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Music

Black to the Future: Electronic Music's Sci-Fi Roots

"Science fiction is for the marginalized. It's a place for criticism of established norms."

We're living in a moment where pop culture and science fiction are feeding insatiably off each other.  Take a quick look at the movies dominating the big screen this week: you've got the requisite team of sexy superheroes, Russell Crowe herding animals from a superhuman storm, and agile teenage warriors surviving in a post-apocalyptic world.

All of these blockbusters are sure to be lots of fun, if somewhat brainless. They are also dominated by the same archetype we've over and over again ad nauseum: the crusading Caucasian hero. It doesn't have to be this way.

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Afrofuturism, a term coined in 1993 by Mark Dery in his essay Black to the Future, is a cultural movement that injects a much-needed dose of non-white figures into our imaginative cosmos. By placing the themes of the African diaspora into a sci-fi and techno-cultural context, Afrofuturists present a different vision of the future—a black future.

Last week, two different exhibitions in New York—stitched together by the Philadelphia-based techno producer and DJ King Britt—examined the effect the two decade-old movement has had on today's popular culture. The first, an exhibition at Red Bull Studios New York called OmniPresent: A Different View, used rare mementos dug up from the archives of Omni magazines—a classic science publication that shuttered in 1998—to critique the bland worldview of mainstream science fiction that still endures, to some extent, today.

King had been an avid reader of Omni magazine as a kid, but "growing up, I only saw a lot of Caucasian people in sci-fi." So King reached out over Twitter to Claire Evans, the science journalist (and lead singer of the band Yacht) who recently rebooted Omni in online-only form.

Claire Evans and King Britt. Photo courtesy of Greg Mionske/ Red Bull Studios New York

As the revived magazine's current editor-at-large, Claire is hardly immune to the prevailing nostalgia for Omni's heyday, but she's also the first to acknowledge that "Omni is the ultimate document of white science fiction bullshit." Owned by Bob Guccione, the publisher of Penthouse magazine, it was "very masculine, and very much about consumer goods and luxury as much as it was a subversive magazine," Claire said. The artwork in Omni magazine has been praised for its striking originality, and one of the reasons for its continued popularity. So when King dug into Omni's voluminous archives and found artwork that diverged from the whitewashed norm, images that he didn't often see as a kid, "bringing these images to the forefront was so exciting," Claire said.

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By casting light on these oft-ignored images, both Claire and King hope to steer today's science fiction culture away from its obsession with summer movie franchises and novelty commercial goods to a place of real discourse. "Science fiction is for the marginalized," Claire declared. "It's a place for criticism of established norms. As a genre, it's such a beautiful place to build worlds outside of the patriarchy, and outside of the mainstream."

King also wrote several tracks inspired by Omni's archives, which he played for the crowd at the exhibition's opening party. Each track was directly influenced by a particular image. "The Mind Knows," for example, is King's sonic interpretation of a robot at war. "I wanted a bit of action, robotic sounds, and funky changes," he explained.

An archival image from Omni magazine that inspired King Britt's track "The Mind Knows"

For another track, "Northstar," King had this to say about the image that inspired it: "The women of any tribe are the leaders—they are what holds everything together. The North Star is the one we follow when lost. It grounds us and keeps us together." Thus, King incorporated delicate drums with heavy kicks into the accompanying tune to give it a sense of both femininity and gravity.

Three days later, this sentiment was echoed in different forms at MoMA's contemporary art museum PS1, where King Britt had put together a rather historic event: an entire day devoted to Afrofuturist thought and music. The event featured a panel with Afrofuturist thought leaders like Columbia University's Professor Alondra Nelson and Public Enemy's chief producer Hank Shocklee, and was headlined by Ras G and Shabazz Palaces. "This is a family reunion of sorts," King said. "We all came up together. Everyone did their own thing and blew up."

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Under a darkened domed tent in the museum's courtyard, King debuted the latest music from his live act Fhloston Paradigm—named after Fhloston Paradise, the fictional planet and intergalactic cruiseliner from The Fifth Element. Joined by the classically-trained vocalist Pia Ercole, King Britt's performance was a rather literal take on the movie's space age exotica, with Pia's operatic vocals channeling the alien diva Plava Laguna's.

King Britt and Pia Ercole. Photo by Auriel Rickard

On why he—and so many Afrofuturist musicians like Flying Lotus and Sun Ra—are seduced by the aesthetics of intergalactic travel, King Britt said, "I've always gravitated towards space because it's open territory. All the sounds coming out of that mentality are free. Whereas pop culture in America is so boxed-in by formula."

Both exhibitions proved that Afrofuturism and its obsession with other dimensions continues to be a useful way to think outside of the systems we are trapped in. Electronic music in particular, with its technological impulses, serves as a critique of the way "black people are seen as a people of the past, and their contributions to music are a backwards-looking acknowledgement," said Dr. Nelson. By adding "the afro and the future" together, electronic music flies in the face of the stereotype "that we don't have a nerd, scientific of technological culture."

As King Britt and Pia Ercole left the stage, the American spoken word artist Ursula Rucker took their place. Her words rang strong and true. "This is the cure that no one wants to admit. This must not stop here. This is a starting point. Because somebody blew up America and nobody wants to rebuild. Boom."

 Fhloston Paradigm's The Phoenix is out June 10 on Hyperdub 

@MichelleLHOOQ