Black to the Future | Bitch Media
▻http://bitchmagazine.org/article/black-to-the-future-afrofuturism-feminism-music-janelle-monae-kelis-e
How women in pop are carrying the mantle of Afrofuturism
Maps & Legends
illustration by Pam Wishbow
When my brother and I were young, our parents would build us igloo forts out of blue sheets in the living room before putting us to bed. They would turn off all the lights except for a string of white Christmas lights that looped through our plants, and turn on the jazz-fusion, African-rhythm synthpop of Afro-Parisian Wally Badarou, creating an icy new world for us. What I now recognize as a way to calm two small children before bedtime felt like magic to me then. Our living room was transformed into a timeless space that felt simultaneously prehistoric and futuristic.Grace Jones’s “Slave to the Rhythm” was in heavy rotation in our household. I remember poring over the cover art—her fierce eyes; her avant-garde high-top fade; her open, extended mouth like a chomping cyborg or an insect mandible; and her glossy brown skin. All this, paired with her booming and distorted voice over African percussion and synth, made her a mesmerizing figure to my 7-year-old ears and eyes. I had never heard music or a voice like hers, and although I didn’t completely understand her or the world she was creating with her music, she would go on to influence my ideas of womanhood, blackness, and the performative nature of identity.
