Danyel Smith gives Black women in pop their flowers in 'Shine Bright'

In this conversation from April 2022, former guest host Juana Summers sits down with author Danyel Smith to chat about her book, Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. They talk all about Black women in music — like Gladys Knight, Mahalia Jackson and Whitney Houston — whose true genius and contributions have not yet been fully recognized.

This episode was originally produced by Anjuli Sastry Krbechek, and it was edited by Acacia Squires and Tamar Charney. Additional production came from Liam McBain and additional editing came from Jessica PLaczek. We had engineering support on this episode from Stacey Abbott and Gilly Moon. Our executive producer is Veralyn Williams, our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni, and our Senior VP of Programming is Anya Grundmann.