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I believe that something that would be great to discuss in terms of Afrofuturism would be J Coles album KOD. The reason I say this is because the entire album tells a story, and each song is like a chapter in the story. The main message is the struggles faced by children in the African American communities in our time. His main focus is the fact that young African American children are more prone to be exposed to terrible things such as drugs as well as gang related activities. This is because they are raised and brought up in areas that are not as fortunate as others, therefore they are more easily manipulated. He then writes about in his songs how certain people have the power to help these young children but don’t do anything to help them. One particular idea that we talked about in class that I believe relates to this album and the story it tells is the argument between an aesthetic and an activist.  It goes back to the argument that if you have someone with the power and the voice to make a change for these kids, is it wrong for them not to? And on the other hand, some of the activists who are trying to make a difference don’t have the platform as some of the aesthetic’s may have.

On their landmark collaborative “Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star” album from 1998, rappers Mos Def and Talib Kweli implement many elements of Afrofuturism, amongst other themes such as black empowerment and dealing with their identities as rap stars and black men. The whole album touches upon these topics, but one track, “Thieves in the Night” came immediately to mind when I saw this week’s task. The inspiration for the track comes from a novel called “The Bluest Eye”, which is written from the perspective of a black girl who ponders how differently she would view the world if she (was white) had blue eyes. The track deals with this theme of being black in a white world and how to adjust without losing self-identity. On Mos Def’s verse, he says “I find it distressing, there’s never no in-between. We either n****s or Kings, we either b*****s or Queens”, referencing the way America encounters black people through white representations of them, which usually only show the extreme sides of the “spectrum” and leads people to misunderstand black people. Black culture is extremely stereotyped, which in turn cultivates the messages behind them from the amounts of exposure. In the hook, Mos and Talib trade bars about more of these stereotypes and how black personalities are contrived by the media. “Not strong, only aggressive/ Not free, we only licensed / Not compassionate, only polite / Not good but well behaved/ chasing after death so we can call ourselves brave/ still living like mental slaves”. The fourth line hints at the fact that where a white person might be called good, a black person in the same scenario would be described as “well-behaved” because the representation of black people in our society leads the masses to EXPECT them to be “bad” or “poorly-behaved”. Mos and Talib bring many elements of black culture to the light on this amazing album, but Thieves in the Night resonates with me the most in terms of Afrofuturism.

When I think of examples of Afro-futurism that I see today I immediately think of my favorite rapper, Vince Staples. Through his last album I feel he embodied the very sound and idea of Afro- Futurism, even landing himself a song on the Kendrick Lamar produced Black Panther album. Vince described his album Big Fish Theory as afro futurism half jokingly but it still shows connecting elements. “We making future music. It’s Afro-futurism. This is my Afro-futurism. There’s no other kind…This is Afro-futurism y’all can keep the other sh*t. We’re trying to get in the MoMA not your Camry”.  Rapping about his former gang lifestyle and what it’s like to be Black in America over futuristic, upbeat EDM beats. I feel like this connects to the idea of repetition especially because Vince himself challenged the idea that these beats are new or different because the EDM, electronic beats we think of today as outside of black culture actually originated in Detroit house music. Dance music, like almost every other kind of music to come out of America in the past century, is black music. Although he  doesn’t speak about Afro-futurism in the conventional sense of the word, even bristling at the term himself, Vince speaks about societal problems and black issues over beats that sound the same as decades of black American music, tlike Sun Ra and Parliament-Funkadelic.

I first wanted to talk about the excerpt that i read from Snead. This quote from the reading in particular i found very interesting. Snead wrote ” Nothing is constant in the whole world. Everything is in a state of flux, and comes into being as a transient appearance. . . don’t you see a year passing through a succession of four seasons?” pg. 65. I found this quote to be very intriguing because it implies that as time continues to pass, oppression and other hardships faced by africans may dissipate. I really liked how Snead used the example of a year that passes with four seasons. This helps the reader understand that the world and the situations within it are constantly changing.

So far I am finding this class to be very interesting. It is a topic that is completely foreign to me and I believe that is why I find it so interesting. I saw the movie black panther last year and when I first watched it, it just seemed like a typical superhero movie to me. However as we go through it in class, I’ve realized that there is much more about Black Panther then just “a superhero movie”. I feel like I am learning a completely new subject for the first time in a while and it excites me for the rest of the semester.

I believe that it was really powerful when W.E.B DuBois wrote, “he wouldn’t bleach his negro blood in a flood of white Americanism… He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both.” Although he understands the history and the struggle being black in America comes with, he embraces where he comes from and who he is. While at the same time, it is important for him to acknowledge and still embrace his American culture. However being both black and American is hard not to separate because of all the challenges African Americans have to face. This quote reminds me of the movie Black Panther because one can see the contrast between the Wakandans ( who were her colonized ) and Erik Killmonger ( who grew up being black in America facing racism, ect.) I feel like that quote connects to the black panther movie because of how Killmonger embraces both his ” negro blood ” and being American. We see this in the way he takes the throne and how different he is from the black panther, who is much more traditional.

One quote that I believed was helpful in understanding Afrofuturism was when Tolson wrote “Before Liberia was, Songhai was: before America set the raw foundling on Africa’s Doorstep, before the Genoese diced west, Burnt warriors and watermen of Songhai Tore into Bizarreries the uniforms of Portugal And sewed an imperial quilt of tribes.”. This quote displays to me how devastating the colonization of Africa was to its people. I had to look up what Genoese meant to discover that these were the wealthy Italians who were also rolling into Africa with imperialistic ideals. This portrays the everlasting effect that westerners have on African American culture, and having the ability to understand that is what helps others learn how to improve relations and heal tensions with them. 

One quote that I struggled to understand in the poem was not necessarily one quote but rather an entire page of repetition in the poem. On lines 641 through 710, there is a repetition of words at the beginning of each stanza. It starts off by Tolson writing about all of the wrong doing the United Nations had done, however following that he goes on to talk about “The Bula Matadi” and the “Le Premiere des Noirs” which I had no clue what those two things were. After a lot of research I many different things about “The Bula Matadi” however nothing to determine exactly what it was. Most of what I had read relates to a seaport in the Congo. After researching “Le Premiere des Noirs” almost everything I discovered was related to Toussaint L’ouverture whom I was familiar with from my social studies classes in the past. One of the great leaders of the Haitian revolution.

Towards the end of the poem, Tolson starts to write of Le Premier des Noirs of Pan-African Airways. Contrasting with the beginning of the poem, this section begins to illustrate not the history of Africa, but where the people of Africa are heading, and more specifically Liberia . The plane “whirs beyong the copper cordilleran climaxes of glass skyscrapers on pavonine Cape Mesurado.”. He is calling for us to not look at Africa as it has been historically by the European, but for what it is and what it will be. Snead also mentions that Hegel mentions that the African people are “there” and the European people are “headed there”. Africa is already wonderful in its own right without a report card from Europe that grades Africa as uncivilized because the values differ. Continue reading “On Tolson’s “Libretto for the Republic of Liberia””