As we discussed in class, Afrofuturism in music is an interesting avenue to explore, with artists like Erykah Badu or Janelle Monae. After some searching, I found an episode of This American Life that discusses Afrofuturism. It led me to a song called “The Deep” by a group called clppng which features Daveed Diggs from Hamilton. The podcast explains that, “The song is based on the underwater mythology of the 90s Detroit electro band Drexciya.” The song works with a mythology that imagines that pregnant women who were thrown off of slave ships birthed their children in the water and these children were able to create a thriving civilization under the sea. The intro to the song states, “We built our home on the sea floor, unaware of the two-legged surface dwellers until their world came to destroy ours. With cannons, they searched for oil beneath our cities. Their greed and recklessness forced our uprising.” The song goes on to talk about an uprising from these people after the people on the surface ruin the peace in the civilization down below. The song imagines great peace in this civilizatoin built from children who would have been slaves, and deals very openly with the questions, “what if we had never been colonized? What if we have been left alone?” This kind of imagined separate space makes me think of “the quarter of the negro” that Langston Hughes discusses. Although this space can sometimes be negative in Hughes’ work, both discuss a space purely for black people, without interruption from any kind of white colonizing power.
Excavating Old Rock Layers
Something that I couldn’t shake from the back of my mind when reading The Fifth Season was the treatment of Alabaster’s children–otherwise known as the node maintainers.
Learning that they are sedated and used for the ability to quell shakes is disturbing. However, what’s even worse is learning that the affluent stills use these sedated orogenes for their own twisted pleasure. Continue reading “Excavating Old Rock Layers”
Week 1 Blog Post
“We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality – all that we call feeling – if we would rightly comprehend him; there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character,(p. 150)” Continue reading “Week 1 Blog Post”
Week 2 Blog Post
Afrofuturism is alluded several times in Tolson’s poem Libretto for the Public of Liberia. Two moments in the text that help you think about what Afrofuturism is or could be are in the line 59 and line 70. Continue reading “Week 2 Blog Post”
Afrofuturism in “To Catch a Dream”
A perfect example of an afrofuturistic work is the film “To Catch a Dream”. The short film features the work of eight Kenyan designers; the film is based on a grieving widow, by the name of Ajuma, who suffers from recurring nightmares. She relies on old fairy-tale remedies, which expands her realization beyond the physical realm. Hands down, a 10/10 production film, especially in the afrofuturism department. The film was shot in various locations in the beautiful Nairobi. From the playlist to the artistic designs of the movie, this movie gives all the feels of afrofuturism and is highly-recommended.
Two-ness, Three-ness, Five-ness, Infiniteness
I’ve always struggled with my dual identity as a Bengali-American. I was brought up in my home in one way and expected to be another way at school and in public. My mother constantly reminded me that I was not American just because I was born in America. She instilled her cultural values and traditions in me in such a way that I could never forget, even if I sometimes wanted to. At school, I was expected to speak in English and wear jeans, to look and act like all the other kids. I was the one brown kid in class who wore a colorful salwar kameez while everyone else had on the suggested blue and white uniform. Things like that made me resent my culture and heritage as a child. My teachers encouraged me to speak English at home, and in doing so, I received backlash from my parents. Continue reading “Two-ness, Three-ness, Five-ness, Infiniteness”
Week 3 Blog Post
The most interesting thing about this course so far has been the level of interaction with my fellow classmates, and the ability to share different thoughts amongst one another. Having been in a black studies class before, the difference between this one and the last one I have been in is that this class isn’t based on boring lectures by the professor. Not to sound repetitive, but the class is very interactive and gives an open space to share ideas.
The Snead article has by far been one of my favorite reads because of his relation back to culture. My favorite quotes from him states, “In any case, let us remember that, whenever we encounter repetition in cultural forms, we are indeed not viewing “the same thing” but its transformation, not just a formal ploy but often the willed grafting onto culture of an essentially philosophical insight about the shape of time and history.” When Snead said this, the first thing that came to mind was the saying “history repeats itself”. This phrase carries various meanings, but the meaning related to Snead’s phrase is that “through history, the future can be predicted”. In the past, some of the actions of blacks led to either consequences or rewards. Because of the outcome of these actions, we now know the “do’s” and “don’ts” to prevent events from happening again. With afrofuturism, everything comes full-circle and past and current events truly shape the intake on afrofuturism.
Heard It’s Her Man Too
Solána Rowe, professionally known as SZA, released the album CTRL last year in 2017. As suggested by the title, the album contains themes of control, but also modern love, jealousy, anxiety, and self-esteem. I think this album speaks volumes as a black woman speaking the truth against societal expectations. In black communities, black women assume the role of being strong and emotionally stable. Continue reading “Heard It’s Her Man Too”
The Idea of African American Universality
*CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE)
I revisited the excerpt from “The Philosophy of History by Hegel” and although I didn’t agree with most of the piece morally, the idea of African American Universality did intrigue me. The more I though about this idea I realized that from my point of view one of the biggest things holding back the African American race as a unit is this kind of monolithic thought. Although we just barely starting to move away from this kind of thinking in more progressive circles, it still definitely affects our community from the root to the peak. If a young African American child from Brooklyn tries to introduce his other black friends to rock music that he genuinely cares enjoys he would undoubtedly be asked “Why you fucking with that white shit?” That kind of response will undoubtedly affect that child and make him less susceptible to try things outside of his community which undoubtedly leads to the cycle of negative ideas and practices in our own communities. This even affects African American political choices because the stereotype that “all black people vote democrat” is reinforced in our own community and any deviation from that is once again demeaned and looked down upon. I believe that for the community to progress we need to allow different streams of black thought to be voiced and change the rhythm of monotony.
White Men and Power in Space is the Place
In Space is the Place, I noticed the idea of material/earthly desires versus Sun Ra’s “altered destiny”. Although this was shown in many different ways, it seemed especially interesting that earthy desire seemed to be a majorly white concept. Sun Ra was on the planet to reconnect black people of Earth with the natural. He was only doing this for black people, which implied that this connection to naturality (shown partially through his music) is a black concept itself.
Continue reading “White Men and Power in Space is the Place”