Sense of Place: How American singer Davina Robinson found the blues in Osaka

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Published August 28, 2024 at 8:51 AM EDT

Blues singer Davina Robinson (left) and World Cafe host Raina Douris. — Blues singer Davina Robinson (left) and *World Cafe* host Raina Douris.

The United States may be the birthplace of the blues, but Philadelphia-born blues singer Davina Robinson found them somewhere far, far away from the U.S., in Japan.

Robinson launched her music career after moving to Osaka, where she found an unexpected community of jazz and blues musicians. Since then, she's released an album, several singles, and won the U.K. Songwriting Contest in the blues category in 2020.

In this installment of our Sense of Place: Japan series, Robinson talks about finding that community and her voice in Osaka; about her experience performing and living there as a Black American woman; and how she has navigated the music scene in a country so different from where she grew up.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Tags

NPR Podcasts

Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

See stories by Raina Douris

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

See stories by Kimberly Junod