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.
Radhika Singh’s debut novel Earthly Playing Field is a thought-provoking work of speculative fiction.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“A complex coming-of-political-consciousness narrative . . . heady and fascinating . . . it’s obvious Singh knows her stuff. There’s much to chew on here.””
In her own words, here is Radhika Singh’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Earthly Playing Field:
My debut, Earthly Playing Field (Common Notions Press, May, 2026), is closely followed by the first novel I actually wrote, Weirdly Tuned Antennae (FC2 Press, November 2026)—because life, like art, is a little bit sci fi! Below is a playlist for both novels.
Prince’s final concert ~ Piano & A Microphone tour, 2016
I started drafting my first novel, Weirdly Tuned Antennae, in the fall of 2016. Prince had left Planet Earth that April, and I’d passed the months playing on loop two bootleg copies of his final shows in Atlanta. I’m not alone in considering him an original, a genius, a glittering cosmic flame. I was deeply moved by the fact of his existence and really shook by his premature departure. His final performances are a meditative rumination on a juicy, bursting pop oeuvre… the philosophical confrontation of a man with his original instrument. They subsumed my writerly consciousness and even the writing itself; a literal impression is included in the novel.
Ani Difranco’s cover of When You Were Mine, by Prince
I’ve loved Prince since childhood (my first ever ‘real’ concert was during his Diamonds and Pearls tour), but my teenage heart belonged to Ani. I memorized each word and chord she strummed on stages I never saw, via bootleg cassettes with handwritten track lists exchanged through networks of ardent followers. I learned the principles of poetry by studying her rhymes. She’d left my rotation by my early 20s, and then I found this cover while roaming Prince’s archives after his death. It was surreal to hear her give voice to his lyrics—both so indelibly familiar to me—as I composed my own work.
Weirdly Tuned Antennae is set during the monsoon in the foothills of the Himalayas, where I was living at the time, in a big old wooden house with amazing acoustics. I played a lot of ambient music, like Tibetan singing bowls and throat singing, that would reverberate off the walls and saturate the space. One of the albums I listened to on repeat was Siren Islands by Arooj Aftab. The subdued, dreamy soundscape echoed the mist and rain that perpetually enclosed the house and the hillside, veiling the big mountains otherwise visible from my doorstep. This atmospheric quality is palpable throughout the pages.
Begum Akhtar’s Na Ja Balam Pardes in Gitanjali Rao’s Printed Rainbow
The romance of the Islamic Golden Age endures in the Punjabi / North Indian imagination, through archetypal films like Pakeezah and Mughal-e-Azam and classical Hindustani raags expressing epic themes of divine love. This sense of enchantment is instinctual to me; I’m a sucker for grainy old recordings that feel like they’re reaching through time. Both my novels reflect this core nostalgia. Rather than choosing a specific ghazal or thumri, I’m sharing here a scene I carry with me from Gitanjali Rao’s beautiful animation, Printed Rainbow: a vision of sensuality set to Begum Akhtar’s rendition of Na Ja Balam Pardes. The clip is cued to the opening chords.
Tumhein Dillagi Bhool Jani Padegi ~ Nustrat Fateh Ali Khan
My second novel, Earthly Playing Field, is at heart a Sufi love story. It was a joy to research Sufi poetry and philosophy, and the movement of Sufi orders to North India. Qawwali originated in 13th century Hindustan—devotional music that mirrored contemporary Bhakti traditions and built on the Sufi practice of sama, or deep listening. The ‘father’ of the form, Amir Khusrau, is of special relevance to Delhi-ites like me as his gravesite is located in the center of the city next to that of his beloved, the Chishti Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya. Khusrau blended regional vernaculars and cultural references with courtly Persian and Arabic tongues to produce a uniquely desi syncretism immortalized by masters like the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In the end, however, the qawwali I played most while writing this book is not actually by Khusrau!
Gurbani Kirtan
The real soundtrack to my second novel is Gurbani—the verses of the Sikh holy book set to music. The faith was founded in 15th century Punjab by Guru Nanak, who wandered the lands (all the way to Mecca!) with his companion Bhai Mardana, spreading his teachings of Oneness of Being through gentle song. Bhai Mardana played a stringed instrument called the rabab; nowadays, the accompaniment is more often on tabla and harmonium. Like the Sufi philosophy that inspires the Sikh faith, Gurbani instructs the seeker to surpass the ego and embrace a greater sense of Self. On a revolutionary level, it calls for us to balance the responsibilities of material reality, including the defense of justice, with a total and simultaneous submission to a more transcendent sense of truth. The wisdom of Gurbani forms the ethos of the novel (and of the title – Earthly Playing Field).
Surah Yaseen ~ The Quran
One of the central concerns of Earthly Playing Field is the role of faith in resistance. How does a people besieged by relentless onslaught from a materially powerful oppressor maintain the struggle for sovereignty with such dignity—day after day, year after year, generation after generation? Motivated by my own desperate need to understand a truth greater than myself, I started keeping the Ramadan fast in 2024. I found I wasn’t the only non-Muslim showing up to iftars, wracked by similar questions. That first year of fasting was a real trip, in the trippiest sense. I meditated a lot and listened to many hours-long recordings of mesmerizing Surahs while writing prose that reflected my journey—both physical and metaphysical. This recitation of Surah Yasin is one I return to often.
Chungking Express ~ California Dreamin’
There are songs that hum through us all the time—perhaps because we are, at base, vibrational beings. I wanted to end this list with one of those, but there are so many to choose from! There’s this one called The Moon (Swell Season) that’s always in my head, and Billie Holiday’s All of Me. And there’s Unravel by Björk, a forever beloved whose politic thankfully stands up in genocidal times. I decided on California Dreamin’ because for me the association is with Wong Kar Wai, whose aesthetic was so personally formative and who put Asia on the map of arthouse film back in ’90s USA. Today, as the sun sets over the Western Empire, the notion of California Dreaming feels like even more of a throwback.
Radhika Singh is a writer and editor living in Queens, New York. Her fiction speculates on the presence of magic in this world, the connection to spirit and consciousness, and the power of the people to organize for collective liberation. Her novel Weirdly Tuned Antennae, winner of the 2025 Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest, is forthcoming from FC2 Press; an excerpt was featured in the 2024 Genre issue of The Markaz Review. Her comic Leila Khaled & the Struggle for Liberation, created in collaboration with illustrator Samita Chatterjee, appeared in the 2024 Trade/ Trade Off issue of Comixense magazine. For more information visit: rhsingh.work.