Afrofuturism  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Afrofuturism, or afro-futurism, is an African diaspora subculture whose thinkers and artists see science, technology and science fiction as means of exploring the black experience and finding new strategies to overcome oppression.

In the 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”, launching a small new social movement.

Writers

• LeVar Burton
• Octavia Butler
• Samuel R. Delany
• Mark Dery
• Kodwo Eshun
• Nalo Hopkinson
• Paul D. Miller
• Walter Mosley
• Alondra Nelson
• Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
• 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
• The Shadow Speaker
• The Ear, the Eye and the Arm

Film and television

Film

• The Brother from Another Planet
• Gayniggers from Outer Space
• The Last Angel Of History
• The Matrix
• The Matrix Reloaded
• The Matrix Revolutions
• Space Is the Place

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, 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
• George Clinton
• Sun Ra
• Solstice (Khari Wynn)
• Deltron 3030
• Bernie Worrell
• Futureman
• Cybotron

Visual Arts

• Rammellzee