The My-Stery: Spooky Entanglement — When Black Contribution Is Obscured

The other day as I was looking for some Basquiat inspiration, I came across this article about his artistic influences, “John-Michel Basquiat: The Afrofuturistic and His Art: Part I – Cosmic Slop and George Clinton’s Afro-Futurism. One part struck me the most, especially we discuss appropriation and often the lack of social credit given to black influencers: […]

Moving on the Wires: This Week’s News and Posts (Monday Edition)

Sorry everyone; I had a busy weekend and could not post on Sunday. So here is this post on Monday. *LAST DAY TO DONATE TO MY ATLANTIC IMPACT FUNDRAISER!!!!!!! Here are my posts from the past few weeks with Barbados Cultural Facts of the Day and other Barbados related posts. Please donate to my fundraiser […]

The My-Stery: Janelle Monae and the Struggle for Black Complexity in Mainstream Media

“Narrow views of Blackness lead to a sometimes stalled consumption of challenging art and media.” – Dara M. Wilson While reading the Pitchfork feature on Janelle Monae, some of the issues concerning her art process and the reception of her art reminded me of the balancing act between black intellectuality and black physicality and the […]

Modern Griots Reviews: “Finding the Funk…

…and getting the respect!” Author, music historian and filmmaker, Nelson George, said at a rough cut screening of his latest film, Finding the Funk, that funk music was a music for outsiders. Reaching its peak in the 70s and early 80s, the short time between the eras of soul and post-bop/funky jazz and the rise […]

Modern Griots Review: MUV’s “Sankofa”

If you can keep dancing especially when no one thought you would survive, then you have traveled to a region beyond death. Last weekend, Movement for the Urban Village‘s (MUV) Sankofa performance showed how our expressions (dance, music, words, names and silence) transcend boundaries and even death. As George Clinton says in “Mothership Connection,” “You […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Music To Space Out To…

Funkadelic/Wefunk International (Clip Payne and 420 FUNK MOB) – Eve of the Emperor Although George Clinton was forced to give away some of his legendary music to settle a debt, he and Funkadelic released some new music. Playing off the “emperor has no clothes” with the “emperor has no clones,” funkadelic is still funkatizing the […]

The My-Stery: Frankensteinian Females

Last week, I wrote about how the ideas about creation in Frankenstein can be found in records like “Dr. Funkenstein” and “Monster.” Since Nicki Minaj is on “Monster,” I want to continue the Frankenstein theme with women. Although Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, most of the women seem to be weak, secondary characters in the story. […]

The My-Stery: Images of Mami Wata

The more I study mythology, religions and popular culture, the more I realize the mythological symbolism in a lot of popular culture. For example, in two of Aaliyah’s last videos, “We Need a Resolution” and “Rock the Boat.” The video for the first song contains scenes where she appears to be in a underground setting […]

Cosmic Slop

One of my favorite songs is Parliament Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop. Just a few days ago, I found out about a collection of films called Cosmic Slop, which was produced by the group. Basically, this is the Afrofuturist version of the Twilight Zone. The first film is about what would happen if America was in shambles […]

Sun Ra and George Clinton, Brothers From Another Planet

Don Letts‘, the well-known British music documentarian and DJ, 2005 BBC documentary on the “out-of-this-world” jazz musician, composer, and bandleader, Sun Ra. Born Herman Blount, in 1914 in Birmingham, Alabama, Sun Ra later claimed to be from Saturn and his music definitely sounded like it came from there. Using interviews from members of his “Arkestra” and […]