Jazz ingenue and Afrofuturism’s founding pillar, eccentric jazz artist Sun Ra, sent an artist-in-residence request to NASA shortly after the dawn of the space age and was rejected. Sun Ra, an Alabama-born musician who claimed Saturn as his mythical home, believed that music and technology could heal and transform the world. He was spellbound by the possibilities of space travel and electric technology. But ideas never die. A half-century later, a pop artist with tech love and Afrofuturistic sensibilities would create a song that Martians could hear.
Hip-hop producer and Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am has countless musical honors, but none can trump when he debuted “Reach for the Stars” on Mars. “Why do they say the sky is the limit when I’ve seen the footprints on the moon?” will.i.am sings.
It was the first-ever-planet-to-planet music broadcast in the solar system. In commemoration of the historic landing of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, on August 28, 2012, the song was beamed from Earth to Mars and back—a round trip of some 330 million miles—to an audience of students and scientists at a laboratory in Pasadena, California. Then it was beamed back and played on the Red Planet itself.
The song transmission was will.i.am’s idea. NASA administrator Charles Bolden called will.i.am to brainstorm ways to promote NASA to teens. When the artist suggested creating a song aired from the planet, officials asked who would write it.
“I was like, ‘Are you guys for real? I’ll write the song!’ ” will.i.am recalled.1
Blending traditional musical instruments with the best in beat-making technology, the four-minute song features a forty-piece orchestra matched with techno beats. “This is about inspiring young people to lead a life without limits placed on their potential and to pursue collaboration between humanity and technology,” will.i.am said. He hoped that the song would transcend time and culture.
A longtime science lover, will.i.am advocates for STEM Centers, interdisciplinary schools focused on science, technology, engineering, and math, and he’s on a mission to inspire children to recognize the technologies around them and use creativity, science, and art to change their environment. “Science and technology [are] already a part of popular culture,” will.i.am told a reporter shortly after the broadcast. “The world of STEM hasn’t found a way to remind people that iPod and iPad and all the code that makes Twitter and Facebook work all comes from people who have an education around STEM,” he said.
“I don’t want my neighborhood to continue to be the way it was twenty years from now,” he said. “All it takes is one kid, one kid from Boyle Heights, to be Mark Zuckerberg, and my neighborhood’s changed forever.”2
But will.i.am isn’t the only musician working with NASA. CopperWire, an Ethiopian hip-hop group tapped the nation’s scientists to collect sonified light curves, or sounds from stars, that they’re mixing in their new app. In April 2012 the group debuted their album Earthbound. Raising funds on Kickstarter, a popular crowd-sourcing site, the group’s accompanying app will also include an augmented reality space-flight game, an interactive art widget and comic book, unreleased songs, artwork, and playable instruments.
“The idea of making music from a galactic perspective gives you the opportunity to make up an entire world for sound to exist in,” says Burntface, the CopperWire member who’s also the 3-D modeler and graphic designer behind the group’s Phone Home remix Android app.3 The app’s algorithms can generate two million variations of the song based on any ten-digit phone number.
Soundtrack to the Future
Afrofuturists value universal love, reinterpret sound and technology, and echo beauties of a lost past as the essence of a harmonious future. While the music is full of mind-benders, with the new era of technology, sounds can literally go beyond the stratosphere. Always ahead of the curve, Afrofuturist music embodies the times while literally sounding out of this world. Listen to Sun Ra’s “Astro Black,” Lee Scratch Perry’s “Disco Devil,” Brides of Funkenstein’s “Mother May I?,” an X-ecutioners live DJ show, “Drexciya’s 2 Hour Mix—Return to Bubble Metropolis” by VLR, and “Dance of the Pseudo Nymph” by Flying Lotus and you too might feel like you’ve been sailing on a black ark from a distant star.
But the music is about more than good vibes. Physicist and musician Stephon Alexander revealed in a TED talk that jazz legend John Coltrane’s song “Giant Steps” was an aural and physical diagram of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Alexander stumbled upon a diagram by Coltrane and realized it plotted out geometrical theories of quantum gravity and matched the notes and chord changes in the song. The discovery sparked other research on the parallels between music and quantum physics, and Alexander and his team learned that the Western scale of music also resembles the double helix of DNA.
“It’s outrageous,” says James Haile, philosopher and organizer of the 2013 Black Existentialism Conference held at Duquesne University. Haile watched Alexander’s talk and was floored by the links between music and quantum theory. “It might be the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “I had an idea that’s what was going on, but to have a trained physicist prove that shows it’s more than a notion.” What do such discoveries mean for Afrofuturists? “It shows how we can incorporate particle physics into Afrofuturism and coordinate ideas three dimensionally,” says Haile. As for the world at large, the discovery gives new depth to the power of music.
“Afrofuturistic music is music that pushes beyond the norms and standards of our current culture,” says Leon Q. Allen, composer and trumpet player. Leon Q. fuses Latin jazz and house music to create futuristic expressions of both. He contributed to the Rayla 2212 soundtrack and is also a member of the legendary AACM, a world-renowned avant-garde collective inspired by Sun Ra that emphasizes sonic healing. “It’s the ‘what next’ factor,” Leon says of Afrofuturist music. “It’s music that’s moving forward to a new place of cultural significance.”
Afrofuturism is the only future-oriented aesthetic that has such a rich history in music. George Clinton, Sun Ra, Bootsy Collins, Jimi Hendrix, Lee Scratch Perry, Grace Jones, LaBelle, Outkast, Erykah Badu, Janelle Monáe, X-ecutioners, funk, dub, turntablism, soundclash, Detroit techno, Chicago house, even Coltrane and Miles Davis, have all been framed in an Afrofuturistic context—music that shifted the edge. Whether through lyrics of inspiration, new technologies in music, or shock-and-awe performances, the idea of music and in some cases black identity and gender identity evolved. “The approach is not limited to a certain style of music, the approach is based on the desire,” says Leon Q. “People have to study what’s going on in the society and the culture and look at the trends and patterns for what’s going on at the time.”
The desire to be more, to be free of the constrictions of a society with marked color distinctions and separation is like pixie dust sprinkled throughout the tracks. The music echoes with a universalism rhythmically that emanates from the roots of African music but is jet-fueled into the future. There are no barriers in Afrofuturist music, no entity that can’t emit a rhythmic sound, no arrangements to adhere to, no locked-in structures about chorus and verse. Wordplay is keen.
The standards are high. “When you line up everything that has come before you—if you line up Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, all the way up to now and imagine yourself standing in front of them—are you contributing something that is equal in weight?” asks Morgan Craft, an electric guitarist who has played with Meshell Ndegeocello, among others. “You have to push something that is equal to what the masters have pushed before you. If you don’t hold yourself up to their standard, it’s a waste of time.”
However, if there’s a cosmic ground floor for the existence of Afrofuturism in music, Sun Ra and George Clinton would be that foundation. The idea of a song mythology from the cosmos, highflying African-inspired space costumes, wordplay that challenged logic, and the use of traditional and electronic instruments to redefine sounds and push for universal love were established by Sun Ra and George Clinton. Both are reference
d more than any other artist as the inspiration for today’s Afrofuturists. Clinton, whose funk sounds came to the forefront in the 1970s, later spoke of being inspired by Sun Ra, who began creating sonar sounds for the space age in the ’50s.
While many Afrofuturist artists have donned the space gear and metallic pants of the musical space cadet, in the case of those artists dubbed as Afrofuturist innovators, the space theme was more than just a kooky gimmick to play off the space age, more than an eyebrow-raising marketing ploy. The colorful, albeit shiny, costumes served as a visual tool to stimulate higher thinking and to prepare audiences for something new.
In other cases, the costuming wasn’t a focal point at all. Creative uses of technological innovations to create reigned queen. The wordplay, the heights of irony and dissonance, compelled listeners to question their take on reality. “What I appreciated about Parliament, Funkadelic, and Sun Ra is that they were almost speaking in code. Almost like the old Negro spirituals, we’re going to talk about three things in this one line, and you almost have to be in the club to understand,” says Shawn Wallace, composer and arranger, noting that the best in hip-hop lyricism uses the same layered language.
Afrofuturists enjoy challenging their listeners on their path to enlightenment. They enjoy pulling the rug out from under the smugness of reality. Whether it’s through chord arrangements, oddity, or sheer boldness, they get a kick out of tossing their listeners into the far reaches of outer space.
The Trifecta: Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Lee Scratch Perry
When Sun Ra, born Herman Poole Blount, left Birmingham, Alabama, for Chicago in the late 1940s, he was already a well-respected jazz musician with extraordinary talents. But his affection for electronic music and predictions that man would one day land on the moon made him stand apart. “He was very well read,” said Arthur Hoyle, renowned jazz artist who played with Sun Ra in the late ’50s. In a time when Chicago’s South Side was littered with jazz bands and clubs, Sun Ra was a fixture on the scene. Before he adopted the flashlights, solar helmets, and sci-fi African garb that would come to be his trademark, he was known as one of the most scholarly musicians around and would frequently hand out literature about his theories in Washington Park. His canon of must-reads included books on theosophy, numerology, metaphysics, science fiction, biblical studies, and a glut of underground alternative history books and African history books. He was propelled to answer what others hadn’t questioned and gravitated to books with theories on the origins of the world that differed from the Eurocentric lessons propagated in media and schools.
Sun Ra wanted to use music to heal. He had a preacher-like conversion moment. Part spiritual revelation, part self-described alien encounter, Sun Ra believed he came to the world to heal. This quest to fill the knowledge gaps, to find the erased contributions of people of color, and to ultimately shatter the color/class divides resulted in an information trek that would last for much of his life. And this searching for more, this desire to know the answers that weren’t readily available in the classics and media of the time, was the impetus for his stretch in music. Although he was adept at playing the big band and bebop that defined jazz in the 1950s and early ’60s, he did not want to be limited by its form. He named himself Sun Ra after the Egyptian sun deity and claimed he was from Saturn.
Sun Ra was a total original. He was a founding father of Afrofuturism, a pioneer of electronic music, playing multiple electronic keyboards long before anyone in jazz or otherwise adopted the instrument. Moreover, he was a forerunner of today’s space-music genre, new-age or ambient electronica designed for contemplation.
“He had a very original concept that was way beyond his time,” says Nicole Mitchell, avant-garde jazz flutist and composer who met Sun Ra when she was twenty. “He was one of the first African Americans to start his own record companies and was one of the first jazz artists to incorporate African percussion as well as improvising electronics into his music. He wanted to find the real power of music,” she says, noting that he also believed music could develop telepathy.
With so many ideas to explore, space analogies were the ideal way for Sun Ra to escape the parameters of music and humanity, and they freed him creatively to ponder the life questions he seemed so dedicated to answering and addressing through music. Hyperlinking his music to space travel created a prism of creativity for Sun Ra. He explored with healing tones, new sounds, and pushed jazz beyond its bebop dimensions. Songs like “Astro Black,” “Nubia,” and “Dance of the Cosmo Alien” explored cosmic origins and sonically both abided and broke the rules of modern jazz simultaneously.
Arthur Hoyle played with Sun Ra in Chicago before leaving to travel with Lionel Hampton. He shared a story about how the two reconnected in New York shortly after Sun Ra moved there in 1961. Sun Ra and his Arkestra came up the steps in their space-aged garb and elaborate wired headgear. The combination of shield-like metal ornaments caused the motley crew to clank with every step. A neighbor peered into the hall and shut her door immediately. “She probably thought they were from outer space,” Hoyle said. While Sun Ra claimed he was from Saturn, he created a cosmology for himself and his music that rooted its eccentricities in a land beyond the stratosphere.
Sun Ra was also a showman, and the theatrical costumes combined with the music was a one-two punch that would come to define the assault on the senses that many musical artists in Afrofuturism would use as a model. Sometimes he drew his own album covers. He was also a fervent poet. By the time he moved to New York in 1961, he sported his onstage garb daily, walking the streets of Harlem with his Arkestra of Saturn-born ingenues. The band lived, ate, and created music together while immersing themselves in Sun Ra’s philosophy and synergizing their unique approach. Anyone in conversation with him, during rehearsal breaks and elsewhere, was either held hostage or caught spellbound by his verbal debates and attempts to solve the mysteries of the world.
In 1974 Sun Ra starred in the cult classic Space Is the Place, an independent feature film directed by John Coney. An incredibly magical film that underscores the quagmires of self-determination, backed by Sun Ra’s effervescent piano solos and rhythmic big band space music, Space Is the Place is named after one of Ra’s most popular songs. The story follows Sun Ra’s earthly return and attempt to convince African Americans to leave Earth and embark on a new life on a distant planet with different vibrations and “under different stars.”
The film opens on this lush planet world. Sun Ra sits in a multihued garden in his new colony wearing Egyptian sphinx head garb and states that time is officially over. He “works on the other side of time,” he adds. He then concludes that he would bring the black populace to this world “through isotope, teleportation, transmoleculization or, better still, teleport the whole planet here through music.” Sun Ra then travels back in time to his early musical haunts and must contest with proverbial freedom gatekeepers, including a pimp named the Overseer, while embarking on his quest to transport the race to the far-off space colony with music. The film defies categorization, but Sun Ra’s celebration of the unity of life is clear. “Yes, you’re music too,” he states. “We’re all instruments. Everyone is supposed to be playing their part in this vast arkestra of the cosmos.” Space Is the Place creates a rich world to understand Sun Ra’s sensory-altering sounds while conveying his purpose as a musician.
Although Sun Ra received critical success and attracted a loyal fan base around the world, he was never a chart topper. Yet hundreds of musicians came under his tutelage. One of Sun Ra’s prized musicians, Kelan Phil Cohran, was inventor of the Frankiephone, an electronic kalimba also known as the Space Harp and featured on several Sun Ra albums. Cohran was Maurice White’s music teacher. White would later found the R&B band Earth, Wind & Fire, known for their songs of peace and love as well as their space-inspired, Egyptian-themed costumes.
Shortly after Sun Ra’s death in 1993, Afrofuturism was born.
Funk to the Future
George Clinton als
o reframed the soul music of the time, challenging James Brown’s band’s tight funk with fluid chords and repetitive bass lines by former Brown bandmates Bootsy and Catfish Collins. They created funk, a syrupy, bass-heavy music form designed to create states of ecstasy akin to the trance consciousness that morphs from tribal drumming, but using a mid-tempo bass guitar as the match. The sound would shape the 1970s and influence music into the twenty-first century. “JB brought you to an elevated state of consciousness. Parliament/Funkadelic brought you to an altered state of consciousness,” says Leon Q.
Clinton said that at the time he created funk, blackness itself had become commercial. “I had to find another place where they hadn’t perceived black people to be and that was on a spaceship,” he said in the 1996 documentary The Last Angel of History.4 Parliament’s fourth album, Mothership Connection, shows a sunglasses-wearing, metallic-silver-clad Clinton coming out of or entering a flying saucer. The mothership came from the star Sirius, harking back to the Dogon’s theory of origin. Clinton was a Newark-raised barber from North Carolina whose early doowop group the Parliaments tapped into the late 1960s’ societal transformation. Looking to Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix and their fusion of R&B and psychedelic rock, the mothership became a bridge between a missing African past and a glorious space-age future.
Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture Page 5
