Love is the Message: Music, the Dance Floor and Counterculture
A unique intellectual project, Love Is the Message maps the relationship between music, social change and the world. Beginning with the opening of the NYC Loft on Valentine’s Day 1970, the podcast moves forwards, backwards and sideways across time and space, listening to and analysing transformational music from the USA, Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Europe and beyond, from the colonial era to the present. “Tune in, turn on and get down” with co-hosts Jeremy Gilbert and Tim Lawrence, both of them acclaimed authors as well as audiophile dance party hosts/DJs who worked side-by-side with David Mancuso.
There’s one big party going on all the time. Sometimes we get to tune into it. The rest of the time there’s Love is the Message.
Latest Episodes
Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat. A natural partner piece to our beloved Summer of Soul, Johan Grimonprez’s documentary tracks in vivid and exhilarating style the Cold War episode that led American musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.
We discuss decolonialism, the activities of black jazz activists in America, and listen to Roach behind the kit. We hear the history of the colonisation of Congo by Belgium, introduce Lumumba as a unique historical figure, and spend some time reflecting on how these imperial legacies resonate today. Elsewhere in the episode we stop by Malcom X, Khrushchev, and Joseph Conrad. The horror, the horror…
Series 1: Introduction
Counterculture, the 70s, the dance floor, love and the Loft
Series 2: USA 1965–1975
DJs, disco, Fordism to post-Fordism, feminism and funk
Series 3: Afro-Psychedelia
Consciousness-exploding tropical music from the colonial era to 1975
Series 4: New York City 1975-76
The melting pot city at the center of the world
Series 5: Conversations
Tim and Jeremy talk with leading academics and writers
Series 6: 1977 in NYC
A pivotal year in a precarious place.
Patrons Episodes
We’re committed to keeping the main series of the show free and available to everyone. However, for those who choose to support our work through a monthly Patreon subscription, we’ve created a large and ever-expanding selection of bonus material by way of thanks. This includes lectures on Marxism, Fordism, and Deleuze and Guattari; book readings and extended meditations on complimentary topics; conversations about what we’ve been listening and playing recently; and explorations of related scenes and musical moments that don’t quite fit into the main thrust of our LITM episodes.
See a full list of the patrons episodes here.
