Otherworldly Videos: Louis Chude-Sokei Reading

Hello everyone, I’m back! With my return, I will be posting at a later time (8:00pm) and for the next couple of weeks, the blog will have a Caribbean afrofuturist focus, especially since I wrote a piece for Africa Is Done Suffering about a need to highlight more of Caribbean experience into diaspora (and in […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Phantom Limb, Octavia Butler’s “Kindred,” and Tiphanie Yanique’s “How to Escape from a Leper Colony”

In Octavia Butler’s time-traveling fantasy Kindred, the novel begins with the main character, Dana, losing her arm. Even without the ending, that is an unusual way to begin a story. Similarly, Tiphanie Yanique‘s mythic/mystical/religious storytelling in her short story collection How to Escape from a Leper Colony, includes in the title story, a character named […]

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 Interview: Blayer Pointdujour

Blayer Pointdujour and the Rockers Galore are a band based in Philadelphia. Calling themselves the adopted child of Saul Williams and Paul Simonon (of The Clash), the group combines different musical styles, including punk rock, reggae, funk, hip-hop, and Haitian rhythms. Pointdujour aims to put a new twist on old music, making a new style […]

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, […]

Modern Griots Review: Zetwal (Twinkl)

Can poetry be fuel for a spaceship? One man, Robert Saint-Rose, from the Caribbean island of Martinique believed so. The inspiring documentary film, Zetwal, which means “stars,” or “twinkl” from the film, in creole, follows the journey of the Caribbean folk hero who builds a spaceship in 1974 on a mission to be the first […]

The My-Stery: Bacchanal!!!!

Destra Garcia – “Bacchanal” While doing research to write one of my poems, I learned about the Greek god Dionysus/Roman god Bacchus and Bacchanalia festivals. When I heard the word Bacchanalia, I thought of how often Bacchanal is said in Caribbean Calypso and Soca music, and I wanted to know the connections between Caribbean carnival […]