Metropolis combines such a wide array of time periods, sounds, layers, and intrigue that it feels like audio time travel. Even the music’s mythology has a mythology. Monáe likes to say that her tunes are created at the “Palace of Dogs,” a place that cannot be spoken of.
Monáe, too, uses traditional orchestra instruments courtesy of the Wondaland ArchOrchestra as well as kinetic computergenerated beats.
Just in case the purpose of these hyperlayered metaphors and musical arrangements goes over your head, Monáe distributes the Ten Droid Commandments at her concert. Written like P-Funk hyperbole, the commandments instruct attendees on how to experience the music.
Commandment 4: “Please be aware that the songs you will hear are electric: be careful as you experience them and interact with electrical devices, drink water or touch others. The Wondaland Arts Society will not be held responsible for melted telecommunications devices or injuries resulting from lockback, sweat-tech, leaveweave, poparm, shockjaw, electrobutt, or any other maladies or malfunctions caused by the jam.”
Commandment 6: “Abandon your expectations about art, race, gender, culture and gravity.”
Commandment 7: “Before the show, feel free to walk about the premises impersonating one of the many inspirations of the ArchanDroid Emotion Picture: (Choose One) Salvador Dali, Walt Disney, Outkast, Stevie Wonder, Octavia Butler, David Bowie, Andy Warhol or John Williams.”
Commandment 9: “By shows end you must transform. This includes, but is not limited to, eye colour, perspective, mood or height.”8
Like her Afrofuturistic brethren before her, including Sun Ra who donned a flashlight or cosmic crown, and George Clinton’s multicolored hair and space suit, Monáe is rarely, if ever, seen without her starched shirt, pompadour, and classic shrunken tux. At the 2012 Black Girls Rock! Awards, she said her costume was an ode to her working-class parents, who wore uniforms too.
The song “Q.U.E.E.N” from the Electric Lady album includes fellow Afrofuturist Erykah Badu. In the video, the two are suspended in animation in a future’s past museum exhibit on rebels who used music as a freedom movement. The song, a funk throwback, is an ode to the eccentric, independent ladies of the world who are labeled as freaks for being themselves.
Monáe has an ArchOrchestra; Sun Ra had an Arkestra. Sun Ra came from Saturn to teach earthlings how to love; Cindi May-weather must return to free her robotic counterparts. Sun Ra juggernauts to space using African themes, Monáe hyperlinks back to the ’50s big-band jazz era in which Sun Ra cultivated his cosmos theories. Monáe was mentored in part by unconventional hip-hop duo Outkast, which featured Andre 3000—as in the year 3000. Outkast borrowed their stylistics from P-Funk themes, most notably their Stankonia music in honor of the funk.
The mothership is in flight.
Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé is a scholar and noted shaman of the Dagara, a society in Ghana and Burkina Faso that has maintained ancient practices. Somé is most popular for documenting his journey to shamanism in the 1994 book Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman. He writes about the proverbial dive into the rabbit hole as he was studying with the elders of his community and balancing his newfound wisdom with his Western education. Somé paints a picture of a different path to knowledge that contradicts the norms of Western conventions. According to him, the Dagara have no word for the supernatural. “For us, as for many indigenous cultures, the supernatural is part of our everyday lives,” he writes. The Dagara also don’t draw a line between reality and imagination either, he writes, but rather emphasize the power of thought to create reality.1
And the Dagara don’t have a word for fiction. Out of curiosity, Somé decided to conduct an experiment. In the book, he recalls a day in 1996 when he showed the film Star Trek to his shaman elders. The elders watched the film, assuming that these were the day-today happenings of a group in another part of the world. He writes, “My elders were comfortable with Star Trek, the West’s vision of its own future. Because they believe in things like magical beings (Spock), traveling at the speed of light, and teleportation, the wonders that Westerners imagine being part of their future are very much a part of my elders’ present. The irony is that the West sees the indigenous world as primitive or archaic. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the West could learn to be as ‘archaic’ as my elders are?”2
But the elders also found the Trekster spaceship and outfits to be a bit cumbersome in the magic-making process. It would be much simpler if they just traveled with their minds.
The absence of Africa’s contribution to global knowledge in history, science, and beyond is a gaping hole so expansive it almost feels like a missing organ in the planet’s cultural anatomy. Can humanity ever know itself with this rigid segmentation of knowledge? Can ancient knowledge be recovered? Can trauma be erased? While the whys and hows that led to this void are etched in history, the obvious absence has compelled many Afrofuturists to look to the continent’s myths, spirituality, and art on a never-ending quest for wholeness.
Afrofuturist artists site Egyptian deities, the Dogon myths, water myths, and Yoruba orishas more than any other African cosmology in their art, music, and literature. From the costumes of Earth, Wind & Fire to Lee Scratch Perry’s Black Ark to the idea of the mothership itself, the Dogon’s star bond with Sirius and ancient Egyptians’ unexplained technologies are the basis for Afrofuturist lore, art, and spectacle.
These cultures are referenced largely because of the sci-fi elements and mysticism in the mythology. The Egyptian and Dogon, in particular, are the most documented African wisdoms in the world. The importance of the Yoruba orishas and African water deities to enslaved African cultures in the Americas resound with descendants and continental Africa today. Afrofuturists are intrigued by Africa’s ancient wisdom and ancient wisdom from around the world. The aesthetic attracts students of the esoteric. Shamanism, metaphysics, Hinduism, Buddhism, African traditional religions, mystical Christianity, Sufism, Native American spirituality, astrology, martial arts mythology, and other ancient wisdoms are typically funneled through an African or diasporic viewpoint.
Stargazing is a popular pastime.
“Afrofuturism is about looking at and recovering those ancient ways and looking at how artists through the ’60s and now are using those to talk about the future,” says D. Denenge Akpem, scholar and performance artist.
Ancient Egypt and Nubia
Afrofuturists love to anchor their work in golden eras from times long gone, and there’s no ancient culture that merges the heights of science and the esoteric like the Egyptians and Nubians. Egypt’s reign in the ancient world and Nubia’s influence stand as proof that cultures of dark-skinned people ruled advanced societies and shaped global knowledge.
From naming themselves after Egyptian deities to donning the wardrobe, no stone is left unturned in the quest to reinterpret the greatness of ancient Egypt and Nubia in modern and futuristic black cultures. Ankhs, pharaoh crowns, and snakes are the visual aesthetic of the pharoahs. Gods and goddesses reappear in Afrofuturistic art, depicting an Egyptian cosmology that is as much in the past as it is the future.
Ancient Egypt’s stellar deities Ra, Isis, Horus, Set, the sky goddess Nut, and beyond are common mythological inspirations. Sun Ra named himself after the Egyptian god, and Erykah Badu gained fame while wearing the Egyptian ankh—a symbol of eternal life and fertility—in videos and stage shows, which repopularized African-inspired fashion and piqued curiosity about quantum physics.
But Afrofuturists aren’t the only ones reeled in by Egypt’s glory. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the mysteries of the pyramids and Sphinx, even the love-drenched tales of Cleopatra have inspired some of the greatest art, motion pictures, and literature of our time. Although anthropologists continue to crack away at the time-honored mysteries of the ancient Egyptians, the true meanings behind their mythology, architecture, religion, and writings are still cloaked in question marks, inspiring speculative history an
d theories that zigzag straight to space. Ancient Egypt is a treasure trove of speculation. Writers have speculated that the pyramids are celestial portals to other worlds. Others say that aliens, not humans, are the true architect, a theory often fraught with racism for its inability to imagine brown-skinned people achieving such mastery. Then there’s also the speculation that Egyptians had a special connection to other worlds. Even the blockbuster film Prometheus implies that the hieroglyphics are the offshoots of an ancient alien language.
In 1787 Count C. Volney, French scholar and author of Ruins of Empires, delighted readers with the wonders and impact of Egyptian culture on the changing world and the intellect of the “black-skinned” creators.
Early Egyptian libraries and secret societies were the envy of philosophers from Pythagoras to Plato, both of whom studied in Egypt. How did this culture come to be? What secrets did it hold? What were its secret teachings? Ancient Egyptian culture and lore is as much a pipeline to the great beyond as the mystery of dark matter.
The Afrofuturistic claim on the culture places the nation at the heart of African diaspora history, a statement that counters popular culture’s tendency to divorce Egypt from its African locale and people. “A lot cling on to it because it is a high point in African history,” says Afua Richardson, comic illustrator, about ancient Egypt’s popularity among Afrofuturists. “The pyramids themselves are one of the great mysteries of the world.”
An artist in a family of scientists, Richardson began her career as a flutist, playing for Sheila E. and Parliament/Funkadelic, among others, and was soon asked to lend her artistic skills to create album covers for Nona Hendryx. Richardson is a fan of speculative fiction on ancient societies and is developing a new comic on the Egyptian mystery schools and technology. However, Egyptian imagery in Afrofuturism is so popular it’s almost cliche, and she wants to add a new spin. “I want to combine futuristic imagery with shamanism,” she says.
Others look to the culture’s realities as a backdrop for fantasy. Fantasy writer N. K. Jemisin’s book The Killing Moon delves into the lives of high priests inspired by Egyptian society. In the book, the priests of the dream goddess harvest dreams and guide dreamers into the afterlife.
Egyptian Stargazing
Egyptian astronomy spread throughout Africa due in part to the Egyptians’ expansive trade routes, which crossed into the Horn of Africa and south of the Sahara. Manuscripts from Timbuktu in West Africa reference the Egyptian reach, and astrological understanding is nearly omnipresent in art and architecture from the region.
Lore aside, it’s a fact that the Great Pyramid of Giza and others have a host of sky-bound connections. Pyramids were arranged to align with the movement of constellations, solstice sunrises, and cardinal points on the compass. The star Sirius was associated with the annual flooding of the Nile River. Egyptians had a very sophisticated understanding of astronomy that permeated everyday life.
Ancient Nubian culture has a symbiotic relationship with Egypt. The two often shared pharaohs, deities, and history. The two are sister cultures in many ways. Nubia may predate Egypt. Nestled in modern-day Sudan, just south of modern Egypt, Nubia was also known for its stellar architecture and rich cosmology. Unfortunately, the building of the Aswan Dam some decades ago flooded many ancient Nubian sites and ruins. Much of it is currently covered by water.
Symbolically, Egypt and Nubia predate and rival the Western world’s anchor in ancient Greece and Rome.
The Dogon
The Dogon have perplexed Western scholars for centuries. Some believe that this Mali-born ethnic group, with an astronomical lore that goes back three millennia, harbors the ancient wisdom of the Egyptians. The stories of the Dogon opened the floodgate of alternative histories and tales inspired by probable outer-space human origins.
According to the Dogon cosmology, the Sirius system is the home to the Nommos, a race of amphibians akin to mermaids and mermen who visited Earth thousands of years ago. They arrived on Earth in an ark—inspiring Perry’s Black Ark and Clinton’s mothership myths—and imparted the wisdom of the stars.
French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen conducted and recorded conversations with Dogon priests between the 1930s and ’50s because they were dumbfounded by the Dogon’s common star knowledge, all assessed without a telescope. The Dogon knew that the star Sirius has two companion stars, the Digitaria (po tolo) and Sorghum (emme ya tolo). They knew that Digitaria has a fifty-year orbit cycle, and they were also familiar with the rings of Saturn and Jupiter’s moon. Robert K. G. Temple’s book The Sirius Mystery was published in 1977 and popularized these Dogon myths and knowledge.
Scientists would later challenge Griaule and Dieterlen’s findings as well as Temple’s extraterrestrial leanings, arguing that there’s no way this culture—without conventional astronomical technology—could possibly know about star orbits and distant moons. And yet the Dogon have conducted ceremonies since, and have art depicting their knowledge from, as early as the thirteenth century.
The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius is a popular star in legend and lore, with mentions in the Iliad, Star Trek, and Men in Black. But no story rivals the creation story of the Dogon.
Artist Cauleen Smith says she is fixated with the Dogon and used their theme in her 2012 show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. “I spent a few days in the astronomy research center reading about the star Sirius. [Scientists] will spend a whole chapter on how it’s impossible for the Dogon to know about this star. They are even willing to consider that aliens from outer space told them,” she says. “Why do they have a seven-hundred-year-old ritual for a star that they cannot see?”
The Dogon astronomy is held by many Afrofuturists as proof of the advanced science minds and talents of the ancient world. “It represents an African source,” says Akpem, who teaches about the star’s creative inspirations in her college-level Afrofuturism course. “It represents a cosmology that predates Western discoveries,” she continues. Afrofuturist bloggers from the AfrofuturistAffair.com to FuturisticallyAncient.com and Black ScienceFiction.com have posted essays and YouTube videos heralding the star. Art and stories relating to the star Sirius as well as galactic-origin metaphors are attributed to the Dogon.
African Mermaids and Mami Wata
Dogon lore is also one of the sources of the Mami Wata and African mermaid myths. Mami Wata are the pantheon of African water deities—half human, half sea creature. Other Mami Wata include the Togo’s Densu and Yoruba’s Olokun. However, the Dogon say their stories of Nommos, the mermen and mermaids of their ancestors, came from Egyptian stories. “Most were honored and respected as being ‘bringers of divine law’ and for establishing the theological, moral, social, political, economic, and cultural foundation, to regulating the overflow of the Nile, and regulating the ecology i.e., establishing days for success at sailing and fishing, hunting, planting etc. to punishment by devastating floods when laws and taboos were violated,” writes Mama Zogbé, Mamaissii Vivian Hunter-Hindrew, EdM, author of Mami Wata: Africa’s Ancient God/dess Unveiled.3
Even the words Mami and Wata have Egyptian origins. Ma or mama means “truth and wisdom,” and Wata comes from the ancient Egyptian word uati, meaning “ocean water.”
Contemporary images of Mami Wata are mostly women with long hair and snakes circling their torsos. The image was created by a nineteenth-century German artist but was inspired by the ancient imagery of the Egyptian goddess Isis. Isis was also depicted with braided hair and two serpents draped around her neck. (Isis and Mary, mother of Jesus, also are similarly depicted, as a mother holding a child.) According to myth, when she’s not sea bound, she walks the streets of modern African cities and has “avatars” that do the same. She gives wealth to her followers.
The Mami Wata are also closely associated with Africans brought to the New World in the transatlantic slave trade. They inspired the Drexciya myth, of female slaves thrown overboard who now live under the sea. Mami Wata are a
lso a favorite of graphic and installation artists, with odes on sites such as MermaidsofColor.tumblr.com.
Aker, blogger for Afrofuturist website FuturisticallyAncient.com, argues that Mami Wata permeate popular black culture. R&B star Aaliyah’s slithering snake adornments in the “We Need a Resolution” video and the floating scene in the “Rock the Boat” video are archetypical references to Isis/Mami Wata. Even Tina Turner’s rocking “Proud Mary (Rolling on the River)” evokes water goddess lore.
“Originally recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the song was famously covered by Ike and Tina Turner. The name of the band that originally recorded it as well as the lyrics suggests a religious theme. Proud Mary is a ‘riverboat queen’ and its name reminds me of Virgin Mary, whose name come from Stalla Maris, ‘the star of the sea.’ Virgin Mary is often syncretized with Mami Wata or Erzulie,” writes Aker.4
Nona Hendryx and Labelle speckled their sci-fi rock with mermaid tops and tails and fin-like hair. CopperWire’s sole woman, Meklit Hadero, has an alias of Ko Ai, a character whose mythology says she is a messenger species that swims through electrical networks and doubles as a mermaid.
Hip-hop starlet Azealia Banks adopts the cosmetic mermaid motif too, adorned with the trademark colorful long hair and shell tops. With her Mermaid Balls and aquababes, the quickwitted lyricist taps into the fantasy ideal, complete with a Fantasea mix tape and songs titled “Neptune” and “Atlantis.”
Although Banks doesn’t credit her water-themed inventions to Mami Wata per se, she says that the basic idea was inspired by an invitation to designer Karl Lagerfeld’s house and a need to impress him. “I can’t just look like the rap chick,” she told Spin, so she dyed her hair green, blue, and purple for the appearance. “I looked like a fish,” she said. It’s telling that the young ingenue’s disdain for rap-borne limitations and her desire to break free of stereotypes led her to be redefined as a classic water goddess.5
Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture Page 7
