Afrofutures and Album Covers
In an earlier series of blog posts, I discussed some of the history of visualizing Black music in America. But what about Black futures?
One interesting development in Black visual, musical, and literary culture of the past 60 years has been Afrofuturism, which incorporates aesthetic elements from science fiction from a uniquely Black or pan-African perspective. Rather than being compelled to deal with the traumas of the present and past, Afrofuturism freed Black artists and performers to imagine futures distant from present realities. It allowed Black artists and performers to imagine Black life within radically new frames of reference.
An entourage from Wakanda exits a transport ship. (From Marvel’s Black Panther, 2018)
The term Afrofuturism was coined in the 1990s, but the cultural expressions it refers to began much earlier. In more recent years, Afrofuturism has become a style more recognizable to the mainstream audiences. One recent example is the fictional African nation of Wakanda from the Marvel film Black Panther. The aesthetic of Wakanda combines well-established sci-fi tropes from the Marvel films and comics, but aims to recontextualize them from a culturally “African” perspective.
Sun Ra
But one key location for earlier expressions of Afrofuturism was in album art. The amazing free-jazz artist Sun Ra represents one early signpost in Afrofuturism. Sun Ra is best known for performances with his “Myth Science (or Solar) Arkestra” during the 1960s and 1970s. Their 1965 recording Secrets of the Sun featured artwork by Chris Hall, which recalls comic-book visions of futures in outer space. In the center we see someone wearing a futuristic garb, perhaps a representation of Sun Ra himself, who typically appeared in costumes mixing “Egyptian” and futuristic elements.
George Clinton emerges from the mothership.
P-Funk’s “mothership” was a regular stage prop in their live shows during the 1970s. It now is housed at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
Another master of self-aware, playful Afrofuturism is George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. By the 1970s, soul and funk music had become a way of celebrating Black identity and expressing Black power in the United States. The cover to their Mothership Connection (1975), designed by the graphic design company Gribbitt!, features an astronaut in platform shoes and a space-foil suit bursting from a spaceship. The opening track frames the record as a concept album “coming to you directly from the Mothership.” The album uses funk to portray a collection of powerful ”extraterrestrial brothers,” who have overtaken the airwaves—not to dominate the human race, but to deliver “uncut funk.”
More recently, Janelle Monáe’s genre-blending 2010 album The ArchAndroid resonates strongly with Afrofuturist aesthetics. Like Sun Ra before her, she is depicted on the album cover in an elaborate headdress. The styles on the album combine hip-hop, rock, soul with square “robotic” phrasing and futuristic electronic sound effects.
These album covers are playful, and they excite the imagination. But imagining futures is not just a frivolous form of escapist fantasy. Indeed, many of our current technologies were first imagined in the context of science fiction. So how might these Afrofutures pull us into new forms of present realities?
