Black Panther has been a hot topic ever since it came out
February, breaking box office records and inviting endless discussions and
debates about the tone and texture of this otherwise conventional superhero
flick. But this sudden spur of interest has also drummed up musings on it
particular genre - one relatively little known to many Westerners:
Afrofuturism. Very loosely defined,
Afrofuturism - and its cousin, Afrofantasy - is an umbrella term encompassing
speculative fiction, futuristic music and/or pop culture either made by people of
African descent, featuring main characters of African descent, or using Africa
as a setting. But it’s much more than that; it twists expectations about
who is or is not part of the speculative fiction bubble. Afrofantasy and Afrofuturism - whether high or low, dystopian or utopian -
promises an expanded role for people of African descent in arenas traditionally
viewed as beyond their reach: the ballooning technological democracy of the
Space Age, or the narrative freedom and adventure of ideas endemic to the fantasy paradigm. But it also issues a challenge to the
dominant worldview, usually by tempering the often out-of-bounds optimism of
science fiction with real-world racism and perspectives from a people who have
all-too-often felt the boot of history’s zealous, future-oriented “winners.”
It is a fascinating and
diverse genre that spans the full multimedia range, but despite being filled to
the brim with talented authors and artists, it is sadly ignored or
underestimated by many mainstream fantasy and science fiction fans. The
reasons are manifold: general unfamiliarity with and condescending dismissal of
Africa and the African diaspora on the part of the Global North is a prime
culprit, but other factors, like access and exposure, play keys roles as well.
It’s no surprise that the Afrofuturist/fantasy creators most familiar to
the mainstream reside in the United States.
So if you’re hankering
to immerse yourself in the same vibe delivered by Coogler and co. this past
February, check out the authors, performers, and other luminaries down below.
They’re just the tip of a very deep iceberg, but their works shine a
light into this fascinating and ever-changing field.
Authors
Nnedi
Okorafor: This Nigerian-American writer is well known for
her evocative sociocultural imagery of West Africa, as well as her thoughtful explorations of gender, class, and the social Other in fantastic or
post-apocalyptic settings. Her most notable works include Akata
Witch, the first in a fantasy
series starring an albino Nigerian-American who discovers her knack for magic
on a trip to her parents’ homeland; and Who
Fears Death, a
grim, post-apocalyptic tale of a child of rape who discovers it’s her
magical destiny to end the genocide of her people.
Octavia Butler: The late, great grandmother of the genre, she was one of the
first
African-Americans to
achieve success in the traditionally exclusive arenas of science fiction and
fantasy. She was a diverse and imaginative writer, refusing to be bound
to a particular convention, and her plots sampled everything from astronomy
and cybernetics, to time travel and biology, though always with the core theme
of the misuse of humanity’s gifts to repeat cycles of domination and abuse -
both at home, and across the galaxy. Kindred
is her most famous and
bestselling work, starring a reluctant time traveler from the 1970s who’s
repeatedly whisked away to the antebellum South in order to ensure that her
slave-owning ancestor lives to father her family line. Aficionados should
also check out her Xenogenesis
and Patternists
series, though the
woman’s entire body of work is a treasury of Afrofuturism and Afrofantasy.
Samuel
R. Delany: Another pioneering author of the Afrofuturism
genre, Delany entered science fiction as a black homosexual, already far out of
the norm for the field’s usual craftsmen, and never hid his aspirations for
literary gravitas in a genre often mired by shallow technophilia and plots hung
together by the barest of scaffolding. His stories are complex,
existential, yet often quirky, using the freedom of sci-fi to explore the
bending boundaries of sexuality, race and class. Dhalgren is widely considered his masterpiece, a 1975
mammoth of a book featuring a nameless protagonist known only as “the Kid” in
his trek through the post-apocalyptic ruins of a fictional central US city in
search of “signs.” This is science fiction in the bare minimalist sense, more likely to appeal to fans of Cormac McCarthy's The Road than
to the hardcore sci-fi enthusiast, though his bizarre early space opera, Nova, and seminal military sci-fi series Fall of
the Towers are on more familiar,
if no less deconstructivist, grounds. Through it all, though, he remains
arguably Afrofuturism’s most brilliant theorist.
Nancy Farmer: This Arizona native spent much of her early years in Africa, where
most of her earliest works take place, and though she’s drifted from the
continent in her later stories, she is recognized for pioneering the placement of Africa as a
speculative fiction setting for young adult fiction. Her most famous work of Afrofuturism is The
Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, the story of three children in 2194 Zimbabwe who are kidnapped
and put to work in a “plastic mine,” while three mutant detectives - the
titular characters - search for them on order of the kids’ powerful father,
in the process revealing a land both absurd and painfully familiar.
Leslie Esdaile Banks -
AKA L.A.Banks: Though cancer had tragically cut her life short, Banks left the world a sprawling
corpus across a diversity of genres. But she is best remembered for her
intricately-plotted webs of urban fantasy and paranormal romance starring young
African-American female protagonists. Her Vampire
Huntress Legends Series is perhaps her most popular, with Damali Richards as the
eponymous huntress: a no-nonsense spoken word artist who leads a guerrilla team
of deadly musical vampire slayers (no, really) in a never-ending battle of good
against evil. Described, perhaps superficially, as “Blade meets Buffy,”
Banks infuses the series with free-flowing metaphors linking her underworld
nosferatu with the clandestine dealings of drug lords and kingpins, and
stresses the power of love in all its myriad forms to light even the darkest
recesses of the world. These themes carry over in her other works, like
the
Crimson Moon Series
centered on a secret government consortium of Special Ops werewolves, as well as
the number of young adult graphic novels based on her stories.
Musicians
Herman “Sonny” Blount -
AKA Sun Ra: The self-declared member
of an angelic race from Saturn, he was a visionary composer and jazz band
leader who pioneered the melding of free group improvisation and electric
instruments that greatly influenced the jazz styles of the 1960s.
Incredibly inventive and wildly eccentric, he styled himself a
philosopher/mystic, preferred his musicians to live communally, and often gave
live performances in a mixed-media fog of outlandish costumes, sounds, and
poetry that left his audiences both energized and bewildered. His music
often themed around the Space Age and cosmic sounds, and set much of the tone
for the futuristic vibe that has become such a staple of Afrofuturism. Futuristic
Sounds of Sun Ra is perhaps his most
accessible work, while Atlantis
is the perfect example
of the free “space” jazz that ties him so firmly to the Afrofuturism category.
The Space Age is Here is a compilation that samples a number of
his songs through the years, so it’s a nice way to wet your feet with this
admittedly difficult avant-garde artist, if you can find it.
George Clinton: The father of funk, this barber from North
Carolina blended soul and psychedelic rock into a bright, colorful package,
producing dazzling performances and espousing revolutionary politics.
Through his two bands, Parliament and Funkadelic, Clinton created a
“musical cosmology,” and much like Sun Ra, rooted his sound and his
eccentricities in a place beyond the divisions and hierarchies of Earth.
The fluid, bass-heavy melodies of P-funk and their otherworldly rhythms
were elevated by Clinton’s often space-based performances and costumes. Mothership
Connection,
released in 1976, was a fictional concept album with a heavy space theme, and
features such classics as "Mothership Connection (Star Child)" and
"Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)."
Other Media and
Resources
- Pumzi,
a twenty-one-minute short by Kenyan native Wanuri Kahiu, set in a
technologically advanced underground city in East Africa.
- Experimental filmmaker and
multimedia artist Cauleen Smith, who blends her sci-fi
sensibilities with French structuralism to make challenging and often
confrontational works.
- Many figures in the creation of
Afrofuturistic comic books and graphic anthologies, like John Jennings and Turtel
Onli.
- Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise, a documentary from 1980 about the musician himself and
his thoughts on life, death, and music, punctuated by performances from the
“Arkestra.”
Sources:
"Samuel R.
Delany." Authors and Artists for Young Adults, vol. 24, Gale, 1998.
Biography In Context,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1603000116/BIC?u=dkpl&sid=BIC&xid=07078480.
Accessed 29 Mar. 2018.
"Sun Ra." Contemporary
Black Biography, vol. 60, Gale, 2007. Biography In Context,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1606003655/BIC?u=dkpl&sid=BIC&xid=898d3cb6.
Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
White, Jerry. "The
Many Layers of Cauleen Smith." Black Film Review, vol. 8, no. 2,
June 1994, p. 6. EBSCOhost,
proxygsu-dep1.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=9503312058&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Womack, Ytasha. Afrofuturism
: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. vol. First edition,
Independent Publishers Group, 2013.
