Afrofuturism

Catalog description

What can music offer a group of people who have been symbolically annihilated in practically every facet of life? In the Cold War era, dominated and framed by the Space Race, framed by utopic images of a post-human world (think of the Jetsons), the absence of black representation was profound. It underlined a white utopia that eradicated the physical bodies of black humans. Scientific and creative outlets were imagining futures seemingly unthinkable in their advancement-living side-by-side with robots, partaking in time travel, flying cars-yet the racial imagination was still strained. We will discuss the conditions of possibility or the conditions of necessity for the emergence of Afrofuturism, decode some of its far out and psychedelic word play and symbology, and we will discuss the influences Afrofuturism has had on the present. Our discussion of Afrofuturism will largely focus on the music, the “sonic fiction[s]” created by artists such as: Sun Ra and his Arkestra, George Clinton’s band Parliament-Funkadelic, LaBelle, Janelle Monáe and her android alter-ego Cindi Mayweather, and Drexciya and their underwater nation, among others. Satisfies the Visual and Performing Arts requirement