Into the Continuum of Courage: Afrofuturism Then and Now

On Wednesday, 3/5, our Discover Jazz series Continuum of Courage: Afrofuturism Then and Now returns for its second series, devoted on the concepts of Afrofuturism in music, literature, fashion, and popular culture with instructor and pianist Tammy L. Hall.

Each Wednesday of the month will be devoted a different discipline that expresses the ideas of a positive Black future, with special guests including musician Brandee Younger, actor and producer Renée Wilson, music group Skip the Needle, and musician Shaunna Hall. 

What follows are excerpts from the official Discover Jazz coursebook, including introductory text and specific areas of discussion arranged by the upcoming session schedule:

Discover Jazz journeys into the realm of truly transcendent artists, creatives, and game changers, highlighting the intersection between art, culture, and technology at the center of Black identity. For this special season’s pairing we illuminate Afrofuturists whose vision and work defy categorization, invite curiosity, and celebrate the promise of a better world.

The foresight of our Black Ancestors who knew that the sacrifices and acts of extraordinary courage they made and acted upon were for the generations coming after them is in and of itself beyond remarkable.

The term Afrofuturism, first coined by Mark Dery in 1993, has deep roots that extend back to the 19th century, reaching a modest level of mainstream visibility in the 1950’s.

One could argue that “Afrofuturism” as an idea was a reaction to an Anglo-European conception of the role of Black populations in the larger human society. To those sensibilities, the idea is seen as a juxtaposition between the realities of Black culture in America and futurist concepts, rather than a correlated evolution. The concept was and is a disenfranchised population’s response to a bleak and uncertain future, creating visions of a tomorrow in which they have agency and inclusion.

“Afrofuturism is an intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation.” – Ytasha L. Womack, author of Afrofuturism (The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture)

Class 1 • Mar 5: The Spiritually Transcendent Vision of Alice Coltrane w/ Brandee Younger

Alice Coltrane, also known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda, nee McLeod, played piano and organ (in church). Her father encouraged her to pursue playing in various clubs in Detroit, where she grew up. She studied classical music and jazz with Bud Powell in Paris and appeared on French television before returning to the U.S. and beginning her career as a professional musician. In 1963, she met saxophonist John Coltrane and in 1965 they married. Alice and John’s joint pursuit of expressing spirituality through music cemented their commitment to each other and Alice started playing piano in his band, replacing McCoy Tyner, until John’s death in 1967. That same year, after John Coltrane’s most unexpected death, she received a delivery of a full-sized Lyon & Healy harp – a purchase made by John for her. In 1970, Alice met Yoga guru Swami Satchidananda Saraswati, a well-known spiritual leader to many, including Laura Nyro and Carole King. Her 1971 release, Journey in Satchidananda, is dedicated to healing and transcendence – two essential components of Afrofuturism.

By the mid-1960s saxophonist John Coltrane was certainly thinking astral thoughts, with later compositions called “Stellar Regions” and “Sun Ship” and a 1967 free jazz odyssey called Interstellar Space recorded in duo with drummer Rashied Ali.

The Afrofuturist aesthetic in jazz reached a zenith in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the work of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Alice Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Pharoah Sanders, Gary Bartz, and Eddie Henderson, to name but a few.

Davis’ landmark 1970 fusion statement Bitches Brew is a prime example, full of relentless searching and otherworldly electronic effects wrapped in the now classic Afrofuturist cover art by painter Abdul Mati Klarwein. Miles’ inspiration for much of his electronic music exploration was none other than his wife at the time, Betty Davis, who had a few years earlier introduced Miles to Jimi Hendrix, a very dear friend. Miles was quite taken with Hendrix's use of effects devices like wah-wah and distortion pedals and integrated them into his sound, and plans were made to collaborate on future projects, which sadly never came to fruition with Hendrix's death in 1970. Betty also inspired Miles to ‘expand his universe’ in the way that he dressed, trading the stodgy, stuffy suit for more dynamic threads.

Hancock’s work of the time remains a standard bearer for the movement, blending rock and funk with cascades of synthesizers and washes of electronics that propel the listener to a bright new future with, as Robert Springett’s evocative artwork for 1974’s Thrust shows us, Hancock at the keyboards/controls.

Class 2 • Mar 12: Transfixed & Transformed: Afrofuturist Fashion Icons w/ Renee Wilson

Class 4 • Mar 26: Space Is the Place! The Legacies of Sun Ra & George Clinton w/ Shaunna Hall

Though Afrofuturism in fashion is most often considered an ultra-modern "science fiction” expression of the concept, it is often based in African spiritual traditions, encompassing West African and Egyptian influences.

In an article for Chicago Art Magazine, artist and scholar D. Denenge Duyust-Akpem wrote:

"In Afrofuturism, the garment is an active part of the creative/transformative process; the garment or costume is an activator. In West Africa, for those Egungun priests who invoke the departed spirits, the self disappears in the wearing of the sacred garment; one becomes a vessel for spirit.”

For much of their history on the North American continent, the Black population expressed their heritage, identity, and individuality through clothing – from the headwraps, bright fabrics, and patchwork during the time of enslavement through the bold patterns and textures of the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age. In the 1920s, singer Josephine Baker made hoop earrings – a powerful symbol of African tradition – a regular part of her wardrobe on and off stage, and by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, many Black Americans wore the West African dashiki (an adaptation of the Yoruban word “danshiki”) as a politically-charged embrace of cultural heritage and a deliberate rejection of white influence.

Though these consciously visible statements of individuality may not seem inherently “futuristic,” on the surface, they undoubtedly were assertions of worth and declarations of self-determination and freedom that looked toward a better tomorrow.

Although the aesthetic and philosophy of Afrofuturism has manifested itself in all aspects of creative endeavor, from the literature of Octavia Butler and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat to the photography of Renée Cox, the concept found a recognized musical expression during the early 1950s by Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount). Claiming to have been an alien from Saturn on a mission to bring peace to the world, the keyboardist, composer, and bandleader pioneered a marriage of Afrocentric ideology with space age references that began a forward-looking musical revolution, informing the approaches of artists from Herbie Hancock to Beyoncé.

“My whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up...I wasn’t in human form...I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn...they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools...the world was going into complete chaos... I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That’s what they told me.” – Sun Ra

From the start, Sun Ra's self-produced releases on his own El Saturn imprint featured a mixture of lush big band swing combined with African and Asian exoticism, sporting cover art depicting astral voyages and songs with titles like “Plutonian Nights,” “Somewhere in Space,” “Interplanetary Low Ways,” “Rocket Number Nine Take Off for the Planet Venus,” “Space Jazz Reverie,” “Tapestry From an Asteroid, “There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You About)” and “Space is the Place.”

Beyond the conceptual innovations, Ra was among the first to incorporate electric bass and keyboards in jazz and pioneered group freeform improvisations and exotic modes and scales.

Live performances were spectacularly theatrical, with the band clad in elaborate futuristic costumes, often accompanied by dancers, fire-eaters, and dramatic lighting.

Over his four-decade career Sun Ra became one of the most prolific recording artists in history, recording well over 100 full-length albums and dozens of singles, many of which were pressed in quantities of less than 100, making them some of the most collectible jazz records in existence. His ownership of his recorded output stands as an early and influential model of how an artist could control the means of production and distribution of his own work without compromise or restriction.

Afrofuturist concepts in fashion are often rightly connected to the artists whose work defines the movement’s musical expression. We looked at some of the visual aspects of Sun Ra’s visual aesthetic in the chapter on music – a signature stylistic vision that became iconic for its combination of “space age” symbolism with Kemetic influences. That imagery had a major impact on Parliament bandleader, conceptualist, and funk giant George Clinton, whose spectacular stage shows included elaborately costumed musicians, UFOs landing on stage, and songs featuring the characters “Star Child,” “Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk,” and “Dr. Funkenstein.” Clinton’s longtime collaborator, bassist and bandleader Bootsy Collins, takes the image to its furthest extreme with a wildly flamboyant stage look and trademark star-shaped “Space Bass” that remain defining visual representations of 1970s intergalactic funk music.

In the 1970s and 1980s, singer, model, and actor Grace Jones took Afrofuturist fashion in a decidedly less shiny “space age” direction that blends with her post-modern R&B aesthetic seamlessly. Encompassing influences from the New York avant-garde, punk, disco, and fetish scenes that play with androgynous imagery and overt sexuality, Jones’ fashion sense is marked by form-fitting black leather, studs, fur, velvet, close-cropped hair, and outlandish hats. At 76, she remains an influential style icon who has refused to be pigeonholed by any binary concept throughout her career – be it gender, sexual orientation or – anything.

Other funk, pop, and R&B artists of the era including Earth, Wind & Fire, Labelle, and Nona Hendryx also adopted the Afrofuturist aesthetic, making silver jumpsuits, capes, headdresses, and other futuristic apparel a signature part of their stage presentation and artistic image.

Class 3 • Mar 19 The More Things Change: Afrofuturist Literature & Music w/ Skip the Needle

Lines establishing strict definitions of what constitutes Afrofuturist literature are not sharply drawn. In a general sense, they are fictional works, often in settings which could be considered “revisionist history” in which the Black protagonists utilize science and technology to create a bright future in which they maintain agency and control of their destinies beyond oppression and systemic racism.

One can posit, however, that fiction depicting characters of Black ancestry who are both literate and users of then-modern technology are seen today as precursors of a broader movement of so-called “Black science fiction” that has origins reaching back to the 19th century with the work of political leader Martin Delany, the “Father of Black Nationalism.” His serial 1859 work Blake; or the Huts of America imagined a widespread slave revolt from the Confederate states and the establishment of a new Black society in Cuba.

Novelist and historian Pauline Hopkins’s 1902 work Of One Blood tells of a hidden society in Ethiopia possessed of advanced technology (possibly an influence on Black Panther), while sociologist and author W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1920 short story The Comet remains an oft-referenced landmark concerning an apocalyptic event in New York that leaves only two survivors – a Black man and white woman – whose procreation would be humanity’s only hope to save itself.

As the century progressed, so did depictions of a Black future in allegorical, poetic, and satirical fiction.

Harlem Renaissance icon Langston Hughes envisioned a future reversal of the servile expectations of his subject in the 1926 poem “I, Too,” and the writer and social critic George Schuyler satirized white society’s view of Blackness and the development of a modern “cure” in his futuristic 1931 book Black No More.

Celebrated as the ‘Mother’ of Afrofuturism, the now much revered Zora Neale Hurston was the first to self-acknowledge as a “cosmic being” in her 1928 essay, “How It Fees to Be Colored Me.”

“The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads. I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries.”

Academic Lisa Yazsek makes a compelling case for the inclusion of Ralph Ellison’s seminal 1952 novel The Invisible Man in the list of Afrofuturist forebears in the journal Rethinking History, describing the narrator’s utilization of technology as a means to self-determination.

Writer and poet Ishmael Reed's 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo, a freewheeling mix of voodoo symbolism and modern technology, was cited by Parliament/Funkadelic mastermind and Afrofuturist music luminary George Clinton as a singular influence on his aesthetic.

Science fiction writer Octavia Butler put the concept front and center through her multipart Patternist series and the celebrated 1979 novel Kindred. Incorporating a time travel narrative that transports the protagonist between her life in the late 20th century and the slaves at a Maryland plantation in 1815, Kindred and its depiction of a woman’s experience of the inhumanity of slavery through her contemporary sensibilities struck a chord with readers, selling over a half-million copies and inspiring a 2022 miniseries on the FX network.

Our Discover Jazz course, "Continuum of Courage: Afrofuturism Then and Now" runs every Wednesday in March (5,12,19,26). Tickets and more information are available here.