How can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, imagine possible futures? This is the question Mark Dery poses in his essay “Black to the Future.” He defines Afrofuturism¹ as speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth century technoculture.² Historically, Black people are wiped not only from past and present memory but the imagined futures many science fiction and fantasy authors, filmmakers, and artists create. Traditional media does not make space for the future of Black culture in these imagined worlds. But Afrofuturism gives Black people a place to also imagine and dream far into the future. To carve this imagination aligned with the unique qualities of Black culture. Yolanda Bouka, Assistant Professor of Politics and Gender, describes Afrofuturism to be an artistic movement that combines “elements of science fiction, magical realism, and African history.”³ She highlights Black Panther as one of the most groundbreaking releases in the cinematographic comic industry because it grounds the plot in Africa while simultaneously showcasing a predominantly Black cast and production crew.⁴ However, these Afrofuturist themes are not just the basis of iconic literature and cinema. Many are inspired by the unique historical and science fictional features of Afrofuturism to build worlds with their bodies of work, described in vivid color.
Afrofuturist themes in music can be heard as early as the 1950s, with the introductions of jazz fusion led by genius musical minds, namely Sun Ra.⁵ Sun Ra and his band wore grandiose, Egyptian-styled costumes and headdresses with science fiction-themed stage design and props. “By placing his band and performances in space and extraterrestrial environments Sun Ra built a world that was his own view of how the African diaspora connected.”⁶ Jerome Ellis, a multimedia artist and musician, states, “Sun Ra was using sound as a tool to imagine possibilities for Black people, using it as a vehicle to explore identity.”⁷ Similarly, Parliament Funkadelic’s Mothership Connection (1975) takes the listener into outer space, where Black astronauts are fighting aliens across the galaxy. Decades later, frontman Goerge Clinton reflects on Mothership Connection with the Clevescene stating, “We had put black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in, like the White House. I figured another place you wouldn't think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Star Trek, so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang.”⁸
We see these early Afrofuturistic aesthetics come together in the 1974 feature length film Space is the Place written by Sun Ra. Directed by John Coney, the film soundtrack was scored by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, and starred the band as themselves. It was both a visual album to bring this futuristic world to life, and an Afrofuturist film imagining a world, a planet where only Black people can decide to resettle and reside.
Herbie Hancock, Earth Wind and Fire, Betty Davis—many of the musical elders who first created this genre focus their imagined worlds borne from the idea of Sankofa, which loosely translates from Twi meaning to go back and retrieve it. It celebrates learning your history, and preserving it for generations to come, regardless of how the world looks then. Sun Ra imagined Egyptian jazz dignitaries in intergalactic metaverses. George Clinton and his “Astronauts” led the P-Funk revolution, traveling to alien worlds “funkitizing galaxies.”⁹ As we move into the late 90’s, we see even more Black musicians embrace Afrofuturism in new ways.
There was a boom in futuristic music videos during the late 90’s into the 2000s. Now described as the Y2K era, the turn of the century brought about the rapid advancement of technology that only added fuel to this Afrofuturist movement. We moved from big clunky computers to sleek touch screen phones. From thick CD-players, to MP3 players, iPods, and lots of colorful, hard-plastic gadgets and LED pixelated gizmos. When put on screen we saw fantastical stories of robot abductions, shiny chrome landscapes, and very early CGI graphics to illustrate these beings from the future.¹⁰ Inspired by shiny chrome and blue LED aesthetics, late 90’s R&B acts such as TLC, Blaque, and Aaliyah offered cool toned intergalactic visuals for songs No Scrubs, Bring It All to Me, and We Need a Resolution respectively. 1997 brought about the iconic duo Missy Elliot and Hype Williams. Together, they created the music videos for “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” a true cultural moment in Hip Hop, as well as “Sock It To Me.” These music videos not only incorporated the futuristic aesthetics and iconography, but “Sock It To Me” told a story about intergalactic robot monster chase inspired by the Mega Man cartoons. Nadirah Simmons, writer and Hip Hop lover, states, “With her music , production, lyrics, and outfits, Missy Elliot used Afrofuturism to take herself (and us) to another century and beyond.”¹¹
Missy Elliot’s impact is still felt in music. Her Afrofuturist visuals have become the blueprint for modern day dreamers like Janelle Monaé. Afrofuturism is at the core of Monaé’s artistic doctrine. Since the inception of her first body of work Metropolis, she has been building characters, worlds, and sonic landscapes that exist far beyond human imagination. Her second album, ArchAndroid exists as the backdrop to tell the story of Cindi Mayweather, an android seen as an “other” in this dystopian reality who was disassembled after falling in love with a human being.¹² With the release of Monaé’s 2018 album Dirty Computer, she also released a sci-fi film companion- an “emotion picture” as she describes it.¹³ The film details a future where outlaws, or androids, are considered “dirty” and have to undergo an intense cleansing process by androids deemed “clean.” In this world, people have become reduced to a scientific threshold of purity. This album, and accompanying film, carry themes of racism, colorism, and xenophobia experienced in a futuristic dystopian society ruled by robot oligarchs.
Afrofuturism is the lens through which Janelle Monaé has created some of her most impactful work. She addresses her experiences growing up Black, femme, queer and othered through her storytelling and worldbuilding across the space-time continuum. She’s gone on to inspire newer artists like Doja Cat to create from an Afrofutirist lens. Namely the video for “Woman” calls back to the earliest forms of Afrofuturism in music, where African inspired instrumentation and traditional clothing are blended with spacey-techno sonic and visual palettes. Doja Cat’s “Woman” is inspired by the fashions of Sun Ra’s Arkestra, the pimp-Afronauts of Parliament Funkadelic, the intergalactic visual landscape of Hype and Missy, and the impeccable sci-fi storytelling of Janelle Monaé.
Afrofuturism blends both visions of nostalgia and futuristic imagination that exists in a poignantly Black and African space. A space that calls to the oldest memories of African music, fashions, history to imagine how Black people exist in the future. Whether re-watching Black Panther, or jamming out to Mothership Connection, it’s important we cherish the great work and out-of-this-world imagination of Afrofuturists.
1 Afrofuturism in this article is meant to encompass “African-Futurism,” another term often brought up in this conversation.
2 Dery, Mark. 1994. “Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose.” In Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture, 180. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.
3 Bouka, Yolande. 2018. “Wakanda, Afrofuturism, and Decolonizing International Relations Scholarship.” The London School of Economics and Political Science. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2018/02/12/wakanda-afrofuturism-and-decolonizing-international-relations-scholarship/.
4 Bouka
5 VPM History. 2023. “Afrofuturism in Music: A Journey Beyond the Beat.” YouTube. Afrofuturism in Music: A Journey Beyond the Beat
6 Corbett, John. 1994. “Brothers From Another Planet.” In Extended Play: Sounding off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein, 7-24. N.p.: Duke University Press.
7 VPM History
8 Hicks, Robert. 2006. “Turn This Mutha Out.” Clevescene. https://www.clevescene.com/music/turn-this-mutha-out-1496190.
9 McAlpine, Fraser. 2018. “8 afrofuturist classics everyone needs to hear.” BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/0ebecc1d-d08b-465f-924e-ee037e9231ab.
10 GoldFro. 2022. “Remembering Y2K Afrofuturism in Music Videos.” YouTube. Remembering Y2K Afrofuturism in Music Videos
11 Simmons, Nadirah. 2024. “Intro.” In First Things First: Hip-Hop Ladies Who Changed the Game. New York, New York: Grand Central Publishing.
12 MTV. 2010. “Janelle Monae Talks To Our Urban Blog.” MTV. https://www.mtv.co.uk/news/h0n0xw/janelle-monae-talks-to-our-urban-blog.
13 Grierson, Tim. 2018. “Why Janelle Monae’s ‘Dirty Computer’ Film Is a Timely New Sci-Fi Masterpiece.” Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/why-janelle-monaes-dirty-computer-film-is-a-timely-new-sci-fi-masterpiece-629117/.
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