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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.
Books
- Black Empire
- Black No More
- Futureland
- Kindred
- More Brilliant Than the Sun
- The Intuitionist
Film and television
- The Brother from Another Planet
- The Last Angel Of History
- 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 always claimed to be from Saturn. 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.
The afrofuturist cause was 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 speak of "certified Afronauts, capable of funkitizing galaxies."
See also
References
- 'Black to the Future' by Mark Dery
- Afrofuturism: A Special Issue of Social Text edited by Alondra Nelson (ISBN 0822365456)
- Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora & Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (ISBN 0446528609)
External links
"Afrofuturism"