Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism, or afro-futurism, is an African diaspora cultural and literary movement whose thinkers and artists see science, technology and science fiction as means of exploring the black experience.cite paper| author = Dery, Mark| title = Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0| date = 1995 | url = http://www.markdery.com/archives/books/flame_wars_excerpts/| accessdate=2007-01-29] cite book| editor = Thomas, Sheree R.| title = Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora| publisher =Aspect| year = 2001| id = ISBN 0446677248] cite book| editor = Nelson, Alondra| title = Afrofuturism: A Special Issue of Social Text| publisher = Duke University Press| year = 2002| id = ISBN 0822365456]

In the late 1990s a number of cultural critics, notably Mark Dery in his 1995 essay "Black to the Future", began to write about the features they saw as common in African-American science fiction, music and art. Dery dubbed this phenomenon “afrofuturism”.

In "Black to the Future," Dery writes,

Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture—and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future—might, for want of a better term, be called "Afrofuturism".

[...] If there is an Afrofuturism, it must be sought in unlikely places, constellated from far-flung points. We catch a glimpse of it in the opening pages of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, where the proto-cyberpunk protagonist—a techno-bricoleur “in the great American tradition of tinkers”—taps illegal juice from a line owned by the rapacious Monopolated Light & Power, gloating, “Oh, they suspect that their power is being drained off, but they don’t know where.” [...] Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings such as Molasses, which features a pie-eyed, snaggletoothed robot, adequately earn the term “Afrofuturist,” as do movies like John Sayles’s "The Brother From Another Planet" and Lizzie Borden’s "Born in Flames". Jimi Hendrix’s "Electric Ladyland" is Afrofuturist; so, too, is the techno-tribal global village music of Miles Davis’s "On the Corner" and Herbie Hancock’s "Headhunters", as well as the fusion-jazz cyberfunk of Hancock’s "Future Shock" and Bernie Worrell’s "Blacktronic Science", whose liner notes herald “reports and manifestoes from the nether regions of the modern Afrikan American music/speculative fiction universe.”

Afrofuturism manifests itself, too, in early ‘80s electro-boogie releases such as Planet Patrol’s “Play at Your Own Risk,” Warp 9’s “Nunk,” George Clinton’s Computer Games, and of course Afrika Bambaataa’s classic “Planet Rock,” records steeped in “imagery drawn from computer games, video, cartoons, sci-fi and hip-hop slanguage,” notes David Toop, who calls them “a soundtrack for vidkids to live out fantasies born of a science-fiction revival courtesy of "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind").” Techno, whose name was purportedly inspired by a reference to “techno rebels” in Alvin Toffler’s "Third Wave", is a quintessential example of Afrofuturism.

[...] Afrofuturism bubbles up from the deepest, darkest wellsprings in the intergalactic big band jazz churned out by Sun Ra’s Omniverse Arkestra, in Parliament-Funkadelic’s Dr. Seuss-ian astrofunk, and in dub reggae, especially the bush doctor’s brew cooked up by Lee “Scratch” Perry, which at its eeriest sounds as if it were made out of dark matter and recorded in the crushing gravity field of a black hole (“Angel Gabriel and the Space Boots” is a typical title).

African-American culture is Afrofuturist at its heart, literalizing [the SF novelist William] Gibson’s cyberpunk axiom, “The street finds its own uses for things.” With trickster elan, it retrofits, refunctions, and willfully misuses the technocommodities and science fictions generated by a dominant culture that has always been not only white but a wielder, as well, of instrumental technologies.

According to the cultural critic Kodwo Eshun, the British journalist Mark Sinker was theorizing something very like Afrofuturism in the pages of "The Wire", a British music magazine, as early as 1992.

Afrofuturist ideas were incubated and elaborated on the eponymous list-serve established by Alondra Nelson in 1998. Participants in those conversations include Alondra Nelson, Paul D. Miller, Alexander G. Weheliye, Nalo Hopkinson, Sheree Thomas, Art McGee, and Kali Tal.

Writers

* LeVar Burton
* Octavia Butler
* Samuel R. Delany
* Mark Dery
* Kodwo Eshun
* Nalo Hopkinson
* Paul D. Miller
* Walter Mosley
* Alondra Nelson
* Ishmael Reed
* George S. Schuyler
* Alexander G. Weheliye

Fiction

* "Black Empire"
* "Black No More"
* "Futureland"
* "Kindred"
* "The Parable of the Sower"
* "The Salteaters"
* "Brown Girl in the Ring"
* "Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora"
* "Apex Hides the Hurt"
* "The Intuitionist"
* "Blue Light"
* "Aftermath"

Film and television

Film

* "The Brother from Another Planet"
* "The Last Angel Of History"
* "Space Is the Place"

References

* " [http://www.refractory.unimelb.edu.au/journalissues/vol4/defrantz.pdf 'Believe the Hype: Hype Williams and Afrofuturist Filmmaking' by Thomas DeFrantz] "
* " [http://www.ebogjonson.com/archives/afrofuturism/ 'They Came Before the Matrix' (Afrofuturist Film) by Gary Dauphin] "

Music

The afrofuturist approach to music was first propounded by the late Sun Ra. Born in Alabama, Sun Ra's music coalesced in Chicago in the mid-1950s, when he and his Arkestra began recording music that drew from hard bop and modal sources, but created a new synthesis which also used afrocentric and space-themed titles to reflects Ra's linkage of ancient African culture, specifically Egypt, and the cutting edge of the Space Age. Ra's film Space Is the Place shows the Arkestra in Oakland in the mid-1970s in full space regalia, with a lot of science fiction imagery as well as other comedic and musical material.

Afrofuturist ideas were taken up in 1976 by George Clinton and his bands Parliament and Funkadelic with his magnum opus "Mothership Connection" and the subsequent "The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein" and P Funk Earth Tour. In the thematic underpinnings to P-Funk mythology ("pure cloned funk"), Clinton in his alter ego Starchild spoke of "certified Afronauts, capable of funkitizing galaxies."

In 2005, [http://www.solsticequinox.com Solstice] , a progressive jazz-rock band lead by Public Enemy (band) guitarist, Khari Wynn, under the stage name of "James Equinox" introduced a jazz-rock evolution to the Afrofuturist style. This modern interpretation remains true to the pace set by Sun Ra, including a "revolving door" of musicians.

Acid rap also often deals with Afrofuturist subject matter. In 2000, Deltron 3030 rapper Deltron Zero (aka Del tha Funkee Homosapien) would refer to similar themes with lyrics about "intergallactic rap battles" and a computer virus that could "trash your whole computer system and revert you to papyrus".

Musicians

* Alice Coltrane
* DJ Spooky
* Kool Keith
* Drexciya
* [http://www.myspace.com/afrofuturismfoundation (Dj) Instantaneous] Listen
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* George Clinton
* Sun Ra
* [http://www.solsticequinox.com Solstice (Khari Wynn)]
* Deltron 3030
* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000007UP7 Bernie Worrell]
* [http://www.discogs.com/artist/Cybotron Cybotron]

Visual Arts

ARTISTS
* [http://keithpiper.users.btopenworld.com/ Keith Piper]
* Rammellzee
* [http://www.the-artists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=CD0675C4-29A8-40C6-8C38334AEBA0F1A3 Fatimah Tuggar]
* [http://home.jps.net/~nada/tuggar.htm Interview with Fatimah Tuggar] EXHIBITIONS
* [http://www.obsidianarts.org/afrofuturism.html AfroFuturism Exhibition]
* [http://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/2006/10/sun_ra_el_saturn_chicagos_afro.php Sun Ra exhibition]
REFERENCES
* [http://www.collegeart.org/artjournal/fall2001.html Afrotech and Outer Spaces, "Art Journal", Vol. 60, no. 3, Fall 2001: 90-105]
* [http://groups.msn.com/AfrocentricArtists/articles.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=2671&LastModified=4675494847837708088 What is Afrofuturist Art? by Cinque Hicks]

References

Bibliography

* [http://www.ebogjonson.com/archives/afrofuturism/ Dauphin, Gary. 2006. 'They Came Before the Matrix' (Afrofuturist Film)]
* [http://www.markdery.com/archives/books/flame_wars_excerpts/ Dery, Mark. 1994. Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0]
* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0704380250 Eshun, Kodwo. 1998. "More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction." Quartet Books.]
* [http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/new_centennial_review/v003/3.2eshun.pdf Eshun, Kodwo. 2003. 'Further Considerations on Afrofuturism" CR: The New Centennial Review" Volume 3, Number 2: 287-302]
* [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=SAM&volumeId=2&issueId=02 "Journal of the Society for American Music" 2: Special issue on Technology and Black Music in the Americas, May 2008]
* [http://www.arc.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=G&Product_Code=color-3_1 Nelson, Alondra. (2000) 'Afrofuturism: Past Future Visions' "Colorlines" (Spring)]
* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0822365456 Nelson, Alondra. 2001. "Afrofuturism: A Special Issue of Social Text". Duke University Press, ISBN 0822365456.]
* [http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=7174&id=4308 Rockeymoore, Mark A. 'What is Afrofuturism?']
* [http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/covers/cov102.htm Science Fiction Studies #102: SPECIAL ISSUE ON AFROFUTURISM, July 2007]
* [http://www.slate.com/id/2193871/ Weiner, Jonah. 2008. 'Lil Wayne and the Afronaut Invasion' "Slate" June 2008.]
* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0814736041 Williams, Ben. 2001. 'Black Secret Technology: Detroit Techno and the Information Age' in eds. Nelson and Tu, "Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life." New York University Press, 154-176.]
* [http://www.sdonline.org/38/13-Sedghi.html Yaszek, Lisa. 'Afrofuturism: Science Fiction and the History of the Future' "Socialism and Democracy"]
* [http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/rrhi/2005/00000009/F0020002/art00010;jsessionid=4rl1qj41edcle.alice?format=print Yaszek, Lisa. 2005. 'An Afrofuturist Reading of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man' "Rethinking History" Volume 9, Nos. 2-3: 297-313]

External links

* [http://www.afrofuturism.net/ afrofuturism.net]
* [http://www.myspace.com/afrofuturismfoundation Afrofuturism Foundation]
* [http://www.blueblackatlantis.squarespace.com BlueBlack Atlantis: Blog dealing with Afrofuturism and sci-fi from the Black perspective]
* [http://czem.sonance.net/afrofuturism Afro-Futurism]
* [http://www.sleepybrain.net/earth-is-the-alien-planet-an-afrofuturist-discussion/ Earth is the Alien Planet: An Afrofuturist Discussion]
* [http://www.afro-netizen.com/ Afro-Netizen]
* [http://www.afrogeeks.com Afrogeeks]