Today is the day I entered into this world and one way I will celebrate is with a tribute post to musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk, with whom I share a birthday. “Y’ know, Music is a beautiful thing. When I’m reincarnated, I’m gonna come back as a musical note! That way can’t nobody capture me. […]
Read More Modern Griots: Rahsaan Roland KirkFilm student and Afropunk member Nef Prez premiered her short film, I Am Other, which celebrates various people who consider themselves misfits in society and proud of it.
Read More Otherworldly Videos: Nef Prez’s “I Am Other”Last weekend, I went to Brooklyn for the Soul of Brooklyn Block Party. I was curious to know what was going on there. While it didn’t turn out to be the block party atmosphere I expected, I was able to listen to a couple of steel pan players do their own version of popular songs, […]
Read More Behind the Mask: I Met A Clown…Cosmic Yoruba wrote a piece on Afrofuturism from various African perspectives. Read an excerpt of “’We’ve Been to the Moon and Back:’ Afro-futurism in Music” and the rest at This Is Africa: Although Afro-futurism doesn’t have one clear-cut definition, for the purpose of this article we’ll go with the one that defines it as a […]
Read More What Is Afrofuturism? Part 11: Cosmic YorubaTamara Natalie Madden is a Jamaican artist who has overcome obstacles to use her art to express her “vivid and buoyant” vision of life. For a photoshoot she did for Pangaea’s Garden, she wrote in a recent post, Beauty and the Beholder , “We live in a society where we are judged by our physical […]
Read More Art of This World: Tamara Natalie Madden*Akosua Adoma Owusu is a Ghanaian filmmaker who has created such films as Drecxiya and Me Broni Ba (My White Baby). Currently, she is working on a film project with her uncle, Ko Nimo, called Kwaku Ananse – A fable, a funeral and a spider coffin. The film, drawing from Ghanaian mythology, is about a […]
Read More Moving on the Wires: Kwaku Ananse, Burlesque and Burnt Sugar…A few weeks ago, Melissa Harris Perry gave a segment on her show about the political, economic and historical significance of transportation in the United States. Transportation for Black communities, as well as other marginalized communities, historically have been modes of displacement and transcendence, and the lack of transportation for these communities has meant entrapment. […]
Read More The My-Stery: Let Me Ride Part 1“If we let them be in control, they will get revenge. They will do to us what we did to them.” I believe these are probably the thoughts that are and have been on the minds of many Americans; many who will state that they want their country back or that they need to preserve […]
Read More The My-Stery: Save the Pearls Reveals A Fear of the Future“Mars” She describes herself as “the angel who wears her halo as a belt.” Kim Hill is a singer-songwriter who makes her own rules. Hill has been around since the 90s, working with the Black Eyed Peas, Tupac, Jane’s Addiction, Les Nubians and Mos Def. Although she was signed to Interscope Records in 1998, she […]
Read More Modern Griots: Kim HillWritten and directed by Greg Tate, Black Body Radiation is a short film that “imagines a future New York dominated by three rival, warring, black religious sects after two space ships mysteriously crash into Manhattan. Kulu, leader of a circle of priestess healers lives beneath the African Burial Ground. Through trance she is in communication […]
Read More Otherworldly Videos: Black Body Radiation
Sherese Francis 