507 Magazine: Where did Minneapolis' sound come from?
By
John Sievers
507 Magazine
December 21, 2017
Black, white, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin’,” sings Prince in “Uptown." This song and Prince’s purple “reign” is the pulsating crescendo of Andrea Swensson’s book “Got To Be Something Here: The Rise of the Minneapolis Sound.”
Swensson, a music reporter and radio host for “The Local Show” on Minnesota Public Radio’s 89.3 The Current, points out Prince’s lyric in her final chapter, “Funkytown.” It suggests a reaction to a racially divided music scene in Minneapolis, and Swensson carefully notates this scene’s insistent rhythms.
