The new black is now.
If the “Attending” numbers on Facebook events are accurate, then tomorrow night the African American Arts and Cultural Center in San Francisco will be overrun with approximately 300 black/afro/futurist/punk/geeks and the people who roll with them. The opening of Black Diamonds Shining’s “The Black Futurists” exhibit and accompanying two month schedule of events, performances and film screenings sound like a love song that’ll lure in all sectors of the Bay’s black outlier culture. The ones usually only glimpsed on the deepest house dance floors, select street art installations and the most underground art events.
A couple weeks after that, the much YouTubed TED conference is getting the Black to the Future treatment, when Berlin based Afrofuturistsaxtechologist Onyx Ashanti takes the stage to show off the latest evolution of his Beat Jazz project-an open source, woodwind mimicking, motion sensitive, MIDI music system.
In September, South Africa will see the 4th installment of the annual Pan African Space Station, a 30 day music and arts festival and “cross-cultural and cyber-spatial exploration, bringing together diverse pan-African sounds from ancient techno to future roots.” The event features everything from musical tributes to Steve Biko and Busi Mhlongo to performances by Doctor Philip Tabane & Malombo and Theo Parish.
And in true “seen it like a Zenith” steez, Black Rock evangelist, cultural curator and community catalyst Rob Fields recently announced that on October 17th he’s hosting the Festival of the New Black Imagination in, where else but the black planet of Brooklyn. The Festival sounds like a place where all the corners of black creativity can converge and add ingredients to the next serving of cultural cosmic slop.
If you’re looking for the next “It”, it’s here. If you’re looking for African diaspora folks who’re on something different, you really, really don’t have to look too hard. The forward thinking, tech savvy, community building tribes mainstream culture has been “searching” for-those “positive”, nuanced portraits of black folks-are being created in hyper real, augmented reality.
They’re sitting right beside you on the train coding mobile apps on their mac, they’re skating past you with a nose ring and mohawk bumping Odd Future, they’re creating art installations and hanging them in the hood. They might not fit neatly into boxes, but collectively they explode stereotypes and complicate a cliched narrative that’s been in serious need of a rewrite.
If you’re that one black kid looking for your particular tribe, don’t worry homie. Whether you’re a freak, a geek, a futurist, or a gamer there are hella ports in the storm for your particular brand of blackness.
The New Black is now.
The more I do research and gather information for the Black/Other project, the more Rob Fields “New Black Imagination” resonates as the best description of the global shift.
It’d be limiting and inaccurate to call what’s happening a movement. It’s more like the evolution of interconnected ideologies-a crew of mini movements. There are hella ideas, interpretations and experiments happening right now that will hopefully lead to a broader, more nuanced understanding of African diaspora culture. A collective rising tide to lift the boats of black thought from out of the dark ages.
There are emerging philosophies and collectives, like my folks D. Scot Miller’s Afrosurreal San Francisco and the genre defining crew over at Afropunk.com There are folks that kinda defy easy categorization like noisemakers Paris Suit Yourself, technologist Juliana Rotich and the work of professor, political theorist, dog store owner and “Rockstar, Stud, Gigallo” Torrance Stephens. There’s scholarly and pop culture writing that draw connections between the strands like Duane Deterville’s, essays on art and the Afriscape, Mosi Reeves rock/pop musing and just about anything from the pages of Coon Bidness.
The New Black is NOW.
I don’t mistake this shift as utopian. The afrofuture has to live in the afropresent if we’re going see any tangible, real world afrochange. There are issues of unity, competing ideologies, access, finance, gender and social conditioning that need to be addressed.
But increasingly, for every time I see an article on the marginalization of black women, there’s a Krys Freeman or Latacia Peterson I can point to. For every question about where are the blacks in technology, there’s an answer like Cordeva Williams or Lynne D Johnson. For every stale ass radio edit there’s a Nerd Kween, Black Hippy or Young Lovers. The tide of black thought is rising. A new bar is being set. The question of whether mainstream culture chooses to accept it is irrelevant. The real question is how hard are we willing to fight to be heard.
If you’re in the Bay Area, the Black Futurist gathering tomorrow promises to be a good place to connect with your tribe. If you’re out there somewhere doing your indie thing, don’t worry sis. You’re not the only one. You are the future.
