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How Afrofuturism Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
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Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
0:49
Speaker 1: should know. No, no, no, yes, yes, yes.
0:56
Speaker 2: You should have said this CoA and welcome to the podcast, right,
1:02
Speaker 2: because I want to issue a CoA on this one.
1:05
Speaker 1: Okay.
1:06
Speaker 2: This is one of those that is so broad and
1:11
Speaker 2: dense and awesome that like I almost feel bad doing
1:17
Speaker 2: it as a you know, forty five ish minute episode
1:20
Speaker 2: of podcasts. Yeah, because afrofuturism is so vast. It's like
1:26
Speaker 2: it's hard for sometimes these to not feel like we'll
1:29
Speaker 2: explain what it is and then just like list a
1:31
Speaker 2: bunch of awesome people. Yeah, you know, but this, you know,
1:36
Speaker 2: this one is of all of our episodes, this one
1:40
Speaker 2: is meant to wet the appetite more than most. I think,
1:43
Speaker 2: as an introduction to what afrofuturism is, so you can
1:47
Speaker 2: go check out lots and lots of stuff yourself, because
1:49
Speaker 2: that's all I've been doing.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we should title it Afrofuturism one on one.
1:56
Speaker 3: Maybe not even what's what's below one on one?
1:59
Speaker 1: Ninety nine?
2:00
Speaker 3: Okay, ninety nine, that won't make it.
2:01
Speaker 1: I can't remember. There's actually a number for it, and
2:04
Speaker 1: it's like remedial college courses that you have to take
2:07
Speaker 1: to catch up. Man, I can't remember, but we'll look
2:10
Speaker 1: it up and maybe that'll be there.
2:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we will get email saying how could you
2:15
Speaker 2: not mention so and so? How could you not mention
2:18
Speaker 2: so and so's other thing even though you mentioned them.
2:22
Speaker 2: It's just one of those things. There's just too much.
2:24
Speaker 2: But hopefully this will just introduce people to this idea
2:27
Speaker 2: and this concept of this cultural aesthetic in philosophy.
2:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is definitely one of those episodes that
2:35
Speaker 1: we should try to define what we're talking about first, which,
2:38
Speaker 1: by the way, we took guph for not telling people
2:42
Speaker 1: in depth who Milli Vanilli were. I was so taken
2:47
Speaker 1: aback by that, Like, you know, it just didn't even
2:50
Speaker 1: occur to me that we needed to go further into
2:54
Speaker 1: defining Milli Vanilli from the outset.
2:56
Speaker 2: I know, I thought even our younger listeners, I thought
2:59
Speaker 2: that was such a big cultural thing that you know,
3:02
Speaker 2: like I know about things before I was born.
3:05
Speaker 1: Nope, nope, Well this is not Milli Vanilli. This is
3:08
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. Afrofuturism and afrofuturism. Like you said,
3:12
Speaker 1: it's a huge, big thing that has a lot of
3:17
Speaker 1: different definitions, but probably the most succinct way I can
3:22
Speaker 1: define it, and this is me defining it, is that
3:27
Speaker 1: it is the visions of the future or fantasy worlds
3:32
Speaker 1: or alternate realities, which all fall under the umbrella of
3:36
Speaker 1: speculative fiction or speculative literature. Yeah, through a African American lens, right.
3:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'll just drill down a little bit and
3:50
Speaker 2: say that incorporates obviously literature, but music and dance and
3:59
Speaker 2: every kind of art you can think of, movies obviously
4:03
Speaker 2: in television, really kind of anything that has this cool
4:08
Speaker 2: sort of sci fi bent.
4:11
Speaker 3: Through the lens of African Americans.
4:13
Speaker 2: And we'll get into more definitions, because you know, it's
4:17
Speaker 2: one of those things that people can really pick apart
4:19
Speaker 2: as far as what counts and what doesn't. And then
4:21
Speaker 2: after it's around for a while, like should we even
4:24
Speaker 2: be calling it this now?
4:25
Speaker 3: And should we call it this?
4:26
Speaker 2: And we'll get into all that, but suffice it to
4:29
Speaker 2: say that, like all of this stuff is just really
4:31
Speaker 2: cool and awesome and serves and has a title because
4:35
Speaker 2: it is serving people that has been underserved when it
4:39
Speaker 2: comes to science fiction.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's kind of evolved in parallel as its
4:44
Speaker 1: own thing, but it grew out of originally science fiction writing.
4:51
Speaker 1: So when most people think of afrofuturism, they think of
4:54
Speaker 1: sci fi novels essentially. Yeah, but once you start to
4:58
Speaker 1: look into afrofuturism and start to understand what it is,
5:01
Speaker 1: you see it popping up all over the place, like
5:03
Speaker 1: it was right there in plain sight for me and
5:05
Speaker 1: I never really realized what I was looking at. I
5:07
Speaker 1: was just kind of taking all of it as like
5:09
Speaker 1: individual like artistic things rather than a part of a collective.
5:13
Speaker 1: So it's cool to see that there is one giant
5:17
Speaker 1: movement that it's a part of. But like I said,
5:20
Speaker 1: it does definitely have its roots in science fiction, which
5:25
Speaker 1: is pretty appropriate because as far as any literary genre goes,
5:29
Speaker 1: science fiction has explored the themes of race and racism
5:33
Speaker 1: and otherness and alienness more than any other I would.
5:37
Speaker 2: Say, yeah, And I have a little stat to sort
5:41
Speaker 2: of drive home my underserved point, and this was from
5:45
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen in Voxo. It's a little dated and things
5:48
Speaker 2: have gotten better since then, for sure, but eight percent
5:52
Speaker 2: at the time, eight percent of the top grossing sci
5:55
Speaker 2: fi films of all time featured black protagonists, and four
6:00
Speaker 2: percent of those were Will Smith.
6:03
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
6:04
Speaker 3: So aside for Will Smith, four percent of movies.
6:08
Speaker 2: And then of course, if you look at you know,
6:10
Speaker 2: the big two Star Trek and Star Wars. You know,
6:12
Speaker 2: the Star Wars got a lot better now, but the
6:14
Speaker 2: original trilogy had one black character, of course, Lando, and
6:19
Speaker 2: then Star Trek, which I know nothing about, and I'm
6:22
Speaker 2: sure things have changed since then as well, But at
6:24
Speaker 2: the time, I think only had and all of the
6:26
Speaker 2: Star Trek properties had it said less than twelve black characters.
6:31
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure what that means. Why I didn't
6:34
Speaker 2: say eleven unless one was on the fence.
6:37
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
6:38
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, that is an odd way to
6:39
Speaker 1: put it, for sure.
6:40
Speaker 3: I bet a trick he could explain it, though.
6:42
Speaker 1: I speaking of every time I read or research about
6:46
Speaker 1: Star Treker, it just comes up. I have to go
6:48
Speaker 1: watch that William shattn or Saturday at Live appearance from
6:51
Speaker 1: the Bees.
6:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, get a life.
6:53
Speaker 1: He's speaking at a Star Trek convention. It's just priceless
6:58
Speaker 1: every single time. If you've ever seen that, just look
7:00
Speaker 1: up William Shatner Star Trek Convention Saturday Night Live and
7:04
Speaker 1: you won't be disappointed.
7:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, and for our younger listeners, William Shatner is an actor.
7:11
Speaker 3: Right from before you were born.
7:13
Speaker 1: And acting is where you perform something that you're actually
7:17
Speaker 1: not on screen, any screen. That's right, So that eight
7:23
Speaker 1: percent is actually progress compared to the early twentieth century.
7:28
Speaker 1: And most people don't think that there were any black
7:30
Speaker 1: sci fi writers. If you think about that, kind of
7:32
Speaker 1: thing at all until the sixties, really, when a guy
7:34
Speaker 1: named Samuel Delaney came along. He's often credited as the
7:38
Speaker 1: first black sci fi writer. He made a huge splash
7:42
Speaker 1: in the sixties, kind of almost single handedly taking the
7:45
Speaker 1: genre of sci fi out of the realm of Martians
7:48
Speaker 1: are invading an Earth outpost to let's explore sexual irritation,
7:54
Speaker 1: gender fluidity, race in really like high handed manner, producing
8:00
Speaker 1: books that were over eight hundred pages long in some cases.
8:05
Speaker 1: But he really moved things along. So not only was
8:07
Speaker 1: he one of the first African American sci fi writers,
8:12
Speaker 1: he was one of the first to take sci fi
8:15
Speaker 1: into much deeper directions.
8:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
8:18
Speaker 2: But he's also a guy that when you see interviews
8:21
Speaker 2: with him, and I watched quite a few, super cool guy,
8:24
Speaker 2: but he's one of the first ones to say no, no, no,
8:27
Speaker 2: I had people before me. It never became hugely popular,
8:33
Speaker 2: probably for obvious reasons. But there was a guy in
8:35
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty seven named Martin Delaney who was a kind
8:39
Speaker 2: of a jack of all trades. He was a doctor
8:41
Speaker 2: and a journalist and an author and abolitionist. He wrote
8:45
Speaker 2: a book, a novel called Blake or the Huts of America,
8:49
Speaker 2: which was as a lot of these are alternate histories
8:52
Speaker 2: that kind of suppose, like what would life be like
8:56
Speaker 2: had either slavery not happened or slave rehappened in a
9:00
Speaker 2: different way, or what if, you know, the white people
9:04
Speaker 2: were enslaved and black people were on top. And it's
9:08
Speaker 2: just sort of looking at kind of a lot of
9:10
Speaker 2: things through the lens of the diaspora. And you know,
9:14
Speaker 2: I'm not into sci fi books, I never have, but
9:18
Speaker 2: a lot of this stuff it made me want to
9:19
Speaker 2: read sci fi for the first time just because it
9:21
Speaker 2: sounds so cool.
9:21
Speaker 3: Because I love alternate history.
9:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and that's definitely a part of speculative
9:26
Speaker 1: fiction alternate history in general. But yeah, Martin Delaney's Blake
9:31
Speaker 1: or the Huts of America was written in eighteen fifty seven,
9:35
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until I mean, I think that another
9:38
Speaker 1: couple decades things would come out sporadically. But there was
9:41
Speaker 1: a guy named Edward Johnson who wrote Light Ahead for
9:45
Speaker 1: the Negro in nineteen oh one, and he imagined a
9:49
Speaker 1: black man who was transported to a socialist version of
9:54
Speaker 1: the United States in two thousand and six, where things
9:56
Speaker 1: were much much better. So these ideas, these all alternate
10:00
Speaker 1: histories are kind of coming out little by little, but
10:03
Speaker 1: they are very very clearly under the what you would
10:06
Speaker 1: call now speculative fiction umbrella. And they were written by
10:10
Speaker 1: African Americans much earlier than Samuel Delaney, long before he
10:15
Speaker 1: was even born. This stuff was happening. It just was
10:18
Speaker 1: happening like almost in a vacuum. Like a black author
10:22
Speaker 1: or a black leader would have a great idea to
10:24
Speaker 1: get his point across by writing an alternate history, and
10:29
Speaker 1: that was it. There wasn't like a genre, There wasn't
10:31
Speaker 1: a movement or anything like that.
10:33
Speaker 3: Yeah.
10:33
Speaker 2: And Delaney also points out that the like the old
10:37
Speaker 2: pulp rags, a lot of those were written anonymously and
10:41
Speaker 2: it kind of was an area of literature where people
10:45
Speaker 2: of color, women who you know, couldn't get published published
10:49
Speaker 2: as readily at the time, they could write under these
10:51
Speaker 2: pseudonyms and get their stories out in these pulp magazine
10:57
Speaker 2: articles and stuff and stories. And he's like, you know,
11:00
Speaker 2: who knows how many you know African Americans are writing
11:03
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff.
11:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you did the whole thing through the mail,
11:05
Speaker 1: and apparently at the time you were more likely than
11:08
Speaker 1: not to be using a pseudonym for that stuff, because
11:11
Speaker 1: that was just like keeping the electricity on kind of writing,
11:14
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, so that's a really
11:17
Speaker 1: great point. But I think the underlying thing here is
11:22
Speaker 1: the reason that there weren't more black authors of sci
11:25
Speaker 1: fi in part was because it was just writing in
11:31
Speaker 1: general literature in general. There was like a general push
11:34
Speaker 1: to keep African Americans out of things like that as
11:37
Speaker 1: much as possible. And then as African Americans became more
11:40
Speaker 1: and more integrated into American society, the thing that kept
11:45
Speaker 1: African Americans out of sci fi writing actually came down
11:50
Speaker 1: to one guy who was named John W. Campbell Junior.
11:54
Speaker 1: And it's just slightly hyperbolic to say he was the
11:57
Speaker 1: glass ceiling that that the gatekeeper that kept sci fi
12:03
Speaker 1: white for decades.
12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was definitely one of the one of the gatekeepers.
12:08
Speaker 2: He was an editor of I think back then it
12:12
Speaker 2: was called Astounding Science Fiction. It went by a bunch
12:15
Speaker 2: of other names, and now it's around as Analog science Fiction.
12:18
Speaker 2: In fact, yeah, in fact, yeah, I said that with
12:23
Speaker 2: a comma, but in fact it's a period. Actually there's
12:25
Speaker 2: no period, but he was the editor, and like you said,
12:29
Speaker 2: he was a guy that you know, he wrote a
12:32
Speaker 2: bunch of essays in the nineteen sixties that supported segregation.
12:37
Speaker 2: At one point he called slavery a useful educational system.
12:41
Speaker 2: And because of guys like him that were gatekeepers, these
12:45
Speaker 2: stories didn't get through and people like Delaney and Octavia
12:49
Speaker 2: Butler who were going to talk about a lot more.
12:51
Speaker 2: She talked about being in school and even her teachers
12:54
Speaker 2: saying things like, you know, unless it's like really necessary
12:58
Speaker 2: for the plot, Like you shouldn't have a black protagonist
13:01
Speaker 2: unless it's like for a reason, or you know, if
13:04
Speaker 2: you're going to talk about race in a way, you
13:08
Speaker 2: know in science fiction, maybe like make them extraterrestrial instead
13:12
Speaker 2: of black. It's sort of like a metaphor because it's
13:15
Speaker 2: kind of too heavy for people to, you know, to
13:17
Speaker 2: really take right.
13:18
Speaker 1: Octavia Butler wrote a really great essay in nineteen eighty
13:22
Speaker 1: called the Lost Races of Science Fiction, and she took
13:25
Speaker 1: on that excuse for why there wasn't more black people
13:29
Speaker 1: in science fiction works. And she's zeroed in on Star
13:33
Speaker 1: Wars as an example, the first one. And she said
13:37
Speaker 1: war okay, planet wide destruction okay, kidnapping okay, but the
13:42
Speaker 1: sight of a minority person, too heavy, too real. So
13:46
Speaker 1: she's pointing out that, like there's plenty of real world
13:49
Speaker 1: stuff that you could consider pretty horrible. Yeah, that is
13:53
Speaker 1: just fine in science fiction, but race is too distracting.
13:57
Speaker 1: And that was like just kind of the drum that
13:59
Speaker 1: was beaten by guys John W. Campbell. And the reason
14:02
Speaker 1: why they were so powerful was because at the time,
14:05
Speaker 1: if you wanted to get your novel published, basically the
14:09
Speaker 1: most direct route was to have it serialized first in
14:12
Speaker 1: one of those magazines that guys like John W. Campbell edited,
14:16
Speaker 1: and then if you keep black authors out of black
14:19
Speaker 1: sci fi, you also largely keep black readers out of
14:23
Speaker 1: sci fi too, And just by preventing people like Samuel
14:28
Speaker 1: Delaney from getting his stories serialized, black sci fi writers
14:34
Speaker 1: were basically kept out. And as Janette Ing, who won
14:38
Speaker 1: Best New Writer of twenty nineteen for science fiction writing,
14:42
Speaker 1: I can't remember which award, I think it was actually
14:45
Speaker 1: maybe that same award from Analog Science Fiction. In fact,
14:52
Speaker 1: she said that sweet it really is. She said that
14:56
Speaker 1: John W. Campbell had kept science fiction stale, sterile, male
15:00
Speaker 1: white exalting of imperial aspirations, colonialism, settlement, and industrialism and
15:09
Speaker 1: she was basically just, I mean, we're not gonna harp
15:14
Speaker 1: on this the whole episode, but there was a huge
15:16
Speaker 1: block in this particular genre, and it was just a
15:20
Speaker 1: handful of people who everybody else went along with it.
15:22
Speaker 2: Seems like, for sure, I think that's a great initial
15:27
Speaker 2: fifteen minute overview, and we'll come back and talk just
15:32
Speaker 2: about the term itself and where it came from right
15:34
Speaker 2: after this. All right, So afro futurism, it's kind of
16:12
Speaker 2: hard to say quickly sometimes. It was coined by a
16:14
Speaker 2: white writer named Mark Dairy in the early nineties and
16:18
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three and a piece called Black to the Future.
16:22
Speaker 2: And in that piece he interviewed a few writers, Delaney,
16:26
Speaker 2: a music writer named Gregory Tait, and Tricia Rose, who
16:29
Speaker 2: was a sociologist, and basically was like, the whole point
16:33
Speaker 2: of the essay was why are there so few working novelists,
16:39
Speaker 2: African American novelists working in this genre? What happened to
16:43
Speaker 2: get us here? Why aren't there more now? And what
16:46
Speaker 2: can we do about it to change this in the future.
16:49
Speaker 2: And he's like, especially like science fiction seems especially suited
16:54
Speaker 2: for people of color because and this is a great
16:56
Speaker 2: quote he said, in a very real sense, they're the
16:59
Speaker 2: descendant of alien abductees, and like, when you think of
17:03
Speaker 2: it like that, it makes a lot of sense that
17:05
Speaker 2: sci fi would kind of be, you know, something that
17:08
Speaker 2: really fits.
17:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was right. It turned out to be
17:11
Speaker 1: a great fit for African American sci fi writers. But
17:14
Speaker 1: still at the time there were basically four that he
17:17
Speaker 1: could think of, including Samuel Delaney and Octavia Butler. Then
17:21
Speaker 1: also a guy named Steve Barnes who's written basically everything
17:25
Speaker 1: that has anything to do with science fiction, and then
17:29
Speaker 1: another fantasy author named Charles Saunders. And that was basically it.
17:33
Speaker 1: And this was the mid nineties that this guy was
17:35
Speaker 1: writing this essay and doing these interviews. But he hit
17:39
Speaker 1: it right on the head that it is a really
17:41
Speaker 1: great basis or springboard for black writers to kind of
17:46
Speaker 1: explore the past and the future. But he defined it
17:50
Speaker 1: as a speculative fiction that treats African American themes and
17:53
Speaker 1: addresses African American concerns in the context of twentieth century technoculture.
17:59
Speaker 1: And he took what was already happening and firmly labeled
18:05
Speaker 1: it and put a lot of constraints on it. When
18:07
Speaker 1: he coined the term afrofuturism and then defined it like that.
18:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where there is some I guess debate
18:17
Speaker 2: over whether or not it should be strictly limited through
18:21
Speaker 2: the lens of African Americans and the diaspora or just
18:26
Speaker 2: Black culture worldwide as a whole. And you know, well,
18:30
Speaker 2: I think at the end we'll talk about some of
18:32
Speaker 2: the some other more inclusive names that kind of encompass all,
18:35
Speaker 2: you know, kind of worldwide black culture.
18:37
Speaker 3: But there are people that kind of are on both
18:43
Speaker 3: sides of the fence.
18:44
Speaker 2: And I mean, I guess for me, you know, I
18:47
Speaker 2: just I just think it's all great, So nitpicking about
18:51
Speaker 2: you know, the exact definition is not for me, but
18:57
Speaker 2: we have to point it out that that it's out there,
18:58
Speaker 2: and then there is a debate.
19:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one of the big things is whether it's
19:02
Speaker 1: specifically African American, because there's a lot more black communities
19:08
Speaker 1: out there than just African Americans. They're one of many.
19:11
Speaker 1: You've got the entire continent of Africa and all of
19:14
Speaker 1: its various groups. You've got the diaspera, like you said,
19:18
Speaker 1: African American descendants or African descendants living in Europe, and
19:22
Speaker 1: Asia and all around the world. Then there's even like
19:25
Speaker 1: sub types as well, like the African American diaspora is
19:30
Speaker 1: made up of people whose ancestors were enslaved in America
19:35
Speaker 1: and then once they were free, moved out of America
19:38
Speaker 1: into Mexico, Canada, wherever. So there's a lot of different groups.
19:42
Speaker 1: And what Mark darry did was situated exclusively in the
19:47
Speaker 1: realm of African Americans. That's a big that's a big
19:51
Speaker 1: point of debate still today.
19:53
Speaker 2: The other thing Womack points out in that book, which
19:57
Speaker 2: you know is very easy for like a middle aged
19:59
Speaker 2: one guy to overlook, is the fact that these afro
20:03
Speaker 2: futurist themes are a way of she talked about a
20:07
Speaker 2: method of self liberation, self healing. So you know, to
20:10
Speaker 2: imagine a future for your race is a hopeful thing.
20:14
Speaker 2: So if you're in a hostile world, it's probably very
20:18
Speaker 2: easy to have a very bleak depiction of the future
20:22
Speaker 2: of your people. And these stories like they're sure it's
20:26
Speaker 2: science fiction, and it's you know, science fiction is always
20:29
Speaker 2: just sort of.
20:33
Speaker 3: Not light.
20:33
Speaker 2: It's actually very heavy in a lot of cases, but
20:36
Speaker 2: maybe not to be taken seriously by some people.
20:39
Speaker 3: But you know, I just I don't think it's like that.
20:41
Speaker 2: I think that it can offer very heavy commentaries and
20:44
Speaker 2: it can offer hope to people that like, hey, if
20:47
Speaker 2: we can write about ourselves in the future, that means
20:49
Speaker 2: we can imagine ourselves like thriving in the future.
20:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. And similarly, it's a way for African Americans and
20:56
Speaker 1: people of African descent in general to stake a claim
21:01
Speaker 1: of the future too, right, because if you think about
21:04
Speaker 1: the future, and I think Mark Darry made the point like,
21:08
Speaker 1: if you look at Tomorrowland from a Disney World in Disneyland,
21:12
Speaker 1: it's super white, and the future in general is just white.
21:15
Speaker 1: It's like a projection of current times. And afrofuturism says, nope,
21:19
Speaker 1: there's a different way of looking at it too, and
21:22
Speaker 1: that this was the one that kind of triggered them understanding.
21:26
Speaker 1: For me, the distinction between afrofuturism and just any other
21:32
Speaker 1: kind of say sci fi that features like a black
21:37
Speaker 1: character is that you're not just taking like an African
21:41
Speaker 1: American and making him or her them an astronaut in
21:46
Speaker 1: the structure of the current imagined future, which again is
21:50
Speaker 1: super white. The basis of afrofuturism is completely reimagining the future,
21:56
Speaker 1: completely reimagining the past through a black lens, kind of
22:01
Speaker 1: like if you if black people were in charge of
22:05
Speaker 1: producing the future. This is a vision of what it
22:08
Speaker 1: could be like kind of thing. Yeah, rather than just
22:10
Speaker 1: following along the current trajectory that we've been on all
22:13
Speaker 1: this time in America, which is a super white trajectory
22:16
Speaker 1: that includes other people, but the basis of everything, the
22:20
Speaker 1: structure of everything is through the white lens. This is
22:23
Speaker 1: taking it through a black lens. And it's I saw
22:26
Speaker 1: it puts defamiliarizing what we think of as like the future.
22:31
Speaker 3: Oh I like that term.
22:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought so. I thought you would.
22:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense.
22:36
Speaker 2: There's one guy who we have to mention who is,
22:40
Speaker 2: you know, a complicated guy to say the least, and
22:44
Speaker 2: that is one of the first sort of twentieth century
22:48
Speaker 2: afro futurist writers, who is George Schuyler. And he wrote
22:53
Speaker 2: generally for black publications, but he wrote all these books.
22:58
Speaker 2: He wrote novels and essays and shorts, stories and things.
23:01
Speaker 2: Sometimes there were pulp stories, and they were exactly what
23:05
Speaker 2: we've been talking about. That was one in the thirties,
23:07
Speaker 2: these serialized pulp stories about a global black uprising against
23:12
Speaker 2: white colonialism. But he wrote these under pseudonyms, the pseudonym
23:17
Speaker 2: Samuel I. Brooks and Skuyler himself in IRL would write
23:25
Speaker 2: essays kind of slamming stories that he wrote as Brooks.
23:31
Speaker 2: He wrote he said it was hokum and hack work
23:33
Speaker 2: in the purest vein and was a very conservative guy
23:37
Speaker 2: in his real life, and like backed Joseph McCarthy's campaign
23:42
Speaker 2: against communists, and he was sort of opponent of the
23:47
Speaker 2: civil rights movement. And it's just, man, I need to
23:50
Speaker 2: dive into this guy a little more and see that's
23:53
Speaker 2: some serious complication right there.
23:55
Speaker 1: You know for sure he is. But he wrote that
23:57
Speaker 1: book Black No More, where you you could visit a machine,
24:01
Speaker 1: pay fifty dollars and after a three day process be
24:04
Speaker 1: turned from black to white. And it completely up ends
24:07
Speaker 1: society and civilization, both in the white community and the
24:10
Speaker 1: black community. And he wrote that as George Skyler, the
24:13
Speaker 1: conservative guy, but he's considered one of the first progenitors
24:19
Speaker 1: of the of afrofuturism in the twentieth century. And then
24:24
Speaker 1: simultaneously chuck as guys like Skyler are writing and Samuel I. Brooks,
24:30
Speaker 1: who's the same guy as they're writing afrofuturism. A musical
24:35
Speaker 1: form of afrofuturism is kind of developing too. And if
24:39
Speaker 1: you look back in the past, it was just a
24:40
Speaker 1: few people popping up and doing something that eventually, a
24:44
Speaker 1: couple decades later you could say, I'll fall into this
24:47
Speaker 1: same general category.
24:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean these are all sort of in the
24:51
Speaker 2: cases of Skyler and the guys we're about to talk about,
24:55
Speaker 2: is all these are all like retroactive titles, right because
24:59
Speaker 2: that and wasn't around back then. But you can't talk
25:02
Speaker 2: about afrofuturism without talking about George Clinton and Sun Raw
25:07
Speaker 2: on the music side, and I spent the basically all
25:11
Speaker 2: day listening to a Sun Raw playlist, and it is
25:15
Speaker 2: you know, I have to be in the mood for
25:18
Speaker 2: this kind of jazz. Is it's tough, it's very free form,
25:24
Speaker 2: it's very odd, and it's not like, you know, this
25:30
Speaker 2: very melodic, super listenable kind of thing. It's challenging music.
25:34
Speaker 2: And Sunraw was a really interesting guy. He was born
25:38
Speaker 2: in Birmingham in nineteen fourteen as Herman Blount, and he
25:42
Speaker 2: moved to Chicago in the forties and played a little
25:46
Speaker 2: more traditional type jazz. But in the sixties he went
25:50
Speaker 2: to New York and things, really he really freed himself
25:54
Speaker 2: up of what the idea of jazz or just composed
25:59
Speaker 2: music could be. He was an out there cat in
26:02
Speaker 2: all the right ways.
26:04
Speaker 1: For sure, and he made more than one hundred and
26:06
Speaker 1: fifty albums with this orchestra, and the whole premise of
26:10
Speaker 1: it was that he was essentially kind of like the
26:14
Speaker 1: prophet returned from Saturn to help lead humanity, if not
26:19
Speaker 1: just African Americans off of Earth, because things like slavery
26:23
Speaker 1: had ruined Earth. And he had this whole mythos. This
26:25
Speaker 1: wasn't just like a concept album that he put.
26:28
Speaker 3: This is his whole career career.
26:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for decades. This is how he lived and
26:34
Speaker 1: he inspired a lot of people. And I'm with you,
26:38
Speaker 1: that kind of jazz is hard for me to listen to,
26:41
Speaker 1: no matter who's playing it. But he had an album
26:44
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifty seven that I think is super easy
26:46
Speaker 1: to listen to called Supersonic Jazz. Yeah, I think it's
26:50
Speaker 1: technically before, Yeah, it's before he moved to New York
26:52
Speaker 1: and really set up the orchestra, but it's clearly son
26:56
Speaker 1: raw like you can you can tell. So if you
26:59
Speaker 1: want to try Son Raw and you've tried some of
27:01
Speaker 1: his later stuff and you're like, I'm not ready for this,
27:03
Speaker 1: listen to Supersonic Jazz that album first and see what
27:06
Speaker 1: you think.
27:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good. Don't lead them down that.
27:11
Speaker 2: That confusing so confusion jazz fa Yeah, much more accessible
27:18
Speaker 2: is George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, right, Yeah, I'm a
27:23
Speaker 2: big fan. I always have been. I tend to lean
27:25
Speaker 2: more towards the Funkadelic records than the Parliament, even though
27:28
Speaker 2: I love the Parliament stuff too. But he is someone
27:33
Speaker 2: I've seen a few times and live, and I'm going
27:35
Speaker 2: to see him again next month where at Symphony Hall
27:39
Speaker 2: where we're performing. I just like to share the same stage.
27:44
Speaker 2: Not at the same time, obviously, but just to be
27:47
Speaker 2: on the same stage that George Clinton will be on
27:49
Speaker 2: or had been on.
27:50
Speaker 3: It's pretty cool.
27:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not worthy, but always a great show. His
27:55
Speaker 2: band is is awesome. I mean, it's all it's very
27:59
Speaker 2: space age. He used to have the mothership that would
28:01
Speaker 2: come down on the stage and he would enter the mothership.
28:05
Speaker 2: Just it's a great sort of feast for the eyes
28:08
Speaker 2: and ears.
28:09
Speaker 1: Hey, that reminds me before you go on. I'm sorry
28:11
Speaker 1: to interrupt, but there just coincidentally, the main exhibit right
28:16
Speaker 1: now at the National Museum of African American History in
28:20
Speaker 1: DC is Afrofuturism. Oh cool, And one of the cool
28:24
Speaker 1: things they have on display is a replica of the
28:26
Speaker 1: UFO that George Clinton would come on the stage and.
28:31
Speaker 3: The mothership there.
28:32
Speaker 1: Yeah.
28:32
Speaker 3: Is it like life size?
28:33
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it's like an exact replica because apparently somebody
28:37
Speaker 1: threw away the one that he used in the seventies,
28:38
Speaker 1: and in the nineties when they started touring again, they
28:41
Speaker 1: made a replica and I think that's the exact one
28:43
Speaker 1: that's in the Smithsonian.
28:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.
28:46
Speaker 2: Well, the first time I saw him was when he
28:48
Speaker 2: started up again and he was on that lat of
28:50
Speaker 2: Paloza tour and he played a show. I saw him
28:53
Speaker 2: at the Lalla Palouza, but I saw him the night
28:55
Speaker 2: before at the Center Stage Theater.
28:58
Speaker 3: Hey, we have also played there.
28:59
Speaker 1: Actually, George Clinton all over the place.
29:03
Speaker 2: But he did the show at the Center Stage and
29:06
Speaker 2: you know, he was getting up there in age at
29:08
Speaker 2: the time back then. I imagine when I see him
29:11
Speaker 2: next month, like he's an older guy now.
29:13
Speaker 3: But he was.
29:14
Speaker 2: He was still getting down back then, and he had
29:16
Speaker 2: the BAC Boys came out at the end and because
29:19
Speaker 2: they were playing Lolla Plues and it was sort of
29:21
Speaker 2: like this all star thing and it was pretty great.
29:23
Speaker 2: But Clinton was a kid who listened I'm sorry. He
29:27
Speaker 2: watched Star Trek and Buck Rogers and was into sci
29:31
Speaker 2: fi and it was just again, it was one of
29:33
Speaker 2: those things where he didn't see any representation.
29:36
Speaker 3: He just knew what he liked. Apparently took acid.
29:39
Speaker 2: Later on and watched two thousand one of Space Odyssey
29:42
Speaker 2: in Fantasia when he took LSD for the first time,
29:45
Speaker 2: and that, you know, had some pretty profound impacts.
29:48
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I didn't realize because
29:51
Speaker 1: you know, we're living in the post Parliament era, but
29:55
Speaker 1: one of the things that Parliament did was unite a
29:58
Speaker 1: generally fractured black community. After the MLK assassination, Apparently there
30:05
Speaker 1: was a lot of just fracturing in the black community,
30:08
Speaker 1: and a few years later George Clinton came along and
30:12
Speaker 1: kind of tried to bring people together by by throwing
30:16
Speaker 1: a party for for for the African American community in
30:19
Speaker 1: the United States and the world. Really and so the
30:22
Speaker 1: whole whole premise was that George Clinton and the rest
30:25
Speaker 1: of the p Funk All Stars, who includes like Bernie
30:30
Speaker 1: Warrel or Bernie Warrel and Bootsy Collins. They were aliens
30:36
Speaker 1: who'd come to Earth to teach everybody how to party. Yeah,
30:40
Speaker 1: they were this is a quote afronauts capable of funketizing galaxies.
30:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, it's so cool.
30:48
Speaker 2: I want to quickly mention local Atlanta guy Lonnie Holly
30:52
Speaker 2: as well. Lonnie, you remember Matt Arnett, our friend who
30:58
Speaker 2: well we know Matt through a lot of different way
31:00
Speaker 2: here in Atlanta, but big supporter of the arts, and
31:02
Speaker 2: Matt is Lannie's kind of friend, and I guess I
31:05
Speaker 2: guess he's his tour manager and manager. But Lonnie Holly
31:09
Speaker 2: is is a modern representation of sort of what afro
31:14
Speaker 2: futurism is and still plays these small shows.
31:17
Speaker 3: And his stuff is.
31:17
Speaker 2: Really really good and just soulful and like intense and weird.
31:23
Speaker 2: It's really cool.
31:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super cool. I've never heard his stuff, but
31:27
Speaker 1: I'm going to check it out now.
31:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you can see him live, because that's when
31:31
Speaker 2: it gets really kind of awesome.
31:33
Speaker 1: Well, take me to a show.
31:35
Speaker 2: Well, he didn't play a lot. I just saw he
31:37
Speaker 2: played in New York recently, because Michael Stipe of course
31:39
Speaker 2: was there.
31:40
Speaker 1: You finally up to New York. What's your problem?
31:43
Speaker 2: I saw Matt in court the other day, so we
31:47
Speaker 2: were only able to text from across the court room.
31:50
Speaker 1: There's got to be a story there.
31:52
Speaker 2: We were both fighting the man, you know, we were
31:54
Speaker 2: both right and basically just the bureaucracy of Atlanta had
31:59
Speaker 2: kept us down and find us for various things hashtag
32:03
Speaker 2: hero Yeah, I can get into it later, but both
32:06
Speaker 2: of us were like, this is such bs.
32:08
Speaker 1: So yeah, so the whole parliament mythos that kind of developed.
32:16
Speaker 1: It actually did help bring people together quite a bit.
32:19
Speaker 1: And it was just kind of a point where not
32:20
Speaker 1: just black people, but white people and people of all
32:23
Speaker 1: color who were into funk could really just come together
32:26
Speaker 1: and agree on that, which is like if you just
32:31
Speaker 1: kind of look at it like that, it's like, yeah,
32:32
Speaker 1: they had a band and a lot of people like them,
32:36
Speaker 1: but if you just kind of scratched just one level down,
32:40
Speaker 1: that's really significant to make something on purpose, to purposefully
32:45
Speaker 1: bring people together and not to talk about problems, not
32:48
Speaker 1: to hammer issues out or anything like that, but just
32:51
Speaker 1: to kind of give everybody a place to kind of
32:53
Speaker 1: breathe and chill together and get away from the rest
32:56
Speaker 1: of the issues and just kind of come together. That's
33:00
Speaker 1: what Parliament did, and I think that's pretty neat and
33:03
Speaker 1: they're not the only group that ever did that, But
33:06
Speaker 1: it seems that George Clinton's express purpose was doing that
33:09
Speaker 1: from what I From what I can.
33:11
Speaker 2: Tell, Yeah, and he put his own like cool psychedelic
33:17
Speaker 2: futuristic spin on it, you know.
33:19
Speaker 1: And another just real quick side thing. Another a musician
33:22
Speaker 1: that's often overlooked but sometimes cited as afrofuturist is Lee
33:26
Speaker 1: Scratch Perry, who created dub reggae, and he did do
33:31
Speaker 1: some kind of far out stuff. He was a far
33:33
Speaker 1: out dude apparently. But like just his music alone has
33:38
Speaker 1: like this spacey vibe to it that you just you're
33:41
Speaker 1: overlooking it if you don't include it in afrofuturism.
33:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, we have to talk about art a
33:47
Speaker 2: little bit. I mean, all of this is art, obviously,
33:51
Speaker 2: but Jean Michel Basquiat one of the great artists in
33:57
Speaker 2: our history here in North America. He is one of
34:01
Speaker 2: the first afro futurists of in the fine art world,
34:04
Speaker 2: and he was a guy that was was listening to
34:06
Speaker 2: Funkadelic in Parliament in groups like that, and hip hop
34:09
Speaker 2: culture informed his art. There was this graffiti artist and
34:14
Speaker 2: Moore named Rammelsey who I looked into. This guy man,
34:17
Speaker 2: I had never heard of him. He died in twenty ten,
34:20
Speaker 2: but he was a sculptor and a writer and a
34:22
Speaker 2: performance artist and graffiti artist, and his stuff looks really
34:26
Speaker 2: really cool. And he was definitely one of these guys
34:30
Speaker 2: that was, you know, dressing up is like this futuristic showgun.
34:34
Speaker 2: He was blending cultures and genres and baskingout was buddies
34:38
Speaker 2: with him. So all these people were doing this stuff.
34:41
Speaker 2: You know, it wasn't like, Oh, I'm going to seek
34:44
Speaker 2: fame and fortune as a graffiti artist who dresses up
34:47
Speaker 2: like a futuristic samurai.
34:49
Speaker 1: Right.
34:50
Speaker 2: They were doing this stuff because it was like what
34:52
Speaker 2: moved them. And it stands out because there weren't a
34:55
Speaker 2: lot of black people doing this kind of thing.
34:57
Speaker 1: Right, that's the initi of a movement. That's where it starts, rightly.
35:04
Speaker 1: Octavia Butler is also I mean, she was a hallmark,
35:09
Speaker 1: a founder of black science fiction writing and also afrofuturism.
35:13
Speaker 1: But just like you were talking about Rammelsey in Basquiat,
35:17
Speaker 1: like she wasn't trying to create like a place for
35:21
Speaker 1: black people to write in science fiction. This was just
35:24
Speaker 1: what she did to escape her own life and her
35:26
Speaker 1: own self consciousness. She wrote sci fi stories like that's
35:30
Speaker 1: where she went, and she was really good at it.
35:32
Speaker 1: There's a really great kind of biography on her called
35:36
Speaker 1: The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler that was in Vulture.
35:39
Speaker 1: That's worth reading. It really dives into her life and
35:42
Speaker 1: her career. She was a really exceptional person, but she
35:47
Speaker 1: just kind of started slow, was very much underpaid and overlooked,
35:50
Speaker 1: and just kept at it and kept at it, and
35:52
Speaker 1: finally in the nineties people really started to recognize her
35:55
Speaker 1: and went back and looked at some of her past
35:57
Speaker 1: work and said, this writer's pretty amazing.
36:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was the first sci fi writer to get
36:03
Speaker 2: a MacArthur Genius Grant. And there's a TV show last
36:08
Speaker 2: year or the year before from her book Kindred from
36:13
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, which I didn't see. I saw the
36:15
Speaker 2: FX canceled it after one season, but that was about
36:18
Speaker 2: the premise looked really cool. It was about a modern
36:21
Speaker 2: black woman who time travels to meet her in the
36:25
Speaker 2: people who enslaved her. And I remember seeing the trailers
36:28
Speaker 2: and stuff. At the time, I was like, this looks
36:30
Speaker 2: really good, but I didn't realize that it was in
36:32
Speaker 2: Octavia Butler book. So I just learned that like today
36:36
Speaker 2: or yesterday.
36:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was just one book, Kindred. She also had
36:40
Speaker 1: a series called the xeno Genesis series from the eighties.
36:44
Speaker 1: Parable of the Sewer was the beginning of a series
36:48
Speaker 1: that she wrote, and I think it came out in
36:50
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, and that was the one that got
36:52
Speaker 1: everybody's attention. And then they went back and were like,
36:55
Speaker 1: oh good, this lady has a whole cannon that we
36:57
Speaker 1: get to read now. Yes, she was pretty neat. I
37:01
Speaker 1: strongly recommend going and reading The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler.
37:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, should we take another break?
37:09
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, we'll take another break.
37:12
Speaker 2: We'll talk about kind of where things stands now, and
37:15
Speaker 2: also just talk about a lot of other great artists.
37:17
Speaker 1: Right after this, so Chuck, things really started to change,
37:53
Speaker 1: where afrofuturism went from this cool thing that kind of
37:57
Speaker 1: existed sporadically into being the find by a white journalist
38:01
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties into becoming mainstream starting in the
38:06
Speaker 1: late nineties, thanks in large part, and I didn't really
38:09
Speaker 1: realize this until you said it to Will Smith getting
38:12
Speaker 1: roles like men in Black Independence Day, I am legend,
38:18
Speaker 1: like just tons, He's been in tons of sci fi movies.
38:22
Speaker 1: I never really realized it before, but he was a
38:25
Speaker 1: huge kind of glass ceiling breaker for African Americans in
38:31
Speaker 1: sci fi because up to that point, it was like
38:33
Speaker 1: if you saw a black person in a sci fi
38:35
Speaker 1: movie or a horror movie, you just knew that they
38:38
Speaker 1: were one of the first ones to die. That's just
38:40
Speaker 1: like this long standing kind of trop Yeah. Yeah, And
38:45
Speaker 1: it started to change in the nineties where they're like, oh,
38:48
Speaker 1: actually we can use a black protagonist and they can
38:51
Speaker 1: actually carry the movie at least if you get Will
38:54
Speaker 1: Smith in there. Who else can we give a chance to?
38:59
Speaker 3: Wesley Snipes? Yeah, he was in Blade.
39:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.
39:01
Speaker 2: The Matrix of course featured not in the lead, but
39:05
Speaker 2: they featured, you know, people of color in their trilogy.
39:08
Speaker 2: I think more and more in the second and third
39:10
Speaker 2: movies even and then you know today I was like,
39:13
Speaker 2: is Jordan Peel and afro futurist filmmaker, and I read
39:16
Speaker 2: some stuff and like he's he dabbles in it. It's
39:19
Speaker 2: it's not like straight up afrofuturism in the traditional sense
39:23
Speaker 2: that you might think of, but there are certainly elements
39:27
Speaker 2: of it in everything he's done, especially this last one.
39:30
Speaker 1: And Nope, that was so cool.
39:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, no spoilers there, but that movie was
39:35
Speaker 2: not the movie I thought it was.
39:36
Speaker 3: It was way more sci fi and wayless horror. Sure,
39:39
Speaker 3: but I think he's.
39:40
Speaker 2: Kind of, you know, carrying that torch along in his
39:42
Speaker 2: own way, in a way that's kind of dabbles in
39:46
Speaker 2: afro futurism that that is way more mainstream, which is
39:50
Speaker 2: a valuable thing.
39:51
Speaker 3: You know.
39:51
Speaker 1: Yes, that is a great example of what I was
39:53
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, where I didn't really realize. I'd heard
39:56
Speaker 1: the term afrofuturism before, obviously, but I'd never really he
40:00
Speaker 1: looked into it until we started researching this, But when
40:04
Speaker 1: I did, I realized, like it just pops up all
40:06
Speaker 1: over the place. And that's a really good example of
40:08
Speaker 1: his Jordan Peele's movies, Like they're not necessarily like the
40:13
Speaker 1: whole point is afrofuturism. It's just it just shows up.
40:17
Speaker 1: It's like an influence, it's a part of the whole thing.
40:20
Speaker 1: And there's Coulson Whitehead's another good example of that too.
40:24
Speaker 1: He is like one of the gleaming beacons of literature
40:29
Speaker 1: right now, and in his very realistic novels, fantastic stuff
40:35
Speaker 1: can happen. And that's afrofuturism popping its head up as well.
40:40
Speaker 1: Can It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the future,
40:42
Speaker 1: but it falls under speculative fiction or speculative literature in
40:46
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form.
40:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess we can talk about music a little more.
40:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's because again, just like in movies in the
40:55
Speaker 1: late nineties, things, even starting in the early mid nineties,
40:59
Speaker 1: things really started to take afrofuturistic turn in music.
41:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and by way of hip hop, if you look
41:06
Speaker 2: at the history of hip hop, the DNA of afrofuturism
41:09
Speaker 2: is kind of woven throughout it. You know, earlier groups,
41:14
Speaker 2: groups that I really like, like Diggable Planets and I
41:17
Speaker 2: don't know if you ever listened to any Cool Keith stuff,
41:21
Speaker 2: but Cool Keith had a character and a concept album
41:25
Speaker 2: he did called Doctor Octagon that was very weird and awesome.
41:31
Speaker 2: I won't give away it's kind of weird. He's a
41:34
Speaker 2: he's a time traveling guynecologist, So I guess I did
41:37
Speaker 2: kind of give it away, but it's really good Wu
41:40
Speaker 2: Tang and of course specifically Riza with Bobby Digital.
41:44
Speaker 3: And then when I was.
41:45
Speaker 2: Looking at you know, like Beyonce uses kind of afro
41:48
Speaker 2: futuristic aesthetics and a lot of her videos and stage shows,
41:53
Speaker 2: and so Launch does too. But when I was kind
41:57
Speaker 2: of reading about them and Janelle Monet, who's certainly really
42:01
Speaker 2: represents afrofuturism, I could I was like Missy Elliott, Like,
42:06
Speaker 2: why aren't we talking about Missy Elliott? Because she was
42:08
Speaker 2: before all of them, and was could really get out
42:11
Speaker 2: there as far as you know, talking about writing around
42:15
Speaker 2: in spaceships and stuff.
42:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, and all of her videos are super afrofuturistic, even
42:19
Speaker 1: when she's just sitting there in front of the camera
42:21
Speaker 1: like raping, like she's doing weird stuff, or she's in
42:25
Speaker 1: outer space or she's in virtual reality or something like that. Yeah,
42:28
Speaker 1: she's definitely at least influenced, if not an influencer, of afrofuturism.
42:34
Speaker 1: Another one I saw that I hadn't considered, but I'm like,
42:36
Speaker 1: oh yeah, totally diggable planets. Especially their first album, they
42:40
Speaker 1: were from outer space. They were insects from outer space
42:44
Speaker 1: who'd come to help the world out, and I just
42:47
Speaker 1: never thought about that before.
42:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, that saw that. Well, I got a side story
42:53
Speaker 2: I'll tell you off air. But I saw them in
42:54
Speaker 2: college in Athens and then and.
42:56
Speaker 1: You saw them in court last week.
42:58
Speaker 2: And then the only time I saw them was on
43:01
Speaker 2: their reunion tour.
43:03
Speaker 3: A couple of years ago.
43:03
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, cool.
43:04
Speaker 2: So it was a big break in between, but it
43:06
Speaker 2: was great. But their second album I think was really awesome,
43:10
Speaker 2: and it wasn't afro futuristic.
43:12
Speaker 1: No, but it's one of the greatest albums of all time.
43:14
Speaker 3: So good.
43:14
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we can't talk about all of the people,
43:17
Speaker 2: but we'll talk about a couple of more because I
43:19
Speaker 2: wanted to mention John Jennings and Stacy Robinson, who are
43:25
Speaker 2: there in the comic book world, and they work under
43:27
Speaker 2: the name Black Kirby, which is obviously a riff on
43:30
Speaker 2: the great comic book artist Jack Kirby, and they reimagine
43:35
Speaker 2: sort of Kirby stuff through the African American lens, and
43:39
Speaker 2: things like the Unkillable Buck instead of the Incredible Hulk
43:42
Speaker 2: and stuff like that.
43:43
Speaker 3: It's really cool looking.
43:45
Speaker 2: And then they are I think influenced by one of
43:47
Speaker 2: the first African American comic book.
43:52
Speaker 3: Writers was Larry Fuller.
43:53
Speaker 2: In the late sixties, he created a character named ebon
43:56
Speaker 2: Ebo n which I.
43:59
Speaker 3: Think was the first black superhero, at least among the first.
44:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw one of the Black Kirby characters as
44:04
Speaker 1: Major Sankofa or Sankopha. I'm not quite sure how you
44:07
Speaker 1: say it, but it sancophies like a. It means like
44:10
Speaker 1: the spirit of going looking backward into the past and
44:14
Speaker 1: taking what's good there and take moving it into the future.
44:18
Speaker 1: And it was Major Sankofa instead of Captain America, and
44:22
Speaker 1: it's a It's just cool. I like that whole concept
44:24
Speaker 1: for sure.
44:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if we're gonna talk comics, we have to
44:29
Speaker 2: shout out Stanley and Jack Kirby because they created Black
44:32
Speaker 2: Panther and that is sort of maybe the biggest, most
44:37
Speaker 2: mainstream example of afro futurism on the big screen that
44:43
Speaker 2: we've ever seen. These Black Panther movies are huge, They're
44:46
Speaker 2: wildly successful, they're award winning, and they are afro futuristic,
44:51
Speaker 2: like to a t.
44:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and apparently we have Chadwick Boseman to thank for
44:57
Speaker 1: keeping all of the African characters from having British accents.
45:02
Speaker 3: Yeah.
45:02
Speaker 1: Man, can you imagine like colonization a hooy, like all
45:05
Speaker 1: these people British accents. So he insisted that they speak
45:09
Speaker 1: with a South African accent, not the British kind, but
45:12
Speaker 1: the Osa. I did it that that dialect, that's the
45:17
Speaker 1: accent they were speaking with, the Hosasa. Yeah, I did it.
45:22
Speaker 1: I got a three times.
45:23
Speaker 3: It was pretty good.
45:23
Speaker 2: But I think it's hasa Nope, oh it's not not anymore. Okay, Well,
45:29
Speaker 2: Trevor Noah says it different. It's a hard thing to do.
45:32
Speaker 2: It's that uh the Zulu uh you know, I click
45:36
Speaker 2: language for lack of a better term, but it's it's
45:39
Speaker 2: hard to do it because you have to click at
45:41
Speaker 2: the same time that you're saying something.
45:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.
45:44
Speaker 2: I practiced it earlier and I was like, I can't
45:46
Speaker 2: do it, so I wasn't gonna try.
45:48
Speaker 3: But hats off to us.
45:50
Speaker 1: So halasa halasasa.
45:53
Speaker 3: That's how Trevor Noah said it, and of course he
45:55
Speaker 3: was on this. I never mind.
45:57
Speaker 1: Well, he's from South Africa, so I'll defer to him.
46:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, So where are we now with afro futurism. We
46:06
Speaker 2: are in a better place than we've ever been as
46:08
Speaker 2: far as just more and more stuff. It's becoming more mainstream,
46:12
Speaker 2: not as just sort of different in other than it
46:15
Speaker 2: used to be. But this is where we've gotten to
46:18
Speaker 2: the point where people start to drill.
46:20
Speaker 3: Down on the term.
46:22
Speaker 2: Some people say, like, you know, is it just too
46:25
Speaker 2: broad of a thing to call sort of all this
46:28
Speaker 2: stuff afro man I keep messing that up afro futurism
46:33
Speaker 2: when it You know, there are people like I said
46:36
Speaker 2: beginning that said no, it should always I believe his
46:39
Speaker 2: name was. He's a science fiction fantasy writer Nigerian American
46:43
Speaker 2: name Tochi Anyabuchi said this should always be addressing or
46:49
Speaker 2: at least allegorizing black suffering. Otherwise it shouldn't count. And
46:54
Speaker 2: so people have formed other words like astro blackness. That's
46:59
Speaker 2: a pretty cool one.
47:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ethno Gothic, that one's neat.
47:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that one too, the black fantastic magical realism.
47:08
Speaker 2: There's another another Nigerian American science fiction writer name Indie
47:14
Speaker 2: Okora for I think I'm pronouncing that right, And she
47:17
Speaker 2: coined the term African futurists and was like, you know,
47:21
Speaker 2: these these African American stories are great, but like, I
47:25
Speaker 2: also like to tell the stories through the lens of
47:27
Speaker 2: you know, Africans, and so African futurism is rooted in
47:31
Speaker 2: all these cultures.
47:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, African futurists and African jujuist for fantasy kind of stuff.
47:38
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was that debate I was talking about earlier.
47:40
Speaker 1: It is like, is it just through the lens of
47:42
Speaker 1: African Americans or what? Yeah, so you said it, it's
47:46
Speaker 1: gone mainstream. We've reached the point where it's becoming so
47:50
Speaker 1: mainstream that it's just part of pop culture. It's not
47:53
Speaker 1: like a separate, tangential or additional part of pop culture.
47:58
Speaker 1: It's infused into pop culture. And so you get to
48:00
Speaker 1: the point where you're like, do you even need a
48:02
Speaker 1: name for this anymore? It is what it is. And
48:06
Speaker 1: if that's the case, then then people like Samuel Delaney
48:12
Speaker 1: and all the people who came before him, Octavia Butler
48:16
Speaker 1: Son raw George Clinton, were fully successful Even if they
48:20
Speaker 1: didn't intend to create something like that, they were still
48:25
Speaker 1: successful in their own way.
48:27
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think it's so mainstream now.
48:30
Speaker 2: There are, for sure studio executives that are, like, we
48:35
Speaker 2: need a black people in space thing. Netflix has theirs,
48:38
Speaker 2: why don't we have ours.
48:39
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and that means mainstream yep. That means
48:43
Speaker 1: that everybody needs to figure out a new artistic path
48:47
Speaker 1: to blaze.
48:49
Speaker 3: That's right.
48:50
Speaker 2: And I don't feel bad making fun of those studio
48:51
Speaker 2: execs because they are they don't want to pay their
48:54
Speaker 2: artists fair wages, and that's why the writers are on strike.
48:57
Speaker 1: Just real quick, a couple more people. Manzel Bowman is
49:00
Speaker 1: a graphic designery, does amazing stuff. Lena Iris Victor an
49:04
Speaker 1: amazing painter. Camasi Washington kind of carrying on the vibe
49:08
Speaker 1: of son Rab but way way more melodic. And then,
49:13
Speaker 1: like you said, Janelle Money, she's the poster child of
49:16
Speaker 1: afro futurism right now with her concept album Dirty Computer
49:19
Speaker 1: and a book set in the same world Memory Library,
49:22
Speaker 1: and she's just totally going nuts on it. And you me,
49:26
Speaker 1: by the way, just loves her, has a crush on her.
49:28
Speaker 2: She said, Well, she I was just about to say,
49:31
Speaker 2: she's also my celebrity crush, So you mean I share.
49:33
Speaker 1: That I gets pretty great.
49:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard not to.
49:35
Speaker 1: I got to keep you and you, me and Janelle
49:37
Speaker 1: Monet out of the same room.
49:41
Speaker 3: Oh that's good. That Dirty Computer Man, what a great record.
49:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm going to see Beyonce later this year,
49:46
Speaker 2: and I've never been to a big pop show like
49:49
Speaker 2: that in my life, and I just I like having
49:53
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not even I'm not even the hugest
49:55
Speaker 2: Beyonce fan, just because it's not something I listened too much,
49:59
Speaker 2: but like, you know, I want to go to one
50:01
Speaker 2: of these big pop shows, and like, who else should
50:04
Speaker 2: I go to.
50:05
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna go see Taylor Swift. I'll go to Beyonce.
50:07
Speaker 1: H hice.
50:08
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I'm sure that Taylor Swift show was
50:09
Speaker 2: great too, but yeah, Beyonce's looks like, I don't know
50:12
Speaker 2: more at my speed.
50:13
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, her show, like this tour is apparently three
50:16
Speaker 1: hours long.
50:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's supposed to be amazing. My mom went, Actually
50:20
Speaker 2: she got free tickets to a friend. Yeah, and doesn't
50:23
Speaker 2: go to stuff like that and like big concerts and stuff,
50:26
Speaker 2: and isn't even a big Taylor Swift person, and she was.
50:28
Speaker 3: Just like it was so great.
50:29
Speaker 1: Well, I think we all knew at the beginning of
50:31
Speaker 1: this episode that there was one hundred percent chance Taylor
50:34
Speaker 1: Swift was going to come up.
50:36
Speaker 3: Oh I saw that coming.
50:38
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to know more about afrofuturism, you
50:40
Speaker 1: can do a lot worse than going to Instagram and
50:43
Speaker 1: search for that hashtag and start looking. Just look all
50:46
Speaker 1: over the internet and you will find a whole new
50:49
Speaker 1: world of pretty cool stuff, including some stuff you already
50:52
Speaker 1: knew about but never really thought about.
50:54
Speaker 3: Okay, agreed.
50:56
Speaker 1: Since Chucks had agreed, it's time for listener mail.
51:01
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna call this brown fat.
51:05
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, delicious.
51:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked about that in our Oh gosh, why
51:11
Speaker 2: am I blinking now?
51:12
Speaker 1: I think it was our Intermittent Fasting episode.
51:15
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I thought it was our Taylor Swift episode.
51:18
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, just finish listening to Intermittent Fasting and was
51:22
Speaker 2: so excited when brown fat was mentioned. I learned about
51:25
Speaker 2: brown fat this past year in school in my biochemistry class,
51:27
Speaker 2: and it's more amazing than what Josh was even guessing
51:30
Speaker 2: in the episode.
51:31
Speaker 1: You were guessing. No, you were speaking, you were.
51:34
Speaker 3: Speaking some facts.
51:35
Speaker 2: Brown Fat's main biological purpose is to release heat to
51:39
Speaker 2: keep the body temperature stable.
51:40
Speaker 3: I think I said that.
51:41
Speaker 2: Actually to do this, it actually breaks down white fat
51:44
Speaker 2: in a way that allows for more heat to be
51:45
Speaker 2: released per fat molecule burned than if regular cells were
51:49
Speaker 2: breaking down the white fat. Because this helps keep body
51:52
Speaker 2: temperature stable, people who live in cold environments adapt to
51:55
Speaker 2: living there by having more brown fat cells than people
51:58
Speaker 2: who do not. Babies are also born with high brown
52:02
Speaker 2: fat levels and keeps them helps them adapt to life
52:05
Speaker 2: outside the womb for the first few days. I just
52:07
Speaker 2: really want to thank you guys for everything you've done
52:09
Speaker 2: for me over the years. Started listening in twenty eighteen
52:12
Speaker 2: in high school. Just graduated with my bachelor's in chemical
52:15
Speaker 2: engineering from the University of Tennessee.
52:18
Speaker 1: Oh. Congratulations Tuesday, Govalls.
52:21
Speaker 3: And that is from Sarah Batton.
52:24
Speaker 1: Thanks Sarah, thank you very much, and thanks to Brown
52:26
Speaker 1: Fat too for being so great that Sarah wrote a
52:29
Speaker 1: listener mail about it.
52:31
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that's a band name.
52:32
Speaker 1: I don't even think I'd.
52:33
Speaker 3: Recognize it at the time as such.
52:34
Speaker 1: Brown Fat. Yeah, like one of those albums where the
52:38
Speaker 1: name of the band, the first song, and the album
52:40
Speaker 1: are all the same. You know, I can't think of
52:44
Speaker 1: one right now, but it's definitely out there.
52:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.
52:47
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, this whole conversation's petered out. So if you
52:51
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us and let us
52:52
Speaker 1: know you graduated college, we say congratulations in advance. You
52:55
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
52:59
Speaker 1: dot com.
53:02
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
53:05
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53:10
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