Table of contents for Issue 80: Autumn/Winter 2023 in Huck

Hearing Yoruba or pidgin used to be something third-culture kids might only hear at home or over the phone. Fast forward to Afrobeats’ global spread and its rise in prominence in pop is as fast as the ‘millennial whoop’ was in the 2010s in the UK and US music charts. With such cultural dominance comes the idea that there is a winning recipe for pop music coming from the continent. “I think there was a format of how Afropop feels and when you’re not doing that format, people did not understand what the music was,” says Teezee. “It was like, this is too foreign, it’s too European or whatever.” BORN IN LAGOS and living in London, the musical maverick is thought of as a pioneer of Nigeria’s burgeoning alternative scene…

Subversive street artist Foka Wolf has an air of mystery about him. He’s never photographed and doesn’t like to give away too much for obvious reasons. He’s based somewhere in the UK’s Midlands area and has been using text installations and interruptions to highlight and protest against inequality for nearly a decade. From notes left on 4x4 owners’ windscreens questioning their penis size, to hacking London Underground adverts and taking over full advertising billboards, his pieces are subtle enough to make you think they might be real. Then you take a second look and realise what he’s done. WHEN DID YOU REALISE THE POWER OF USING WORDS IN YOUR WORK? I started out making hand-drawn classified adverts on stickers for all sorts of random shit like “Iz your nan acting…

Truly effective communication transcends mere words. It’s how you choose to communicate, with whom you communicate, and the trust that underpins it all. Married climbing partners Jesse and Molly Dufton have this down to a fine art, enabling them to conquer iconic climbing routes as they communicate through a radio mic. Their communication is extra important because Jesse cannot see — he can only distinguish between light and dark in an extremely restricted field of view. Born with the genetic condition, rod-cone dystrophy, Jesse had only 20 per cent sight, and his vision has deteriorated over time, making communication with Molly even more important in a sport where trust between partners is already vital. Together they have climbed difficult ascents, while Jesse has built a reputation for being one of…

Musician, comedian, podcaster, writer and philosopher, Blindboy Boatclub is a cultural figurehead and one of Ireland’s foremost artistic voices. He has published two number-one bestselling books of short stories: The Gospel According to Blindboy and Boulevard Wren and Other Stories, and his show The Blindboy Podcast reaches more than one million listeners monthly. This winter sees the release of his third book, Topographia Hibernica, which unravels the knotted threads of humanity, nature and colonisation, using subjects from a donkey being stuffed into the back of a Fiat Punto, to jackdaws pecking brains out through the roof of a confessional box. Just before he took the book on tour, we spoke to him to find out how words impact his life. THIS ISSUE OF HUCK IS THE POWER OF WORDS ISSUE…

DIONNE FROM CLUELESS. Brenda from Scary Movie. Lily from The Devil Wears Prada. Susie from Rugrats. Chastity from 10 Things I Hate About You. Chad and Taylor from High School Musical. What do all these fictional, yet undeniably influential, characters have in common? Across their multiple media franchises, they could all be categorised as a Black Friend. Yes, the Black Friend: that storytelling trope wherein a protagonist, usually caucasian, will have unfettered access to the wisdom, attitude, joie-de-vivre, cultural cachet, and fashion sense of a carefree Black companion. Often underdeveloped, the Black Friend is a bestie, a confidant, who by sheer proximity elevates the main character’s white experience from mundane to magical. It’s a stereotype that has rightfully been called into question in the last decade or so, with endless…

THE CURRENT STATE OF MEDIA journalism could perhaps be summed up by an off-the-cuff tweet I wrote in July: “It’s so depressing that I’ve gone into every job I’ve had in media knowing I’ll probably be laid off at some point if I don’t leave first.” I wasn’t alone in my nihilistic perspective. The tweet hit a nerve and went quasi-viral with colleagues sharing how much my earnest string of words resonated with them. Replies like “I hate how common this is” or “Why do we work in the media” made me feel vindicated. It wasn’t just my imagination — in 2023, that is the perpetual anxiety of working in the media. After all, I, myself, had been laid off from my editorial job just two months prior to when…

“I like zhoosh,” says Professor Paul Baker on his favourite Polari word when we interviewed him for this feature. “It’s got an interesting pronunciation and starts with a consonant sound that rarely appears at the start of words in English (the “zhju” sound), although you do get it in languages like French, so it’s a word that sounds exotic to English ears. You have to place your mouth in a certain position to get the sound right, sort of pouting your lips and putting your top and bottom sets of teeth quite close together, so you make your face quite camp when you’re saying it.” Professor Baker knows what he’s talking about. Not only is Paul a professor of English Language at Lancaster University, he’s recognised as the world’s foremost…

THE ‘DRAMA STUDIO’ — a classroom whose breeze blocks had been painted navy rather than cream — at my school didn’t have desks. Classes were normally spent sitting on chairs in a circle. When it came to watching things, we’d crowd our seats around the TV, much like people did in the ’50s when the first person on the street got a set. On this auspicious Thursday morning, our drama teacher, Mr. Drake, wheeled out the TV trolley and told us to watch. In the darkness, the opening credits to The Shining lit up our faces. The sweeping shots of mountains and valleys, of winding roads and rivers were captivating. We sat there in total silence, with the sound of the television right down, in awe of the beauty of…

Nobody knows definitively where the Black Country is. While it still has a distinct working-class identity and dialect, the place itself remains elusive. It can’t be found on any official map and agreement on its precise borders has never been reached. THE GENERAL CONSENSUS IS THAT it’s made up of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Sandwell, Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton in the UK’s West Midlands. The Black Country exists in the region’s collective imagination and social customs as much as geographic reality. Battered chips, faggots and peas, pork scratchings and homely pubs are evocative hallmarks of its traditional heartland. A vast coalfield fuelled the region’s rapid growth during the Industrial Revolution and over 500 furnaces and factories quickly sprang up. Being an engine of industry, soot, smoke and oil coated…

On the south coast of Sri Lanka, under the ample shade of a Wetakeiya tree, a group of local young women are sitting in the sand learning about ocean safety. On their laps are booklets written half in English and half in the ornate looping curls of Sinhalese, the most widely spoken language on the island, to help facilitate their learning. A few metres away, small beginner-friendly waves break gently just beyond the shoreline. THE GROUP ARE PART OF a programme run by the social enterprise SeaSisters at the popular beach town of Weligama. The training combines practical swim and surf instruction in the water with educational sessions on the beach. In keeping with the setting, the lessons are relaxed and interactive, but their content is important, especially in a…