BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series

We pay $15 for each piece selected for publication. 

You may have noticed that The Nasiona Podcast has had a new musical feel, and that in 2021 we produced the first ever The Nasiona album, entitled “Volume 1: Petrichor.” In 2022, we are developing the second compilation volume for our BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series, and we want to consider your work!

Music and oral narrators have always told stories that are as powerful, as moving as personal essays, and we at The Nasiona want to honor these tradition. For the second compilation audio volume of our BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series, we seek submissions of tracks that align with our vision of centering, elevating, and amplifying Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, shedding light on neglected and intersectional identity experiences, while also celebrating our beauty, intelligence, creativity, and joy.

Whether you record your music or spoken word professionally, or whether you have gone the DIY way throughout; whether you are an emerging indie artist, or have never released a track or album; or whether you have simply felt overlooked by the mainstream musical landscape: we believe in your voice, your story, and your talent; and we want your work!

Tell us about growing up as a third culture kid, about living through trauma, about being misgendered, about slice-of-life instances of resolution. Tell us about your elations, your sorrows, your moments of quiet tenacity, your rallying cries of rage. Send us a track (or two, or three!) that tells a story, whether in words or through instrumentals. If it matters to you, it deserves a platform.

All genres and languages are welcome. If you identify as BIPOC, we want to showcase your work and profile you.

We can’t wait to experience to your work!

(Note that we are here to center, elevate, and amplify your work. You keep all the rights to your work.)

Learn more about our submissions here.

BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series

The Nasiona’s Black Is Beautiful Playlist

February 9, 2022 The Nasiona Team

With our BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL music playlist, we strive to center, elevate, and amplify the voices and musical talents of Black storytellers and creators. Curated by The Nasiona team, this introduction is more than a simple opportunity for you to learn and be entertained. No. Not just that. That’s a bonus. What we really hope you’ll do is commit to taking action to support these artists, purchase their music, share their work, use your influence and power to create access to opportunity, and become long-term patrons. We hope the playlist animates your body, inspires your soul, and moves your wallet. As we try to impact equity, one critical thing we can all do is buy and experience the works created and produced by Black artists. […]

BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series

Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat

December 9, 2021 Khalisa Rae

The South will birth a new kind of haunting / in your black girl-ness, your black woman-ness. / Your body becomes a poached confection— / honeyed enigma pledging to be allegiant. / The muddied silk robe waving in their amber / grains of bigotry. / Your skin—a rhetorical question, / blood-stained equation no one wants to answer. […]

BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series

A Tale of Two Tongues

August 10, 2021 Angela Rideau

i’m a chameleon with two tongues in my mouth / Punjabi and English / my mother tongue / and the other tongue / one the language of my blood the other of reason // i couldn’t speak anything except my mother tongue until i was five / Punjabi is what i spoke, it was how i was safe and survived/ Punjab comes from the Persian words panj, meaning five, and ab meaning water / it represents the five powerful rivers flowing across the lands / […]

BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series

TRE. CHARLES: “Stressin.”

April 26, 2021 The Nasiona Team

World premiere of Tre. Charles’s debut single/music video for “Stressin.” Tre. Charles is a singer-songwriter who dives into the depths of his soul to try to bring you into his world with an expressive blend of warm and soulful undertones. This track embodies personal and social struggles that Tre. Charles has experienced throughout his life as a young Black man in America. This timely track and its visuals are sure to capture the isolation that many have felt through this pandemic. […]

BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series

Episode 48 – BIPOC Musical Artists Showcase

April 23, 2021 Julián Esteban Torres López

Listen to our first musical compilation album, entitled Volume 1: Petrichor. The works contained in this volume—from mournful piano compositions, dazzling spoken word, spellbinding vocal layered-songs, to beautiful instrumentals—express the intricacies of being an artist of color in a too-often indifferent world. Artists: San Palo, Whitney & The Saying Goes, Stephanie Henry, Tony Tennyson, whenthecitysleeps, Chromic, Beezy Montaña, Mallika Vie, Annah Sidigu, Eki Shola, Samantha Pearl, and Jinnat. […]

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BIPOC Music + Spoken Word Series

Volume 1: Petrichor

February 28, 2021 The Nasiona Team

This first volume of The Nasiona’s music series encapsulates all the glorious highs and the searing lows of navigating the world as an empathetic, curious individual. The works contained in this volume — from mournful piano compositions, dazzling spoken word, spellbinding vocal layered-songs, to beautiful instrumentals — express the intricacies of being an artist of color in a too-often indifferent world; and like the scent that lingers long after the downpour, these masterpieces ask you to sit awhile, to close your eyes, to pay attention […]

Being Latina/e/o/x Series

Four Poems on Latinidad by Anthony Orozco

March 7, 2020 Anthony Orozco

“Encantado” — An ode to Boricuas, who showed up en masse to the first Puerto Rican festival in Reading, Pa, in over a decade. The city’s first Latino mayor was freshly elected, the aftermath of Maria is behind them, and they continue to grapple with the perception of being not “real Americans. // ”mano a mano” — A call for unity, advocacy, and pride among Latinos. It honors the massive contributions and hidden hardships of our people. The poem momentarily erases our cultural, national, and class barriers to connect us as one. // “Conquest” — Written and performed with the oral tradition in mind, it is a vulnerable and visceral defense of mixed-race, mixed-culture people. When people try to control what Latinidad means or looks like, though they do not know the multi-cultural and sordid past of Latin America, this poem is used to refute claims of “not being Latino” enough. // “Land of the Cinder Block” — Also written and performed with the oral tradition in mind, this piece is an ode to my father’s homeland of Chihuahua, Mexico. It examines the state’s dual nature of being equally beautiful and perilous, of being sacred and frightening. […]