Modern Griots Review: The United States of Hoodoo

Darius James and Oliver Hardt’s film The United States of Hoodoo has a deceptive quietness with a hidden power underneath it. But then again, it is just another variation of the film’s themes of the trickster and the crossroads. Returning home to Connecticut, the film follows James’ coping with his father’s recent death and his […]

Moving on the Wires: Afrofuturism Talk, The United States of Hoodoo, MUV’s Sankofa, Buli…

*For those who will be in Missouri, one of my supporters, Reynaldo Anderson will be having a talk at Missouri History Museum on February 1st, called Afrofuturism: Race, Art and Politics in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Hopefully, the conversation will be recorded and the rest of us can listen to it later. *The filmmakers […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Séan L. Young’s The Mystical Gathering Series

Popular culture is filled with worlds of wizards, witches and mystic superhero characters likes that of Harry Potter. But while audiences are excited by the fantasy of those worlds, real life communities of witches either go unnoticed or are demonized as satanic. And even in the fiction, rarely do we get a super-witch character who […]

Modern Griots Interviews: De’ Kridge and The Power In M!O!R!E!

As a writer and entrepreneur, De’ Kridge tells of his inspiring and triumphant story that has led to the formation of his own spiritual mythology and language through his project, “The Power In M!O!R!E!.” Read his story below in my interview with him (Note: read carefully, it may be a lot to take in): 1) […]

Otherworldly Videos: Mami Wata Films (Lady in the Water/Nkiru)

The legend of Mami Wata is one that has traveled from the shores of different countries in Africa to the shores of shores of the different countries all over the world in which the African diapsora lives. The media production company 37th State has produced a short documentary and short film that explores the figures […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Limbo by Edward Kamau Brathwaite

Will you make it to the other side? It’s amazing how many aspects of my culture and other cultures, too, are either hidden or diluted. One, for example, is the limbo dance that originated in Trinidad and Tobago. For many, it is only a fun dance game in which you try to pass under a […]

Modern Griots Review: Ancestral Voices

What are the spiritual and physical consequences of us not studying the spiritual and magic systems of the African Diaspora in depth? This is one question amongst several explored in the British documentary film, Ancestral Voices: Esoteric African Knowledge. Premiering in New York City last Saturday at the New York African Diaspora International Film Festival, […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Jayne Cortez

MAKE IFA – By Jayne Cortez Make Ifa make Ifa make Ifa Ifa Ifa In sanctified chalk of my silver painted soot In criss-crossing whelps of my black belching smoke In brass masking bones of my bass droning moans in hub cap bellow of my hammer tap blow In steel stance screech of my zumbified […]

Modern Griots Review: Oya and Anyanwu — The Faces of Change

Without stories, we are nothing but shells, only giving others the physical form of ourselves. Stories ground the spirits and forces around us and make them real. Oya priestess Isoke Nia expressed this sentiment last night at the Schomburg Center in Harlem at the enlightening tribute to the Yoruba orisha, Oya, and writer Octavia Butler. […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Myth in Brown Girl Brownstones

Last week I read Caribbean-American Paule Marshall’s novel, Brown Girl Brownstones, and to put it simply, I was blown away. It definitely on par with The Invisible Man. It is a coming of age story that follows a Bajan (Barbados)- American girl, Selina Boyce, who is finding her own path amidst the destruction of her […]