Trees of Reverie Readathon: Bookish Challenge #13

Bookish Challenge 13: Book Playlist!

I love making playlists. In fact, it’s one of my favorite ways to procrastinate, which is what I’m doing right now. (I have two papers to finish for school, and a whole whack of reading to do, but I’m going to make a playlist, because… uh, yolo*, I guess. *cries salty tears into my teacup*)

This time, I’ve made a playlist for The Dragon Can’t Dance by Earl Lovelace, which is a brilliant novel I read for my Caribbean lit class this term. As I’ve previously mentioned, I prefer to make quite long playlists, that I can put on as background noise while doing other things; this playlist clocks in at 2 hours and 42 minutes long, which is actually a bit on the short side for me.

Most of the songs are assigned by character, with a few songs being used to express their situation at a few different points in the book, and thereby sketch a kind of arc:

• Songs 1, 19, and 34 are for Cleothilda
• Songs 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 17, 18, 35, and 40 are for Sylvia
• Songs 5, 15, 21, 23, 24, 26, 31, 32, and 33 are for Aldrick
• Songs 9, 22, 25, and 30 are for Fisheye and the Calvary Hill Nine
• Song 27 is from Mr Guy to Sylvia
• Song 16 is from Sylvia to Aldrick
• Songs 8, 29, 38, and 39 are for Philo
• Songs 11, 28, and 36 are for Pariag
• Song 37 is from Dolly to Pariag
• Songs 12, 13, 14, and 20 are for Carnival season

Here’s the list:

1. We Are One by Angelique Kidjo
2. Flora’s Secret by Enya
3. No Scrubs by TLC
4. Partition by Beyoncé
5. Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi
6. I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) by Whitney Houston
7. I Think I’m In Love With You by Jessica Simpson
8. Billionaire/Successful by Ahmir
9. Pistols at Dawn by Seinabo Sey
10. Anaconda by Nicki Minaj
11. Tu Koi Aur Hai by A.R. Rahman, Alma Ferovic, Arjun Chandy
12. Cheers (Drink to That) by Rihanna
13. All Night Long by Lionel Richie
14. Pata Pata by Miriam Makeba
15. Turn Me On by Kevin Lyttle
16. (소녀시대) – Run Devil Run by Girl’s Generation
17. Glamorous by Fergie, ft. Ludacris
18. Flawless Remix by Beyoncé & Nicki Minaj
19. Criminal by Fiona Apple
20. Trini Dem Girls by Nicki Minaj, ft. Lunchmoney Lewis
21. Ribcage by Mary Lambert, ft. Angel Haze & K.Flay
22. Bad Blood by Bastille
23. No Air by Rissi Palmer
24. A La Claire Fontaine by Les Petits Minous
25. This is War by Thirty Seconds to Mars
26. Wicked Games by The Weeknd
27. O.M.G. by Usher, ft. will.i.am
28. Grand Piano by Nicki Minaj
29. Wordplay by Jason Mraz
30. Demons by Imagine Dragons
31. Happy Ending by MIKA
32. Man in the Mirror by Michael Jackson
33. Angry by Matchbox Twenty
34. Younger by Seinabo Sey
35. The Weakness in Me by Joan Armitrading
36. Prem Ratan Dhan Payo by Palak Muchhal
37. Love on Top by Beyoncé
38. Mad Season by Matchbox Twenty
39. Marilyn Monroe by Nicki Minaj
40. Sight of the Sun by Fun.

You can listen to it on Spotify.

*yolo, in case you don’t know, stands for You Only Live Once, a mantra adopted by some millenials to express their desire to enjoy life and do things that make them happy, probably in response to how thoroughly screwed we feel as we collapse under the weight of our student loans, trying to live up to the demands of our predecessors in an unstable housing market, racialized unemployment disparities, and a racialized system of gendered wage disparity, where we’re shamed for not being able to be literally in two places at once: to go to school and spend 45 hours a week in class for a degree that we shouldn’t need for the low wage work we can find, while also magically working the 48 hours a week it would cost to pay tuition (which is to say literally nothing about rent, bills, and food), and if we want to sleep 8 hours a night (not something you can really sustainably skimp on) that leaves 8 hours per week for cooking and eating and commuting and literally everything else outside of school and work. What, bitter? not me…

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