UKNY for June 7

"Despair? Did someone say despair was a question in the world?," the playwright, poet, and civil rights activist Lorraine Hansberry once observed. "Well then, listen to the sons of those who have known little else if you wish to know the resiliency of this thing you would so quickly resign to mythhood, this thing called the human spirit."

That resilient human spirit—and the imperative to speak out with fury, frustration, aspiration, illumination, love, and hope—is the river that flows through tonight's UKNY at 11 with music from Celeste, Ghostpoet, Neneh Cherry, Michael Kiwanuka, Mysie, and Moses Boyd. And at long last, London composer and saxophonist Nubya Garcia releases a stirring new track, an early prelude to a new solo album.

All on UKNY, 11p.m.-midnight ET on 90.7, also streaming online and available via the Weekend Archives for two weeks after broadcast.

Songs played:

1. Falle Nioke and Ghost Culture, “Barké,” Youkounkoun EP
2. Little Simz, “might bang, might not,” Drop 6 EP
3. Michael Kiwanuka, “Final Days,” Kiwanuka
4. Celeste, “I Can See the Change,” single
5. Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes feat. Freddie Gibbs, “Nightrider (radio edit),” What Kinda Music
6. Ghostpoet, “Nowhere to Hide Now,” I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep
7. Tony Allen and Hugh Masekela, “Obama Shuffle Strut Blues,” Rejoice
8. Girlhood, “The Love I Need,” Girlhood
9. Neneh Cherry, “Black Monday,” Broken Politics
10. Nubya Garcia, “Pace,” Source
11. Mysie, “Sweet Relief,” single
12. Moses Boyd feat. Obongjayar, “Dancing in the Dark,” Dark Matter