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Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Mark Lee’s slide guitar, Jordan Stokes, and Matt Wrather use the power of music to channel the ancestors, bridge the gap between the living and the dead, and also discuss the 2025 Ryan Coogler film Sinners. It’s quite possibly a masterpiece; at the least, it’s certainly the best movie musical about vampires set in the Mississippi Delta that’s ever been made.

The panelists sink their teeth into the tradition of blues music in the rural south; what it means for different cultures to appropriate music; vampire lore across the centuries; and what exactly the vampires in this movie symbolize. Are they just racist villains, or is something else more complex going on here? And what does it mean that the vampires’ music absolutely slaps?

No souls were sold to the devil at the crossroads in the making of this podcast.

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Further Reading

• Watch Sinners on HBO Max
• Listen to the Sinners soundtrack on Spotify
• Crossroads (1986), starring Ralph Maccio
• Crossroads (2002), starring Britney Spears
• Saoirse Ronan and Jimmy Sing “Fairytale of New York”