Exploring Afrofuturism: Music, Literature, and Film

Music and storytelling are among the major tentpoles upholding what constitutes every culture. For enthusiasts from Earth to Sun Ra’s native Saturn and beyond, the following guide lists some major works of art essential to a proper understanding of Afrofuturist culture. Vanguards of modern-day jazz, veterans and young guns of speculative fiction, and cinematic tours de force from indie film and Marvel Studios are all represented here. Whether on vinyl, CD, e-reader, the printed page, streaming video, or Blu-ray, savor these Afrodiasporic cultural artifacts.

Music

So much of Afrofuturism leads back to Sun Ra. A list of modern Afrofuturist music would be incomplete without the Sun Ra Arkestra (represented here with last year’s Seductive Fantasy). Flying Lotus had heavy input on the only rap album to win a Pulitzer Prize—Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly—and his score to Yasuke, an anime about a Black samurai in medieval Japan, is another must-hear, overflowing with synth stabs, trap beats, and trip-hop. The connecting thread of all these suggestions—from the brooding intensity of Fatou to the orchestral techno of Versus—is their collective laser-focused gaze on a future full of the African diaspora.

Books and Literature

Octavia E. Butler’s speculative fiction planted seeds for the fantasy storylines of HBO’s Watchmen and Lovecraft Country, as well as her literary progeny Nalo Hopkinson, Nisi Shawl, and scores of other scribes. Among all other artistic disciplines, literature contains the widest body of work that can easily be considered Afrofuturist. There are books that explain it (Ytasha L. Womack’s Afrofuturism) and those that exemplify it (Janelle Monáe’s The Memory Librarian collection). Take your pick.

Film

The Empire Strikes Back trod a pioneering path in 1980 when casting heartthrob Billy Dee Williams—known for African American–targeted films like Mahogany—as the Star Wars franchise’s swashbuckling rogue, Lando Calrissian. Aside from the late Yaphet Kotto’s appearance in 1979’s Alien, Hollywood largely whitewashed people of color from space operas like The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. That absence made the 1984 indie film The Brother from Another Planet—and its central idea that maybe extraterrestrials weren’t so WASPy-looking, a welcome shock. So many of these film selections (Black Panther, District 9, etc.) debuted between 1980 and Lando Calrissian’s comeback in 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. The force of Afrofuturism is strong with them all.

Photography: Sun Ra Arkestra by Lawrence Sumulong.

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