#Arteetude 334 - Detlef Schlich and AI Co-Host Sophia reflect on Neil Quinn´s three-day voting journey around WAW’s single “Africa Smile” in The Cork Playlist – Song of the Week.

What begins as a simple story about a local playlist becomes a deeper meditation on independent music, visibility, community, and the emotional labour of self-promotion. Detlef looks back at the old DIY days of band promotion — photocopied flyers, cut-and-paste posters, pubs, record shops, and paper under car windscreens — and compares them with today’s digital rituals of links, WhatsApp messages, Instagram stories, Spotify streams, and online voting. At the centre of the episode is The Cork Playlist , created and curated by Neil Quinn , as an important cultural platform for Cork music. Detlef considers how such local initiatives interrupt the disappearance of music in the endless streaming machine and create a space where artists can be heard, compared, supported, and discovered. The episode also tells the dramatic and slightly comic story of WAW’s three-day voting campaign: the excitement, the constant refreshing, the stress, the WhatsApp group mistake, the quick lesson in digital boundaries, and the realisation that promotion must remain an invitation — not an invasion. WAW reached second place with 465 votes , while Stacey Dineen deservedly won first place with her beautiful song “Stay.” Rather than framing this as defeat, Detlef and Sophia explore second place as evidence of resonance: a sign that Africa Smile moved through people, networks, friends, strangers, Cork, West Cork, Germany, and beyond. The episode closes with gratitude to everyone who voted, shared, listened, added the song to playlists, and carried it further — before playing “Africa Smile” once more as the end-song. Two rivers meet. Two artists listen. One wounded hope keeps moving. Detlef Schlich is a rock musician, podcaster, visual artist, filmmaker, ritual designer, and media archaeologist based in West Cork. He is recognised for his seminal work, including a scholarly examination of the intersections between shamanism, art, and digital culture, and his acclaimed video installation, Transodin's Tragedy. He primarily works in performance, photography, painting, sound, installations, and film. In his work, he reflects on the human condition and uses the digital shaman's methodology as an alter ego to create artwork. His media archaeology is a conceptual and practical exercise in uncovering the unique aesthetic, cultural, and political aspects of media in culture. WEBSITE LINKS WAW Official YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@WAWBand From the forthcoming WAW album The Stories of Nil Young Two songs from WAW’s developing album project The Stories of Nil Young — a mythopoetic journey along the Nile, where river, memory, loss, cooperation and hope flow into music. AfricaSmile AfricaSmile follows the Nile as an imagined journey from its sources to the Mediterranean Sea — a river of memory, movement, rhythm and myth.The song turns the meeting of the White Nile and the Blue Nile into a fragile image of cooperation. It is not a naïve peace anthem, but a wounded musical hope: two different currents meeting, listening, and still moving forward together. The Niles Bittersweet Song The Nile’s Bittersweet Song is the first official single by WAW / Wild Atlantic Way — Detlef Schlich and Dirk Schlömer. The song follows the Nile as a river of memory, beauty, loss and contradiction: a li