Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Curwen Best

I was searching for Caribbean science fiction, which is frustrating because most of the first results are for Pirates of the Caribbean (ugh!), but anyway, I stumbled across Bajan scholar Curwen Best and his analyses of the intersections between technology, the internet, social and other media, and Caribbean culture and identity. He has written a […]

Modern Griots Recap: Divination 101

Divination (n): the art or practice that seeks to foresee or foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge usually by the interpretation of omens or by the aid of supernatural powers. Divination, Science and Technology, Transhumanism and Futurism: Definition, including implied ones, are important because they affect our perceptions. That is true for some modern […]

Moving on the Wires: My New Logo and Interview with Artist Estella Yu

Today, I am presenting my second surprise — my new logo for my blog! My friend from high school, Estella Yu, designed it for me. I love it and as I told her, it’s like my own bat signal. Another thing about the Aker image I noticed that I didn’t until now is that the […]

Modern Griots Tribute: RIP Amiri Baraka

If you have seen the top of my blog, you would see that the tag line is a quotation from Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), “the future is always here in the past,” which was one of the last lines in his essay, “Jazzmen: Diz & Sun Ra.” So, as you can see Baraka was an […]

Time Forward Music List

For the last day of 2013, here is a list of some recent releases to vibe to as we go into 2014. Happy New Year!

Modern Griots Reviews: Odysella – Empress of Nar

Despite its critics in its early days, Hip-hop as an artistic medium has spread to all corners of the Earth, but could it spread throughout the galaxy? What about world violence against young people? Chicago-author Shirley Hardy-Leonard explores these questions in her latest work, Odysella: Empress of Nar series. The series follows two main leads […]

The My-Stery: The Ghost of AfroFuture…

Social Death, Wounded Transformations and The Hauntings of Prophetic Tradition : Tomorrow is Christmas and one story that came to mind in relation to afrofuturism, and especially after I watched Arthur Jafa’s Dreams Are Colder than Death, was Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the story’s ghosts of past, present and future. In the Western […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Poem in Process – “A Mad Man with a Box”

Last week, I received some inspiration to write a new poem. I was watching an episode of Mysteries at the Museum and saw I segment on Henry “Box” Brown, the enslaved man who mailed himself to freedom. For some reason, the story stayed on my mind. The next morning when I watched a Doctor Who […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Afrofuturism – The World of Black Sci-FI and Fantasy Culture

I know I am a bit late on reviewing this one, but finally here is my review of it: Ytasha L. Womack’s Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-fi and Fantasy Culture is a well-thought out introductory book that is a smooth blend between a personal memoir and a reference source for those interested in delving […]

The My-Stery: The Social Brain, Psionic Ability and Shiftings of Mind, Body and Space

While reading this morning Brainpicking’s, “The Science of Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect,” the article stood out to me because of its connection between sociality, survival and mindreading: “[Matthew D. Lieberman] argues that this osmosis of sociality and individuality is an essential aid in our evolutionary development rather than an aberrant defect in […]