How Does Blackness Sound in the Future?: A Review of Two Podcasts on Afrofuturism

“It [Afrofuturism] is a way of using the imagination as an act of resistance. That resistance can be fun...being able to claim a stake in the future that you are creating for yourself.”

— Regina Bradley

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:

“We Are in the Future,” Neil Drumming, This American Life

Following the standard format of This American Life, this episode begins with a prologue where Neil Drumming explains Afrofuturism to Ira Glass in a comic bookstore. Act One introduces the audience to Ingrid LaFleur, an Afrofuturist, pleasure activist, and curator of digital media during her campaign for Mayor of Detroit. Act Two is particularly interesting to me as Black woman, as it is solely voiced by Azie Dungey. She describes the harrowing experience playing the role of a slave while working at George Washington’s famed plantation Mount Vernon. In the third act listeners hear the song “The Deep” by clppng. Commissioned by the podcast and draws inspiration from water, mythology, and Drexciya, a 90s electro band based in Detroit. In the final act Drumming digs deeper into the YouTube videos documenting incidents of policing young Black boys walking home from school in both Brooklyn and Atlantic City.

Azie Dungey Ask A Slave Series on Youtube.

“Culture in the Cosmos: AfroFuturism, Hip-Hop, and Black Joy,” Dr. Regina Bradley, Christina Lee, Bottom of the Map

Bottom of the Map focuses on hip-hop in the south and the various iterations of Afrofuturity in music from the 90s and beyond. Marvel’s Black Panther is used as a modern-day articulation of popular culture’s take on Afrofuturism. For example, we hear snippets of Megan the Stallion and others referencing Wakanda in their songs as an “easy connection to Afrofuturism.” But Dr. Bradley complicates the idea of what this cosmology means to artists, stating: “Sometimes folks go back in time, they revise, they re-envision, so to speak... It allows folks to reconsider where they fit into these spaces and societies that pushed them to the side.” Time is spent explaining the origins, or what I consider to be the canon of Afrofuturist music, calling on the names of Sun Ra, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. While they acknowledge the artists outside of the south the meat of the episode unpacks the sonic legacies of OutKast’s Black futurist albums such as ATLiens and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Lee describes the lore of Future as a possible “sound of Afrofuturism in the future.” But the most interesting genealogical thread she articulates in this episode centers on Young Thug and Future as descendants of Missy Elliot’s futuristic flow. By way of Missy Elliot’s work, Lee brings up Pharrell Williams’ productions “Get Lucky” and Hidden Figures wonders whether he should be considered an Afrofuturist figure. Dr. Susana Morris, specialist in Black feminism, Black digital media, and Afrofuturism, joins the host to understand the deeper roots of the phenomenon’s history, extending back to the early 19th century. Dr. Morris discusses the boundaries of coolness and nerd culture amongst Black people interested in Black culture, and its accessibility to the masses in current times.