We Want the Funk

[By Erin Ranft]

Today in my Afrofuturism course, I channeled Tony Bolden and Howard Rambsy II. After having the opportunity to learn from Bolden and Rambsy over the summer at the NEH Summer Institute, "Don't Deny My Voice: Reading and Teaching African American Poetry" at the University of Kansas, I was anxious to put music and poetry listening sessions to work in the classroom. And what a session it was!

In preparation for our discussion of Funk, and specifically Afrofuturist elements of Funk music primarily by Parliament, the students read some background information on the musical genre and the different productions by Parliament. After a group presented their findings on the readings, the class listened to tracks from Mothership Connection. Feet were tapping, shoulders shrugging in time, and heads were bobbing. We were 'on the one.'

Rickey Vincent, in Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One, defines 'the one' as a point when "a harmony among all people is achieved." We were there, on the one during our listening session and in the discussion that followed. To add to this, the students also read Etheridge Knight's "It Was a Funky Deal" to add dimensions to our understandings of 'funk' as a term, idea, and a genre that developed prior to and alongside the Black Arts Movement.

Line by line, the students went through the lyrics from Mothership Connection and lines of Knight's poem, adding their understandings and interpretations of these texts to the overall course theme of Afrofuturism. Utilizing the practices, methods, and ideas related to poetry and music employed by Bolden and Rambsy were, well, instrumental.

What a day, and a day when I felt the presence of all the fellows, faculty, and staff from the Don't Deny Summer Institute.

We gotta have that funk.

Realism as Fantasy: From Jonathan Franzen to Colson Whitehead

By Emily A. Phillips

In his 1996 article,  “I’ll be Doing More of the Same,” Jonathan Franzen defends his use of realism as a novelist. He claims “When the times get really, really awful, you retrench; you reexamine old content in next contexts; you try to preserve; you seem obsolete…The day comes when the truly subversive literature is in some measure conservative. Maybe it’s time for us to ask ourselves whether apocalypse might be self-indulgence” (38).

Afrofuturism & the Expression-Scriber; or why Amiri Baraka thinks a typewriter is corny

[By Howard Rambsy, II]

Some years ago when I began participating in Alondra Nelson’s “afrofuturism” online forum and as I worked to gain a clearer understanding of AF as a framework, I started looking out for works that I had previously overlooked or under-studied concerning technological ideas and speculative narratives.  No doubt one of my greatest finds or re-discoveries was Amiri Baraka’s essay “Technology & Ethos,” which appeared in Amistad 2 (1971) edited by Charles F. Harris and John A. Williams.

Katherine Dunham’s Use of Technology and Dance

[By Danielle Hall]

Some of what I have found most fascinating while researching Katherine Dunham as an intellectual involve examining the ways in which she used technology (film and musical recording devices) and her dance technique to advance the knowledge and studies of black people and Diasporan cultures throughout the world.

Dance, then, functioned as a form of “Diaspora literacy” (as coined by VèVè Clark) for Dunham in that she communicated ideas about black identity and self-determination to her audience world-wide. Thus, her work within and beyond black communities, covering many artistic forms of expression such as music, dance, drama, film, theatre, and writing, demonstrates many different modes of black creativity and expression in America.

Ask Your Mama: Langston Hughes and Afrofuturism

[By Alysha Griffin]

My best friends and I used to be fond of playing the dozens—particularly, exchanging “yo’ mama” jokes. Too young to realize how problematic this was from a historical angle, we realized that this was probably something we should avoid only when the battles ended with a fist fight and/or punishment from someone’s angry mother- my best friends were also my first cousins. Needless to say, one of Langston Hughes’s works that I most appreciate is his book length poem, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz  (AYM)(1961).

6 Afrofuturistic Albums and Novels

[By Goyland Williams]

In a yesterday's post, I discussed the concept Afrofuturism and the connections between black music and literature. While Parliament-Funkadelic’s Mothership Connection and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man were the first two works that jumped out at me as Afrofuturistic, my continued interest in the subject has lead me to seek out other texts and works of art that fall into this category.  

Archandroid—Janelle Monae (2010): In a album of utter beauty, rap, disco, rock, and folk, Janelle Monae takes us on a journey of ideas. Monae explores elements of science fiction and Afrofuturism as she follows a concept and the archandroid through a journey of freedom and escape. 

The Souls of Black Folk: Afrofuturism and Freedom Dreams

[By Goyland Williams]

The history of black people has been a history of movement—real and imagined. Who can hear “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” or Parliament’s “The Mothership Connection” and not hear these travel/escape narratives—afrofuturistic representations of freedom? 

While the term Afro-futurism can be formally traced back to the publication of Mark Dery’s 1994 edited collection Flame Wars:The Discourse of Cyberculture, its message is not limited to the 90’s. As a larger and broader aesthetic, black people have long articulated black futures and freedom dreams in the midst of black experiences as a mode of survival.

On Digital Scholarship...Blogging and other Technologies

[By Professor Jerry Ward]

Scholars in all disciplines may acknowledge that change, both as a concept and as a practice, is inevitable.  Many of them welcome the dazzling promises of emerging technologies, for they are convinced that the creation and transmission of knowledge in a future must be digital.  Digital technology enthralls. The kind of change it promotes can have a profound, irreversible impact on methods of research, on our choices of what is valuable and what is trivial, and on our understanding of how “revolutionary “ paradigms and epistemes function in disciplines and in interdisciplinary work.  Such change can be overwhelming.  It encourages older, traditional scholars to be cautious and skeptical.  To be blunt, a few of us honestly want to know what is at present only a matter of speculation in cognitive sciences: the consequences of long-term exposure to electronic forms on the brain.  Will it be the case half a century from now that man’s higher order cognitive operations have been so altered that independent critical thinking will be minimal?

Digital Humanities: Blogging About Black Culture

[By Kenton Rambsy]

In his 2010 remix to his hit song “Power,” Kanye West tells his listeners “Now we all ain’t gon’ be American Idols /But you can least grab a camera, shoot a viral /Huh? Take the power in your own hands.” Kanye’s emphasis of taking the “power” into your own hands speaks to the ways that the use of new technologies during the contemporary era provides users with opportunities to participate in cultural and artistic production.