In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Eugen Bacon’s Crimson in Quietus is an impressive work of Afro-futurism, a novel both inventive and lyrical.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Bacon sets this smart, metaphysical Afrofuturist saga in the multiauthor-created Sauútiverse, which imagines a binary star system supporting a federation of five planets where magic travels on sound waves. . . . Bacon’s prose is as rich as the world-building, studded with neologisms derived from African language and legends (a helpful glossary provides both meanings and derivations). Her inspiring characters, many of whom riff on familiar archetypes (expectant mother, bickering lovers, supportive elder), persevere through extraordinary trials by relying on bonds of faith and affection. The result is both striking and stirring.”
In her own words, here is Eugen Bacon’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Crimson in Quietus:
In Crimson in Quietus: A Sauútiverse Novel, Muso’mi is a maadiregi—an expert highly gifted in the art of consuming sound. In a quest to follow her research and find her missing friend, Fin’Lei, Muso’mi puts herself in peril inside a pattern of killing in the fields of silence that are all too familiar.
What compositions might channel new kind of literary mystery where the investigator is not a detective but a sound scientist?
I find affinity with a gaze at a new kind of logic into odyssey and the afterlife, deforming laws of nature… Perhaps there’s speed (fast, slow), gravity, relativity, causality and the alternate right there in the core of sound magic.
Papaoutai / Stromae
“Où es-tu, papa? Où es-tu?”
The deeply melancholic beat of absence and a haunting echo of presence in this lively dance-pop brings to life the dirge for a missing parent, chiming with protagonist Muso’mi and Fin’Lei’s sense of “missing” and their inherent quests to belong.
Don’t Stop Believin’ / Journey – The Essential Journey
The lyrics of this song in a soaring vocal and escalating keyboard riff resonate with the novel and its characters. Strangers waiting, shadows searching in the darkness, streetlights and silence, people hiding somewhere in the night…
My Lover/ Mercy Chinwo
“You no dey use me play
You no dey carry me joke oh…”
The resonant text in Crimson in Quietus marries this African gospel in a ballad that offers spiritual shelter and intermittent love as reality forms, deforms. Mercy Chinwo’s rich, grounding vocals act as a gravitational constant, a sonic anchor amid chaos.
Gambia / Sona Jobarteh
“Kanyiba long, n’ga dunya long
N’ga n’ba long, n’ga n’fa long”
To know who we are, we must know our world, we must know our mothers, we must know our fathers… Ancient and intricate, a deeply-rooted quest to belong. The rhythmic sweep of this African beat in the acoustic resonance of the kora celebrates the core themes of heritage and cultural odyssey.
Anxiety / Doechii
“Anxiety, anxiety
Holdin’ onto me tightly”
Feel the chaos, the speed, sharp shifts in rhythm and tension in this genre blend. Voices in the head urging fight or flight, with each climbing disorientation.
When You Say Nothing At All / Ronan Keating
Gentle, slow… The grounding nature of silence is soft and intimate, unsettling and nostalgic. In the remoteness of space, our protagonists assuage themselves with reminiscence:
“The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me wherever I fall
You say it best, when you say nothing at all…”
Miracle of Sound / Valhalla Calling (feat. Peyton Parrish)
The echoes of eternity… Valhalla’s calling… The strings of destiny, as the crash of thunder pounds within. The carry of wind and waves—will they set anyone free? The miracle of silence is as thunderous as that of sound. Folk vocals and guttural metal against the cadence of war drums in this composition resonate with the action, action, deep percussions in the roar of the cosmos and, the fabric of the afterlife in this Afro-irreal narrative.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Eugen Bacon and Andrew Hook’s playlist for their novel Secondhand Daylight
Eugen Bacon’s playlist for her novel Mage of Fools
Eugen Bacon’s playlist for her story collection The Road to Woop Woop
Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She’s a Solstice, British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Award, Ignyte and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was also announced in the honor list for “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.” Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a “sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work.” Visit her at eugenbacon.com.