We all know of some Black child who learned about her Africanized history from film or song. I guess my point is, did it sound like “Black Gold,” or was is more like watching 12 Years A Slave?

They say I have a way with words. And they have a way with me

She went first, I stood still listening with all my body, feeling the intensity of the sounds my professor sent like waves to my center of my chest. They radiate down my back, clinking through my spine, speeding out to my legs. I listen. I listen and listen to the sounds between her world and me. 

Notice how your body feels as you read this list. Remember it.

Those pitches resonated like thunder in honor of you. I could hear strings vibrate from all around, their sounds reverberate the racism enacted on your body in hopes of freeing you from it. The symbolism is captured on film, Elijah, we see the police storming the scene in Denver. Luckily there was peace in NYC, or so I’m told.

I am noticing how often I go through bouts of forgetfulness about the true nature of the learning process, as much as I want to master this idea of teaching, educating, and instructing with others. My professor reminded me that the learning process is often uncomfortable, where you are asked to hold opposing ideas thoughts, ideas, and ways of being for the sake of expanding your worldview.

I’m not suggesting I believe Pharrell is an Afrofuturist because he mentions the right buzz words on the right tracks nor will my work consist of providing the correct citations to link Williams to the lineages of the Afrofuturist musicians. But I am weary about iterations of Afrofuturism that involve canonizing cishet Black men whose splicing of sonic fragments of Egyptology, Hinduism, and space-time travel fails to make room for those who come after them.

In my own work it begins with the concert space, by looking closely at Black artists performances of sonic Blackness often in front of thousands of white people, Black and Brown people. There are tons of online and face to face performances of sexual orientation, ability, class and more captured in these concert vlogs, especially when one considers the dynamics of crowd sizes and mosh pits

In addition to this, the musicologists who testified on the Blurred Lines case have mighty professional legacies that I am afraid to oppose. Based on that reason alone l have vowed to myself that I won’t touch “Blurred Lines” in my dissertation.So there is this constant tension within me as a young researcher regarding intellectual property.

This week I listened to two podcasts about Afrofuturism: “We are in the Future” from This American Life and Bottom of the Map’s “Culture in the Cosmos: AfroFuturism, Hip-Hop and Black Joy.” I listened to how the hosts introduced Afrofuturism to their audience, and there is more I am going to to with these works later. But for now, here is a brief summary of what I heard:

It is a moment of terrifying pleasure, to expose my students to intentional dissonance by using music to unlock the possibilities of sounding the haunting of U.S. American history. This intervention is born out of a love and reverence for their minds and world views. I vow to use the space of my classroom for wrestling with perspectives that challenge the ideas that miseducate us into comfort.

By looking at the ways concert/festival footage is captured, circulated, and discussed amongst fans on websites like Youtube, and social media platforms I can build a theoretical and methodological foundation for exploring how positionalities of concert goers, artists, bands and the like, shapeshift as voicing human and post-human subjectivities.

I did a big thing this week too, before all the madness. I recalled moments of content collapse at one of my favorite artist’s concert. I hadn’t imagined on Monday when I was reading about DIY videos concert experiences that I would publish my own on youtube from that same live performance. It’s funny how things work out like that.

As the show went on the divide between two personal worlds began to simmer, and by the time the concert was through everyone was vibing together as unit. We had become a part of the Dirty Computer ecosystem housed in the Tabernacle that night.

I signed up for this course with some imagination of how what I am to learn in this setting will forever change me-igniting some spark within me to be more confident in my intellect, more productive in online scholarly pursuits and networks, more disciplined in writing out my thoughts.