The Cause Podcast with Dr. Reiland Rabaka

08/18/2026

What happens when memory moves through rhythm? Journey across the African diaspora through reggae, salsa, samba, calypso, soca, and cumbia, exploring Black music as memory, resistance, sanctuary, pleasure, and democratic expression. Featuring the original poem “Our Music Remembers” and a thematic playlist.

Listen closely. There are messages in the music.

https://www.colorado.edu/center/caaas/podcast/episodes/episode-41-music-african-diaspora-reggae-salsa-samba-calypso-soca-and-cumbia

08/06/2026

Today on The Cause, we cross more than water.
Episode 40, "The African Diaspora: Beyond Borders, Beyond Boundaries," is live now. And it is one of the most expansive and far-reaching episodes Dr. Reiland Rabaka has ever recorded.

The African Diaspora is not simply the history of Africans dispersed across the globe. It is the story of a civilization whose influence crossed oceans, whose ideas crossed generations, and whose enduring commitment to freedom continues to enlarge the democratic imagination of humanity. Dr. Rabaka traces the Diaspora from Africa's ancient kingdoms and trading networks, through the catastrophe of the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, through the rise of Pan-Africanism and the global struggle against colonialism, and into the living, worldwide community of African-descended people that continues shaping the 21st century.

Along the way he honors W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Anna Julia Cooper, Ella Baker, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Nelson Mandela, and Wole Soyinka, whose Nobel Prize acceptance speech gave Dr. Rabaka one of the most profound awakenings of his intellectual life: Africa does not stop where salt water licks its shores. Africa is wherever African people are.

The episode features Dr. Rabaka's original poem, "Our People Crossed More Than Water," and a specially curated African Diaspora playlist spanning calypso, samba, salsa, son cubano, soca, reggae, Afro-Cuban rumba, and funk.

Episode 40 is Part One of a two-part series. Episode 41 explores the music of the African Diaspora.

Our people crossed more than water. Listen today.

🎙️ Listen now: https://bit.ly/thecausepodcast

07/16/2026

Today on The Cause, we go to the blues.

Episode 39, "The Blues: Musical Memories, Oral Histories, and Cultural Archives," is live now. And it is one Dr. Reiland Rabaka has been preparing with deep personal passion. He spent hours immersed in the recordings while researching this episode. Blind Lemon Jefferson. Bessie Smith. Robert Johnson. Muddy Waters. Howlin Wolf. Ma Rainey. Memphis Minnie. Elmore James. The ancestors showed up for this one.

The blues is not simply a music of sadness, heartbreak, or loss. It is one of history's most eloquent narrators. Philosophy carried in song. Theology expressed through everyday life. Democratic testimony voiced by ordinary women and men whose names rarely appear in history books but whose lives helped shape the modern world. Dr. Rabaka traces the blues from its African roots through the field hollers and work songs of enslavement, through the Mississippi Delta and the Great Migration, to the electrified streets of Chicago and into the DNA of virtually every Black musical tradition that followed.

The episode also features his original poem, "Some Truths Cannot Survive Ordinary Conversation," written directly in the blues aesthetic and tradition. And a specially curated companion blues playlist is ready for your listening.

The blues remembers what history sometimes forgets. The blues sings what freedom still longs to become.
🎙️ Listen now: https://www.colorado.edu/center/caaas/podcast/episodes/episode-39-blues-musical-memories-oral-histories-and-cultural-archives

07/09/2026

Next week on The Cause, we go deeper into the roots.

The blues is not simply a music of sadness, heartbreak, or loss. It is one of history's most eloquent narrators. Philosophy carried in song. Theology expressed through everyday life. Democratic testimony voiced by ordinary women and men whose names rarely appear in history books but whose lives helped shape the modern world.

Episode 39, "The Blues: Oral Histories and Archives of the African American Experience," is Part Two of our three-part series on Black music and its enduring democratic power. Dr. Reiland Rabaka traces the blues from its African roots through the field hollers and work songs of enslavement, through the Mississippi Delta and the Great Migration, to the electrified streets of Chicago and into the DNA of virtually every Black musical tradition that followed.

Along the way he honors Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, and so many more whose artistry transformed American culture and the world.

The blues remembers what history sometimes forgets. The blues sings what freedom still longs to become.

Tune in Thursday, July 16. 🎙️

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07/02/2026

Today on The Cause, we go back to the beginning.
Before gospel. Before blues. Before jazz, soul, funk, and rap. There were the spirituals.

Episode 38, "The Spirituals: The Black Sacred Song Tradition," is live now. This is an episode Dr. Reiland Rabaka has been preparing with deep personal reverence. These are the songs he heard his grandmothers sing, songs passed hand to hand, mouth to mouth, generation to generation, like a small flame crossing a storm.

Dr. Rabaka traces the spirituals from their African roots through the era of enslavement and beyond, exploring how these sacred songs functioned as prayer, protest, philosophy, historical testimony, communal healing, and visions of liberation. He examines how they shaped gospel, blues, jazz, soul, funk, and rap, and why their voices continue to call us toward freedom today.

The episode features his original poem, "The Sacred Singers Remain With Us," and a companion spirituals playlist curated by Dr. Rabaka himself. Nobody can speak for the ancestors better than they can speak for themselves.

As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1903, the Black folk song stands not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas.

Episode 38 is Part One of a three-part series on Black music and its enduring democratic power. The sacred singers remain with us.

🎙️ Listen now: https://sites.libsyn.com/562110/ep-38-the-spirituals-the-black-sacred-song-tradition

06/25/2026

Next week on The Cause, we go back to the beginning.

Before gospel. Before blues. Before jazz, soul, funk, and rap. There were the spirituals.

As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1903, the Black folk song stands not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas.

In Episode 38, Dr. Reiland Rabaka traces the spirituals from their African and African diasporic roots through the era of enslavement and beyond, exploring how these sacred songs functioned as prayer, protest, philosophy, historical testimony, communal healing, and visions of liberation. He examines how they shaped gospel, blues, jazz, soul, funk, and rap, and why their voices continue to call us toward freedom today.

The episode also features Dr. Rabaka's original poem, "The Sacred Singers Remain With Us," a meditation on memory, music, and the enduring presence of those whose voices carried hope through history.

Songs carried what chains could not contain. Tune in next week.

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06/24/2026

On February 2, 2026, the Center for African and African American Studies gathered for its fourth Black History Month Celebration, a convergence heavy with memory and deep meaning. The night marked not only another February, but the Center’s fifth year of existence, the campus’s 150th anniversary, and the centennial of Black History Month itself. See the full gallery here: https://www.canva.com/design/DAHAmveXRdw/TYdMcjQuEyH6JW1SaVEvRA/edit

06/23/2026

Article: Freedom deferred, freedom declared, freedom demanded: a Juneteenth playlist

Juneteenth is not only a historical commemoration; it is also a musical archive. Long before freedom was legally recognized, it was imagined, sung, prayed, whispered, shouted and remembered in song.

Read:

On a day of commemoration, African American music is a living record of struggle and survival.

06/23/2026

Ep 37 (06/18/26): Juneteenth: Freedom Deferred, Freedom Declared, Freedom Demanded

Juneteenth is not merely a holiday. It is not merely a date on a calendar, a festival, a parade, or a cookout. Juneteenth is a historical mirror. It asks us to look honestly at America's promises and America's contradictions, to remember both the wounds and the wonders of the American experiment. In this special episode, Dr. Reiland Rabaka traces the origins of Juneteenth, from June 19, 1865, when Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce what enslaved people in Texas had been denied for more than two years, to the decades of organizing by activists, educators, churches, and communities that finally secured federal recognition in 2021. At the center of it all is one of democracy's enduring lessons: freedom must not only be announced. It must be enforced. It must be protected. It must be practiced.

Listen now:

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress." — Frederick Douglass Juneteenth is not merely a holiday. It is not merely a date on a calendar, a festival, a parade, or a cookout. Juneteenth is a historical mirror. It asks us to look honestly at America's promises and America's contradictions, to...