The My-Stery: “Get In-Formation: Black Performance, Black Code and Black Spies”

The Mask as Technology Part 3: Although I tried not to add onto the dozens of think pieces that are already out there about Beyonce’s latest video, “Formation,” sometimes I like to jump on the bandwagon to either use it momentarily like a free ride to a needed destination or to veer it off into my […]

Modern Griots Interviews: : Louis Chude-Sokei Part 2

Welcome back! Here is part 2 of my interview with Louis Chude-Sokei! You can read part 1 here. “…What will matter in the long term is the impact we have on the (Sci-fi) genre itself, not on its packaging or clichés…” 4) Science fiction and fantasy have in the past been centered around European/Western stories […]

Modern Griots Interviews: Louis Chude-Sokei Part 1

Happy New Year!!!!! Welcome back to Futuristically Ancient! Last year, I introduced to you all to the upcoming release of Louis Chude-Sokei’s The Sound of Culture. Well, the book is finally here and I had the privilege to interview Louis about his book and his research. Louis is a truth-speaker and an illusion-breaker who is […]

Moving on the Wires: ‘The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics’

Louis Chude-Sokei, the author of The Last ‘Darky‘: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora, will be releasing a new book, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics. Chude-Sokei, as he has done in his previous work, explores the complexities of race and ethnicity through a Caribbean lens. As someone who calls myself Afro-Caribbean-American, I […]

Rewind: Dapper Ladies

Currently, when we think of a black woman artist who showcases an androgynous or gender-bending look, we think of Janelle Monae. But, before Monae, other black women have challenged gender coding and in less accepting times, and possibly with less conventionally attractive features. Black women doing gender-bending often received less attention than when it is […]

Modern Griots: King Britt

King Britt is a Grammy-nominated electronic composer, musician and DJ. He is currently part of The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage’s music program, Noise From the 18th Floor. His curated playlist is Cosmic Culture: A Sonic Journey Into Afrofuturism, which includes music from the past, present and future of afrofuturism. Britt also premieres his […]

“Naming Evil in the World: Hip-Hop’s Blues Footprints”

From the Blues and the Spirit symposium, Mark Anthony Neal discusses the secular and sacred aspects of hip-hop and Black music in general. He speaks about their visionary and prophetic tradition, their practice of naming evil in the world, the subtlety of the musical forms, the musical technology used, and concepts of escape, freedom, fugitivity, […]

Otherworldly Videos: The Haunting of Sound

As I work on my honors thesis about percussive and body politics of black music, specifically in hip-hop, the focus of my paper is forming as how sound in black culture has been used as a subversive tactic. Both James W. Perkinson’s Shamanism, Racism, and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion […]

The Last Angel of History

Do you know how long I have been trying to find this film?! And the only place where I can find it, sells it for almost $300!!!! Directed by Ghana-born English director, John Akomfrah, the 1995 documentary, The Last Angel of History,explores the intersections between Black music, science fiction, and African Diasporic religion, spirituality and […]