Show Host Profile: Sakura "D Rootzmaster" Kone

Published on: April 9th, 2023
Written by Melissa Milton

While most of New Orleans sleeps through the wee hours of every Wednesday, D Rootzmaster sits at the board in the WWOZ studio, connecting listeners, musicians, and poets from all over the world. For the past 13 years, from midnight to 6 am, his show, Overnight Music and Information, brings songs and spoken word to fans, or friends as D Rootzmaster calls them. "I can’t say enough about all the friends I’ve made from all over the world over the – the relationships that we have established, and how when they get to New Orleans we get together, go out for beers or go out for live music, sometimes even they come on my show. That’s very special to me. I will cherish those relationships, henceforth and forever. That’s one of the most exciting things about being at WWOZ – it is quintessential community radio."

Starting with an hour of music devoted to the midnight hour, about a third of D Rootzmaster’s show is listener requests and dedications – "In the meantime, in between time, keep those calls coming my way!" He blends together the blues, reggae, ska, jazz, R&B, highlife, African pop, and more. The rest of the show draws from his lifelong love of music and his years as an agent and band manager for, among others, The Mandators, the #1 reggae band on the African continent in the early 1990s, and Thomas Mapfumo, known as The Lion of Zimbabwe, and his band, The Blacks Unlimited. Despite years of touring all over Africa, and many years living in California before returning to New Orleans just after Katrina, this son of Lake Charles, Louisiana says, "I still consider myself a country boy."

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