WAMU’s Hans Anderson chatted with Diabate about the griot life for last week’s “Global D.C.” edition of Metro Connection. They met up at D.C. lounge Bossa, where Diabate regularly performs with a band.

Diabate talked to Anderson about the esteemed but solitary role of being the D.C. region’s only Malian griot:

I remember, a long time ago, they called me the griot of the Congress because every time when any president came from Africa they invite me to go sit down and play my n’goni — bring peace — for everybody. I’m the only griot here.

There’s a million, million people in our culture and we put together good music. I’m here. I miss my family. I miss other griot. It’s not easy, but that’s my life. So, God sent me here. It’s very difficult but God is big. When I go to many university they ask me, “Cheick, I want to be griot.” I tell people, “You’re born griot. You don’t want to be griot. You’re born griot.”

Listen to the rest of the story on metroconnection.org. Want more? Check out Diabate’s 2013 Tiny Desk performance below and catch him every Tuesday night at Bossa in Adams Morgan.

On last Friday’s show, host Rebecca Sheir — with me in the passenger seat — took listeners on a tour of D.C.’s astonishingly diverse music communities: the thriving local jazz and hip-hop scenes, rarely seen corners of area music venues, a record label bringing Ethiopian electronic music to the District, metal in a dozen flavors and the small universe of music fans thrusting cassette tapes back into the musical ecosystem.

We also talked with attorney Chris Naoum of Listen Local First to find out what his group is doing to push music-friendly policies in D.C. and strolled down memory lane with Positive Force co-founder Mark Andersen — who shared a moving memory from a Rites of Spring show he’ll probably never forget — as well as WAMU Bluegrass Country’s Katy Daley.

Did you miss the show over Memorial Day weekend? No problem. It’s streamable via Metro Connection‘s website and iTunes. Click “play” and get deep.

Photo: Give at Fort Reno, 2014

Friday and Saturday, Bandwidth is pairing up with WAMU’s weekly newsmagazine Metro Connection to tackle music communities in the Washington, D.C. region.

We’ll be covering a lot of bases, talking about the remarkable growth and vibrance of the District’s jazz scene, the evolution of D.C. hip-hop music, local cassette culture, boutique electronic-music label 1432R and Baltimore’s Deathfest.

Plus, Art Beat reporter Lauren Landau will take us on a backstage tour of D.C. music venues, and we’ll have a little slice of oral history from one prominent figure in D.C.’s punk community.

To get you primed for this special edition of Metro Connection, we have a sampling of some of the perspectives you’ll hear on the show when it airs 1 p.m. Friday (and 7 a.m. Saturday):

D.C. jazz promoter Dick Smith discusses the “high art” of jazz and his take on electronic music:

Rapper and producer Kokayi doles out advice to up-and-coming D.C. musicians who want to be heard:

The founders of D.C. electronic label 1432R remember how a fortuitous night at U Street Music Hall helped them understand their calling:

A backstage tour of the 9:30 Club with venue spokesperson Audrey Schaefer:

For more teasers from this week’s show, check out WAMU 88.5’s Soundcloud page — and don’t forget to tune into the program at 1 p.m. Friday or 7 a.m. Saturday. Of course, the show will also be streaming online as of Friday, May 22.

Photo by Flickr user bootbearwdc used under a Creative Commons license.

Got a special story from your days seeing go-go at the Capital Centre? Jazz at HR-57? Hip-hop on U Street? Techno at Nation? Did something at a D.C. music event change your life? We want to hear about it. Your story could air on WAMU 88.5, which is a great story unto itself.

So what’s your D.C. music story? Share it with us. Email Metro Connection at metro@wamu.org.

Photo: Reesa Renee and RAtheMC at the 2014 Broccoli City Festival

Reporter Jerad Walker, a staffer at WAMU’s Bluegrass Country, talks to Bill MacKaye—father of Ian—who’s been a member of the radical church since 1960. He says the church went to great lengths to open its doors to the local community.

“I came at the same time as a very adventurous and forward-looking priest came to be rector or pastor of the church,” MacKaye remembers. “His name was Bill Wendt. His sense of what he needed to do with this congregation was get them ready for major change.”

At the time, Wendt presided over the first racially integrated Episcopal Church in D.C.— then, a radical concept in and of itself.

“Father Wendt came in here with a mission to open up the church to the neighborhood,” says MacKaye. “He not only was going to welcome in black people, but he was going to go up and down the streets and say ‘You’re really welcome. Come in.'”

Walker also talks to the younger MacKaye as well as Positive Force founder Mark Andersen, whose activist group has hosted many, many punk shows at the church over the years.

Metro Connection airs today at 1 p.m. and Saturday at 7 a.m., but you can stream the entire show online now.

I’m at the home of Sully and Patsy Stephens in a leafy suburban neighborhood in Columbia, Maryland. Joining me are 25 people, mostly in their 50s and 60s, listening intently to a performance from veteran bluegrass musicians Eddie and Martha Adcock and Tom Gray.

“The venue is our living room, our TV room,” says Sully Stephens. “We move all of the furniture out and put all the chairs in.”

A few years ago the Sully and Patsy went from being concertgoers to concert producers when they saw some of their favorite musicians struggling to find small and mid-size venues in the region.

“We found ourselves in an area that seemed to work for the traveling musicians to stop in, play a few gigs, and move on,” says Sully. “We’re not a big venue but we afford them to opportunity to pay their gas money and food for a day and a half I guess.”

This show isn’t entirely altruistic. There’s a personal payoff for Sully and Patsy as well.

“We just love the music,” says Patsy Stephens. “To have performers in our living room—it’s an intimate setting, and you meet them, you talk to them and they’re up close and personal. I think it’s just cozy.”

“You want to see what’s going on in D.C. music, you should be going to house shows.” —Alex Tebeleff

House concerts aren’t a new phenomenon in the metro area, but the home show movement is experiencing a bit of a renaissance of late. In D.C. alone there are an estimated 35 active venues. With this surge, several grassroots organizations have popped up to help promote shows and assist venues.

Nick DePrey cofounded the website Homestage DC. “The only goal [of Homestage DC] is to nurture and sustain the house show scene,” says DePrey. “And we do that in a bunch of ways. One is a calendar—just letting people know. Because one of the things we found is that if you’re not kind of in the know, and I wasn’t for a long time, you don’t know when these things are. And for a long time we were also just helping people host in whatever capacity that we could. Sort of guerrilla house show hosting. You need a PA, or you don’t know any local bands, or you don’t know how to promote or you don’t know how to rock-proof your house and you’ve never done this before. We can help with all of those things.”

DePrey and I are in Petworth at a venue called The Paperhaus, a two-story rowhouse on a quiet side street. We’re there for a show featuring two indie-rock bands—locals The Sea Life and a touring band from Atlanta called Dog Bite. Although both groups regularly play in traditional rock clubs, DePrey says house venues are still an attractive option. The modest pay they receive from donations tonight is helpful, but the Paperhaus offers them something intangible.

“It offers an opportunity to take risks creatively that I’m not sure would be tolerated or as accepted in traditional venues,” says DePrey.

Beyond the creative freedom, there is also an aesthetic difference to playing in a house.

“It’s more of a wall-of-noise concept than you might be used to,” explains DePrey, who has performed with bands in D.C.-area houses and at traditional venues. “Typically in a house here like The Paperhaus, the drums dominate. So you have to either tell the drummer to be more quiet or you have to match his noise with whatever you’re doing. But yeah, it comes with its own unique challenges as a musician—and it offers its own listening experience.”

Alex Tebeleff books and produces shows at The Paperhaus. “You want to see what’s going on in D.C. music, you should be going to house shows,” he says.

And what was once a small, underground and sometimes invitation-only scene has blossomed into an open and diverse collection of venues.

“It’s more accessible now,” he says. “I think that’s something that’s really important. Literally any kind of music is welcome. Any kind of person is welcome.”

The crowd tonight at The Paperhaus consists of about 25 people. They’re mostly 20-somethings that wouldn’t look out of place at a big rock club like the Black Cat or 9:30 Club. On the surface, these people have very little in common with the crowd at Sully’s place in Columbia. But Tebeleff says there’s a subtle but important similarity.

“I think people come here more for the music than for partying, which is something that really is what creates the atmosphere that I appreciate and why I keep doing it.”

Back in Columbia, Maryland, I tell Sully Stephens about his young counterparts in Petworth and ask if that surprises him.

“I think there are a lot people who would just like to come and listen and want an opportunity to be in an informal setting,” says Sully. “I don’t know much about indie rock at all—us old fogies you know—but it doesn’t surprise me that there are other people doing the same thing. I just think we want to support the live music.”

So if you want to see the next big thing in D.C. music, you may not have to travel very far. In fact, there could be a venue right next door.

To find out where you can see house shows in the D.C. area, visit Homestage DC, DC Showspace, DC Bluegrass Union, the Washington Folk Music Association, the Folklore Society of Greater Washington and Showlist DC. For more on local musicians, visit Listen Local First.

Second photo: Dogbite at Paperhaus by Travis Bozeman

It’s a nippy 40 degrees in the meat-cutting room of the Save-A-Lot grocery store on Rhode Island Avenue NE. Butcher Tonya Pointer is making quick work of a side of pork, slicing the meat into evenly sized chops.

It’s a segment about a butcher, yes, but that butcher is also a former chart-topping hip-hop artist. In 1996, Pointer made one of D.C.’s most famous hip-hop songs ever, the socially conscious “5 O’Clock.” As Metro Connection’s Lauren Ober reports:

“5 O’Clock” was an undeniable hit. It landed on many Billboard charts that year and eventually reached the number one spot on the Hot Rap Singles list. Nonchalant was in good company—LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes and 2Pac also had hits on the chart that year.

But “5 O’Clock” wasn’t just a catchy song; it also had a powerful message.

“I had to be at work really, really early in the morning and I would see young guys out on the corner selling drugs. You knew what they were doing. Rain, sleet, shine, snow, they were there,” she said. “And I was just like, ‘God, I hope I never see one of my nephews out there.’”

But while the song was a hit, Nonchalant’s career sputtered in the single’s wake, Ober reports. Pointer attempted a comeback, but it never came together. Now, she finds happiness at her day job, but also as a DJ on a mission to help young women rap, spin, and produce hip-hop.

Read and listen to Ober’s story on Metro Connection.