THE DEEP

Narrator Daveed Diggs brings his unique voice to Rivers Solomon’s collaborative novella, THE DEEP, inspired by a song of the same name, written by Diggs’s band, Clipping. Diggs explores his multilayered world through the voice of Yetu, the historian of an ocean-dwelling people called the Wajinru, descended from pregnant African women thrown overboard during the transatlantic slave trade. Diggs brings different voices to the generations of characters but relies more on description than changes in tone to express emotion. While the story itself was inspired by music and is interwoven with music and sound, there is little reflection of this in the audio production. Although the lack of musicality seems like a missed opportunity, Solomon’s words stand strongly on their own. H.C. 2021 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2019]