Palgrave Studies in Sound

palgrave studies in sound
afrofuturism and
black sound studies
Culture, Technology, and Things to Come
erik steinskog
Palgrave Studies in Sound
Series editor
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark
Palgrave Studies in Sound is an interdisciplinary series devoted to the
topic of sound with each volume framing and focusing on sound as it is
conceptualized in a specific context or field. In its broad reach, Studies in
Sound aims to illuminate not only the diversity and complexity of our
understanding and experience of sound but also the myriad ways in
which sound is conceptualized and utilized in diverse domains. The series
is edited by Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard, The Obel Professor of Music at
Aalborg University, and is curated by members of the university’s Music
and Sound Knowledge Group.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/series/15081
Erik Steinskog
Afrofuturism and
Black Sound Studies
Culture, Technology, and
Things to Come
Erik Steinskog
Department of Arts and Cultural Studies
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark
Palgrave Studies in Sound

ISBN 978-3-319-66040-0 ISBN 978-3-319-66041-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7
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Acknowledgements
While working with the material for this book, and writing it, I have
benefited from a number of interactions in real life and on social media.
Most of the people I know that work with Afrofuturism I met on social
media, and I have been lucky enough to meet some of them in real life.
I am grateful to Reynaldo Anderson, who found me on Twitter, and
who encouraged me to write a piece about Janelle Monáe, to participate
in a number of panels, and not least to come to Jackson, Mississippi for
the Planet Deep South colloquium in 2016. That event also contrib-
uted to my belief that I had a voice to add to the conversations. I want
to thank my fellow panelists and speakers in Bayreuth, Norrköping,
Manchester, and Jackson: Dariel Cobb, Jared Richardson, Tom
Simmert, Tiffany Barber, Lonny J. Avi Brooks, Florence Okoye,
Rasheedah Philipps, Camea Ayewa, Darion Kareem Scott, Kevin Sipp,
and Tobias C. van Veen. Thanks as well to all the people I met at these
difference gatherings: Linda Addison, Regina Bradley, Kinitra
D. Brooks, Bill Campbell, Julian Chamblis, Jess Dickson, Hauke
Dorsch, Aisha Durham, Tim Fielder, Walter Greason, Matthias De
Groof, John Jennings, Susana Morris, Kerstin Pinther, Stacey Robinson,
Andrew Rollins, Sheree Renée Thomas, Stephanie Troutman, Maisha
Wester, Qiana Whitted, and Ytasha L. Womack. I am grateful for the
continuously expanding network of Afrofuturist scholars that emerged
from those interactions.
v
vi Acknowledgements
Closer to home I want to thank colleagues and students at the

Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen,
both the Section for Musicology, and the Department tout court. In par-
ticular, I want to thank the students attending my class on Afrofuturism
in the spring 2016.
I also want to thank the editors who published my earlier works deal-
ing with Afrofuturism, both in a more popular vein as well as my schol-
arly work: Eirik Kydland, Elisabeth Friis, Mikkel Bolt, Dan Hassler-Forest
and Pascal Nicklas, Mads Anders Baggegaard and Stefan Jonsson,
Charlotte Bailey and Florence Okoye, Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard and
Peder Kaj Pedersen, and Stan Hawkins. The processes leading up to
those publications, editorial comments as well as anonymous peer review,
have been tremendous, and demonstrated to me that writing is never
done solely alone. In this context, I also want to single out Mark
Grimshaw-Aagaard, who saw potential in my work for a book and
encouraged me to write the book proposal for this one. I also thank my
editors at Palgrave and the reviewers of my proposal and my manuscript.
The book would be less readable without you, and may not exist at all.
Finally there are a number of people to thank, for years of friendship,
conversations, and encouragement. Thanks to Joyce Goggin, Jeffrey
Gore, Stan Hawkins, Teresa Heffernan, Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen, Troels
Degn Johanson, Claus Krogholm, Bjørn Myskja, and Louise Yung
Nielsen. And, at last, to my three sons—Aleksander, Kristoffer, and
Benjamin—who make life important in non-scholarly ways, more thanks
than I can ever give.
Contents
1 Introduction: Afrofuturism and Black Sound Studies 1
2 Blackness, Technology, and the Changing Same 37
3 Space and Time 75
4 Vibrations, Rhythm, and Cosmology109
5 Interstellar Space, Outer Space and Inner Space139
6 The Sounds of the Future175
7 Conclusion: New Suns/Sounds213
vii
viii Contents
D
iscography219
Bibliography225
Index 235
1
Introduction: Afrofuturism and Black
Sound Studies
Since Mark Dery coined the term “Afrofuturism” almost 25 years ago,
the term and the phenomena it refers to have gotten much attention.
These days it can be found in reviews of recordings, music videos, novels,
cartoons and visual art, in think pieces about music, literature, art, and
popular culture, but also in articles about technological developments on
the African continent. In addition, the term is found in scholarly litera-
ture on similar topics, in book titles (Womack 2013; Anderson and Jones
2016 ) or as a key term related to black speculative fiction and black sci-
ence fiction. A third area where the term is found is on social media—
arguably foremost on Twitter and Tumblr—as well as in real-life
community work, such as the Black Quantum Futurism Collective in
Philadelphia.1 With the Black Speculative Arts Movement and similar
projects, conventions, conferences, and seminars draw together artists,
activists, academics, and fans.2 With this much attention, it is as if
Afrofuturism has been around for a long time, and that no explanation
for what it means is needed. But while the number of articles, blog posts,
and social media updates on Afrofuturism contributes to a feeling that it
has been here for ages, it is still common that radio shows and interviews
begin with the question “what is Afrofuturism, then?” Here one should
© The Author(s) 2018 1

E. Steinskog, Afrofuturism and Black Sound Studies, Palgrave Studies in Sound,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7_1
2 1 Introduction: Afrofuturism and Black Sound Studies
probably add that the phenomena described by the term Afrofuturism

are much older than the term itself. In that sense, its history is much
longer than 25 years, and interesting dimensions of this discourse, to
which this book will contribute, are re-readings of the past, negotiations
of received stories, and establishing counter-histories to normative
history.
Today it has come to the point where some artists seem to feel the hype
is such that they want to distance themselves from the term, as happened
at the Moogfest in 2016. As part of the panel “Can You Remember the
Future?” Hieroglyphic Being seemed to ridicule the term. On the same
panel the producer duo Christian Rich, consisting of the brothers Taiwo
Hassan and Kehinde Hassan, began by claiming that they had never
heard of the term until a couple of hours earlier. Somewhat surprisingly,
Janelle Monáe distanced herself from the term as well, although she
claims to be an “Afro futurist” on her Instagram profile, and her albums
have contributed to the mainstreaming of elements of the Afrofuturist
discourse.3 That artists attempt to distance themselves from a term is
nothing new, and I do not think one needs to pay particular attention to
this. Even if the musicians claim not to be Afrofuturists, it is still perfectly
reasonable to read them, their music, and art from within the Afrofuturist
discourse or through the lens of Afrofuturism. The question why artists
would want to distance themselves from the term is still of interest. It is,
in a sense, the other side of the coin as to why scholars and critics attempt
to delineate Afrofuturism somewhat more explicitly, so as to say, for
example, that not every music video containing a spaceship should by
necessity be seen as the latest example of Afrofuturism. The media atten-
tion, the hype, the possible overuse of the term, may make it less clear,
less explicit, and less edgy.
The question of how to understand Afrofuturism is important here at
the outset, and I advocate exploring which other terms exist in its vicin-
ity, terms that may help to distinguish between Afrofuturism and related
movements or concepts. That said, this is not a book solely about
Afrofuturism. “Black sound studies” is also part of the book’s title, and
while scholars have raised questions as to whether any of these concepts
or terms refer to something actually existing, it is my argument that in
the still undefined field where these two concepts meet something
Afrofuturism 3
important takes place. What emerges are lines of thought that can be
used for study and new discussion of black sonic culture, black studies,
popular music studies, and a number of other disciplines or sub-disci-
plines as well. Whereas Afrofuturism and black sound studies are not
thought of as perspectives excluding each other, much of my argument
happens where they partly overlap, and engaging these points of overlap
may clarify differences as well as similarities. As such, black sound stud-
ies is of importance for a number of artistic practices, both within and
outside of Afrofuturism. Thus, here in the introduction I will give some
preliminary thought on Afrofuturism and black sound studies as points
of departure for the discussions in this book.
Afrofuturism
While Dery coined the term back in 1993, in his article “Black to the
Future,” other authors where working with similar ideas around the mid
1990s, most notably John Corbett, Kodwo Eshun, Mark Sinker, and Greg
Tate.4 These five critics, while not necessarily in full agreement or adopting
the same focus, can thus the contributors from where the discourse on
Afrofuturism emerged. Another necessary addition to these texts is the
movie The Last Angel of History (1996, directed by John Akomfrah); the
movie is important both for its themes and discourses of Afrofuturism,
and at the same time it raises a number of questions about what
Afrofuturism is. Towards the end of the decade Eshun, who is also present
in The Last Angel of History, used the term “sonic fiction” in the subtitle of
his book, More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction; the
subtitle highlights that sound and the sonic have been an inherent part of
Afrofuturism. Dery’s is not the only definition, but it functions as a point
of origin and is still worthwhile remembering and putting in conversation
with other definitions to see what Afrofuturism is or can be today. His
introduction opens by asking about the absence of African-American sci-
ence fiction authors, and moves on to the much-quoted definition:
Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses

African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century
technoculture – and, more generally, African-American signification that

appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future –
might, for want of a better term, be called ‘Afrofuturism’. (Dery 1994, 180)
The definition highlights a number of central dimensions, foremost of

which is the speculative, the African-American context, the relation to
“technoculture,” and the “prosthetically enhanced future.” He immedi-
ately, however, moves on to point to a “troubling antinomy” within the
term, a kind of inherent contradiction or incompatibility in it.
Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose
energies have subsequently been consumed by the search of legible traces of
its history, imagine possible futures? Furthermore, isn’t the unreal estate of
the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, streamliners,
and set designers – white to a man – who have engineered our collective
fantasies? (Dery 1994, 180)
This antinomy, then, relates to time and history in all different modali-
ties. The future is dependent upon the past, and therefore the under-
standing of an African-American culture addressing the future is
simultaneously taking part in a conversation about history and time. The
future in and of Afrofuturism is thus at stake in an emphatic sense, not
only in relation to the historical, European futurism, but also in address-
ing the place and space of the African American presence in the past and
the present. As such, Dery’s discourse points to the necessity of counter-
histories, of searching for legible traces of black history, so as to be able to
imagine possible futures. After these much-quoted passages, however,
Dery moves on to a much more open definition, writing that “African-
American voices have other stories to tell about culture, technology, and
things to come” (Dery 1994, 182). “If there is an Afrofuturism,” he adds,
“it must be sought in unlikely places, constellated from far-flung points”
(Dery 1994, 182). From this he moves on to mention a number of artists
where this possible Afrofuturism may be sought, while simultaneously
opening up the possibility that there might not be an Afrofuturism at all.
At the same time, however, this particular definition, in all its openness,
points to other stories coming out of the African-American community.
Afrofuturism 5
These voices, he writes, have “other stories to tell about culture, technol-
ogy, and things to come,” and I have taken the liberty of lifting these
three categories out of his text and use them in my subtitle. This is done
in homage to Dery, but it is also my way of opening up the concept and
trying to continue to write in relation to what Afrofuturism may be. This
part of Dery’s text is also quoted by Alondra Nelson in her “Introduction:
Future Texts”, from the Afrofuturism issue of Social Text. She explicitly
opts for a broad definition of the concept:
Afrofuturism can be broadly defined as ‘African American voices’ with

‘other stories to tell about culture, technology, and things to come’. The
term was chosen as the best umbrella for the concerns of ‘the list’ – as it has
come to be known by its members – ‘sci-fi imagery, futurist themes, and
technological innovation in the African diaspora’. (Nelson 2002, 9)
Quoting from the AfroFuturism online community that she founded

in 1998, Nelson underlines some of the same topics as Dery, singling out
“sci-fi imagery, futurist themes, and technological innovation in the
African diaspora.”5 My understanding of the concept differs from her
broader approach primarily because I will focus on the sonic, but also
because, despite using the term “black,” I will first and foremost write
about the African-American context.
Neither Dery’s nor Nelson’s definitions are explicitly directed towards
the sonic. On the contrary, one could claim that quite a few of the terms
they use seem to be explicitly visual or literal, and thus less applicable to
sound or music. Eshun, however, both as interviewed in The Last Angel of
History (and being involved in the making of that movie) and in his book
More Brilliant Than The Sun, establishes the obvious relation to sound
and music with his term “sonic fiction” in the subtitle to his book. There
can be little doubt that this term is a sonic parallel to “speculative fiction,”
thus implying that music or sound have the same potential for specula-
tion, even if it is done in a different mode or medium. In his later article,
“Further Considerations on Afrofuturism,” Eshun more explicitly engages
the term Afrofuturism (a term almost absent in More Brilliant Than The
Sun), arguing that “Afrofuturism is obliged to approach the audiovisions
of extraterrestriality, futurology, and techno-science fiction with patience
and seriousness,” that it is “difficult to conceive of Afrofuturism without

a place for sonic process in its vernacular, speculative, and syncopated
modes,” and that “Afrofuturism studies the appeals that black artists,
musicians, critics, and writers have made to the future,” thus covering
much the same conceptual territories as Nelson, although with a constant
focus on the sonic (Eshun 2003, 293f ). Within Afrofuturism an impor-
tant question is how to move from the mythology, grand stories, as well
as material histories to the question of the sonic. These different historical
layers include a timeline from Ancient Egypt to a future outer space, but
also include the Middle Passage, slavery, and black existence in America.
To do this, to pay attention to the sonic within Afrofuturism, I build
upon Eshun’s notion of “sonic fiction” as well as Alexander G. Weheliye’s
discussion of a “sonic Afro-modernity” (Weheliye 2005) and engage in a
constant dialogue with broader definitions of Afrofuturism. One of the
challenges is to bring the sonic dimensions to the fore.
Relating to the past is necessary for the Afrofuturist discourse, but at
the same time both Dery and Nelson focus on “things to come,” techno-
culture, and futurist themes. As such there is an echo from European
futurism, establishing a relation that could simultaneously be deemed
problematic. Futurism was an avant-garde movement in Italy at the
beginning of the twentieth century and subsequently spreading to other
European countries. In addition to being avant-garde it can also be argued
that it was reactionary in its politics, masculinist in its rhetoric, and pro
war. Nelson writes about Marinetti’s “The Foundation and Manifesto of
Futurism” and notes that “he called for a new aesthetic that could prop-
erly represent the sensation of living in a rapidly modernizing world,” and
that this aesthetic related to destruction and war, to the beauty of speed,
and praised modern technology (Nelson 2002, 2). Implicitly, she writes,
he “evoked a subjectivity that was decidedly male, young, and carved out
in relation to the past and the ‘feminine’” (Nelson 2002, 2). Is this rele-
vant for Afrofuturism? Can we think of an Afrofuturism without hearing
echoes of “futurism”? Nelson criticizes the futurist dimensions here.
However, what cyber-theory can contribute is more important, but it is
read through a black lens. As such the decentred dimensions of subjectiv-
ity promised in the cyber culture of the 1990s are seen as already prefig-
ured by W.E.B. DuBois’s notion of double consciousness from The Souls
Afrofuturism 7
of Black Folk (1903), a reference establishing yet another line in the sto-
ries of Afrofuturism. From DuBois’s discussion of double consciousness
it is only a small step to how a similar perspective is employed by Paul
Gilroy in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993).
And from this counter-history of the modern world one finds important
elements for the history of Afro-modernity. When Eshun reads DuBois,
on the other hand, he sees him as prefiguring Norbert Wiener’s The
Human Use of Human Beings (1950), and thus some kind of cybernetic
history of blacks, robots, and cyberculture.6 Thus in rereading the history
of modernity, broadly conceived or in a more narrow twentieth-century
sense, a number of possible connections arise.
In thinking history or time Nelson discusses Ishmael Reed’s novel
Mumbo Jumbo (1972) (Reed is also present in The Last Angel of History),
and she thinks history/time—the relation between the past, the present,
and the future—by way of Reed’s novel. Here, then, is one way of doing
speculative theory—using works of speculative fiction as ways of think-
ing differently. One of the most interesting dimensions of Reed’s novel
for understanding Afrofuturism is the value of “the past.” Is the past
over? Do futurists always strive towards the future and feel the past can-
not be left behind fast enough? Or can the past be said to be here in the
present as something colouring the present, as a layer of time beside or
beneath the present? And what about the future? What is the future that
futurism relates to? Is it already here or is it created in the present?
There are a number of issues in need for discussion, one of them
arguably inherited in term “futurism.” The historical European futurism
was quite obviously related to both masculine ideas and dimensions of
the avant-garde. Both Italian and Russian futurism, as historical phe-
nomena, are very much part of the historical avant-garde, and as such
partake, for us today, in the construction of the past’s future. In this, the
history of the future gets another round; from the vantage point of
today we can look back in history to see what kinds of futures we can
find. In such a formulation, however, I seem to make myself guilty of
constructing the linearity of history, and claiming that we today move
back in time. In a sense, the challenge is to broaden this perspective,
which is something that can be done in different ways. One personal
favourite of mine is relating to futures that never happened, understood
in the sense of futures that once were seen as possible, but where histori-
cal or artistic developments went in other directions. This is a kind of
alternative history, but one that at the same time questions where the
borders are between “alternative history” as counter-history and “alter-
native history” as fiction. There is a kind of continuum here from mate-
rial history to fiction, where the different stages in this continuum
contribute to a thick description of history or to the construction of
mythologies, and where the differences between these two phenomena
are not always clear. In this there is a dimension of science fiction found
in everyday life, in the sense of imagining futures and where in the rear-
view mirror we find that they never materialized. This is also a question
related to different uses of history, as there are obviously different per-
spectives or purposes between a negotiation of histories for understand-
ing the past and the artistic use of historical material.
What are the cultural logics making some futures real and others obsolete?
To answer this question it is important to pay attention to the multiple logics
at work and also to how history has been written. When it comes to music
one finds academic writings where some forms of music continue to develop
into other forms, be it genres or different musical dimensions that are high-
lighted in historical continuities. In a sense, such a perspective is less about
constructing the future and more about being on top of things, being con-
temporary, and where history will show where the source of the future was.
But there might also be projects explicitly attempting to create the future. An
example could be Ornette Coleman’s album The Shape of Jazz to Come
(1959), where the future—“things to come” as jazz to come—is inscribed in
the title of the album, thus expanding the album’s context further than it’s
here and now. The title seems to claim that this album is the seed of the
future, and following the shapes of the music one could realize “the jazz to
come.” Coleman’s later album, Science Fiction (1971), points in a similar
direction, as the music, the album, and its context together built the cultural
entities we are analysing. Whereas Coleman has not really been taken into
account within Afrofuturism, these albums testify to his importance for
thinking along similar strands as the Afrofuturist discourse. A similar argu-
ment could be made for a number of other musicians. But it is not necessary
to have these “extra-musical” (for lack of a better word, as will be discussed
more thoroughly in what follows) dimensions for the music to be understood
Black Sound Studies and the Question of the Sonic 9
as Afrofuturist. But there are still changes to come for what Afrofuturism—or
sonic fiction—is or how it sounds when the artists, composers, and musi-
cians do not inscribe themselves in the discourse of Afrofuturism.
lack Sound Studies and the Question

B
of the Sonic
In 2008 the Journal of the Society for American Music published a special
issue about “Technology and Black Music in the Americas” that was
edited by George E. Lewis. His foreword is titled “After Afrofuturism.”
Seen from today, it is unclear that Afrofuturism was over in 2008. It can
better be understood, in my view, as a continuously emerging field, but
the discourse has moved on. Lewis’s foreword is still central, however, in
rethinking important dimensions of Afrofuturism with the sonic as the
central dimension. This becomes abundantly clear when he asks a ques-
tion that is key not only for his own argument, but for anyone interested
in discussing the issue of the sonic within Afrofuturism: “What does the
sound – not dress, visual iconography, witty enigmas, or suggestive song
titles – what can the sound tell us about the Afrofuture?” (Lewis 2008a,
141). Lewis’s question is imperative, and while it could be read as a
dichotomy between sound on the one hand and everything else on the
other, I prefer to read it as the intertwining of the two dimensions, but
simultaneously as a reminder to keep sound in focus. Continuing his
argument, Lewis offers a neat transition to the field of sound studies—
and to the topic of this book—as he focuses upon what he calls a “triad
of blackness, sound, and technology” (Lewis 2008a, 142). Lewis’s chal-
lenge to focus on the sound is important, although could be seen as
belonging to the metaphysical tradition of “sound as such.” For me, how-
ever, his statement is first and foremost a reminder that sonic dimensions
are in danger of being discussed less than they deserve if the contextual
dimensions are the primary focus. Keeping this danger in mind, however,
I will argue that the textual and visual dimensions of the music or
sounds at stake need to be a part of the discourse, that they might
equally well be seen as signs, hints, or interpretational keys opening
up for an u nderstanding of sounds. While this book already presupposes
that “Afrofuturist sound”—or what could be termed “Afrosonics”—

exists, in this introduction I attempt to show this on a more general level
as a basis for the more particular discussions in the chapters to come.
The continuous importance of blackness to sound studies also became
clear in the journal Small Axe in 2014, with Tavia Nyong’o’s “Afro-
philo-sonic Fictions: Black Sound Studies after the Millennium,” a
review of Alexander G. Weheliye’s Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-
Modernity (2005) and Julian Henriques’s Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound
Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing (2011). In the
review Nyong’o employs Weheliye’s term “sonic Afro-modernity” (from
the subtitle of Weheliye’s book), but also introduces the term “black
sound studies.”7 These are different designations highlighting different
dimensions of the same field. In addition to Nyongo’s review, both
authors—Weheliye and Henriques—pen responses, thus opening the
conversation of “black sound studies after the Millennium.” In his
response Weheliye is hesitant to say that “a field such as ‘black sound
studies’ exists” (2014a, 184), but the texts open up a space for revisiting
the Afrofuturist tradition and a broader discussion about sound within
black studies. Following Nyong’o’s understanding of “black sound stud-
ies,” in this book I will argue that such a field may be said to overlap
with Afrofuturist discourse. My argument is, while perhaps counter-
intuitive, that sound studies can fruitfully be subsumed under
Afrofuturism. This will highlight how the sonic field of Afrofuturism
needs to be discussed in relation to musicians/artists who are not yet in
what has become an Afrofuturist canon. There is nothing intrinsically
wrong about establishing a canon, but it is important to resist the ten-
dency towards stabilizing the music discussed, and allow for examina-
tion of musicians less obviously related to the musical or sonic
dimensions commonly found within Afrofuturism. Focusing upon
sound, I will examine musicians at the borders of Afrofuturism, either
because they are newer acts or because their performances have not been
written about much in the literature.
Nyong’o opens his review declaring, “Music has long been understood
to be central to the lived experience of black people” (Nyong’o 2014,
173). The statement is in many ways a truism within black studies or
African-American studies, and there are historical reasons for this. One
reason is a question of literacy in the historical period of slavery, and

whether music/sound in one way or another became the primary
medium for communication (broadly understood) rather than the focus
upon words/letters/language often seen as a contrasting, though not
opposing, medium. Such a discussion opens up a space for understand-
ing how “sound” (or “music”) is delineated in relation to other means of
communication, but should also be seen as facilitating discussions about
how sound could function similarly as words, that is to say, challenging
the previously understood divisions rather than keeping them.
This understanding of communication could be one reason for music/
sound being important within “the lived experience of black people.”
Another related argument is that music has functioned as a kind of
archive, including a dynamic archive transmitted through the ages, and
as such it is a part not only of lived experience but also of tradition. Such
an act of transmission would be related to what Amiri Baraka called “the
changing same,” a notion that allows for seeing music in a historical set-
ting, both as transmission but also as a way of developing and trans-
forming sounds within music cultures, be it music composed, music
improvised, popular music, or experimental music—following from
Baraka’s discussion of the term (Baraka’s essay is central for Chap. 2). In
many ways Baraka’s “changing same” is similar to what Ishmael Reed, in
Mumbo Jumbo (1972), calls “Jes Grew.” Discussing Reed’s novel, Nelson
calls the Jes Grew “a meme of African diasporic culture,” thus emphasiz-
ing the dimension of transmission (Nelson 2002, 6). In Reed’s case one
can see how the literary treatment of music is an intimate part of the
experience of black people. Reed, in other words, confirms Nyong’o’s
statement.
According to Nyong’o, black music is related to many questions, one
of which, crucially, is “a question of timbre” (Nyong’o 2014, 173).
Timbre, he argues, should be understood according to Henriques’s defi-
nition as “the synaesthetic idea of sound ‘colour’” (Henriques 2011, 55)
that at the same time “resist[s] notation” (Henriques 2011, 54). This is
in many ways a classical definition, where sound and “colour” meet.
While it may be said to “resist notation” (of interest for the discussion
of literacy), one could similarly claim that the act of instrumentation is
a guide in bringing these colours to sound. Understanding sounds as
being differently coloured, a musical score is a guide to realization

where these different colours are given sound. The sonic difference
between a clarinet and a trumpet will thus make itself heard. In a music
not based on written scores, these negotiations will have to take place
differently, but in principle will have similar effects. Such an argument
can also lead to a question about whether the timbre of black music is
different from other music; this is a much more complicated question,
as it necessitates a definition of what it tries to describe and subscribe,
the blackness of black music. While timbre will often be seen as “sound
colour” it can equally well be a way to describe different “voices.” This
would be a version of “having your own voice,” which could be trans-
lated as having your own sound, and thus points to how these differ-
ences can be described. In “Improvised Music after 1950” Lewis writes,
“Part of telling your own story is developing your own ‘sound’” (Lewis
1996, 117); this statement is important for my argument in what fol-
lows. In this article Lewis also makes a distinction between “Afrological”
and “Eurological” to highly interesting effect. In the context of sound
he claims, “an Afrological notion of an improviser’s ‘sound’ may be
seen as analogous to the Eurological concept of compositional ‘style’”
(Lewis 1996, 117).
In his article, “The Avenging Angel of Creation/Destruction: Black
Music and the Afro-technological in the Science Fiction of Henry
Dumas and Samuel R. Delany,” Salim Washington takes up the same
question, where in addition to the improvisers’ style, he also argues for
what he terms “the Afro-technological,” as a cultural-technological use
of, among other things, musical instruments. Washington explores how
different sonic dimensions are valued in African-American music that
would be avoided within a European—or conservatory—tradition. In
this, the “sound” Lewis is writing about is related to technology in a
new way along the lines both he and Washington advance (Washington
2008). These sonic dimensions, the colour of one’s “own sound” as well
as the understanding of an Afrological approach to improvisation and
music making, are all part of the history of black music. But, Nyong’o
claims, “The transformation and reverberations, across time and space,
of the synaesthetic idea of black music cannot be distilled into a pat
ethnological formula” (Nyong’o 2014, 173). The use of the term rever-
beration in relation to transformation—across time and space—is

interesting. While it is not the same as “the changing same”—the latter
is more temporal, the former more spatial—there are some correspon-
dences in how these dimensions can be thought. It is as if echo becomes a
sonic term related both to transformation, transmission, and
alterations.
Black studies, in its diasporic variegation and antagonism, provides the

context within which Weheliye and Henriques pursue their shared investi-
gation into ‘the lower frequencies’ that Ralph Ellison famously evoked in
Invisible Man. The radical tradition of black communication on the lower
frequencies is what enables Weheliye and Henriques to challenge Western
epistemic illiteracy in the field of black sound. (Nyong’o 2014, 174)
The reference to Ellison is a frequent one, but there is still potential in

teasing out what it means, and the relation between Ellison’s novel and a
“radical tradition of black communication” is of interest, as it points to
the possibility of a hidden tradition—hidden, that is, from the hege-
monic, Western literate tradition—of an underground, or perhaps of a
counter-history. Perhaps the counter-history is a sonic one, with the sonic
playing the role of the other in opposition to the written. Sound rather
than sense, some would say, in that the sonic is often understood as non-
signification, found within studies of poetry but reduced in importance
when dealing with meaning of texts. The figure of “the lower frequencies”—
a figure from a literary text but also heard, for example, in dub—plays
into this “hidden” history, almost as a kind of ghost story. As Weheliye
writes, in Phonographies,
Echo, along with reverb, and delay, to this day, remains one of dub’s core
features, inserting spatiality into the musical track, while also messing with
its temporal dimensions; in fact, the spatial effect of echo is achieved via
the stuttering and dispersion of the music’s time. Also, the term ‘dub’ itself
not only indicates a doubling or copying but carries homonymic overtones
of duppy (the Jamaican word for spirit and/or ghost) so that the dub version
of a song provides not only its shadow but also its spectral other than ini-
tially appeared on the flipside of a record, but eventually became much
more popular than its ‘original’ source. (Weheliye 2005, 102)
This, he argues, is where Freud’s theory of the uncanny and DuBois’s

notion of double consciousness meet, in some sense altering each other.
It is thus not only Ellison who is important here, but also DuBois, and
Weheliye illustrates how literary texts are important for thinking sound.
In addition to the literary references there are theoretical references of
importance. The Freudian is one, where the doppelganger is central for
Weheliye’s understanding of the uncanny. The uncanny in German (das
Unheimliche) can literally be translated as not-at-home-ness, and could
thus also describe the diasporic condition. This in turn may lead to
thinking about an origin, a home, whereas it would seem that in
Weheliye’s reading the point of origin is always already doubled. When
he combines these interpretations of Freud and DuBois something very
interesting appears, something almost like a definition of Afro-modernity.
The combination of a double existence and double consciousness comes
across as perhaps the paradigmatic experience of modernity.8 This is tem-
poralized with references to spirits, ghosts, and spectrality. The haunting
dimension can be said to point to another history, and such a hauntol-
ogy—to use Jacques Derrida’s term—is another version, another way of
conceptualizing the counter-history of modernity that Gilroy writes.9
There is an additional dimension I want to pull out of this discourse, and
it has to do with metaphors for history. The spectrality or haunting may
not be visual at all; it might be that shadow is not the best word to
describe it. That is, the counter-history might not be a shadow history.
Perhaps it should be seen as a sonic history, as an echo, as reverberation.
This seems to be the implication as well of Weheliye’s introduction,
where he refers to Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s classic
Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), but, following Jonathan Sterne,
changes the terms to an “Ensoniment,” and as such underlines the acous-
tic dimension (Adorno and Horkheimer 1999; Weheliye 2005, 10;
Sterne 2003, 2). It is nothing new to argue that there are a number of
parallel histories in so-called modernity. What I find of interest is how,
by way of Weheliye, it can become clearer how this might be challenged
by a combination of the acoustic and the African, and thus that a black
sound studies, or a sonic Afro-modernity as Weheliye calls it, comes to
the fore to tell something about the categories having been taken for
granted within modernity as well.
In Nyong’o’s discussion of Weheliye, he too employs the term “Afro-

sonic modernity.” With this term another engagement with the discussion
of the blackness-sound relation is taken to the fore, and it highlights the
history of modernity for these discourses. Whereas modernity could refer
straightforwardly to a historical context, in what could be called “moder-
nity studies,” the term modernity is still being negotiated, because black-
ness—or “the Afro-”—offers a different understanding of modernity
along the lines of Gilroy’s counterculture of modernity described in The
Black Atlantic. The term “sonic Afro-modernity” is Weheliye’s own, and
he introduces it by way of technology:
And, while the appearance of the phonograph suggests the most obvious
point of entry into ‘sonic Afro-modernity’, given the clearly technological
dimensions of this summit so central to twentieth-century global culture,
we will have to cast a wider and differently tuned historical net that consid-
ers the vexed place of writing – both in a limited and general sense – and
orality vis-à-vis New World slavery, in order to come to grips with the
singularity of black sounds as they ricochet between ‘humans’ and modern
informational technologies. (Weheliye 2005, 3f )
Again there is a possibility for a sonic counter-history, as Weheliye

interrogates the “vexed place of writing […] and orality” as an important
part of sonic Afro-modernity, connected as well with technological devel-
opments. The phrase “the singularity of black sounds” is highly signifi-
cant, and is related to the importance of the sonic for Afro-diasporic
cultures.
The sonic remains an important zone from and through which to theorize
the fundamentality of Afro-diasporic formations to the currents of Western
modernity, since this field remains, to put it bluntly, the principal modality
in which Afro-diasporic cultures have been articulated – though clearly it
has not been the only one. (Weheliye 2005, 5)
Such an argument about the sonic as the principal modality of

articulation contributes to marking a major difference between the
Western and Afro-diasporic understandings of modernity. By dis-
cussing the question about the place of sound and the sonic, these
differences come into play, and questions about the senses (hearing ver-
sus seeing) and about media (writing versus orality) become crucial.
Weheliye’s argument seems to presuppose that the answer to questions
about the “principal modality of cultural articulation” at the same time
will point to cultural differences. It is not, however, as if he thereby
claims any essentialist difference between Europe and Africa, as based in
the eyes versus the ear, in vision versus sound, in literature versus music.
Such a reading would be reductive. Rather, his claim at the same time
articulates how historical configurations have led to different modalities,
something related to what he calls “the rhizomatic reverberations of
sonic Afro-modernity” (Weheliye 2005, 5). This phrase at the same time
echoes the introduction to Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic: “The first part
addresses some conceptual problems common to English and African-
American versions of cultural studies which, I argue, share a nationalis-
tic focus that is antithetical to the rhizomorphic, fractal structure of the
transcultural, international formation I call the black Atlantic” (Gilroy
1993a, 4). If Gilroy’s “black Atlantic” is understood as another name for
what Weheliye calls “Afro-modernity,” then the rhizomatic and rhizo-
morphic converge, in the sense that they both point towards a complex
formation rather than any binary structure. And this is a question about
“black” and “white,” as well as about “the ‘Afro-’.”
In discussing “the singularity of black sounds” it is important to avoid
what Louis Chude-Sokei, in The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black
Technopoetics, calls a “false universalism.” In Chude-Sokei’s critique, the
“false universalism” is an African American blackness, where other black-
nesses are undertheorized or hidden from discourse. And this is an issue
when dealing with black sounds as well as Afrofuturism. He claims that
the use of the term “diaspora” hides some of the differences, not necessar-
ily because the term is wrong, but because of a perceived issue with
Afrofuturism basing the discourse about race on an American racial poli-
tics. The connections, the networks blacks exist in, will be different in
relation to other racial politics in the Caribbean or on the African conti-
nent. One should probably also include blacks in Europe, where there
would be other distinctions as well related to former colonial powers, to
different languages, to migrations, and so on. These differences, while
important, will not be adequately handled in this book. While I hope my
discussions of black sound (as well as Afrofuturism) can come into

dialogue with a number of discourses, the material I will discuss is pri-
marily African-American.
In The Sound of Culture Chude-Sokei writes about how music in the
texts he analyses “function[s] less as music per se and more as [a sign] of
technological reproduction,” and thus consequently shows a relationship
between technological reproduction and race (Chude-Sokei 2016, 8).
This, he argues, is also why he focuses on sound rather than on music. I
am curious to understand what is meant when he writes that “the focus
on music rather than sound is to invite considerations this book isn’t pri-
marily interested in, such as lyrical meaning, rhythmic analysis, specific
musical history, or musicology. This more general use of sound is instead
part of this book’s desire to participate in a number of cultural, intellec-
tual, and artistic conversations […]” (Chude-Sokei 2016, 8). The italic
on sound for me echoes Lewis’s question in “After Afrofuturism” quoted
above: “What does the sound – not dress, visual iconography, witty enig-
mas, or suggestive song titles – what can the sound tell us about the
Afrofuture?” (Lewis 2008a, 141). Here too sound is italicized, but what is
more important is that in discussing “sound” it seems to be necessary to
remove everything else. In one sense, then, sound is something that is left
when everything that is not sound is taken away; it is a kind of remainder.
There are similarities here to how Michel Chion discusses the “voice.” In
The Voice in Cinema he writes about the elusiveness of the voice, and then
asks, “Once you’ve eliminated everything that is not the voice itself – the
body that houses it, the words it carries, the notes it sings, the traits by
which it defines a speaking person and the timbres that color it, what’s
left?” (Chion 1999a, 1). Indeed, what is left? A similar question, I will
claim, can be raised when it comes to sound. What is left when every-
thing that is not sound is eliminated? What I find challenging is in a sense
whether this entity—sound—actually exist at all. What if sound is a rela-
tional entity existing in the interstices of a number of other entities, where
the sonic is the result of these entities’ interactions? In other words, what
if sound is something emerging from a meeting between a number of
different entities, and that it is this meeting, this interstice that con-
structs or establishes “sound”? From such a perspective the analysis and
discussion of sound would not be a practice of removal or elimination,
but would rather be a practice where a situation or a meeting is analysed

both in relation to concrete entities as well as the space of their meeting.
This space would be a sonic space, a resonance chamber of interactions,
but would at the same time constitute an atmosphere or a context. My
hope is that analysing such interstices would also be concrete, in the sense
that they are a result of historical and social circumstances—or, stated
even more generally, they are cultural. I am in no doubt that the above
authors would agree that sound is cultural, and that analysing sound
always also is part of a cultural analysis.
In my reading of Lewis the cultural dimensions become clear when
later in his article he writes: “Broadening the conversation would allow a
wider range of theorizing about the triad of blackness, sound, and tech-
nology […]” (Lewis 2008a, 142). Such a broadening of the conversation
is to be done on multiple levels. The first one is about the musical acts to
be discussed. One reason for this, a highly telling one, is “to interrupt the
maleness of the Afrofuturist music canon” (Lewis 2008a, 142). Such a
reference to the maleness of the canon has been voiced by others as well,
and while many of the acts in the musical canon are important to keep in
the conversation, other stories can be told, and the discussion will become
better, by challenging the male domination. At the same time it is clear
that it is not necessarily the Afrofuturist canon that is Lewis’s main object
of inquiry. Rather, his approach is “theorizing about the triad of black-
ness, sound, and technology.” The second dimension in broadening the
conversation is also about adding more musical acts (composers and per-
formers), this time including “nonpopular music” (Lewis 2008a, 142).10
In some sense both of these dimensions can be said to be the same, a
challenge to a hegemony found within the Afrofuturist discourse, where
some music is valued and other music is seemingly neglected.
Lewis’s reference to “the triad of blackness, sound, and technology”
corresponds with Chude-Sokei’s discussion of a “race/technology dyad”
(Chude-Sokei 2016, 4). These approaches are crucial for my attempt to
think what a “black sound studies” could be. Both Lewis’s triad and
Chude-Sokei’s dyad collect blackness/race and technology, and whereas
“sound” is explicitly mentioned by Lewis, in Chude-Sokei it is integrated
into the dyad in the sense that it is a nexus in the dyad: “these interactions
with sound, race, and technology – or sound as the primary nexus of race
and technology – can and will be traced back to the jazz age and the
assumptions around jazz as a product of racist and nationalist notions of
black primitivism and simultaneously of new technologies of massifica-
tion” (Chude-Sokei 2016, 7). It is, then, slightly different formulations
that bring out this interstice in both authors, and they would probably
agree on the importance of these three categories or terms.
What, then, happens when one focuses upon blackness and sound,
and tries—for the time being—to remove technology? I am not saying
technology can be removed. With the definitions of technology employed
by Lewis and Chude-Sokei it is rather to be understood as an even broader
concept than within technology studies, one reason for this being what
could be called a “black technology” or what Salim Washington calls the
“Afro-technological.” Chude-Sokei would perhaps have some issues with
Washington’s term, as he writes, in relation to Afrofuturism, that his per-
spective is “as committed to problematizing the ‘Afro’ as it is with provid-
ing the historical ground and alternate philosophical models for visions
of the possible that depend on race and technology” (Chude-Sokei 2016,
14). If he would “problematize the ‘Afro’” of Afrofuturism he may do the
same with Washington’s discussion of “Afro-technological,” but problem-
atizing is not the same as arguing that the term is not useful. If I read him
correctly it is rather about discussing the prefix within a historical and
philosophical understanding. It is, however, of interest that in his intro-
duction Chude-Sokei both wants to “problematize the ‘Afro’” of
Afrofuturism, thus challenging the prefix, while simultaneously writing
about how a number of futurisms could end up “suffer[ing] for want of a
suffix”:
But perhaps nothing has been as influential to the use of technopoetics as

the still-controversial Italian futurism. Its importance is worthy of note if
only for being the first futurism, without which Afro-futurism, astrofutur-
ism, queer futurism, Chicana-futurism, Kongo-futurism, and others would
suffer for want of a suffix. (Chude-Sokei 2016, 12)
In other words, there are reasons to be critical of both the prefix and the
suffix; one could end up needing other terms.11 A related problem—or
issue—with the term Afrofuturism in Chude-Sokei’s discussion is how
the notion of “Afro-” hides a particular African-American bias. The

discourse of Afrofuturism was at first primarily related to African-

American expressions and an African-American context. This is not in
itself a problem, but if this context is hidden in the description, an issue
arises as to whether a generalized “blackness” is at stake too. It is with a
focus on the Caribbean that Chude-Sokei raises this critique first and
foremost, and this is central for the possibility of discussing a “black sound
studies” (cf. Chude-Sokei 2016, 167). When Chude-Sokei discusses the
Caribbean context he does so partly while challenging “some of Afro-
futurism’s African Americanness.” The Caribbean, and not least Jamaican,
influence on “techniques of sound and on machines of sonic reproduc-
tion” may be lost—even while referenced in “classical cyberpunk.”12 And
this possible loss is a result of a “false universalism”: “Without a unique
trajectory the distinctiveness of the Caribbean becomes lost in the false
universalism of a first-world blackness that can masquerade its specific
agendas and cultural privileges by way of the term diaspora” (Chude-Sokei
2016, 167f ). The danger of the “false universalism” is important if any
notion of a “black sound studies” shall have validity. While “black music”
is more than the collection of musical genres emerging from the African-
American community, these genres are often given more attention in the
discourse. That the history of popular music—white and black—has had
a primary focus on European and North American genres or develop-
ments seems clear as well, and in addition the more narrow history of jazz
more often than not begins in the Southern states of the USA, and where
“white” parameters and “black” parameters—harmony and rhythm, if
formulated very rough—understood as a dichotomy, have been central
for writing such a history. Within the history of jazz the introduction of
so-called “Latin” elements—rhythm and instruments—interrupts the lin-
ear, “bi-polar” history, and contributes to a complexity similar to the one
Chude-Sokei argues for. If the distinctions between musical forms and
elements are part of the conversation this dimension helps to challenge
the universality as well. Can one at all operate with a notion of “black
sound studies” and at the same time avoid what Chude-Sokei refers to as
“false universalism”? Or does the very notion of “black” at the same time
partake in such a “universalism”? I think Weheliye’s way of describing
black—in an arguably more pragmatic sense—can help, if one at the
An Afrofuturist Canon 21
same time keeps in mind that the notion is shorthand for a subset of a
superset that does not exist. In other words, the term “black” does not
refer to any universal entity, but is an umbrella term for a diversity of dif-
ferent positions all having in common that they are described or describe
themselves as “black.”
An Afrofuturist Canon

In the 25 years since the term Afrofuturism was introduced there has
emerged something like an Afrofuturist canon when it comes to musical
acts (as well as literature and film). There is nothing surprising in this, and
arguably nothing problematic either, but it may be well worth thinking
about. With this book I hope to participate in discussions of the Afrofuturist
canon. Canon formation may well be inevitable as some of the cases
(musicians, composers, bands) are unavoidable points of reference for any
discussion of Afrofuturism . The most obvious example of this is Sun Ra.
Paul Youngquist’s recent book A Pure Solar World (2016) has as its subtitle
“Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism,” and there is nothing surprising in
his choice. To me this obvious dimension has led to a question about the
sound of Afrofuturism before Sun Ra, i.e., are there musical acts (recorded
or live) in the years before Sun Ra’s first recordings (around 1956) that
should also be counted as Afrofuturist?13 Obviously one should also count
Sun Ra’s music prior to his first recordings, and, if one follows the story of
the movie Space is the Place (1973, directed by John Coney) there are rea-
sons to move back in time at least to “Chicago, 1943” where one of the
early scenes takes place, and where Sonny Ray, Sun Ra’s character, is play-
ing the piano in a club. While this scene is fictional rather than historical,
Sun Ra’s piano playing has the effect of changing the whole surroundings,
a fire breaks out, glasses explode, and even the piano begins to burn, all as
a result of Sun Ra’s “noisy” music. In a sense what is happening in this
scene resembles what happens in Henry Dumas’s story, “Will the Circle
Be Unbroken?”, where the music, or the particular sounds played, kills the
white audience members. The power of music in these two scenes is simi-
lar, although the racial dimension is not equally present in this particular
scene of Space is the Place.14 But even 1943 is not the “birth” of
Afrofuturism, and one of the things to c hallenge is the understanding of a

birth in the first place. It would be better to think of Afrofuturism as an
emergent phenomenon. That Sun Ra’s movie begins in Chicago in 1943,
however, is important not only in the story of Space is the Place, but also in
the story of Sun Ra’s music. His move to Chicago, establishing the first
version of the Arkestra, and forming more explicitly the “mythical” system
he relates to are all crucial dimensions not only for his musical oeuvre, but
for the history of Afrofuturism. The canon formation of Afrofuturism is to
a large extent a narrative history of musical developments after Sun Ra.
More precisely, one would have to say that “after” is not the completely
correct term, as many of the acts begin recording while the Arkestra con-
tinued their journey, but my point is more the linear narrative of history
found within such a line of thought.
John Corbett’s chapter “Brothers from Another Planet: The Space
Madness of Lee “Scratch” Perry, Sun Ra, and George Clinton,” from his
book Extended Play: Sounding off From John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein
(1994), is an important text in describing some of the founding brothers
of Afrofuturist sound. Corbett does not use the term “Afrofuturism”—
his book is written more or less simultaneously with Dery’s article “Black
to the Future”—but he writes about the same phenomenon. He is also
interviewed in The Last Angel of History, and both in his book and in the
film he underlines the similarities between Lee “Scratch” Perry, Sun Ra,
and George Clinton. In the very beginning of his chapter he writes:
Within the distinct worlds of reggae, jazz, and funk, Lee Perry, Sun Ra, and
George Clinton have constructed worlds of their own, futuristic environs
that subtly signify on the marginalization of black culture. These new dis-
cursive galaxies utilize a set of tropes and metaphors of space and alien-
ation, linking their common diasporic African history to a notion of
extraterrestriality. (Corbett 1994, 7)
When Corbett singles out Lee Perry, Sun Ra, and George Clinton he
makes the same gesture Kodwo Eshun will do somewhat later. When
Eshun discusses Perry, however, he does so in an implicit critique of
Rastafari, highlighting technology rather than religion, which one could
argue has consequences for later interpretations of Afrofuturism—not
least those which engage more with spirituality (even spirituality as a

technology) than the cybernetics and electronics of music production.
Eshun writes that Lee Perry’s studio production is “far from Rastafari’s
flat-earth metaphysics” and “fundamentalist blood and fire,” and that
“The Upsetter tape into the secret life of sound machines, opens the
cybernetics of the studio” (Eshun 1998, 62). This focus upon studio tech-
nology and sound is great, but simultaneously uses a somewhat narrow
concept of technology. Corbett seems to disagree with Eshun’s conde-
scending “flat-earth metaphysics” understanding of Rastafari, and rather
points to how
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s work in dub reggae is particularly interesting in its

interrogation of the line between techno-world and spirit-world. When
queried on the origin of dub’s use of sound effects and various eccentric
studio techniques, Perry responded that they were ‘the ghosts in my com-
ing out’. In fact, in Jamaican context the word dub has etymological con-
nections with ‘dup’, or ‘dupe’, patois for ‘ghost’. (Corbett 1994, 20)
And while Eshun’s book is written after Corbett’s, I still think it makes
sense to see their internal arguments like this. Corbett also references the
relation between dub/dup and ghost that Weheliye echoes, thus opening
the field of reverberations.15 There is, according to Perry himself, proba-
bly a ghost in the machine, but rather than playing with words, it seems
important to me to include this ghost-world—or spirit-world—as part of
the technological context of dub, a very different technology than the
“techno-world” Eshun prefers.
Many familiar Afrofuturist tropes are in place in Corbett’s chapter,
and he is writing about “the same” phenomenon as Dery, Eshun,
Sinker, and Tate, arguably the “founding fathers” of the Afrofuturist
discourse. It is important to underline “discourse” here, as the very
metaphor of “founding fathers” contains and implies a masculine
dimension that has been the focus of criticism. Whereas examples can
be found both of female scholars and writers, but also musicians,
within the Afrofuturist field, it is still important to remember and
watch out for this potential male—not to say masculinist—bias. In
“Black to the Future” Dery interviews Greg Tate, Samuel Delany, and
Tricia Rose—but I sense that other authors quote Tate and Delany
more often than Rose, although truth be told, Dery’s introduction is
the primary source of quotes. Alondra Nelson is crucial in summariz-
ing16 the current developments of Afrofuturism in her introduction to
Social Text’s Afrofuturism-issue (2002), and that same issue also con-
siderably broadens the perspective on issues of gender. Together with
Samuel Delany, Octavia E. Butler is commonly referenced as one of
the most important early Afrofuturists when it comes to literature.
But the question regarding women in the history of Afrofuturist
music or sonic production is still important to address, and it is also
important in understanding how the canon was formed during these
last 25 years. I am not saying that there are no female composers men-
tioned in Eshun’s important book, More Brilliant Than The Sun, per-
haps foremost among them Alice Coltrane, but it should not be
controversial to claim that his story is a story of experimental male
composers and musicians first and foremost, embedded, it would
seem, in a modernist/avant-garde narrative where experiments and
“new” musical expressions are what drives history, and where the
avant-garde at any point will outplay more popular or mainstream
expressions.
Although the three musicians Corbett singles out are of different
(earthly) generations—Sun Ra arrived on planet Earth, in Birmingham,
Alabama in 1914; Lee Perry was born in Hanover, Jamaica in 1936; and
George Clinton was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina in 1941—it is
not a generational inspiration he writes about. Rather, and in line with
the understanding of emergence, he is occupied with how these three
musicians/composers arrive at somewhat similar “mythologies” or tropes
individually, without knowing about each other. “What is remarkable,
uncanny perhaps,” he writes, “about the story of these three musicians,
even in their merely mortal incarnation, is how they have independently
developed such similar myths” (Corbett 1994, 11). While Corbett ini-
tially uses the term “futurist,” later in his piece he refers to the “mytholo-
gies” of Sun Ra, Lee Perry, and George Clinton as “black science fiction”
(Corbett 1994, 19). With this latter term he agrees with Greg Tate, who
appears to prefer this term rather than “Afrofuturism,” even if it is the
same music they are discussing. These different choices in terminology

allow for relating to “black sound studies” as an explicitly black version
of what Eshun calls “sonic fiction,” even if Eshun’s use of the term is
already dominated by black music. For me this interrogation of different
terms is not about finding the right term. The term Afrofuturism has
gotten a life of its own and will continue to be used, and to a large extend
I have no problems with that. What “black sound studies” may do, how-
ever, is to contribute to delimitating the music discussed under the term
Afrofuturism, or perhaps better, make clearer some of the borders of
Afrofuturist music with respect to other similar, related musical forms
and acts. By similar or related I am thinking about questions of genre.
One of the great benefits of the Afrofuturist discourse is that it can be
used to discuss music across a number of genres. On the other hand, this
multi-generic discussion may be seen as a challenge to establishing a
canon, because neither the criteria used nor the manner by which differ-
ent musical compositions are compared may be widely agreen upon. If a
canon formation is, among other things, about including—and thus by
necessity excluding—tracks from a list of “most important” or even
“best” compositions, then some criteria for comparison are necessary. As
already stated, it seems that the Afrofuturist canon has been estab-
lished—over time—in conjunction with a discourse on experiments in
music, in how “new” music is established by pushing historical develop-
ments forward. There is, however, a less obvious dimension at stake,
where it is the later effects of musical acts that construct the prehistory
of the now. In other words, musicians, when producing their music,
look back in history—to their musical ancestors—and sample or quote
from them, or they are simply inspired by previous composers and acts.
The result of these two different practices may be similar. In other words,
it may be the same composers or musicians that make up the canon (Sun
Ra, for example, will most likely be in the canon as a result of both of
these practices), but the differences are crucial, both in what is deemed
the most important dimension in different contexts, in the understand-
ing of history underlying these practices, as well as in the different ways
these two practices keep the canon open and dynamic. One could, for
example, see Graham Lock’s Blutopia as an attempt to inscribe Duke
Ellington as one predecessor of Sun Ra and Anthony Braxton, based on
how the chapters and narratives of his book are put to work in his think-
ing. Ellington, then, is, through the process of revision, understood dif-
ferently than one would expect from a more mainstream history. What
Lock is doing—and he too writes without using the term “Afrofuturism”—
is in many ways in conjunction with Afrofuturist ways of thinking,
including Eshun’s “Further Consideration” as well as contributors in The
Last Angel of History, where revisionism becomes intimately related to
what I would like to call “sonic time travel.” Such sonic time travel, and
the notion of revision—Lock’s book (1999) is subtitled “Visions of the
Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington,
and Anthony Braxton”—would complicate the historical narrative of a
canon. A subtle example is in how Lock puts Ellington in between Sun
Ra and Braxton in his own narrative, thus marginally breaking with the
ordinary, linear, narrative logic of history. It is not that I would argue
against some kind of linearity, and this is obviously also an important
lens for reading history. The challenge is rather to read history multidi-
mensionally, so as not to make everything dependent upon linearity.
With this in mind, however, the current canon—if that is what it is—
can still fruitfully be used as a point of orientation, and while the histo-
riographical qualifications are suspended for some time, it may be time
to move beyond the single origin of Sun Ra or the triple origin of Sun
Ra, George Clinton, and Lee “Scratch” Perry, and present some of the
linearities found in the literature.
Taking Dery’s “Black to the Future” as a point of departure, references
to music come after Dery has claimed that “African-American voices have
other stories to tell about culture, technology, and things to come” (Dery
1994, 182). “If there is an Afrofuturism,” he adds, “it must be sought in
unlikely places, constellated from far-flung points,” and then references
the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the movies The Brother from
Another Planet (John Sayles) and Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden), and the
music of Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Herbie Hancock, Bernie Worrell,
Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelic, and Lee “Scratch” Perry” (Dery 1994,
182). He is thus in agreement with Corbett about the origin of Afrofuturist
music, while simultaneously continuing its history into his own contem-
porary time. These references taken together offers a sonic answer to
Dery’s implied question. If African-American voices have other stories to
tell about culture, technology, and things to come, the question would be
“how do these stories sound?” This question is strikingly similar to “what
can the sound tell us about the Afrofuture?” (Lewis 2008a, 141). While it
is not always clear in Eshun’s book, there are similarities between his
approach and Lewis’s, in the sense that they want to take words and other
“external” references away and focus on the music or sound. This is part
of the definition of what Eshun calls “sonic fiction”:
But the main point is that I’m trying to bring out what I call the Sonic
Fiction of records, which is the entire series of things which swing into
action as soon as you have music with no words. As soon as you have music
with no words, then everything else becomes more crucial: the label, the
sleeve, the picture on the cover, the picture on the back, the titles. All these
become the jump-off points for your route through the music, or for the
way the music captures you and abducts you into its world. So all these
things become really important. So a lot of the main sources of the book
are from Sleevenotes; they’re the main thing. A lot of the book talks about
Sleevenote artists. It talks about the guys who did the covers for those Miles
Davis sleeves, this guy Mati Klarwein, another guy Robert Springett, who
did the covers for Herbie Hancock’s early 70s album. There’s different
interfaces between different Sonic Fictions, between the title and the music.
Hendrix would say, ‘What I’m doing is a painting in sound’. And you can
say reversely with the Sleevenotes. The reason the Sleevenote pictures cap-
ture you is because they’re a sounding in pain. If you listen to them, you
imagine them as weird visions conjured up through the music. It’s really
strange. (Eshun 1998, 178f )
Eshun’s rejection (if that is not too strong a word) seems to be in accor-
dance with Lewis’s argument, as does the term sonic fiction. But Lewis is,
in a sense, more radical than Eshun, in that he also wants to reject the visual
dimensions surrounding the music, those dimensions Eshun—a bit para-
doxically—seems to highlight. Lewis would, at least at first, focus upon the
sound alone, and bring out the other stories from the sound as such,
whereas Eshun seems to be occupied with the images (what Lewis calls
visual iconography) and, even more paradoxically, by the titles (“suggestive
song titles,” Lewis writes). The discrepancies between Eshun and Lewis are
in many ways the nodes where the term “black sound studies” come into
my own discourse, as there is a real question about whether it is primarily

the titles and the visual dimensions that bring out the science fiction dimen-
sion in much of the music at stake in this book as well as in the Afrofuturist
discourse at large. We can formulate this as a question related to Lewis’s:
would one think science fiction when listening to Sun Ra’s “There Are
Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You About),” from Lanquidity (1979),
if one did not know the title of Sun Ra’s composition? Is the title directing
our interpretation into one particular line of thought, where a different line
would be chosen if the composition had a more “neutral” title, such as
“Composition 21,” also known as CK7(GN), from Together Alone (1971),
to take an example from Anthony Braxton? It is almost impossible to
answer any such question without more or less suspending a knowledge we
already have, and thus take the focus upon the sounds in a heuristic sense.
This may be fruitful, also for the delineation of whatever Afrofuturist
sounds may be—and, not least, whether one would see Afrofuturist sounds
as a subset to the more overall (superset) of black sounds.
Due to its focus upon music and sound, Eshun’s More Brilliant Than
The Sun is a key text for the establishing of an Afrofuturist canon. The
book, he writes, is “a study of the visions of the future in music from Sun
Ra to 4 Hero” (Eshun 1998, 176). Moving into the 1980s and 90s it is
clear that techno and hip-hop are crucial genres to consider in the discus-
sion of Afrofuturism. Examples from R&B are also at stake. And jazz
musicians may or may not be seen as continuing in veins similar to earlier
Afrofuturism. Arguably, the most interesting dimension of the Afrofuturist
canon from a more narrow point of view of musicology or popular music
studies is how most musical genres found in the history of “popular
music” since the 1950s are found also within Afrofuturism, and thus that
this canon moves across genres. This raises questions as to how the canon
was established in the first place, but also to how the canon is main-
tained, how it continues, and how it is challenged. As already mentioned,
a number of authors have criticized the avant-garde or experimental bias
within the Afrofuturist discourse, and how this bias has excluded more
popular expressions.
The criticism of Afrofuturism—or of the discourse on Afrofuturism—
for being too occupied with the avant-garde has something to it. But
pointing this out may add more problems than it solves. Firstly, it is
important to figure out what is meant by avant-garde in this particular

context, where it is not necessarily obvious. Secondly, there arises an issue
of defining what the opposite of avant-garde would mean, not because
thinking in oppositions or dichotomies is the only way to grasp these
questions, but because such oppositions dominate the discourse of the
avant-garde, making such an othering almost inevitable. The other of the
avant-garde, however, adds to the question an even broader context of
inquiry, as the racialization of music cultures (to focus on music solely, as
these questions could also be seen as relevant for other art forms) is pretty
obvious, and leads to huge differences in how Earth Wind & Fire on the
one hand and Anthony Braxton on the other—to take two examples—
are framed within a popular/avant-garde dimension. According to Marlo
David the discourse on music within Afrofuturism—she primarily writes
about Eshun—has focused on “a number of radical black music styles –
electronic music and experimental jazz, for example,” and thus has “typi-
cally” left “mainstream black music behind” (David 2007, 696). As a
description of the music discussed in Eshun’s book her criticism makes
sense, but from the point of view of today, almost 20 years after Eshun’s
book, it would seem that the Afrofuturist canon is broader than ever. The
canon still seems to be dominated by Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Lee
“Scratch” Perry, via Earth Wind & Fire, Labelle, and Herbie Hancock, to
Janelle Monáe, Flying Lotus, and Jeff Mills. But there are a number of
other musical acts being discussed within the framework of Afrofuturism.
And the canon is both loose and open, in a constant process of becoming
rather than something fixed, and both adding new acts following in simi-
lar veins and employing new perspectives on the past continually expands
the conversation. Jason King voiced a critique similar to David’s at a
conference in 2004, as told by Nabeel Zuberi in his article “Is This The
Future? Black Music and Technology Discourse.”
As Jason King remarked at an Experience Music Project conference in

2004, the Afrofuturist canon of techno and hip hop is also selectively male
and heterosexist. It prefers music without vocals and ignores recording art-
ists such as Earth Wind & Fire, The Undisputed Truth, Missy Elliot,
Labelle, and Sylvester. R & B, soul, disco, and house music with female
and transgender voices have also drawn on the tropes of sf in their work.
(Zuberi 2007, 290)
Preferring “music without vocals” seems to be a bygone phenomenon,

and the artists King mentions are today part of the Afrofuturist discourse.
Earth Wind & Fire is mentioned in Eshun’s More Brilliant Than The Sun,
although with a focus on the visual dimensions of their act, and will be
discussed at length later in this book. Sylvester is given an essay of his
own by Reynaldo Anderson in Dancecult’s Afrofuturism issue (2013).
Sylvester’s visual resemblance with Sun Ra in some photos also provokes
a discussion on how an aesthetic of Afrofuturism can bring similarities
across musical differences into play, in other words, how looks are impor-
tant in establishing context.17 But while the Afrofuturist discourse has
broadened substantially over the last decades there is still a grain of truth
to King’s statement. There are, for example, good reasons to ask why
female artists have been discussed much less often than men in the canon
and why it has come to be dominated by males. Questions of gender and
sexuality are also important, as gender and genre are intimately inter-
twined, both in discourse and in the analysis of discourses. In discussing
the history of jazz, for example, there also seems to be less focus on female
musicians than would be expected, and while there might be historical
reasons for this—the rather few female musicians one could discuss—
that argument is not really valid when it comes to Afrofuturist music,
where there are a number of musicians who obviously could be discussed.
There are changes, though, and these changes are important. But one can
almost imagine the question, what does this have to do with sound? Are
there “female sounds”? It is also interesting, given the number of impor-
tant writers in today’s literary Afrofuturism, to ask whether the musicians
are underrepresented in the broader field of Afrofuturism. Take Labelle
and Missy Elliott, who King mentions, but also Erykah Badu and Janelle
Monáe. Monáe’s inclusion seems to provide a clear example of how
dynamic the canon is, as her work has been discussed quite a bit under
the Afrofuturism umbrella.18 There is also Grace Jones. Arguably, Alice
Coltrane (whom I return to in Chap. 4) is the female musician most
clearly part of the Afrofuturist discourse throughout its history. I will also
discuss Nicole Mitchell (in Chap. 5).
Among the under-sung examples, one could also take Asha Puthli
singing on two tracks on Ornette Coleman’s 1971 album Science
Fiction—“What Reason Could I Give?” and “All My Life”—and com-
pare with “Space Talk” from Puthli’s album The Devil is Loose (1976). Coleman’s
album would seem clearly defined within avant-garde jazz, whereas Puthli’s are
more difficult to categorize, but in this song there are even disco elements.
Where are “high” and “low,” “popular” and “avant-garde” in this context? There
can be little doubt that the preferred terms employed by writers point to theo-
retical orientations, aesthetic points of view, and that they are thus localized
within a much broader context than indicated by the words writers use. I am
also curious to see how these dimensions of “high” and “low” are historical, and
how historical sources have very differernt points of departure in discussing this
dichotomy. A case in point is Amiri Baraka’s “Changing Same,” where the high
and low seems to be internally intertwined based on a kind of essentialized
blackness. Within the discourse on Afrofuturism, these dimensions of high/low,
mainstream/avant-garde can also be found in the literature and film discussed.
And while many find it problematic to call science fiction and fantasy “low,”
there is the additional issue of finding science fiction written by people of colour,
women, etc.—in short, authors who are not white males. Both the understand-
ing of cultural hierarhices and an increasing number of diverse artists and writers
means indicate change, but these changes are still contested, also with reference
to the “old” understanding of “popular” and “mainstream.”
After Dery offers his much-quoted definition of Afrofuturism, he
opens up the field by arguing that “African-American voices have other
stories to tell about culture, technology, and things to come” (Dery 1994,
182). These three categories are also found in my subtitle, and I use them
to organize my discussions. What this means concretely is that I have
tried to find some of these stories, primarily found in music as some kind
of sonic fiction, and attempted to unfold them by focusing on the three
categories Dery highlights. Thus, some working definitions of “culture,”
“technology,” and “things to come” are necessary, although books could
be written in attempting to clarify what is meant by these categories. The
way I have tried to discuss these fields is by subsuming them under a
particular understanding rather than generalizing what they mean.
Indeed, as Dery points out, these are “other stories” being told by
“African-American voices.” I try to register and retell some of these sto-
ries, based primarily in African-American sources, in particular musical
sources. Music may not be the most obvious medium wherein to look for
stories, but thinking along the lines of Eshun’s notion of sonic fiction,
attempts are made to explicate what the sounds could mean, and how
they could partake in opening up the world and the future. The second
move in working with these categories is for me to see how they interact;
that is to say, rather than viewing them as separate entities, I am occupied
with their different interactions and interstices: how does technology
influence understandings of culture?; what are the roles of technology in
the stories of things to come?; how is culture directed towards the future?;
and so on. These questions follow from Dery’s claim. In addition to
Dery’s three categories, I am also inspired by Lewis’s arguments for broad-
ening the conversation and allowing wider theorizing about “the triad of
blackness, sound, and technology” (Lewis 2008a, 142). Whereas Lewis’s
triad is not identical to Dery’s, they agree on the importance of technol-
ogy. In Lewis’s understanding, however, there are important elements
that in combination with elements from Dery’s discussion present a solid
basis for focusing the discussion I present in this book. Whereas Dery
references African-American voices and culture, and Lewis writes about
blackness, they both write about technology. And where Dery writes
about things to come, Lewis’s article asks the pertinent question “what
can sound tell us about the Afrofuture?” (Lewis 2008a, 141), as such
sound and things to come may be more closely connected than first
assumed. These two triads, then, have guided my writing. One could
imagine them as two triangles, meeting in a three-dimensional space,
where the different angles meet, and where I have attempted to turn these
triangles around and let them interact with each other. These interactions
are then almost a model for my writing, although the text had to be lin-
ear. There are thus echoes throughout the text, where one chapter refer-
ences another, and where, hopefully, together the different chapters make
a bid for what a black sound studies can be.
Notes
1. Black Quantum Futurism https://www.blackquantumfuturism.com
2. Black Speculative Arts Movement https://blackspeculativeartsmove-
ment.wordpress.com
Discography 33
3. The panel can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=bHqihZl_300 Janelle Monáe’s Instagram at https://www.insta-
gram.com/janellemonae/
4. Dery’s article consists of interviews with Greg Tate, Samuel Delany, and
Tricia Rose, with an introduction by Dery. It was first published in South
Atlantic Quarterly, volume 92, number 4, 1993, and later in Dery’s col-
lection Flame Wars (a collection more or less a reprint of the South
Atlantic Quarterly issue). Cf. also Corbett 1994, Eshun 1998, Sinker
1992, and Tate 1992.
5. Nelson writes about this community in her introduction to Social Issue
(Nelson 2002, 9). Cf. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/afrofutur-
ism/info. See also Womack 2013, 18ff.
6. Cf. also Louis Chude-Sokei’s magisterial treatment of similar questions
in his book The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics
(Chude-Sokei 2016).
7. Weheliye’s article “Feenin’: Posthuman Voices in Black Popular Music”
was published in the Afrofuturism issue of Social Text (Weheliye 2002).
His writings are thus one bridge between Afrofuturism and sound
studies.
8. This would also be in accordance with Toni Morrison’s understanding of
black lives in modernity, as told to Paul Gilroy in Small Acts: Thoughts on
the Politics of Black Cultures (Gilroy 1993b).
9. The term “hauntology” is lifted from Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx:
The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International
(Derrida 1994), and has also been used in relation to Afrofuturism in
Mark Fisher “The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology”
(Fisher 2013). Gilroy’s counter-history is not least found in The Black
Atlantic (Gilroy 1993a).
10. The term “nonpopular” is awkward, but understandable, as this is not
about “classical” music. It may not be about “compositional music”
either given the importance of the interrelation between composition
and improvisation. Moreover, the terms avant-garde or experimental
music are not necessarily adequate in this context either. This last point
is important even if Lewis’s book about the AACM is subtitled “The
AACM and American Experimental Music” (Lewis 2008b).
11. In fairness, when Dery defined the term he also wrote that the dimen-
sions he described “might, for want of a better term, be called
‘Afrofuturism’” (Dery 1994, 180), thus implying that the term might
have problems attached to it.
12. This is a reference to William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

13. Sun Ra’s first release, recorded July 12, 1956, is Jazz by Sun Ra, later
titled Sun Song. But there are earlier recordings released on the 1973
album Deep Purple. The oldest tracks on Singles were recorded in 1952.
14. More on Dumas and Sun Ra in Chap. 2.
15. Cf. as well Michael E. Veal, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in
Jamaican Reggae (Veal 2007).
16. Nelson is doing much more than summarizing Afrofuturism, but in this
context that is one dimension to single out.
17. Regarding the relation between Sylvester and Sun Ra it is also of interest
that Julian Priester plays trombone on Sylvester’s Living Proof (1979) and
also played on a number of albums by Sun Ra—Super-Sonic Jazz
(1956b), Jazz by Sun Ra (1956a), Angels and Demons at Play (1965), and
Somewhere Else (1993, recorded 1988–1989). He also plays on Herbie
Hancock’s Mwandishi (1971) and Sextant (1973), with Anthony Braxton
on Composition No. 96 (recorded 1981 and released 1989), and a num-
ber of other albums. Whether this would be enough to warrant a discus-
sion of musical relations between Sylvester and Sun Ra is perhaps an
open question, but an interesting one.
18. I have myself written about Badu as well as Monáe, cf. Steinskog (2016,
2017a, 2017b, forthcoming).
Discography
Coleman, Ornette. 1959. The Shape of Jazz to Come. Atlantic.
———. 1971. Science Fiction. Columbia.
Hancock, Herbie. 1971. Mwandishi. Warner Bros.
———. 1973. Sextant. Columbia.
Puthli, Asha. 1976. The Devil Is Loose. CBS.
Sun Ra. 1956a. Jazz by Sun Ra/Sun Song. Transition.
———. 1956b. Super-Sonic Jazz. El Saturn.
———. 1965. Angels and Demons at Play. El Saturn.
———. 1993. Somewhere Else. Rounder Records.
Sylvester. 1979. Living Proof. Fantasy
Bibliography 35
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———. 2014a. Engendering Phonographies: Sonic Technologies of Blackness.
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———. 2014b. Habeas Viscus: Racialized Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black
Feminist Theories of the Human. Durham: Duke University Press.
Womack, Ytasha L. 2013. Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Culture. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books.
Youngquist, Paul. 2016. A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism.
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Zuberi, Nabeel. 2007. Is This the Future? Black Music and Technology
Discourse. Science Fiction Studies 34 (2): 283–300.
2
Blackness, Technology,
and the Changing Same
In the opening of John Akomfrah’s movie, The Last Angel of History

(1996), the story is told about Robert Johnson, who at a crossroads in the
Deep South of the USA was given a “black secret technology” known as
the blues. The blues, so the story goes, is the origin of all subsequent
black musical forms, from jazz to hip-hop. Thus the film explicates how
this black secret technology moves through the ages as a dimension of
musical history. This movement resembles the “Jes Grew” virus in Ishmael
Reed’s novel Mumbo Jumbo (1972), and whether as technology or virus
this tells us something about transmission. After the narrator of The Last
Angel of History has told us about the black secret technology, the film
fast-forwards 200 years into the future and introduces “the Data Thief.”
The scene is set for a moving back and forth between music, futurity, and
different forms of technology. As one of the early documents introducing
the discourse on Afrofuturism, the film gives hints of what was to come,
but also about the different questions Afrofuturism contributes answers
to. It is also a film where music plays a key role in understanding
Afrofuturism.
In this chapter, I will interrogate further the triad George E. Lewis
describes in “After Afrofuturism,” with the three dimensions of “blackness,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7_2
38 2 Blackness, Technology, and the Changing Same
sound, and technology” (Lewis 2008a, 142). My focus is on sound, but

working with the different dimensions of the triad, a more adequate
understanding of how sound relates to blackness and technology will arise.
The question of technology is a complex one, in that the history of blacks
within modernity testifies to different layers for understanding these rela-
tionships. Following Cauleen Smith, Ytasha L. Womack, in her book
Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, argues that
blackness itself in one particular sense is a technology (Womack 2013, 27).
From a somewhat different angle it has been argued that slavery made the
black body into a kind of proto-robot/cyborg, in combination with under-
standings of the slave as subhuman (Moten 2003; Eshun 1998), and this
too impinges on understandings of technology. The term, in other words,
is more broadly defined than what could be expected at first sight, and this
is one issue Lewis’s foreword brings out. These different dimensions of
technology show the importance of discussing whether blacks are related
to technology in different ways than whites. Following Dery, what could
be called a black technoculture, or what Louis Chude-Sokei refers to as a
“black technopoetics” (2016), should then be understood in its difference
from white technoculture of the “established” understanding within sci-fi
and technology.1 This argument presupposes that the established or nor-
mative understanding of technoculture is “white,” something that can be
argued following an emergent discussion of race and science fiction with
authors like André M. Carrington (2016), De Witt Douglas Kilgore
(2003), and Isiah Lavender III (2011).
If we follow Lewis’s argument closely we can see that sound is the most
important category in his triad. What the triad underlines, however, is
that sound is, in a sense, never alone. Thus, here technology is high-
lighted as a node interrelated with blackness and sound, a fact also lead-
ing to the importance of sonic technologies. The primary sonic
technologies in this discussion are musical instruments, on the one hand,
and the gramophone, as a technology of storage and transmission, on the
other. But even different sonic or musical phenomena can be seen in a
technological light, as when Tricia Rose, writing about rap, argues: “Rap’s
primary force is sonic, and the distinctive, systematic use of rhythm and
sound, especially the use of repetition and musical breaks, are part of a
rich history of New World black traditions and practices” (Rose 1994,
The Last Angel 39
64). Here, “New World black traditions and practices” refers back to,
among other things, communication and communication networks
needing to be hidden—and thus secret—during the period of slavery.2
Whereas Rose’s discussion of the sonic force of rap is focused at a later
point in history, it is consistent with the black secret technology in the
opening of The Last Angel of History, where “the blues begat jazz, the blues
begat soul, the blues begat hip hop.” The notions of a black secret tech-
nology and the “Jes Grew” are different ways of articulating what Amiri
Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) called “the changing same” (Jones 2010). In
these references, there may be a dimension of essentialism and something
ahistorical, a black “essence.” While it is crucial to be critical of the notion
of a black essence, it makes sense to make divisions where notions of
blackness work in a quasi-essential way.
The Last Angel

The title of the movie The Last Angel of History appears to be a reference
to the character of the Data Thief. At the same time is it difficult not to
hear an echo of Walter Benjamin’s text “On the Concept of History,”
where he introduces the image of “the angel of history.” This is a famous
quote, but it bears repetition in this context:
There is a picture of Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems
about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his
mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must
look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears
before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon
wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the
dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing
from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel
can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future,
to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows
towards the sky. What we call progress is this storm. (Benjamin 2003, 392)
While the figure of the angel is important, what is really at stake is his-
tory, and Benjamin challenges several inherited understandings of history
from within the European tradition of philosophy of history. Written in

1940, during the Second World War, “progress” is a term that cannot be
used as it once was. Still, from the perspective of the angel, progress seems
to be inevitable; progress is a storm, and the angel is blown into the
future, without any possibility of resistance. The future is “invisible” for
the angel, he (the angel is gendered) has his back towards the future, his
face is turned towards the past, and he sees one single, growing catastro-
phe, wreckage upon wreckage, progress as a continuous catastrophe. The
storm of progress has its origin in Paradise, that is to say, at the beginning;
in that sense history too is a continuous catastrophe.
This history, however, is not necessarily the whole of history. It is com-
mon to argue that Benjamin’s text is indebted to Jewish tradition and
thinking. And this relates to one of the dimensions I pointed out above,
that the future is invisible for the angel. As Benjamin writes, “We know
that the Jews were prohibited from inquiring into the future: the Torah
and the prayers instructed them in remembrance” (Benjamin 2003, 397).
I recalled these lines the first time I read Dery’s “Black to the Future,”
where he presents a “troubling antinomy” in the notion of Afrofuturism:
“Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and
whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search of legible
traces of its history, imagine possible futures?” (Dery 1994, 180). Whereas
the antinomy Dery points out is very different from the invisible or pro-
hibited future Benjamin writes about, there are some similarities when it
comes to understanding history, and in relation to Afrofuturism, the pri-
mary interest is related to the imagination of the future.
The “classic” European futurism, for example of the Italian kind,
wanted a radical break with tradition, with history, and with the past. In
a sense, they wanted the apocalypse, and from there to create a new,
futurist, world. For Afrofuturism, on the other hand, it is not about
wanting the apocalypse; the apocalypse has already taken place. We hear
intoned in the opening of the movie Space is the Place (1972, directed by
John Coney) that “It’s after the end of the world; don’t you know that
yet?”, and on “Countdown to Armageddon” Public Enemy claims that
“Armageddon has been in effect,” as Mark Sinker quotes in “Loving the
Alien” (Sinker 1992).3
The Last Angel 41
An understanding of being after the end of the world is crucial for

interpreting the difference between the last angel of history and the angel
of history, or between Akomfrah’s movie and Benjamin’s text. Despite the
possibilities of the world having ended, there is a kind of future in The
Last Angel of History, as both the fast-forward movement into the future
and the Data Thief ’s capability of moving back and forth testify to. Here
there are similarities to the understanding of the figure of the angel, also
as found in relation to Sun Ra. In the opening of Space is the Place, Sun
Ra, who at times said he belonged to “the angel race,” walks across a for-
eign planet, where “the music is different; the vibrations are different”
and where we are “on the other side of time.”4 Rather than seeing this
post-historical understanding as post-apocalyptic, history, mystery, and
myth come together in Sun Ra’s thinking.
In Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra, John Szwed writes
about Sun Ra’s references to angels, and in this description the angels are
found on many different levels:
He said he was not a man, not a mortal, but part of the angel race, the dark
spirit/angel race (an archangel, of course), a different order of being. Angels
are pure spirit, so they don’t make mistakes. He referred Berkeley students
to Geoffrey Hodson’s The Brotherhood of Angels and of Men, in which angels
were taxonomized as those of power, of the healing arts, of the house, of
buildings, of nature, of beauty and art, and of music. Angels of music are
God’s instrument: they glow with the color of their song, and every light
and sound is an echo of God’s voice and eyes. All men are the instruments
they play on (‘Angel’ he derived from the Greek, ‘angelos’, or ‘messenger’,
thus making him a jazz messenger). (Szwed 1998, 313f )
Angels are found in many traditions, but the word is derived from the
Greek “angelos,” meaning messenger. If the angel is a messenger, there are
similarities to the Data Thief, although in one sense it is more tempting
to call him an archivist. Or perhaps it is better to compare him (the
angel) to the “team of African archaeologists from the future” Kodwo
Eshun writes about in “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism” (Eshun
2003, 287) . Angel, archivist, or archaeologist, these figures reflect differ-
ent ways of dealing with history and messages (communication and
transmission) across time and space. In Eshun’s United States of Africa,

there is an “age of Total Recall” where “memory is never lost.”5 This is also
possible for the Data Thief, as he time travels throughout history to find
glimpses and bits of historical knowledge, transporting it backwards and
forwards. When Robert Johnson met “the devil” at the crossroad, this is
also a position in-between. In that sense this position resembles that of
the angel(s). Angels too are in-between the earthly and the divine, thus in
a sense the living and the dead, being some kind of messengers between
different domains. They are, in other words, existing on the border, or
transgressing borders on a regular basis. In an interview with Rick Theis,
published in Semiotext(e) in 1984, Sun Ra claimed that the United States
is one of the countries with the highest number of angels:
You have to realize this planet is not only inhabited by humans, it’s inhab-
ited by aliens too. They got the books say they fell from heaven with Satan.
So, in mixed up among humans you have angels. The danger spot is the
United States. You have more angels in the country than anywhere else.
You see, it was planned. I’ll tell you something fantastic. It’s unbelievable.
They say that truth is stranger than fiction. Never in the history of the
world has there been a case where you take a whole people and bring ‘em
into the country in the Commerce Department. Never before has that hap-
pened. It happened here. They bringing ‘em in through the Commerce
Department. It was possible for aliens and angels and devils and demons to
come in this country. They didn’t need no passport. So then they’d come as
displaced people. Perfect setup. So they come right on into the United
States. They could come here and act like poor people, they could come
here and act like slaves because they didn’t keep up with what was
happening.6
Thus, while it may be stretching Sun Ra’s statement a bit, in at least

one particular sense, African Americans could be seen as descending from
angels, from messengers, reflecting another dimension of history and
transmission. If the black secret technology at the same time should be
seen as coming from outer space, this would make sense related to Sun
Ra’s extraterrestrial origins. Should we take him seriously? I think we
should. I happen to take everything Sun Ra says very seriously, including
his extraterrestrial origin (here I am in agreement with Eshun 1998, 193).
The Changing Same 43
And one of the words we have for extraterrestrials is “angel.” This angel,
arguably related to the trickster, is also in the above statement in a gener-
alized sense “the Other.” But rather than this general othering, I do prefer
to read Sun Ra in relation to his extraterrestrial origin—and in a sense as
different rather than other. I am tempted to play along with Sun Ra’s
reference to angels, and his album Angels and Demons at Play (released
1965, recordings from between 1956 and 1960), an album with several
titles referencing these inhuman figures: “Angels and Demons at Play,” “A
Call for All Demons,” and “Demon’s Lullaby.” These figures are impor-
tant in questioning not only humanity, but also in how myth intersects
with everyday life, and how Sun Ra’s Myth Science Arkestra gives sound
to this other reality. Sun Ra’s angels—be they in the USA or other
places—need not look like the angels heard about in church (these too
are not necessarily easily described). Rather, it is that some of the features
of the angels are important. Among them primarily, I would argue, being
messengers across time and space.
The Changing Same

Amiri Baraka’s essay “The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music)”
was written in 1966, and published in the 1968 book Black Music (the
author then used the name LeRoi Jones). There are a number of impor-
tant insights in that essay, and I want to primarily focus on two dimen-
sions. Firstly, there is the very notion of “the changing same” found in the
title, with all the important ramifications for understanding music, rep-
etition, and transmission. And secondly, there is the parenthesis in the
title, where he, matter of fact-like, seems to bypass the whole discussion
as to whether there are any important differences between a more main-
stream, popular music on the one hand and the avant-garde (so-called
“New Thing”) on the other. The changing same, the title tells the reader,
is found across black music, across genres, and also across time (and
space), as an impulse within black music originating in Africa, and trans-
mitted within black music as an entity Baraka calls “the blues impulse,”
which is, as he argues throughout the essay, something of a core within
black music. But even as a core it is changeable, although with the
paradoxical dimension to it that it is a “changing same,” in other words,

a dynamic core. This dynamism clearly seems to be a version of repeti-
tion, where, that is, repetition is as much related to difference as it is to
sameness. Another take on similar issues, important as well in thinking
time and music, is James Snead’s article “On Repetition in Black Culture”
(Snead 1981). (It is also difficult, today, not to see similarities to Gilles
Deleuze’s Difference & Repetition, originally from 1968).
The parenthesis in Baraka’s title is telling, underlining the way he sees
similarities between a more popular music (his contemporary R&B) and
the “New Black Music” often—also by Baraka himself—understood as
avant-garde free jazz. These two strands of black music are read as inter-
related. The differences within popular music broadly understood (and
Baraka clearly sees and hears these differences) are localized in other
places than between R&B and “the New Thing.” Baraka wrote a lot about
“the New Thing,” and takes this designation as a point of departure in
Black Music, and it is crucial to his aesthetics, but this makes his refer-
ences to R&B even more telling, as it shows how a theoretical and aes-
thetic leaning first and foremost understood as some version of the
avant-garde can be something else (Jones 2010, 11). It is possible to read
Baraka’s essay in line with the criticism of some Afrofuturist scholars,
where a similar bias—one where avant-garde jazz and electronic music
dominate—determines that one part of the musical or sonic material is
central for examination. In line with this thinking, versions of a “popular
avant-garde” (with all the oxymoronic dimensions of such a term) could
be of interest to discuss, but rather than thinking this as some kind of
contradiction it could be used to expose different layers in a piece of
music, some more popular and others more avant-garde or radical or
new. One could for example find explorations of other kinds of futurity
at stake within more popular expressions than in the avant-garde ones,
simply because these different futures or futurities sound different and
thus are expressed differently. These different layers could also be seen as
related to history, where some layers are more backward-looking and oth-
ers are more forward-thinking, and when these layers exist at the same
time different expressions appear or arise simultaneously. With regard to
Baraka’s notion of “the changing same” these layers may be seen as at one
and the same time referencing sonic archives and alluding to, or actually
also referring to, different futures. They could be seen as bringing about
a number of futures to relate to in the here and now of the musical situ-
ation. Thinking about this as different layers could then be a heuristic
way of discussing sonic time travel, as not only layers of sound, under-
standable in a number of variants from the avant-garde to the popular,
but as different layers of time coexisting in the sonic expression. In the
last instance, the time travel could be seen as taking place in listening and
focusing on the different elements, in a similar way to how listening to
samples in a hip-hop track may take away the focus from the MC’s lines
and instead focus attention upon the sonic archive, but where the listen-
ing situation is one where one moves in and out of focus on a number of
entities. In “Black to the Future,” in relation to Dery’s question about a
dichotomy within hip-hop between the past—“a common history”— and
“the quintessentially American emphasis on forward motion,” Greg Tate
says,
No, because you can be backward-looking and forward-thinking at the

same time. The approach to everything in hip-hop is always with a sense of
play, so that even ancestor worship is subject to irreverence. Ironically, one
of the things that’s allowed black culture to survive is its ability to operate
in an iconoclastic way in regard to the past: the trappings of tradition are
never allowed to stand in the way of innovation and improvisation. You
have to remember, too, that black reverence for the past is a reverence for a
paradise lost. It’s not a past that anyone knows from experience, but a past
gleaned from discussions, from books by scholars like Dr. Ben Yochanan
who have dedicated their lives to researching the scientific glories of black
civilization. (Dery 1994, 211)
I find it interesting that Tate says “backward-looking” and “forward-

thinking” (that is, the difference between looking and thinking), as one
could arguably switch the terms here, but the most important dimension
is to figure out how the past and the future, inherent in the terms
backward-looking and forward-thinking, are to be thought. In addition
to discussing a “popular avant-garde” one could also, with a slight shift in
perspective, discuss a vernacular avant-garde. Again this is a term with
some potential contradictions, but the biggest problem is if the term
avant-garde is taken too much in any traditional sense, and thus the key
is to focus upon the vernacular. What could vernacular be said to be in a

context where the modern (and modernism) as well as avant-garde is
involved, but also, in the particular sense of black music, where the racial
history of a society is involved?
Baraka’s argument is written from within the African American con-
text, with the history of abduction and slavery as necessary components.
There is a potential trauma at stake, highlighted in many musical exam-
ples, and there is a racial history that includes racial pride. When Baraka
argues for the dimension of “Africa” always found within black music this
is both a way of re-entering into a historical conversation with the
Motherland, a way of speaking about the different cultural transmissions
that are reinstalled, and how they are reinstalled, including dimensions of
memory and history in the long period of time where both memory and
history was attempted to be erased. But Baraka is not arguing for any
invented tradition, rather he is showing—and he is not alone—how
transmission can function in other media than those a European or
Eurocentric theoretical discourse presupposes. When or if memory is
seen as intimately related to writing, a non-writing people or community
could be seen as a people without memory. What Baraka and others are
pointing to, however, is the importance of music, sound, and the sonic
not only as expressive forces, but also as mnemonic techniques for storing
memory. It is not, then, that the gramophone is the first medium that can
store sound, although of course the gramophone, as Weheliye makes
clear, stores sound as sound (Weheliye 2005, 7) . But sound is also stored
in the act of transmission within a community. One way is how the blues
are transmitted from one bluesman (another term traditionally gendered
male) to the next, but in this context an even more important way is how
the community as a collective manages to store and reproduce their
sounds, which is, at the same time, their memory and history. This is not
meant to say that sound cannot function like this in other traditions.
Transmissions between performers are also found within the tradition of
European notated/written music, and as such this is not necessarily a dif-
ference between oral and written traditions. But at the same time, the
impossibility of writing within the African-American tradition is differ-
ent than a more chosen absence of writing within other traditions. The
African-American slave experience is also different, as the references to
the “modernity” of the slave-experience, because of the context in which

it took place. In a culture where writing is absent and not missed, this
context is different than in a culture where writing is present but prohib-
ited. Writing was part of the context and was used in establishing hierar-
chies between those who had it and those who did not. When this cultural
context at the same time claims that writing was where memory and
history could be stored, even attempting to store this in a different
medium is a counter-act, and as such it may logically be said to lead to
countermemories and counterhistories. The counterculture of modernity
is an oral culture in the midst of a written one, insisting on this difference
as something capturing other stories or histories. Perhaps even the focus
on sound could be said to be one of these other histories, another history
based on other principles than the normative history, existing not outside
of history, but on another frequency band.
As Eshun writes, in the introduction to More Brilliant Than The Sun:
At the Century’s End, the Futurhythmachine has 2 opposing tendencies, 2

synthetic drives: the Soulful and the Postsoul. But then all music is made
of both tendencies running simultaneously at all levels, so you can’t merely
oppose a humanist r&b with a posthuman Techno. Disco remains the
moment when Black Music falls from the grace of gospel tradition into the
metronomic assembly line. Ignoring that disco is therefore audibly where
the 21st C begins, 9 out of 10 cultural crits prefer their black popculture
humanist, and emphatically 19th C. (Eshun 1998, −006)
There is a new paragraph in this quote, between “Postsoul” and “But,”

but there is much more than a paragraph separating the statements. In
the first paragraph there are two opposing tendencies, whereas in the
second it seems that cultural critics preferring a “humanist” black pop
culture are deemed reactionary in contrast to those inhabiting the twenty-
first century, which began when disco hooked the sonic up to the
machines. Going back in history throughout Eshun’s book, however, this
is not how he reads or hears the music, in the sense that the forward-
looking music is also found before the fall, before disco, but it is telling
how he marks this change in this paragraph, where something new
emerges audibly, even if not all cultural critics noticed. Compared to
Jason King’s critique it is of interest that Eshun singles out disco, as

according to King’s argument disco is part of the excluded half of black
music within Afrofuturist discourse (quoted in Zuberi 2007, 290). Even
when Eshun writes about disco, however, there is something “avant-
garde” about his understanding. He highlights a particular dimension of
disco, “the metronomic assembly line,” and it is not surprising that hardly
any disco acts are discussed in his book. When he discusses the “woman-
machine,” for example, exemplified with Grace Jones’s cover (“remodel”)
of Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control” (Eshun 1998, 95), one could won-
der why he does not include Donna Summer as well—for example “I
Feel Love” (from her 1977 album I Remember Yesterday)—where a similar
argument could be made, from a somewhat different (musical) angle,
challenging even some of the masculinist dimensions appearing when Joy
Division and Kraftwerk become the points of reference. Kraftwerk is of
huge importance for Eshun’s argument, and this is not surprising given
that his history of black music develops from gospel towards post-human
techno. This post-human tendency, however, seems to be quite male and
incarnated (if that is not too much of a biological term) in Kraftwerk
with The Man-Machine (1978) as point of origin. It is as if Eshun returns
to tropes from the classical Italian futurism, repeating the machine-like
and the masculine.7 In his arguments, it is very close to him claiming that
Grace Jones hardly matters herself; in other words, female agency is not
high on his agenda.
When Eshun writes about the two opposite tendencies called “the
Soulful and the Postsoul,” he simultaneously connects these terms to
musical genres—“a humanist r&b” and “a posthuman Techno” (Eshun
1998, −006). When he claims that the twenty-first century “audibly”
begins with disco this is likened with “the moment when Black Music
falls from the grace of gospel tradition.” The choice of words is interest-
ing. “The grace of gospel tradition” not only references the musical genre
of gospel, but the religious dimension underlying gospel as well, “grace.”
Even using the term “religious” might be somewhat misleading, as within
a broader context of music it might better be described as “spiritual.”
With both of these dimensions—the gospel and the spiritual—one is, in
a sense, back to Baraka’s two dimensions of “(R&B and New Black
Music).” A key element when discussing the relation between Eshun and
Baraka would be whether Eshun’s “gospel tradition” is in any way related

to Baraka’s “the blues impulse” (Jones 2010, 205). The importance of
this question increases when one remembers the opening of The Last
Angel of History, where “the blues” is likened to a “black secret
technology”:
We came across the story of a blues-man from the 1930s, guy called Robert
Johnson. Now, the story goes that. Robert Johnson sold his soul to the
devil at a crossroads in the Deep South. He sold his soul, and in return he
was given the secret of a black technology, a black secret technology, that
we now know as ‘the blues.’ The blues begat jazz, the blues begat soul, the
blues begat hip hop, the blues begat R&B.8
Here, the black secret technology of the blues functions as a point of

origin (or emergence) for all later black music genres. If comparing this
technology with the “Jes Grew,” where the virus is central for the trans-
mission—or contagion—one could with references not dissimilar to
Eshun claim that this is a virus from outer space, rather than from “the
devil,” and as such relate to a more explicit Afrofuturist framework on the
one hand, while following the thought that life on Earth is a result of
cosmic intrusion, that life, in short, is from outer space.9
As such it may make sense to see it as the impulse of the entity under-
going the “changing same,” as the fixed point (the same) that is continu-
ously in change. The phrase “changing same” is in one sense paradoxical,
as it brings out the relation between difference and repetition, of continu-
ity and change, of the same and something other, as inherently interre-
lated. The naïve question would be, how can something be “the same” if
it forever changes? On another level, perhaps the paradox is more related
to “the same” than “the changing same.” Understanding historical devel-
opments as gradual changes is not very surprising, but keeping a core
within this changing environment may be what demands explanation.
This would be another angle to the question about “the same”—whether
it should be understood as a core, as something unchanging, as some-
thing permanent. In this it is telling that Baraka’s first reference in “The
Changing Same” is to “the blues impulse,” where the word impulse may
be as important as the reference to the blues. Baraka’s opening thus cor-
responds with the opening of The Last Angel of History, where “the blues”
is an abstracted technology giving impulses to the number of musical
genres emerging out of this impulse. The continuity of “the blues
impulse,” however, as well as the continuous transformation of the emerg-
ing music, may in a different way relate both to the past, to the present,
and to the future.
The changing same is not solely about the different strands of black
music in the 1960s or in the twentieth century (whether this century
sonically begins with ragtime or the blues). It is also, although arguably
more difficult to prove, a historical (archaeological and genealogical) line
back to Africa. As Baraka writes, “The call and response form of Africa
(lead and chorus) has never left us, as a mode of (musical) expression”
(Jones 2010, 206f ). The musical form Baraka writes about contains these
dimensions, even when he can also find changes within the form. Basic
musical dimensions are perceived as a cultural memory, and as one of the
places where this memory—the past, history—has been kept alive. This
is consistent with arguments referenced in my introduction about the
place of music within the black experience, and as a way of discussing
continuities in the transmission of the past for “a community whose past
has been deliberately rubbed out” (Dery 1994, 180). The past, or mem-
ory, is not only possible to find in “legible traces of […] history” (Dery
1994, 180), but has arguably been communicated down the ages through
music and dance, and Baraka underlines the “religious and/or ritual pur-
pose,” claiming that spirit worship “is always at the root in Black art”
(Jones 2010, 207).
Where the slave ship and slavery are seen as having destroyed—or at
least attempted to destroy—the art traditions and the culture of the
slaves, where memory and history was to be erased (Jones 2010, 207), the
musical dimensions of black culture show that white supremacy did not
succeed, or at least did not succeed completely. In the sphere of religion,
it led to, or so Baraka argues, a mixture of African religious practices and
Christianity. This is where Eshun’s discussion about “the fall from the
grace of the gospel tradition” should be inserted. While Eshun’s text is
written much later, and the musical developments he writes about are
taking place after Baraka wrote his essay, is it the case that these Afro-
Christian forms disappeared? Or, said differently, given Eshun’s
focus on disco, did the changing same turn so far as to turn away from
the religious or spiritual towards another metronomic and post-human
condition? And this is said even while acknowledging that Baraka writes
about how “the loss of religiosity in the West” is a general phenomenon
in “the West” affecting “all of America,” not only African Americans.
While this loss is found in the West, one key difference within music is
that for Baraka black music is African in origin, and while he writes about
African-American music there are African impulses in the music that are
redistributed in the continuous transmission of sounds (Jones 2010,
208). And so, before the blues impulse, so to speak, there is an African
impulse, or rather several. But equally important is how these expressions
do not disappear with the “loss of religiosity”—while they may be reli-
gious in origin they are kept even within a secular context, an argument
closely related to how Baraka (and many with him) distinguish between
gospel and soul.
This leads, however, to the place of “religion” or “spirituality” within
Afrofuturism, a question not necessarily easily settled, as there are, in this
context, several versions of Afrofuturism, and important definitions to
make for the key concepts of religion and spirituality. In the case of
Erykah Badu, for example, one finds pretty explicit references to the Five
Percenters, as one also does in Wu Tang Clan (cf. Miyakawa 2005).
Sometimes it is the Nation of Islam, and both of these religions could in
a sense be classified as Afrofuturist. In the music of Alice Coltrane it is
also easy to find a spiritual dimension, one found in much of John
Coltrane’s music of the 1960s as well. And with the reference to the
Coltranes it also becomes clear that this spirituality is not reserved for the
lyrics or titles of the songs, but rather it is a sonic phenomenon. As such
a sonic phenomenon it fits with Baraka’s reading of the close relationship
between gospel and soul. It is enough, he argues, to change a few words,
and the song moves from being perceived as “religious” to become “secu-
lar.” The music, in a narrow understanding of the term, is the same, and
as a sonic phenomenon the “gospel tradition” can persist even within a
totally non-religious tradition. Or, seen from a different angle, perhaps
the “spirituality” at stake in the African-American tradition is something
other than “religious” in the sense understood within Christianity, and
rather becomes the social phenomenon Baraka writes about as “ritual.”
As a social phenomenon understandings of the community might come

to the fore rather than a supernatural being; this is an interesting possibil-
ity when listening to some of the groups or collectives engaged in
Afrofuturist sonic production.
But the kind of church Black people belonged to usually connected them
with the society as a whole … identified them, their aspirations, their cul-
ture: because the church was one of the few places complete fullness of
expression by the Black was not constantly censored by the white man.
(Jones 2010, 208, ellipsis in original)
In other words, the church was one of the few places where a commu-
nity could be established, as well as a place where uncensored expressions
were possible. This does not mean that the religious content was not
important, but it points to the importance of communities, and as such
has a place within the story of the black experience. The dimension of
community found in the church is also, according to Baraka, a place
where memories can be enacted and re-enacted.
Blues (Lyric), its song quality is, it seems, the deepest expression of mem-
ory. Experience re/feeling. It is the racial memory. It is the ‘abstract’ design
of racial character that is evident, would be evident, in creation carrying
the force of that racial memory. (Jones 2010, 209)
It is almost as if one should quote the title of Oliver Nelson’s album

The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961), but more importantly this state-
ment echoes the opening of The Last Angel of History. “The blues” becomes
a mnemonic device, basically a kind of technology. It answers as well
Dery’s question about whether “a community whose past has been delib-
erately rubbed out” can “imagine possible futures” (Dery 1994, 180), or
rather, together with the lines from The Last Angel of History, it shows
how one will have to search for the “tradition” or the preservation of
memory in other places than the European or Euro-American culture
would look. It is not in the written stories that the archive exists. Rather
there is a sonic archive transmitted throughout the ages from the blues
impulse. This transmission is embedded in the “other stories to tell about

culture, technology, and things to come” that Dery references in relation
to African-American voices (Dery 1994, 182); it is a story not necessarily
to be perceived as a traditional oral transmission in the vein of Walter
J. Ong (Ong 1999), about “the technologizing of the word,” but points
rather to another kind of difference than the one between “orality and
literacy,” where an acoustic transmission is at stake. At the same time, one
should pay attention to the multimedial or multimodal transmission at
stake in “the blues” or in black music more generally, and this is one place
where the community is at stake as well.
The communal or ritual dimensions of the musical or sonic experience
are not isolated to listening to songs; it is, as Christopher Small would
say, a “musicking” (Small 1998), a common performance where the
whole communicative act—the performer, the listener, but also the con-
text and the community—participate in a meaning-making activity. And
if Baraka is right that going back “in any historical (or emotional) line of
ascent in Black music leads us inevitably to religion, i.e., spirit worship”
(Jones 2010, 207), then this is a community where the past is present,
where the ancestors take part in a similar vein as the living participants.
In other words, this musical performance is, in a sense, a collapsing of
time and space, a conflation where the past is present in the present, and
there is—in a more Afrofuturist vein—just a short step towards making
a similar argument for the future. Within the more explicit religious ritu-
als, in line with gospel, this future is eschatological, but in a more down-
to-earth manner, the demand for freedom was also found in church. This
demand, however, was also found in a number of “secular” acts, testifying
to the short distance between the sacred and the secular within the musi-
cal performances.
In Baraka’s argument “the blues impulse” is a dimension of all musical
genres. “Rhythm and Blues is part of ‘the national genius’ of the Black
man, of the Black nation,” he writes; “it is the direct, no monkey business
expression of urban and rural (in its various stylistic variations) Black
America” (Jones 2010, 210f ). The reference to “various stylistic varia-
tions” is central for the history of Black Music in America, as the move-
ments of people from the South to the North, as well as differences—also
sonic differences—between the urban and the rural—are central to the

history of this music. In this sense too the music can at one and the same
time be part of “the changing same” and give voice—or rather sound—to
a particular time and place. The sonic environment is integrated in the
whole, a “Total Environment” (Jones 2010, 209) of expression. This
expression is both what used to be called “form” and “content.” These are
“both mutually expressive of the whole” and also “identify place and
direction” (Jones 2010, 211). Black music at the same time relates to and
identifies “an entire group of people,” also as a kind of racial dimension,
as a sonic dimension of the collective in its relation to the past and the
present.
Whereas Baraka discusses both R&B and “New Black Music,” and
whereas both genres take part in “the changing same,” this does not
mean that he is unaware of the differences between them. Here is a cru-
cial dimension both for discussing “black music” but also its relation to
community, history, and society. That there is a “New Black Music” is
part of historical developments, and probably also what Baraka refers to
as “evolution,” but the notion of the “changing same” highlights how
the new is also related to the old, how the old is still present in the new,
how there is something that is “the same” even if that same is
changing.
The form content of much of what is called New Thing or Avant-Garde or

New Music differs (or seems to differ) from Rhythm and Blues, R&B-
oriented jazz, or what the cat on the block digs. (And here I’m talking
about what is essentially Black Music. Although, to be sure, too often the
‘unswingingness’ of much of the ‘new’ is because of its association, deriva-
tion and even straight-out imitation of certain aspects of contemporary
European and white Euro-American music … whether they are making
believe they are Bach or Webern). Avant-garde, finally, is a bad term because
it also means a log of quacks and quackers, too. (Jones 2010, 214)
The inserted “(or seems to differ)” is crucial, as this is one of the

places where Baraka appears to claim that the perceived difference
between New Music and R&B is not really that big; it is a perceived dif-
ference, but looking closer it becomes clear that it is a rather minor one.
This perceived difference is due to contextual dimensions in the inter-

pretations rather that the sonic dimensions of the music. There is no
doubt that Baraka would agree that Dionne Warwick and Sun Ra sound
very different, but they are expressions of something similar. What the
music is about is “consciousness,” he claims:
But the significant difference is, again, direction, intent, sense of identifica-
tion … ‘kind’ of consciousness. And that’s what it’s about: consciousness.
What are you with (the word Con-With/Scio-Know). The ‘new’ musicians
are self-conscious. Just as the boppers were. Extremely conscious of self.
They are more conscious of a total self (or want to be) than the R&B peo-
ple who, for the most part, are all-expression. Emotional expression. (Jones
2010, 214)
The self-consciousness of the New Musicians is, or can be, Baraka

claims, a problem. Here he is normative, this should not be a question of
“self.” The expressions at stake are, in a particular sense, collective. They
are expressions of a people. It is tempting to continue the argument and
contemplate whether what Baraka is arguing is that R&B, in its “all-
expression” and “emotional expression” contributes something that “the
New Music” is in danger of losing. That is, whether R&B contains a col-
lectivity that is in danger of being lost whenever a “New” musician
becomes too self-conscious. There is a dialectics at stake here between the
self and the collective, where “the New Music” and “R&B” in principle
are on opposite sides of the dialectics, even if they both at the same time
contain both sides. It is, then, not an absolute opposition, but a gradual
continuum between self and collective, and where “the New Music” too
can partake in the collectivity.
One dimension I want to realize in this thinking with Baraka is to
question the collectivity of Afrofuturist musical production. This is one
thing that struck me at an early stage in my own work, thinking about
the collectivity of Sun Ra’s Arkestra—also when it comes to the
sonic expressions. I am reminded of what Theodor Adorno wrote about
Arnold Schoenberg’s opera Moses und Aron, that “it is certainly implicit
in the pathos of the music of Moses und Aron, whose intensity gives
reality to a communal ‘we’ at every moment, a collective consciousness
that takes precedence over every individual feeling, something of the

order of the togetherness of a congregation” (Adorno 1998, 228). This
“communal ‘we’,” I claim, also sounds in the music of Sun Ra, and
arguably even more so than in the case of the role of the composer in
European classical music, where the composer is a mastermind behind
the music. It is difficult to compare Adorno’s statement on Schoenberg
with any music within Afrofuturism, but the collective consciousness
he writes about has echoes even in Baraka’s discussion on Africanized
spirituality.
But at its best and most expressive, the New Black Music is expression, and
expression of reflection as well. What is presented is a consciously proposed
learning experience. (See ‘The New Wave’). It is no wonder that many of
the new Black musicians are or say they want to be ‘Spiritual Men’ (some
of the boppers embraced Islam), or else they are interested in the Wisdom
Religion itself, i.e., the rise to spirit. It is expanding the consciousness of
the given that they are interested in, not merely expressing what is already
there, or alluded to. They are interested in the unknown. The mystical.
(Jones 2010, 214f )
The line of thought is of interest, and moves across a number of differ-

ences almost conflated into one. Whereas Baraka at first seems to write
about an Africanized Christianity, here he moves through a more general
spirituality, but immediately mentions Islam, almost on the way to
Wisdom. The unknown and the mystical, on the other hand, are again
possible to read as a generalized spirituality, and probably more so than
any organized religion. What is at stake, however, is something outside of
everyday life, but at the same time outside of organized religion, and this
form of spirituality is obviously heard in much of the black music of the
1960s, but also before and after. While Baraka argues for similarities
between R&B and the New Thing, here at the same time it becomes clear
that there is a hierarchy. The “more complete existence” seems reserved
for the New Music, and as something R&B cannot reach, but R&B still
points in the same direction. Thus, the hierarchy is not excluding one
half, but still seems to argue that the two halves can never obtain quite
the same level of completion.
Electrifying (Eddie Harris) 57
Electrifying (Eddie Harris)

While “The Changing Same” primarily is about Baraka’s present, the past
is explicitly inscribed in his discourse. Less obvious is that his essay has
much to do with the future, although the line of the argument implies
that the alterations found in the changing same will continue. There are,
however, a few places where he explicitly addresses the future. One of the
most fascinating passages in the essay is where he writes about “the sound
that will come” and references mixtures of different traditions, and the
future possibilities of electronics:
For instance, use of Indian music, old spirituals, even heavily rhythmic
blues licks (and soon electronic devices), by new music musicians point
toward the final close in the spectrum of the sound that will come. A really
new, really all-inclusive music. The whole people. (Jones 2010, 215f )
While from the point of view of today, these developments can be seen
in, for example, Moor Mother and her album Fetish Bones (2016), where
found material, historical recordings, electronic manipulations, and
Moor Mother’s voice are mixed to extremely emotional and spiritual
heights. Or it brings to mind the music of Matana Roberts, not least her
COIN COIN albums (2011, 2013, 2015), where the electronic devices
may be less obvious, but nevertheless are other albums bringing together
the past and the present (and arguably the future).
When Baraka writes “even heavily rhythmic blues (and soon elec-
tronic devices),” another musician that comes to mind is Eddie Harris,
and his use of the Varitone. The first album where he uses this “electronic
saxophone” is The Tender Storm (1966), but it becomes used more prop-
erly on The Electrifying Eddie Harris (1967) and Plug Me In (1968). Thus
these are albums Baraka could not possibly have heard, but the elements
Baraka sees integrated into “the sound that will come” are still there as
he is writing. On the later albums, Harris uses the Varitone to a much
greater effect, but the music is in many ways based in “heavily rhythmic
blues” and the electronic device is not simply there for effect, but instead
is an integrated part of Harris’s sound. One author having discussed
Harris in a similar context as mine is George E. Lewis, both in
“After Afrofuturism” and in “The Virtual Discourses of Pamela Z”

(Lewis 2007; Lewis 2008a). In Lewis’s argument there is a dimension of
a counter-history, where Harris’s importance is pointed out in a kind of
contrast to Miles Davis in the “invention” of “electronic jazz.” While
Harris’s music might be seen as being more popular or mainstream, this
counter-narrative thus brings to the fore how sonic experiments are not
primarily found within the music deemed most “experimental.” This
argument also applies to Harris, even if his music is not necessarily
mainstream in a more narrow sense. As such Lewis’s argument seems to
fit with Baraka’s understanding of “(R&B and New Black Music)” as it
was formulated in 1966.
It is tempting to see elements of Baraka’s future realized on Eddie
Harris’s Plug Me In (1968), an album Lewis writes about in “After
Afrofuturism”:
In contrast, the cover of a 1968 album by saxophonist Eddie Harris, featur-

ing his broad, smiling visage positioned comfortably behind an electronic
music device to which his horn is connected, laughingly invites the listener
to ‘Plug Me In’. The title of Harris’s subsequent live album, released in
1969, a year before Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, warns of ‘High Voltage’.
Around 1965, Harris had become one of the first musicians in any field to
seriously experiment, in concert and on records, with the new real-time
music technologies, forging a trenchant connection between advanced
electronic music techniques, extended acoustic instrumental techniques,
and down-home funk. (Lewis 2008a, 147)
This music is contemporary with Baraka’s writing, but more in an

R&B vein than any example of “The New Thing.” What Lewis brings out
of this situation, and localizing it prior to Miles Davis, is part of a counter-
historical dimension in the development of what could be called Black
Electronic Music, and is how serious experiments with sound technolo-
gies can perfectly well exist in other kinds of music than the ones deemed
avant-garde. Eddie Harris, in this sense, also challenges historical narra-
tives, as the electrification of jazz is more often than not written about as
if it were following in the vein of Davis’s different groups around 1970,
as well as his adaptation of funk elements from James Brown and Sly and
the Family Stone, music he seems to have heard about from his then wife
Electrifying (Eddie Harris) 59
Betty Davis. The funk of Eddie Harris, on the other hand, seems to have
much fewer followers.
Lewis points out that Harris, in his use of electronics, anticipated
Davis, thus pointing to another historical trajectory.
Anticipating Miles Davis by at least two years, Harris used electronic pia-
nos and organs, and recorded pieces with real-time electronic sound pro-
cessors such as the Varitone, a so-called octave divider that synthesized
parallel octaves above or below the pitch of the horn, and the Echoplex, an
early tape-based delay line noted for its portability. (Lewis 2008a, 147f )
In a somewhat different context, Lewis references Harris again, this

time together with Charles Stepney and Muhal Richard Abrams: “These
musicians […] despite a lack of institutional or foundational backing, were
nonetheless early adopters of real-time electronic music technology to the
extent that their resources allowed” (Lewis 2007, 63). A particularly fasci-
nating dimension in these descriptions is the focus upon “real-time music
technologies,” as this might be seen to bridge between studio production
and live performances. And by pointing out that Davis recorded Harris’s
composition “Freedom Jazz Dance” on his album Miles Smiles (1967),
Lewis’s claim that “Davis was undoubtedly aware of Harris’s work” seems
inevitable (Lewis 2008a, 147). This period, before Miles Davis’s electric
experiments, shows an experimental attitude in a number of musicians, in
constructing or inventing new devices for sonic production. The synthe-
sizer and electric keyboard are only one side of this, whereas the Varitone
and the Echoplex Lewis mentions are very different roads to new sounds.
It seems that The Tender Storm from 1966 is the first album where Harris
uses the Varitone, an album recorded in the same year as Baraka wrote his
essay. As such, the different elements Baraka sees integrated into “the sound
that will come” are all there waiting, so to speak, to be mixed. The electric
devices can be seen as more of a gimmick than as a musical technology.
This would be in line with several “failed” technologies, where their failure
is seen as a proof of their unserious dimensions for sonic experiments.
Such a judgment could also be extended to other, alternative, modes of
music making—a case in point could be Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s way of
playing several saxophones simultaneously. These judgments, however,
are also related to normative understandings of how instruments should be

played. When John Coltrane began using his sheets of sound technique,
even this was seen as breaking norms, and uses of extended techniques on
the saxophone have a history of being criticized. Here, however, is a musi-
cal parallel to how the streets find their own use of things, in the sense that
abuse of technical equipment obviously brings along new sounds and new
sonic environments. Extending the sonic field, even with dimensions that
would be seen as eccentric, is thus at the same time a challenge to think
what sound could be. The Varitone could also be seen as an early version
of what later became the EWI—“electronic wind instrument”—in many
ways a synthesizer operated by a wind instrument rather than by keyboard,
and thus where tonal combinations idiomatic for a saxophone are more
likely to be the melodic lines, thus becoming a “wind synthesizer.” While
Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra to this day plays an EWI, and with
Michael Brecker famously playing it a lot in the 1980s and 90s, electronic
sounds are arguably dominated by keyboard players until computer play-
ers came on the scene. As such the Varitone is an example of the past’s
future, but the instrument is in agreement with Baraka’s essay, and with the
potential, as Lewis points out, to reread the history of sonic technologies
and experimentation.
But more interesting than discussing examples that confirm Baraka’s
ideas about the future—a future found in the word “soon” as well as in
formulations about how musicians “point toward the final close in the
spectrum of the sound that will come”—is the very fact that he, in dis-
cussing the changing same, at the same time includes speculations about
the future. The changing same, then, is not solely about discussing the
present (his present) in relation to the past, to history, and to memory;
there is a kind of blueprint of the future, but a blueprint only in the sense
that the future will be other changes of the same. There is, then, some
kind of core that will continue to exist, even within the numerous
changes. Or is there? Even this is not clear, although for anything “same”
to be part of the changing same, the notion of a core is almost inevitable.
The future Baraka writes about is a mixture, and he references Indian
music, spirituals (he explicitly writes “old spirituals”), blues licks (where
he localizes important rhythmic dimensions), and, in parenthesis, electric
devices. This is written in 1966, and the number of “electric devices”
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (Henry Dumas) 61
found/heard in the music around Baraka was limited. It is not that elec-
tric devices were absent, and within R&B—and also other forms of pop-
ular music (excluding jazz for the moment)—one could hear electric
guitars and basses, obviously, as well as a number of keyboard instruments.
Discussing jazz more specifically, including “The New Thing,” Sun Ra’s
use of keyboards began well before 1966. But I guess one should not
necessarily focus upon “electric” in Baraka’s statement, but rather on
“devices.” At the same time, the combination is of course of interest in
itself, as this speculation about future sounds—the shape of sounds to
come—is not something Baraka writes about a lot, and so this is a key
passage from this perspective. The mixture of the Indian music, spirituals,
blues, and electric devices opens up geographically (spatially), historically
(the old spirituals), spirituality, and includes “the blues impulse” together
with the future electrifications proposed. This is, then, not only a “final
close in the spectrum of the sound that will come,” but an anticipation of
how the past and the geographically distant will be part of this sound.
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (Henry Dumas)

At one point in “The Changing Same” Baraka discusses how music makes
images, and he singles out James Brown, where “the world James Brown’s
images power is the lowest placement (the most alien) in the white
American social order. Therefore, it is the Blackest and potentially the
strongest” (James 2010, 212). He moves on to claim that “the world is a
total,” and, in parentheses argues that it is in this sense “the total function
of ‘free music’ can be understood” (James 2010, 212). The example he
mentions is highly telling: Henry Dumas’s story “Will the Circle Be
Unbroken?,” a story published in the same year as Baraka’s essay was writ-
ten, 1966. Baraka claims that in reading “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”
the reader will understand the implication of music as nothing less than
“as an autonomous judge of civilizations, etc.” (Jones 2010, 212). “Will
the Circle Be Unbroken?” was published in Ark of Bones, a book Baraka
also references in his essay “Henry Dumas: Afro-Surreal Expressionist”
(1988b). He inscribes Dumas into a genre he calls “Afro-Surreal
Expressionism,” which covers literature, where he mentions Zora Neal
Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Toni Morrison; painting, where his examples
are Jacob Lawrence, Vincent Smith, and Romare Bearden; and music,
where he writes “Duke, Monk, Trane, Sun Ra” (Baraka 1988, 164f ). The
term/designation is imprecise, but perhaps that is the point. When it
comes to Morrison more often than not the term “magical realism” might
be more relevant, but there are certain affinities between this term and
surrealism, even if some surrealism would probably challenge the magic.
When Baraka mentions musicians, however, (and this piece is published
in 1988), he seems less precise than when it comes to writers. It is not as
if he includes everyone in jazz, but the differences between Duke
Ellington, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra make this part
of the list less consistent than in the case of literature. In one case, how-
ever, there is a close relation between a musician and a writer he lists. Sun
Ra and Henry Dumas not only collaborated on the album The Ark and
the Ankh (1966), an album where they discuss Sun Ra’s thinking, but
Dumas also wrote the liner notes for Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy
(recorded in 1963, released in 1967) (cf. Lock 1999, 240; Ragain 2012,
542). There is more inspiration going on in this relation, and as Szwed
writes, “Dumas hung out at Sun Ra’s especially between 1965 and 1966,
while he was employed as a social worker in New York City; and of all the
young writers of the time, he was the closest to Sun Ra, and was inspired
to draw on Egyptian and West African mythological material as well as
Deep South folksay and science fiction” (Szwed 1998, 223). With the
exception of science fiction, these are the same inspirations Baraka singles
out, and they can therefore be seen as crucial for Baraka’s designation
(Baraka 1988, 164). Dumas was shot to death, at age 33, by a New York
City Transit policeman on May 23, 1968. Sun Ra’s “arrival day” is May
22, so this would have been just after his 54th “earth-day” celebration (it
was just past midnight, and Dumas and Sun Ra were acquainted).
Whereas Baraka refers to Dumas’s writings as “afro-surreal expression-
ism,” Szwed argues that he shared with Sun Ra “the Afro-Baptist affinity
for imagery of birds, eagles, the wind, and other figures of escape, height,
and majesty” (Szwed 1998, 223).
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” is not only important for the reference
to “free music.” An equally interesting dimension, with reference to
sounds, is one of the instruments described in the story, an afro-horn that
the main character, Probe, has gotten his hands on. This is a rare instru-
ment, on many levels, and it has a long history, as if it has ancient
origins.
There are only three afro-horns in the world. They were forged from a rare
metal found only in Africa and South America. No one knows who forged
the horns, but the general opinion among musicologists is that it was the
Egyptians. One European museum guards an afro-horn. The other is sup-
posed to be somewhere on the West Coast of Mexico, among a tribe of
Indians. Probe grew into his from a black peddler who claimed to have
travelled a thousand miles just to give it to his son. From that day on,
Probe’s sax handled like a child, a child waiting for itself to grow out of
itself. (Dumas 2003, 109)
The power of Probe’s instrument is immense. And it turns out, at the

end of the story, that it is deadly. “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” is also
of interest as a way of describing not only sound in literature, but also a
sound that must be imagined. It would be deadly, at least for quite a few
of us readers, if we actually got to hear this sound. Thus, the power of
sound is invested in letters, that in many ways provoke the reader. This
speaks to an interesting dimension of sound: the literary sound. And I
want to distinguish this from the literary voice, although there are simi-
larities. Paying attention to these similarities could also help in discuss-
ing how the use of the trope of the literary voice may not be a metaphorical
voice—as so often is the case—but in one way or another is grounded in
the material singing voice much more than literary studies perhaps
wants to acknowledge. Discussing sounds in literature, on the other
hand, points to something different than this voice, and might also take
us into a different territory. Remember as well that with the exception of
phonographs and musical scores, words are the most common way to
convey sounds, even if most people—I guess—would be quick to argue
that words cannot really do this. What is happening in Dumas’s story,
however, is that literature conveys sounds that are not only unheard, but
also inaudible, thus pointing to one place where literature has an advan-
tage over phonographs, simply by being able to describe these sounds in
one way or another, or, perhaps better, to describe their effects.
There is a character named “Sunra” in Dumas, and he may be Sun Ra.

The story, however, is highly interesting: “The Metagenesis of Sunra.”
And it seems likely that the story is to be read as integrated into the
“myth” of Sun Ra. Already the opening alludes to the mythical dimen-
sion: “No man has yet been able to dig the exact time of Sunra’s birth,”
and then moving on to discussing how “scholars have pondered and
measured documents and sounds created by the instruments forged by
his fire” (Dumas 2003, 345). The literary presence of “sounds” here is
telling, as these scholars must have been sound studies people as well, or
perhaps musicologists. If they were musicologists, they may be the same
ones found in Dumas’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” in the discus-
sion of the afro-horns. Dumas simultaneously shows that sound is or
can be an integrated part of literature, and there are reasons to believe
that this is not least the case within African-American literature. There
are a number of reasons for this, but it is interesting, from my point of
view, how this also shows that sound studies might be a part of literary
studies, rather than only musicology, art history, and so on. The histori-
cal dimension of Sunra, as well as the historical force of sounds, are
found when Dumas asks about the origin (Ursprung) of Sunra, follow-
ing upon the opening of the text where “No man” can tell of his birth:
Then there are those people who sing in their songs that Sunra was not
born but was made, not as one makes an object, not as the earth makes a
tree out of seed, not this way, but in the way which sound becomes energy
and energy becomes sound. That is, by metagenesis. And the metagenesis
of Sunra is said to have come about through the intercourse of the sun with
the comet X, which has been seen traveling through the universe only three
times. (Dumas 2003, 345)
Salim Washington’s article “The Avenging Angel of Creation/

Destruction” offers for interesting reflections on technology with refer-
ence to Henry Dumas and Samuel R. Delany. That a musician and scholar
takes literature as a point of departure for discussing sound is in itself of
interest. He discusses what he calls “the Afro-technological,” thus contrib-
uting to the importance of discussing whether there are “black technolo-
gies” that both sound studies and technology studies have for the most
part overlooked. He expands on the Afro-technological, calling it an

impulse as well, and argues that it has been “manifested in music” by “the
inventions of instruments themselves” (Washington 2008, 236).
Washington exemplifies the invention of instruments with the hambone
and the shuffle stomp, the transformation of steel pans, and the drum kit,
before moving on to the uses of computers in the compositions of George
E. Lewis. In addition to inventing instruments, he also writes about what
could be called extensions of more ordinary instruments, where examples
are “Charlie Christian and the amplified guitar, Jimi Hendrix’s use of
electronic feedback, the synthesizers of Stevie Wonder and Herbie
Hancock, and Grandmaster Flash’s pioneering turntablism” (Washington
2008, 236). In addition to the instruments themselves, there are, he
argues, also particular “black techniques applied to conventional European
instruments” (Washington 2008, 236), and he focuses first on percussive
elements, and second on extended vocal techniques (“growl, shouts,
shrieks, and moans”). These techniques, however, are not found only in
vocal music, as the brass section of Duke Ellington testifies, but also the
piano of Memphis Slim and Little Richard, and the saxophone. As he
writes, “the vast majority of the saxophone masterpieces are rendered in
one or another Afrological music” (Washington 2008, 236). Both the
“black techniques applied to conventional European instruments” and
the notion of the saxophone as, in many ways, an “Afrological” instru-
ment are indebted to Lewis’s discussion of improvised music after 1950.
Washington discusses “the intersection between the Afro-technological
and music,” but with the focus on “the technological properties of black
music and music making per se” rather than “the technologies of
machines” (Washington 2008, 237). Black music is, in a sense, a technol-
ogy, but the Afro-technological is also an expanded technology, having
effects upon musicians and listeners alike. In rituals, for example, music
as technology is not something only external to the body, but can be seen
as invasive because it has effects on both the psyche and corporeal reality.
Here is another intersection where Washington also references Lewis’s dis-
tinction of two different “technological imaginaries,” what he calls “pros-
thetic” on the one hand, which is what he finds in Dery’s discussion, and
an “incarnative” on the other, an opposition Lewis takes from Doris
Lessing’s space novels (Lewis 2008a, 139). Entering the interpretation of
literature, Washington argues that Dumas and Samuel Delany both use
“Afro-technological music either to structure their stories or to function
as agents within their stories” (Washington 2008, 237). The music in
these stories makes manifest “the spiritual realm,” and Washington com-
pares this with “music in the Holiness churches” (Washington 2008,
239). Again there is a reference to the “Afrological,” as he when he dis-
cusses moaning as “a descriptive term for a certain bluesy sound of speech/
song” (Washington 2008, 242). This is but one extensive use of sounds,
in contrast to any idea of a “pure” sound, and thus is a counter-historical
sonic environment, where distinctions between noise and sound are rene-
gotiated. He also claims that “in part because of its West African aesthetic
inheritance, African American music frequently makes use of sounds that
are considered extramusical in the Western art music tradition”
(Washington 2008, 242). And thus music, among other things, becomes
“a technology for transporting minds, bodies, and souls – the very being
of black folk – away from oppression and viciously circumscribed living
conditions” (Washington 2008, 237) and thus “a vehicle for either per-
sonal or corporate transformation” (Washington 2008, 239).
Sonic Time Traveling

One way to approach Afrofuturism in sound is to talk about what I
would like to call sonic time traveling. This follows logically upon what
is happening in The Last Angel of History. By this I mean how the sounds
indicate a multilayered understanding of time, as well as how music
makes audible these layers, moving between them. I am not claiming
that Afrofuturist artists are the only ones doing this. On the contrary, it
could be argued that it is a key dimension in black music, testified, for
example, in the notion of “the changing same.” Understanding black
music as changing same indicates a dimension of temporality—or an
understanding of time and/or history—where something similar or iden-
tical is repeated across temporal moments, changing, but not changing
so much that similarities become unrecognizable. Arguably the clearest
way of expressing this sonic time travel is by reference to a number of
genres and generic characteristics. Even if a history of genres runs the risk
Sonic Time Traveling 67
of establishing a too-linear history of (black) music, a version of history

well known in much musicological discourse, this history seems undoubt-
edly to exist in the discourse around the music, and as the clearest way of
discussing “progress” and/or “development.” Such a discussion of “prog-
ress” has been important in the history of jazz, as well as black music
more generally, not least that related to radical music or to the avant-
garde. And there can be little doubt that such a progressive view is domi-
nating much writing about music, including within Afrofuturist
discourse. At the same time there are tendencies of going back and for-
ward in time simultaneously, no matter how paradoxical such a move-
ment may sound when related to the “common history.”
In the case of Afrofuturism, the time span from ancient Egypt to a
future outer space offers a possibility of moving back and forward simul-
taneously. At the same time this framework seems to be more closely
related to the aesthetics or ideologies—or content—of the Afrofuturist
music, and not in the same way to the sounds. One key example, if not
for anything else than him being at one of the origins of Afrofuturism, is
Sun Ra. His own compositions indicate sonic worlds from throughout
the ages, not necessarily in any “historically correct” way, that is to say,
not reproducing the sonic world of, for example, “Ancient Aiethiopia,” to
quote the title of one of his compositions from the 1959 album Jazz in
Silhouette, but as “sonic fiction.” Sun Ra’s compositions are part of a sonic
imaginary, where we hear a version of how the ancient world could sound,
how we can imagine the sounds of the distant past (a parallel to an imagi-
nary future). That is not to say that “Ancient Aiethiopia” does not play
into our ideas about an ancient world. The playing of the drums and
percussion, as well as the use of intertwined flute melodies, is a sonic idea
of music sounding ritualistic, which in itself could be a euphemism for
the ancient. Other elements of the composition point in different direc-
tions, foremost the piano part, but here too the echo of the ancient is
heard beneath the piano figures.
By this, even without any archaeological dimensions, without any his-
tory of music as it sounded back then, he establishes one of the frame-
works of sonic time travel. We hear, or are transported, back to ancient
time, and listening to this music we partake in the time traveling process
even as members of the audience. On the other hand, as another historical
point of orientation, we hear the sounds of the future. In other words, the
future is prophesized or heralded (as Jacques Attali (1985) would say),
and made audible in the here and now. The music in this sense is not only
coming from the future, and is not only predicting the future. Rather the
future becomes audible, even before it has sounded. Here, another kind of
paradox comes into being—or into sound. How can the future exist
already?
So, while it may sound like similar practices to “imagine” the past and
the future respectively, the common understanding of time and his-
tory contributes some paradoxes resulting in different challenges for the
imagination. This does not mean that there are no similarities in the two
processes. As a matter of fact, in one particular sense at least, they are the
same process. One way the similarities can be highlighted is by employ-
ing Eshun’s understanding of sonic fiction.
Another approach would be to say that any sound sounding is always
in the here and now. In other words, while listening to music—even
music from the past—we do listen in the here and now. This is one com-
mon way of discussing the interrelation between, for example, the score
and the performance, and also is a way of discussing the musical work.
While this may be seen as a discussion related to “classical” music, it can
also be used in discussing the sounds of Afrofuturism. But there are, per-
haps, some major differences. The first difference would be that more
often than not, there is no score, but this is only in the sense of a physical
score; the idea of some kind of script might still be applicable. Any song
or musical number can be counted as a “score” by its identity, thus both
in the case of an oral transmission directly, live, between musicians, and
as phonograph the idea of the score can still be said to exist. But for me
the more interesting dimension is not whether we primarily listen in the
here and now, but how this listening makes room for other stories, for
other times, and other spaces.
Another interesting dimension of sonic time travel is the use of samples.
Whereas samples in one sense resembles quotes, in another there is a very
literal sense of re-use that is more concrete than quotes. A quote could be
done on another instrument and still be recognizable. A new version of a
song/composition could be done with a totally different ensemble, and
thus different sonics, but still be recognizable. When it comes to samples,
Sonic Time Traveling 69
however, the recognizability is of a different order, not least if the sample

is hidden, so to speak, deep in the mix. While the characteristics of genres,
including genres’ historicity, may be one way to hear sonic time travel,
there are also dimensions across genres that are applicable to such a dis-
course, but then the argument becomes somewhat different. This is one
place where Baraka’s “changing same” comes to our aid, as his argument at
the same time presupposes genres and the generic, and contests such an
understanding where dimensions of difference are inscribed.
Here, interesting openings appear, as it becomes possible to see—or
rather hear—similarities between R&B and free jazz, as well as other
combinations, across genres, but also, ultimately, across time and space.
This is not only relevant for sonic time travel, as Baraka’s examples make
clear when he discuss music from around the same (historical) time, but
it simultaneously opens up a discussion of this time travel as a broadly
conceived phenomenon. By this I mean that the historical associations of
the music come into play as well, so that what may have been perceived
as “mainstream” versus “avant-garde” can be discussed within the same
framework. This too is a kind of time travel, as the very terminology used
in the discussions relate to two different points in time, a “mainstream”
being more common, and broadly conceived, versus an “avant-garde”
understood as the few being ahead of the curve. On the other hand, the
notion of old-fashioned and schmaltz are also clearly a result of both a
view on history and a view on aesthetics, and these two views may actu-
ally coexist here within a certain form of avant-garde thinking. Not nec-
essarily in the sense that what once was avant-garde becomes old-fashioned,
but there are tendencies for the avant-garde to become mainstream and
thus lose its edge in the process. As for schmaltz, it may safely be said that
this is music never had an edge. Still, a movement from mainstream to
schmaltz may still be possible. To make the argument more relevant,
what is the role of the different forms of “mainstream” and/or “popular”
found in the oeuvre of Sun Ra? I am thinking about how he repeats the
big-band style of Fletcher Henderson on the one hand and his recordings
of music from Walt Disney on the other. To take a positive view on this,
and relate it to sonic time travel, one could hear these sounds, not neces-
sarily as nostalgic or popular (or not solely as such), but as echoes of
another time and space.
The notion of echo is not similar to the notion of sonic time travel, but
there are some comparisons. The echo is a sonic after-effect, the sound
coming back a second time. It is thus found in time (as sound at a later
point in time than the first time it sounded), but this time is dependent
upon space (the space the sound travels through). Here, then, time travel
and space travel intersect in the sonic domain. Where echo is a sonic
phenomenon in time and space, an arguably more mental dimension of
sonic time travel is found in memories and prophesies. The importance
of keeping both of these terms in play is clearly present. Still I also want,
with a reference to kode9s album, to underline the possibility of a “mem-
ory of the future.”10 Such a phrase, yet another paradox, is crucial not
only for understanding sonic time travel, but also as an entry point into
many dimensions of Afrofuturism. One key point would be Eshun’s ref-
erence to Terminator, where time travel is set in context with memories,
as well as grammar, where Sarah Connor tells Kyle that he is speaking in
the past tense about things she has not done yet (Eshun 2003, 291). It is
also, I would argue, crucial for understanding The Last Angel of History, a
movie where time travel is definitely an important dimension (there are
also some similar dimensions in Eshun’s “Further Considerations”). In
other words, what if we take memories of the future as something possi-
ble? Would this be the same as prophesises? If no, what would be the
difference? If yes, what would that mean for the domain most often con-
sidered the field of memory—the past? Would one, in analogue to mem-
ories of the future, also have prophesies of the past? These mental or
conscious operations and the possible paradoxes related to them allows
for different dimensions of time travel, but also for thinking the philoso-
phy of history—and philosophy of time—differently. The dimension of
memory is also important in the sense of historical characteristics, such
as genre. The recognizability of musical style, ensemble combinations,
etc., are important in reminding the listener of the interplay of different
temporal moments put together simultaneously in the sounding music.
It is not as if this process is reserved for Afrofuturism and not for black
music. It is an element of listening to music across genres and cultures.
But there are possibilities of reading/interpreting it differently within
Afrofuturism, as it is a sonic parallel to many of the other dimensions
found in the Afrofuturist discourse and aesthetics. At the same time,
using the different approaches to the past as a model for how to hear and
Discography 71
understand the future contributes different layers of futurity as well.

These are more difficult to determine, as the logic of the future to a lim-
ited degree can be modelled on the logic of the past.
Notes
1. This is something also brought forward in Amiri Baraka’s (then LeRoi
Jones) discussion in “Technology & Ethos” (1970).
2. A similar reference to the “New World” is found in Weheliye, and is
quoted in my introduction.
3. See also tobias c. van Veen’s “The Armageddon Effect: Afrofuturism and
the Chronopolitics of Alien Nation” (van Veen 2015).
4. Sun Ra in the opening of the movie Space is the Place.
5. It seems clear that Eshun is referencing Total Recall as well as Philip
Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (from 1966), the story
adapted in Total Recall.
6. http://semiotexte.com/?p=680
7. The time is interesting. While The Man-Machine is not Kraftwerk’s first
album that could be evoked, and while Donna Summer may be seen as
“European” with “I Feel Love” rather than as Africa American, there are
dimensions in the musical aesthetics here where questions of Europe
versus America, male versus female, etc. are at stake. Eshun is choosing
the male-centric version at least.
8. From the opening of The Last Angel of History, also heard in the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYe_nj7xfQM
9. The phrase “Language is a virus from outer space” should be heard here,
from the song by Laurie Anderson, on the album United States Live
(1984, recorded 1983), as well as from William S. Burroughs’s novel The
Ticket That Exploded (1962), the second novel in The Nova Trilogy (with
The Soft Machine, first published in 1961, and Nova Express, from 1964).
10. Cf. kode9, Memories of the Future (2006).
Discography
Anderson, Laurie. 1984. United States Live. Warner Bros.
Harris, Eddie. 1966. The Tender Storm. Atlantic.
———. 1967. The Electrifying Eddie Harris. Atlantic.
———. 1968. Plug Me In. Atlantic.

Kode9. 2006. Memories of the Future. Hyperdub.
Kraftwerk. 1978. The Man Machine. Kling Klang.
Moor Mother. 2016. Fetish Bones. Don Giovanni Records.
Nelson, Oliver. 1961. The Blues and the Abstract Truth. Impulse!
Roberts, Matana. 2011. COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres.
Constellation.
———. 2013. COIN COIN Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile. Constellation.
———. 2015. COIN COIN Chapter Three: River Run Thee. Constellation.
Sun Ra, and Henry Dumas. 1966. The Ark and the Ankh. Ikef.
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor W. 1998. Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music.
London: Verso.
Attali, Jacques. 1985/1977. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Baraka, Amiri. 1988. Henry Dumas: Afro-Surreal Expressionist. Black American
Literature Forum 22 (2): 164–166.
Benjamin, Walter. 2003. Selected Writings Volume 4 – 1938–1940. Cambridge,
MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Carrington, André M. 2016. Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science
Fiction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dumas, Henry. 2003. Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas
(edited and with a foreword by Eugene B. Redmond). Minneapolis: Coffee
House Press.
Review 3/2: 287–302.
Jones, LeRoi. 1970. Technology & Ethos. In Raise Rage Rays Raze: Selected Essays
Since 1965. New York: Random House.
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Jones, LeRoi (Baraka, Amiri). 2010/1967. Black Music. New York: Akashic
Books.
Kilgore, De Witt Douglas. 2003. Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of
Utopia in Space. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lavender, Isiah, III. 2011. Race in American Science Fiction. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Lewis, George E. 2007. The Virtual Discourses of Pamela Z. Journal of the
Society for American Music 1 (1): 57–77.
Music 2 (2): 139–153.
University Press.
Miyakawa, Felicia M. 2005. Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message, and
Black Muslim Mission. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Moten, Fred. 2003. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ong, Walter J. 1999/1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.
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Ragain, Nathan. 2012. A ‘Reconcepted Am’: Language, Nature, and Collectivity
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Szwed, John. 1998. Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. New York:
Da Capo Press.
van Veen, Tobias C. 2015. The Armageddon Effect: Afrofuturism and the
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Weheliye, Alexander G. 2005. Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity.

3
Space and Time
The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s motto, “Great Black Music: Ancient to

the Future,” could equally well be used as a motto for huge parts of
Afrofuturist music. That black music—and black sound—is related to
history, and thus to the past or to tradition, is not surprising. But how the
past is present in the present, how music relates to the past, are other
questions. Within Afrofuturism the historical context is extended from
Ancient Egypt to a future outer space. It is, in a sense, a history and geog-
raphy of the Afrosonic from the beginning of time to after its end. In this
context, what Eshun calls the “chronopolitical” is crucial (Eshun 2003,
292), but in addition to the chronological—or the temporal—there are
also important issues of space.1 Experiencing sound is both a temporal
and a spatial experience. In the here and now, when sound is sounding, it
begins, lingers, and dies away. This temporal experience is an everyday
experience of the sonic, with impacts upon the senses, the body, and the
environment.
There is a possibility of interpreting some of the differences between
Sun Ra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago by way of the avant-garde/
popular dichotomy. Sun Ra’s repertoire always contained “the popular,”
as exemplified by “I Dream Too Much” from the 1986 album Reflections

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7_3
76 3 Space and Time
in Blue or his album of Disney-related compositions, Second Star to the

Right (1989). Arguably, the most important work of the Art Ensemble of
Chicago is perceived differently, as incarnating avant-garde or experimen-
tal music. This difference, however, should be taken with a grain of salt,
as Sun Ra would also be seen as avant-garde in many contexts, and thus
it is probably better to see him as containing both the avant-garde and
the popular within his oeuvre. The “little instruments” that Art Ensemble
of Chicago use, the fact that all of the musicians play percussion, and in
some tracks those percussion instruments are carrying the sounds, all
point to similarities. Understanding the differences between the two
ensembles according to a avant-garde versus popular dichotomy, how-
ever, does not hold up to real scrutiny where one also finds “popular
songs” in the Art Ensemble of Chicago repertoire—such as Bob Marley’s
“No Woman No Cry” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” on the 1987
album Ancient to the Future. Within the context of the Art Ensemble of
Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
(AACM), Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy is also crucial, as with the wonder-
fully titled album Avant Pop (1986), with versions of songs such as
“Saving All My Love For You,” “Blueberry Hill,” and “Crazy” played as
partly tongue-in-cheek covers, but where these covers at the same time
open up other dimensions of the music, including the very question of
“the popular.”
Paul Youngquist makes a closer connection between the two ensem-
bles, referring to the Art Ensemble of Chicago as “in some ways the
street-wise, terrestrial counterpart to the Arkestra’s cosmic space machine”
(Youngquist 2016, 241), seemingly implying that the “street-wise, ter-
restrial” dimensions make the Art Ensemble of Chicago more down to
earth, and thus historical in a different sense than Sun Ra’s cosmic, extra-
terrestrial sounds, on the other side of time. Youngquist discusses “family
resemblances” between the two acts, while at the same time primarily
underlining differences:
Fiercely committed to moving beyond musical convention the Art

Ensemble innovated in several ways, adding ‘little instruments’ to the jazz
arsenal (bells, whistles, noisemakers, percussive objects, etc.), opening the
whole field of composition to improvisation, and incorporating noise into
3 Space and Time 77
the sonic palette of serious music. Its members’ frequent performance in

African headdresses, masks, or face paint evoked the antic spirit of the
Arkestra, but without overt references to antiquity or astral black futures.
The Art Ensemble of Chicago pursued the possibilities of unfettered sound
into the deep less of outer than of urban space. (Youngquist 2016, 242)
The “little instruments” to me sounds more like something coming

out of the Arkestra’s sonic arsenal, and any dichotomy between composi-
tion and improvisation falls short on both accounts, if compared with
George E. Lewis’s distinction between Afrological and Eurological impro-
visation (Lewis 1996). The contrast between outer space and urban space,
however, is worth exploring, although seems less absolute than Youngquist
makes it out to be. Considering album titles, the Art Ensemble of
Chicago’s 1980 Urban Bushmen is as telling as their 1969 Tutankhamun,
illustrating that the “overt references to antiquity” may be as important as
their contemporary Chicago (or Paris, at the time they lived there). Urban
space, however, is as crucial as the surroundings of music making—
Chicago deemed important for both the Arkestra and the Art Ensemble—
and indicates the contemporary world differently than the imaginary
worlds of antiquity and astro-infinity.
In his book Landing on the Wrong Note, Ajay Heble writes that “one of
the most striking features of the music that has emerged out of the AACM
is its attempt to retain a kind of formalist aesthetic of autonomy while
simultaneously (and paradoxically) calling our attention to the ways in
which that music is historically situated and culturally produced” (Heble
2000, 65). By writing about a “kind of formalist aesthetic of autonomy”
Heble is close to one of the strands of writing about music that under-
lines the “serious” dimension of the music. But adding the “paradoxical”
reference to historicity and cultural context, at the same time he shows
the difficulties of such an interpretation. Within the AACM there are
different solutions to this apparent paradox, and the Art Ensemble of
Chicago’s solution seems to me not to follow Heble’s reading of attempt-
ing a “formalist aesthetic.” On the contrary, what “Great Black Music:
Ancient to the Future” signals is another kind of counter-history, where
the very question of “formalism” is put aside. This designation suggests
that not only is the music “unapologetically black” (as seems to be the
78 3 Space and Time
dominating adjective these days when writing about black culture

insisting on blackness), it is also in a sense above history. “Ancient to the
Future” describes a historicity of long lines, where the ancestors and the
descendants seemingly coexist. It is also, crucially, a challenge to the his-
tory of European and American avant-garde traditions. As Heble writes,
The ensemble’s slogan – ‘Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future’ – sums
up the philosophy of these musicians and makes explicit their effort to
expose the African roots of their music. […] The right to name their own
music: this is what these musicians have been struggling to achieve. It is
perhaps not surprising, then, that members of the Art Ensemble resent the
attempts made by some critics to see commonalities between ‘Great Black
Music’ and the ‘new music’ associated with European and American avant-
garde composers. For one thing […] the Art Ensemble’s music is decidedly
not ‘new’. Such comparisons are also seen as part of an imperializing need
on the part of these critics to locate white cultural precedents for black
music. (Heble 2000, 69)
Thus, an insisting on black music, in and across history, is inscribed in

the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s aesthetics, framing, and sounds.
In this chapter, I take the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s motto as my
point of departure for a discussion of history and geography. My aim is
to discuss some of the effects on the sounds when the music at stake refer-
ences other times and spaces; in other words how in sound, texts, and
images these musical acts reference and relate to time and space. Sun Ra
will be one point of reference, but I will also discuss Earth, Wind & Fire
and their references to both Africa and outer space; Shabazz Palaces, who
while referencing Egypt are also part of a US West Coast music scene;
and Drexciya who engage with Atlantis, which is both a sunken and
mythical continent as well as a reference to the Middle Passage, but with
a mythological and world-building twist. These three cases also represent
different layers of time when it comes to musical production, where
Earth, Wind & Fire primarily related to the 1970s, Drexciya to the
1990s, and Shabazz Palaces have been active since around 2009 on.
Shabazz Palaces and Earth Wind & Fire both reference an imaginary
“Africa” and outer space. My argument is that the use of titles and visuals
help ground Afrofuturist dimensions in their work. Such an argument is
3 Space and Time 79
partly in contrast to Lewis’s question about what sound can tell us about
the Afrofuture in that I move outside of the sonic per se (cf. Lewis 2008a).
My position is closer to Eshun’s discussion of sonic fiction. For him
everything about the recordings is important, as everything is part of the
conceptual dimensions of the music. As concepts they affect the listeners
and the affects and sensations make sonic fiction into what he calls “a
subjectivity engine”:
Sonic Fiction is the packaging which works by sensation transference from

outside to inside. The front sleeve, the back sleeve, the gatefold, the inside
of the gatefold, the record sleeve itself, the label, the cd cover, Sleevenotes,
the cd itself; all these are surfaces for concepts, texture-platforms for
PhonoFictions. Concept feeds back into sensation, acting as a subjectivity
engine, a machine of subjectivity that peoples the world with audio hallu-
cinations. (Eshun 1998, 121)
In Eshun’s argument it would seem that all of the different dimensions

of the albums take part in the production of meaning of the sonic fiction;
in other words, he suggests that, for example, the sleevenotes are an inte-
grated part of the “sound,” rather than, as Lewis’s argument seems to imply,
something that is added to the sounds. The perspectives of both Eshun and
Lewis are important, however, and should be remembered when inter-
preting the different musician’s output, in that Lewis’s insistence on the
sounds prevents a possible reading based on visuals alone. Combining the
two perspectives, then, means broadening the conversation. In the cases
examined in this chapter, many of the important references come from
other sources than the sounds themselves, but these other sources—be it
pictures or texts—contribute to establishing an interpretational context.
I will show how these other media can add meaning to the sounds, and
thus expand the possibilities for interpreting the music, rather than limit-
ing them. In other words, I will show how the references to, for example,
a past Africa lead us to question how one can make a sonic representation
of the past Africa. This particular example is also of interest in what I think
of as a continuum in these representational practices, from a more imagi-
nary Africa on the one hand to more concrete uses of African instruments
on the other, such as, for example, the uses of percussion or the kalimba.
These instruments may be seen as partaking in an exoticizing project,
80 3 Space and Time
in a similar way to the percussion on Sun Ra’s “Ancient Aiethiopia” as

discussed in Chap. 2, but could at the same time serve a different pur-
pose. In the cases of Earth, Wind & Fire and Shabazz Palaces, the use of
actual African instruments is additionally related to use of electronics,
simultaneously showing how an electronic civilization reinvents the past.
This use of electronics is different from Eddie Harris’s use of the Varitone,
as discussed in the previous chapter, but within a frame of “ancient to the
future” similarities might still exist, in some kind of electric past. As such,
a kind of deep history is opened up by the way this second version of
electronics, the electrified ancient instrument, explicitly reinterprets
instruments and sounds understood as being ancient. Here, then, ancient
to the future is taken quite literally in the field of electronics.
Sounds also represent distant times and spaces, both in the past and in
the future. The traditions understood as Afrofuturist relate to history in a
revisionist sense (cf. Lock 1999, although he does not use the term
“Afrofuturism”). An example would be how the “origin” of European think-
ing is challenged, in correspondence with George G. M. James’s book
Stolen Legacy, where the Egyptians (understood as North Africans) are the
“inventors” of Greek philosophy (cf. also Bernal 1991). Another example is
found in relation to the very discourse of “modernity,” where the Middle
Passage and subsequent system of slavery is seen as crucial to the emergence
of modernity (cf. Gilroy 1993a), and as such shows how Afro-modernity
must be thought of as different than the normative modernity (which is
tempting to call “Euro-modernity”). Finally, and related to the dimensions
above, any thought of Africa as “before” or “outside” of history—a thought
found in the European tradition often just referenced with the name
“Hegel”—is challenged and put forward as a contested interpretation
rather than a fact. Here similarities are found with anticolonial and postco-
lonial perspectives, even if the discourses should be differentiated.2
Ancient Egypt
While the discourse on Afrofuturism seems grounded in an idea about
the future, there is at the same time, as already mentioned, an interest in
the past. In Dery’s argument, the past becomes a necessary background
Ancient Egypt 81
for thinking the future at all. And within the African-American context,
which is the context Dery is writing about as well, the history of the
Middle Passage, of slavery, and of life in America is often understood in
traumatic senses, yet another reference to the past. In still another
dimension, the present, from where the future can be thought, is a
result of dimensions in the past, as implicated in the quote from George
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four which Dery uses as an epigram: “If all
records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became
truth. ‘Who control the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future:
who controls the present controls the past’” (Orwell 2003, 40). If con-
trolling the future is dependent upon controlling the past, then obvi-
ously the futurism at stake in Afrofuturism is also about the history of
the world, a history that can be understood as source material for the
future. This is, so to speak, the mirror image of what the Data Thief
does in The Last Angel of History, seemingly coming from the future. But
on another level it could also be seen as a similar move, in that the
Afrofuturist artists and thinkers are doing work similar to that of the
Data Thief: collecting fragments of the past and thus establishing or
creating a different past. This is where Eshun’s notion of “countermem-
ories” and the counter-history or counterculture found in Gilroy are at
stake (cf. Eshun 2003; Gilroy 1993a). Another way of approaching the
question of the futures that did not happen is by way of counter-histo-
ries. This is a very different approach in that, by moving back into his-
tory, it primarily is occupied with how history has been told, and what
kinds of stories have been omitted. In my thinking there are two pri-
mary versions of this counter-history. The first is Martin Bernal’s Black
Athena and is about ancient Egypt and the memory of Egypt in history.
In addition to Bernal, George James’s Stolen Legacy becomes important,
and with a different vocabulary there are also points in common with
Jan Assmann’s approach to Egyptology as well as his general discussion
of history.
In the opening to his book, The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in
the Time of the Pharaohs, German Egyptologist Jan Assmann writes:
History has two faces, one turned towards us, the other averted. The face
turned toward us is the sum total of events and remembrances. It is history
82 3 Space and Time
recalled by those involved in it, as shapers or witnesses, doers or sufferers.

The hidden face of history is not what we have forgotten, but what we have
never remembered, those products of imperceptible change, extended
duration, and infinitesimal progression that go unnoticed by living con-
temporaries and only reveal themselves to the analytic gaze of the historian.
Overt and covert history relate to each other as case history to diagnosis.
(Assmann 2002, 3)
Assmann’s book is about Ancient Egypt. It is, as the German original

has it, “eine Sinngeschichte,” a history of meaning, and also a history of
sense. The meaning of Ancient Egypt, however, has arguably never been
settled, and there are many reasons for this. I am not arguing that such a
meaning should be settled, and neither does, I think, Assmann. Rather,
he is taking part in an ongoing conversation about Egypt. His focus,
however, is the “historical” Egypt, but as can be seen in the above quote
he is also interested in “the hidden face of history,” the history that is
revealed by the analytic gaze of the historian, the diagnosis of what we
have never remembered. In Assmann’s arguably most famous book, Moses
the Egyptian, he writes about “the memory of Egypt in Western
Monotheism,” about the construction of Egypt, and about what he terms
“mnemohistory.” “Unlike history proper,” he claims, “mnemohistory is
concerned not with the past as such, but only with the past as it is remem-
bered” (Assmann 1997, 8f ). These memories are, in a sense, not “trust-
worthy” compared to that found in more normative understanding of
history. They may be false, distorted, invented, or implanted, Assmann
argues.3 The truth of a given memory, however, he claims, “lies not so
much in its ‘factuality’ as in its ‘actuality’” (Assmann 1997, 9).
It is interesting to enter into dialogue with Assmann’s perspectives
when trying to figure out the place for Egypt within Afrofuturism.
Obvious questions concern whether Egypt as a historical fact plays a role,
or whether there is a kind of history of effects or of memories at stake. At
the same time, and with inspiration from Eshun, Gilroy, and Lock, it
seems necessary to discuss this Egypt in relation to the notion of counter-
memory or counter-history, or to a revisionist history. Another version of
such a revision would be to follow Bernal, and not least when he refer-
ences how there actually existed a black history seemingly in parallel to
Ancient Egypt 83
Bernal’s own interpretation. This countermemory or counterhistory is

almost like an “Egyptian unconscious” in relation to Assmann’s The
Egyptian Mind, or as some kind of presence waiting to be ignited.
In Dery’s definition of Afrofuturism there is no mention of Egypt. In
one sense there is hardly much reference to the past either, although that
is made up for with the reference to the “troubling antinomy” where the
absence of the past is crucial for discussing the possibility of imagining a
future (Dery 1994, 180) . Dery’s introduction focuses mostly on science
fiction, and the very term Afrofuturism implies a gaze forward rather
than backwards. But the African-American themes and concerns are also
about history, about “the hidden history,” or what Gilroy calls the “coun-
terculture of modernity,” or what Lock terms “revisions of the past,” and,
in a peculiar sense are related to what Bernal calls “the Ancient Model”
(cf. Gilroy 1993a, Lock 1999, Bernal 1991). Still, as Greg Tate says in an
interview with Dery, “you can be backward-looking and forward-
thinking at the same time” (Tate in Dery 1994, 211). He also claims that
“the black reverence for the past is a reverence for a paradise lost,” and
“not a past anyone knows from experience,” but gleaned or glimpsed
from books, artworks, rereadings. From this understanding there is some-
thing almost science fictional about history, a relation to the past under-
stood as speculative from the point of view of the normative understanding
of history. And such an understanding is, for Tate, both a part of the
black experience and a form of science fiction understood as “continuing
a vein of philosophical inquiry and technological speculation” beginning
“with the Egyptians and their incredibly detailed mediations on life and
death” (Tate in Dery 1994, 210). As does Alondra Nelson in her
“Introduction: Future Texts,” Tate too uses Ishmael Reed’s novels as an
entry point into thinking a different understanding of time. “All of Reed’s
novels collapse time,” he writes; “ancient time and things to come coexist,
which is simultaneously a very African, mythic, cyclical way of looking at
time and a kind of prehistoric postmodernism” (Tate in Dery 1994,
208).4 In Flight to Canada (1976) one of the main characters describes
“literacy” as “the most powerful thing in the pre-technological pre-post-
rational age” (Reed 1998, 35). The “pre-post-” double prefix signifies a
break in narrative logic, or, better, a coexistence of different logics (cf.
Foster 2005, xxvf ), or a different form of communication echoing what
84 3 Space and Time
Gilroy, in The Black Atlantic, describes as “stereophonic, bifocal cultural

forms” (Gilroy 1993a, b, 3).
To delve into Egypt as it is related to science fiction and the future
is a paradox, but it is a paradox related to counter-histories. And it is
closely related to Sun Ra in particular and to Afrofuturism in general.
Where Egypt does relate to contemporary technoculture, however, and
could be seen as a flipside to the Afrofuturist discourse on the future
(and to the presence of black subjects in the future), is when Egypt is
seen as a technological civilization with buildings that needed advanced
technology to be constructed—and that is so even when looking at the
buildings themselves, without even taking into account any relation
between the architectural structures and stars and the heavens. Add to
this the understanding of Egypt as African and Egyptians as blacks,
and here is a black techno-civilization existing a long time ago. To
relate this to Afrofuturism, then, one could turn to James’s Stolen
Legacy, first published in 1954, where his argument is that history as
we know it, or mainstream history in other words, is a distortion—or
whitewashing—of what happened. Rather than seeing the origins of
civilization in Africa, or more explicitly in Greece (and this “Africa” is
similar to what Bernal calls “Afro-Asiatic”—a term of importance for
the network of theoretical strands leading up to Afrofuturism), one
needs simply go one step further back to see that Greek philosophy is
stolen from the Egyptians, that European history is based on an arbi-
trary point of origin, which simultaneously functions as a way of bas-
ing history and civilization in European culture. The same, one could
say, is found when—or if—anything pre-Greek is referred to as myth
rather than history. The border, the cut, as a kind of threshold is a way
of removing important historical dimensions from the discourse by
moving them back into the dark, into myth, back to Africa, into
prehistory.
Interestingly enough, there is a strong parallel to Gilroy’s discussion of
modernity. Here modernity is understood as exploitation of Africa and
Africans, with slavery as a basis or foundation for a particular part of his-
tory, for the process of modernization. This too has been written out of
history, or rather been buried, and thus a partial history emerges where
Ancient Egypt 85
progress comes from itself rather than being rooted in the exploitation of
the other.
A similar process, at another historical level, is what is happening in
Bernal’s Black Athena. There is, I will argue, only a tiny step from how
Bernal writes history to the discourses on Afrofuturism, where writing the
history of the future without the attempted whitewashing is of major
importance. That one might feel that the history of the future (and not the
history of the idea of the future) is less realistic than any history of the past,
and thus that one side of this double-sided history is more fictitious than the
other, does not take away the similarities in the two projects. Perhaps this is
not really two projects, but two sides of the same coin. If this can both be
seen in the past and in the future—and for the sake of the argument, I use
the normative understanding of past and future here—then what about the
present? The present could be seen as a result of the past, or the result of how
the past is employed, but also as a prefiguration of the future, a movement
towards the future. In this, the future will have to have been contested too,
but the way it is contested might be more difficult to see in the present. This
is one way of engaging with Afrofuturism. To see its works of art and theo-
retical discourses as part of this continuous contestation and negotiation in
the present, but directed both towards the past and the future. In this sense,
then, again, the past, the present, and the future are all here.
The Egypt of Sun Ra and of Afrofuturism more generally is about the
past, but as important is its relations to this past. The Egypt of Sun Ra is
an African civilization that he feels connected to. He visited Egypt three
times, and the stories about those visits also reveal the expectations he
had for what he would encounter. The connection or relation is at the
same time a spiritual one, and arguably also cosmological and ontologi-
cal—a whole worldview. This can be seen in the opening scene of A Joyful
Noise (1980, directed by Robert Mugge), where Sun Ra is captured within
what resembles an Egyptian burial chamber, and speaks philosophically
about death, the earth, and outer space. The context, but also Sun Ra’s
statements, make explicit how there are interrelations between Sun Ra’s
thinking and ancient Egyptian thinking, or at least Sun Ra shows how he
bases his thinking in a constant dialogue with Egypt. Here, in what could
be called pre-Greek philosophy (although the notion is obviously wrong
86 3 Space and Time
on may accounts), there exists a different approach to important dimen-

sions of philosophy, as well as concepts not fitting neatly into the philo-
sophical or religious vocabulary that have coloured European thinking
since ancient Greece. In this too there is a counter-history, or, perhaps a
history that never really happened.
Sun Ra
Sun Ra is central for any understanding of Afrofuturism, so much so that
there is a danger that his work will overwhelm any alternatives to or
expansions of the Afrofuturist practices. Sun Ra was born—or arrived to
Planet Earth—in 1914 in Birmingham, Alabama, at that time among the
most racially segregated cities in the USA, and the film Space is the Place
(1972, directed by John Coney) was recorded in Oakland, California, at
that time a centre for the Black Panther Party. And so the continuous
remembrance of the heritage of slavery and of racial segregation obvi-
ously influenced his world. This is one of the common interpretations of
Sun Ra’s project, and it fits with Eshun’s interpretation. Eshun’s historical
telling of Afrofuturist avant-garde music seems intimately related to a pro-
cess of becoming posthuman. At the same time, the posthuman can be
understood in another optic, as related to the aliens found in different sci-
ence fiction universes. If African Americans are descendent from alien
abductees, and thus if the West Africans who were captured and sent on
slave ships across the Atlantic met aliens, then the strangers where the
white slave traders. The meeting across race is thus a meeting of two radically
different entities. The “strangers” becomes a central category, at the same
time as it is abstract, general, and open for interpretation. In a certain sense
both Ancient Egypt and outer space are foreign countries. The foreignness is
here due to historical and temporal distance, the relation to the distant past
and future. Afrofuturist thinking is established between these historical-
mythological points and emerges in the interaction between these points with
a thinking that at the same time is historical, mythological, ontological,
cosmological, and aesthetic. Simultaneously it problematizes the theories
and concepts European thought and tradition are based on. In the case of
Sun Ra it is not least the similarities with the theory found in James’s Stolen
Sun Ra 87
Legacy, where the European thinking (Greek philosophy) is presented as

stolen from Egypt and transformed to what we know today, and where
this transformation simultaneously obscures knowledge of ancient Egypt.
James’s book is thus a counter-history, a form of revision, raising ques-
tions about established and taken-for-granted beliefs.
In 2014 Sun Ra fans celebrated the centennial of his “arrival day,” in
accordance with the understanding of Sun Ra as someone not born on
Planet Earth but arriving from, most likely, Saturn, with a mission for
the black race to travel to outer space to found a new black civilization
on a distant planet, a process fictionalized in the movie Space Is the Place.
All this sounds far away from Egypt, but in 1970 Sun Ra also performed
for the first time in Egypt. His name is taken from the Egyptian solar
deity, and the Egyptian dimension was part of Sun Ra’s lectures at the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1971, when he gave a course enti-
tled “The Black Man in the Cosmos.” One could, as Eshun does, argue
that Sun Ra is “at his most Pharaonic” in Space Is the Place—“This des-
potic alien from an Other Plane of There” (Eshun 1998, 155). Of key
importance for Sun Ra’s understanding of Egypt was what Lock calls “an
alternative mythic past to that proposed in the Christian spirituals” (Lock
1999, 5). A typical example would be “Go down, Moses,” where the very
figure of Moses is inscribed into the social space of slavery and its after-
math.5 Lock argues that Sun Ra’s alternative shows that he “was less con-
cerned with history per se,” but this argument seems to beg for some
qualification. The very opposition between “history” and “myth” is part
of what Sun Ra is opposed to.6 It is not only Christianity, although that
is important too, but a whole world picture. Sun Ra expounds another
history, in contrast to the inherited history of Christianity where African-
American slaves’ identification with the bondage of Hebrews in Egypt
was taken for granted. This is of importance for understanding the cul-
tural configuration and context of slavery. If the slaves’ situation was
strongly identified with slavery in Egypt, that is, as the enslavement of
“God’s chosen people,” then understanding of slavery as in some sense
sanctioned by God could be close at hand. This is one of the dimensions
Sun Ra opposes when he instead identifies with the Egyptian Pharaoh,
and, importantly, insisting that Pharaoh and the Egyptians were Africans.
As Eshun writes,
88 3 Space and Time
Underlying Southern gospel, soul, the entire Civil Rights project, is the
Christian ethics of universal love. Soul traditionally identifies with the
Israelites, the slaves’ rebellion against the Egyptian Pharaohs. Sun Ra breaks
violently with Christian redemption, with soul’s aspirational delivery, in
favour of posthuman godhead. (Eshun 1998, 154)
Calling Sun Ra’s story of Egypt mythological follows a common under-

standing of the term. But simultaneously he breaks with an established
understanding of ancient history, the story taught in schools. On closer
examination, this too points to how the concepts used colour our under-
standing. That is to say, what is “myth” as opposed to “history”? In my own
experience and education this question would be found in learning the
history of philosophy, where a seemingly pre-philosophical stance is found,
even in ancient Greece, leading up to philosophy proper, more or less from
the time of Socrates. I still remember how a movement from mythos to
logos was inscribed in my history books. Here too, as in Walter Benjamin’s
“On the Concept of History,” it is the victorious telling the story, and in
excluding predecessors as not really doing history or philosophy the writers
of history inserted a threshold in ancient time, a threshold marking the
time when history proper entered the world (cf. Benjamin 2003).
In the 1980 film A Joyful Noise (directed by Robert Mugge) Sun Ra
says, “History is only his story, you haven’t heard my story yet.” In another
context he made a variation, saying, “History is only his story, my story is
mystery,” where the wordplay brings the mystery into play (cf. Lock 1999,
51). Sun Ra’s discussion of the mystery brings him to an Egypt under-
stood as a black, technological civilization, and to what ordinary European
thinking has understood as myths. There is not, he argues, any absolute
division between myth and science, and he uses the notion “MythScience”
to show this. The difference between myth and science is in itself a
Eurocentric invention; it is in itself a mode of presentation suppressing
the African dimension of history. It is not only a discussion of history and
the ancient past, but to a large degree it is about the black man’s place in
cosmos—the title of the course Sun Ra gave at the University of California,
Berkeley in 1971 (cf. Szwed 1998, 294).7 In accordance with much of the
above, Sun Ra’s story is several aspects. I am tempted to use Reed’s phrase
and call it “pre-post-history.” The two stable points of reference, Ancient
Sun Ra 89
Egypt and Outer Space, are in an important sense localized in the distant
past and in the future respectively. But on the other hand these points of
reference turn out to be less stable than first proposed, or as presupposed
in a normative history, and can, from one perspective, be seen as open for
negotiation. This is, for example, what is at stake in album cover art, in
literature, and in part of speculative thinking. Insisting on Egypt is simul-
taneously in accordance with James’s Stolen Legacy, with the subtitle “the
Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy, but the people of North
Africa, commonly called the Egyptians.” This revisionist approach to his-
tory is highly telling also for Afrofuturism, as it insists on approaching
history, in its plural modes, anew. James’s version is, as Bernal argues in
Black Athena, not totally new; it is more that it has been suppressed in the
construction of history.
after the rise of black slavery and racism, European thinkers were concerned to
keep black Africans as far as possible from European civilization. Where men
and women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were uncertain about
the colour of the Egyptians, the Egyptophil Masons tended to see them as
white. Next, the Hellenomaniacs of the early 19th century, when Egypt
had been entirely stripped of its philosophical reputation, that its African
affinities could be re-established. Notice that in each case the necessary divide
between Blacks and civilization was clearly demarcated. (Bernal 1991, 30—
italics in original)
The reference to earlier European thinking about Egypt is important,

as it says something both about what Assmann calls “the hidden his-
tory” and about the interpretational conflicts and opposed models for
reading Egypt and history; as a mode of thinking, it could be used to
see how Sun Ra travels across history in presenting his MythScience (cf.
Assmann 2002). The European dimension of this idea or memory of
Egypt is of importance in the context of Sun Ra, as shown on the cover
of the album The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Vol 2 (1965), where Sun
Ra is pictured together with Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler,
and Pythagoras. Thus, as will be discussed in a later chapter, they appear
as fellow sun-worshippers, so to speak, and the image establishes con-
nections between Sun Ra, Renaissance science, and Egyptian cosmol-
ogy (cf. Eshun 1998, 162).
90 3 Space and Time
Earth Wind & Fire

Within what emerges as a canon of Afrofuturist music in the 1970s it is
hard not to see George Clinton, Parliament, and Funkadelic as the key
players, and there are good reasons for this focus. One thing intriguing
me, however, is how this focus at the same time seems to be about choos-
ing the P-Funk collective over Earth, Wind & Fire.8 This could be based
in an understanding of the popular, as a distinction between an avant-
garde versus the popular (or mainstream), but, as already mentioned, this
distinction is not easy to uphold. Earth, Wind & Fire is also among the
musical acts mentioned by Jason King (and quoted by Nabeel Zuberi),
when claiming that “the afrofuturist canon […] prefers music without
vocals and ignores recording artists such as Earth Wind & Fire […]”
(Zuberi 2007, 290). This critique, accompanied by a statement claiming
that this canon is focused upon techno and hip hop, seems to be consis-
tent with what is presented in The Last Angel of History as well as Eshun’s
arguments in More Brilliant Than The Sun. And it is correct that Earth,
Wind & Fire seem of lesser importance in the book, although one could
argue that the one place the band is mentioned is highly significant. It is
in the chapter focusing on Sun Ra, and in a section where Eshun dis-
cusses James’s Stolen Legacy and what he calls “Egyptillogic”9:
Stolen Legacy triggers the Egyptillogical Sonic Fiction of Earth Wind and
Fire. Flip to the back cover of Shunzei Nagaoka’s artwork for ‘79’s I Am and
there’s the Egyptillogical landscape lit in the glaucous redlight of Dali-ized
nuclear mysticism. Mushroom clouds hover in the background. Pharaonic
rock statues sit next to Babylonian ziggurats powered by lines about Fuller
domes; transport grids run through temples built by D. W. Griffiths for his
film Intolerance. Elizabethan ships crash over waterfalls; UFOs circle lazily.
(Eshun 1998, 156)
Eshun focuses upon the visual dimensions of the album, and in an

almost ironic sense the designer/artist Shuzei Nagaoka thus becomes
more important for the interpretation of Earth, Wind & Fire than the
musicians themselves. His interpretation of the visuals, however, focuses
on the different entities seen, and cultural references from Egypt’s past
Earth Wind & Fire 91
and Babylon, via the USA, to some outer space, in other words, quite
typical Afrofuturist references in abstract. While Eshun singles out the
cover of I Am, I would rather have started with the visuals to the 1977
album All ‘N All, with another cover designed by Shuzei Nagaoka. It is of
interest that a Japanese artist/illustrator did these covers, and he also did
a number of covers with space themes, for artists as diverse as Jefferson
Starship (Spitfire, 1976), the Electric Light Orchestra (Out of the Blue,
1977), and Deep Purple (When We Rock, We Rock, and When We Roll, We
Roll, 1978). But while the topic of space is consistent in these three exam-
ples the associations are different in the covers he made for Earth, Wind
& Fire, for All ‘N All (1977), The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1
(1978), I Am (1979), and Raise! (1981). With The Undisputed Truth’s
Smokin’ (1979) or Parlet’s Pleasure Principle (1978) there may be some of
the same associations as with Earth, Wind & Fire, although I would
argue that these covers are not as deep—in the sense of loaded with refer-
ences—as the Earth, Wind & Fire covers.
The question I am after is how to read Eshun’s interpretation of these
covers in the context of the artist/illustrator, which seems to be his point,
as he does not mention the musicians other than by reference to the band
and their album cover. But the crucial dimension seems to be not the
space age, outer space, or other futuristic aspects of the covers, but, in the
case of Earth, Wind & Fire, exactly what Eshun singles out: the Egyptian
dimensions (even if, in the case of I Am, they are mixed together with
Babylonian). This is in accordance with Gilroy’s interpretation as well in
his chapter “Wearing your art on your sleeve: Notes towards a diaspora
history of black ephemera” from Small Acts, where he argues that “the
prevalence of images of ancient Egypt during the 1960s and 1970s proved
to be an important means for communicating pan-African ideas in an
inferential, populist manner” (Gilroy 1993b, 241). Ancient Egypt, then,
is for Gilroy a contemporary topic, related to pan-African ideas, to
Afrocentricity, and thus to global political movements as well. “It is worth
noting,” he writes, “that, appropriating in this way, the ‘traditional’ imag-
ery of ancient Egypt was not counterposed to views of ‘modern’ reality
but rather presented in a way that emphasized its continuity with con-
temporary technological and scientific developments” (Gilroy 1993b,
241). A couple of the album covers Gilroy mentions in this argument are
92 3 Space and Time
Weldon Irvine’s Cosmic Vortex – Justice Divine (1974) and Earth, Wind &
Fire’s Raise (1981), where the continuity between Egypt and the contem-
porary is much clearer on the first. But Earth, Wind & Fire’s All ‘N All
(1977) would be an even more obvious example, although rather than
“contemporary” this cover expands the context into the future as well, as
the front cover shows a pyramid with four statues in front, whereas the
back cover transforms the pyramid into a space station—the pyramid
form kept intact. Here ancient Egypt and outer space come together as
clear as in the MythScience of Sun Ra, but in another medium, as it is
difficult to argue that these dimensions are audible in the sounds of Earth,
Wind & Fire to the same degree as they are visible in the cover art. On
the other hand, and in continuity with the argument that the Egyptian
imagery is a means to at one and the same time relate to the ancient and
the present (or future) simultaneously as well as to relate to pan-African-
ism, neither of these dimensions demands any archaeological under-
standing of Egypt. Rather, this is about some kind of memory of Egypt
(as Assmann would have it) or about an understanding of Egypt in the
here and now. This is also where a dimension of revision comes into the
discussion. Such an understanding, however, at the same time has conse-
quences for a discussion of the sounds (the actual sounds) of this music.
What are, the question would be, the sonic dimensions parallel to the
visual dimensions of the album sleeves?
Gilroy’s readings of cover sleeves seem to be consistent with Eshun’s
understanding, although Gilroy also argues for historicity in relation to
this discourse. Firstly it is about the LP, whereas CDs “do their work in
secret, shut away from the disruptive, creative power of black hands”
(Gilroy 1993b, 239),10 but it is also related to a political sensibility more
prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s, where “black political discourse
migrated to and colonized the record sleeve as a means towards its expan-
sion and self-development. That era is now over” (Gilroy 1993b, 240).
Gilroy’s argument about the record sleeve seems to echo in his article
“‘After the Love Has Gone’: Biopolitics and the Decay of the Black Public
Sphere,” from Between Camps (2000). The article quotes one of Earth,
Wind & Fire’s most famous songs in its title, but his discussion of the
public sphere is more closely related to hip hop and something of the
1970s seems to have been lost, which is what the decay implies. Perhaps
these lost dimensions can be said to return, however, in the final chapter
of the book, “‘Third Stone from the Sun’: Planetary Humanism and
Strategic Universalism,” where, in quoting Jimi Hendrix in the title, a more
future-oriented perspective is unfolded. The whole third part of Between
Camps is entitled “Black to the Future” and is among Gilroy’s most engaged
conversations with Afrofuturism. It is not only because of this that I have
chosen to focus somewhat more on Earth Wind and Fire, but also because
of Gilroy’s focus upon elements related to the sonic sphere.
While there is a clear difference in the significance given to these two
bands or collectives (and I use this term advisedly) in the literature on
Afrofuturism, it is important to see them as interrelated. As Paul Gilroy
writes in There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack,
In the repressive and destructive forces unleashed by ‘maggot brained’ and

infanticidal America were rapidly acquiring a global character, the answer
to them was presented as flight, not back to the African motherland, for
that too was tainted by Americanism but into space. (Gilroy 1992, 240)
In this an Afrofuturist scenario is presented as a necessary answer to

contemporary American society. Gilroy uses Funkadelic’s album, One
Nation Under a Groove (1978), as and example, focusing upon the red,
black, and green flag of the “Afronauts,” and arguing that the “celestial
and interplanetary themes in the soul and funk of this period” both sati-
rize American imperialism and advance utopian visions for the black
nation (Gilroy 1992, 240). The contemporary setting, however, is not the
only approach Gilroy discusses: “The destructive capacity of America’s
technological rationality would be held in check by mystic, natural forces
contained within the pyramids of ancient Egypt, a durable symbol of
black pride and creativity most powerfully evoked by the Jones Girls’s
‘Nights Over Egypt’” (Gilroy 1992, 240). The song is found on their
1981 album Get as Much Love as You Can, and is written by Cynthia
Biggs and Dexter Wansel. Wansel also produced the song and plays key-
boards. And while the lyrics to this song reference ancient Egypt, outer
space is crucial in Wansel’s own albums, not least Life on Mars (1976) and
Voyager (1978). The visual aesthetics of the albums point to outer space,
and the sounds of the synthesizers are futuristic in the sense that many
94 3 Space and Time
synth-based albums were in the latter half of the 1970s. On Life on Mars
there is also a number of songs taking part in what Gilroy calls “celestial
and interplanetary themes.” And whereas the satire Gilroy underlines
may be found in the music and texts of Funkadelic, Wansel’s songs are
much closer to the utopian striving.
The interpretation of the pyramids is interesting, though, as Gilroy
references both the mystic and the durable, pointing towards spirituality
as well as history. The contemporary American political context can thus
be held in check. It still seems like a less than optimistic scenario, as
Gilroy writes, “The means by which black America was to get from where
it was to its reconstituted future was as inconceivable as time travel itself ”
(Gilroy 1992, 240). This is arguably where Gilroy and the Afrofuturist
discourse separate, and where at least parts of the Afrofuturist discourse
want to insist on the conceivability of time travel. And perhaps even the
presence of the pyramids, as a durable past still existing as a symbol, is
more related to time travel than what a first glance would reveal. To
Gilroy, Earth Wind & Fire is related to some of the “mystical” dimen-
sions he finds in the reference to the pyramids and to ancient Egypt. At
the same time, however, it is Pan-African, which can be heard in the
sounds, particularly in the use of the African thumb piano or kalimba (cf.
Gilroy 1992, 242). Gilroy argues that the mystical gives way to a more
open political commentary, but both visually and lyrically it seems to me
that the “mystical” never really disappeared. As such there seems to be a
missed opportunity in Gilroy’s argument to discuss the past and how this
past partakes in contemporary discussions, where defining more clearly
what “mystical” and “mythical” indicate is crucial.
In Between Camps, Gilroy’s reading of Earth, Wind & Fire is somewhat
different, although within a similar framework:
In the 1970s, what we can call the liberationist invocations of African

archaism and techno-scientific modernity were held in an unstable but use-
ful equilibrium. The music, the discourse, and the visual culture of groups
like Earth, Wind and Fire presented it clearly. Strange as it seems, they
strove to be both nationalist and internationalist. The tension between
those two commitments was resolved into a universalistic appeal to spiritu-
ality on the one hand and to shared human characteristics on the other.
The latter, symbolized above all by the endlessly differing but always similar
patterning of the human face, was unexpectedly but happily revealed
through explicit contrast with the extraterrestrial. The music framed these
possibilities by creating spaces of pleasure and discovery. (Gilroy 2000,
349f )
One of the signature sounds of Earth, Wind & Fire is Maurice White’s
kalimba. The instrument should perhaps better be referred to as an mbira,
but this is not to say that it is the “traditional” or African version of the
instrument. It is, and this is important to state, an electrified version of
the instrument, and thus a combination of Africa (be it real or imagined)
and the electric age. Whereas one could argue with the “authenticity” or
traditional dimensions of the instrument, it works, semiotically, as a sign
of Africanness or Afrocentricity.
Arguably it is nowhere as important in the songs of Earth, Wind &
Fire as on “Kalimba Story,” from the album Open Our Eyes (1974), as well
as in solistic appearances by White. The first recording where White plays
the kalimba is on the track “Uhuru” from Ramsey Lewis Trio’s 1969
album Another Voyager (and do remember that “uhuru” is the Swahili
word for freedom) (cf. Bailey 2015, 53). It may seem a coincidence, but
the Another Voyager album is supervised by Charles Stepney, who also
plays on Ramsey Lewis’s Sun Goddess (1974) together with members of
Earth, Wind & Fire, who composed the song “Hot Dawgit” together
with Maurice White, and who produced Earth, Wind & Fire’s album
Spirit (1976) (he died during the recording of that album). Stepney also
did arrangements for Eddie Harris’s Plug Me In (1968), and thus in
addition to his relation with White’s kalimba, he worked with Harris’s
Varitone (cf. Chap. 2). As well, he produced and was the mastermind,
together with Marshall Chess, behind the Rotary Connection, one of
the musical acts Lewis mentions in “After Afrofuturism” that could
“interrupt the maleness of the Afrofuturist music canon,” in “the
Minnie Riperton/Charles Stepney/Rotary Connection collaborations”
(Lewis 2008a, 142). As Eddie Harris is part of Lewis’s counter-history, it
seems that Stepney can be given a crucial role, and in the article “The
Virtual Discourses of Pamela Z” Lewis writes about Stepney’s use of elec-
tronics to create “a form of ‘black psychedelia’ between 1967 and 1971
96 3 Space and Time
with the Rotary Connection and the brilliant singer Minnie Riperton”
(Lewis 2007, 63). Thus whereas Eshun discusses the cover art of Earth,
Wind & Fire, Lewis discuss the studio production and use of electronics,
perfectly illustrating their respective takes on where “the Afrofuture” may
be found.
Everything points to the inspiration behind White’s use of the kalimba
coming from Phil Cohran, a trumpeter with the Sun Ra Arkestra in the
beginning of the 1960s, who developed what he called “the Frankiphone,”
another electric mbira. Cohran was also involved in the foundation of the
AACM, and had his Artistic Heritage Ensemble. Coming out of the
Artistic Heritage Ensemble, when Cohran left, were the Pharaohs, with
several musicians later becoming part of Earth, Wind & Fire. Thus there
are direct lineages between the Sun Ra Arkestra, the AACM, the Artistic
Heritage Ensemble, and Earth, Wind & Fire. Clovin E. Semmes, while
stating that Maurice White never played with Cohran, suggests that
White observed a number of rehearsals and performances, and also see
similarities both musically and spiritually between White’s work with
Earth, Wind & Fire and Phil Cohran and his Affro-Arts Theater (cf.
Semmes 1995, 458).11
The mbira is also present in the soundscape of Shabazz Palaces, and
here there is another interesting thread to the history as well.12 Tendai
“Baba” Maraire, who plays many instruments with Shabazz Palaces, is the
son of Dumisani Maraire, who throughout his life was a performer of the
mbira in a more traditional sense. Born in Mutare, Zimbabwe (then
Rhodesia) in 1944, he taught at the University of Washington, Seattle
from 1968 to 1972, and other places in the region until 1982, when he
returned to Zimbabwe. After this, and until his death in 1999, he moved
back and forth between Zimbabwe and Seattle, and it is not very surpris-
ing to think that this background had an influence on Tendai “Baba”
Maraire, both in the music of Shabazz Palaces, and in his work with
Chimurenga Renaissance, this latter band inscribing the Zimbabwean
context in its very name (chimurenga is Shona meaning “revolutionary
struggle”). In this context there is another kind of movement between
Africa and the USA than the one Gilroy primarily writes about in The
Black Atlantic, with movements back and forth in what also establishes a
possibility of a return to Africa.
Drexciya and Atlantis 97
In addition to Tendai “Baba” Maraire, Shabazz Palaces consists of

Ishmael Butler, formerly of Digable Planets. Digable Planets’s debut
album was Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) (1993), the title
derived from Jorge Luis Borges’s essay “A New Refutation of Time”
(Nueva refutación del tiempo) written between 1944 and 1946. What is
even more crucial to me are some of the samples found on that album.
On “Escapism (Gettin’ Free),” for example, they sample “Lillies of the
Nile” by The Crusaders, “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock,
“Mothership Connection (Star Child)” by Parliament, and “Stretching”
by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers. Whether samples can be said to be
refutation of time and space is in many ways a key question in this book,
but if refutation may be too strong a word, an argument can be made that
samples are part of sonic time travel, where different versions of the past
are, so to speak, blasted into the present with a different force than would
be expected in other ways of making music. But more than an abstract
dimension of time travel, or coexistence of sounds from different periods
of time, it is also important to see what is sampled, whether those tracks
constitute a more thorough statement—lyrically, musically, or socially.
What is clear, however, is that Shabazz Palaces work with the dualism
(if that is not too strong a word) of “African archaism and techno-scientific
modernity” (Gilroy 2000, 349), with the historical references to Africa
and the modernity and electricity of hip hop.
Drexciya and Atlantis
Slavery as a kind of origin of modernity is not least an understanding
from an African-American perspective. And the collective trauma slavery
inflicted is inscribed in African-American lives today as well, despite
Abolition, the Civil Rights Movement, the “New Black Aesthetics” (Ellis
1989), or that Barack Obama was president (Greer 2009). The year
2014 showed clearly that race still is central in the political life of the
USA; the riots erupting after Mike Brown was shot by a policeman in
Ferguson are perhaps the clearest sign. But the trauma simultaneously
opens a space for some form of cultural work, for different forms of rela-
tions with the trauma. Here I think less about work in the sense that art
98 3 Space and Time
should heal the wound, but more as a collection of counter-memories

and counter-histories that Eshun and Gilroy respectively point to. In
Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic he points to how changes in perspective from
Africa, Europe, and America, to the ocean in-between, and from roots
and earth to routes and ocean-transport, inscribes counter-history.
Here the Middle Passage again becomes a kind of beginning, which is
also Dery’s beginning in describing African Americans as descendants
of alien abductees. In Toni Morrison’s understanding this is also the
beginning of modern life. “It is not simply that human life originated
in Africa in anthropological terms, but that modern life begins with
slavery,” Gilroy quotes her in Small Acts, and he takes her statement one
step further, writing that “Morrison sees the intensity of the slave expe-
rience as something that marks out blacks as the first truly modern
people” (Gilroy 1993b, 178). This modern life is, as both Morrison and
Gilroy point out, in stark contrast to the official history of modernity.
It is a counter-history. The modern human being is thus not only a
stranger in the world in the more romantic-aesthetic sense; her or his
origin is due to a radical alienation. And in a particular sense it is the
travel, the slave ships, and the meeting with the “New World” that con-
stitutes this origin. Where Sun Ra in Space is the Place operates with
spaceships and other planets, the historical predecessor uses ordinary
ships and a new world. The slave ships are thus to a certain degree a
historical predecessor to the spaceships of the future, and again think-
ing across history becomes possible.
Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic is obviously also a history of the ocean. In
so many ways it is the Atlantic Ocean that becomes the central chrono-
tope, the central geopolitical—or rather oceanopolitical—area, and in
that choice, understood as a kind of the decentring, something happens
to the theoretical gaze and understanding. In that sense the ocean
becomes a place in-between. As such, movement and transport become
more important than presence in a particular place. The transport, how-
ever, is not without purpose, but the purpose was unknown to the slaves.
They were captured in a no-man’s land, and are on their way to an
unknown destination. This is almost in accordance with the definition of
“modern” in an emphatic sense of the word. They are in a certain sense
no-place, abducted from their land and culture, and not yet “American.”
They are, as Hortense Spillers writes in the article “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s
Maybe,” suspended in the oceanic, which she, with reference to Sigmund
Freud, sees in analogy to the borderless and undifferentiated.
Those African persons in ‘Middle Passage’ were literally suspended in the

‘oceanic’, if we think of the latter in its Freudian orientation as an analogy
for undifferentiated identity; removed from the indigenous land and cul-
ture, and not-yet ‘American’ either, these captive persons, without names
that their captors would recognize, were in movement across the Atlantic,
but they were also nowhere at all. (Spillers 1987, 72)
In a certain sense there arises a fantastic space, one relating the past and
the future (cf. Mayer 2000, 561). At the same time, in the bigger perspec-
tive Gilroy presents in The Black Atlantic, this route is not a one-way
route. If his book is read as a history of modernity, it also contributes to
understand different forms of circulation across the ocean. The historical
hierarchies make it difficult to speak about a return to Africa, even if ele-
ments, not least related to music and expressive culture with a point of
origin in the African-American condition, find their way to the African
continent as well. These relations also raise the question about what hap-
pens when cultural dimensions related to slavery, to the ocean, to moder-
nity, and not least to science fiction and fantasy cross the Atlantic the
other way and find African versions.
While now seemingly having moved way beyond Afrofuturist sound or
this chapter’s purpose of interpreting distant historical places and geogra-
phies, the reflections above lead quite straightforwardly to the thinking
surrounding the music of Drexciya. In the case of Drexciya, there is a
foundational myth at stake, where Atlantis and the Middle Passage meet.
A sonic imaginary is opened up where electronic sounds get a transhis-
torical dimension; this is fitting because it is a way of discussing how the
different layers of time almost work like band waves more than time lay-
ers. I argue that historicizing the musicians, as well as the employment of
history within their musical material, shows how the time traveling of
Afrofuturist narratives is given sonic form. These other stories (and “other
stories” are understood both in the revisionist sense, and related to Dery’s
100 3 Space and Time
and Nelson’s definitions of Afrofuturism) become the context for listen-

ing, and the sounds in a number of tracks will be analysed in relation to
how place and time are given sound, either as a representation of place,
or, arguably better, as a way of re-enacting, fantasizing, or imagining.
Drexciya, coming out of Detroit Techno, creates a whole mythology of
a somewhat different kind than the one usually found within Afrofuturism,
but with enough similarities that it makes sense to read it as an alternative
Afrofuturist “myth.” Rather than outer space, however, the major locality
is undersea, under the Atlantic Ocean. With this location there is an
explicit reference to history, more precisely to the Middle Passage. The
Drexciyans are mutants born to pregnant slaves thrown overboard from
the ships on their way from West Africa to the Americas. The mutations
allow them to live under water, and they create a civilization there. This
alternative civilization is an echo also of the alternative future civilization
in outer space, but here, rather than being localized in the future, it is
found in a parallel timeline to ours. The parallel is also found in Kodwo
Eshun’s piece “Fear of a wet planet” (Eshun 1998)—one possible com-
panion piece to More Brilliant Than The Sun. There are relations between
Detroit Techno and P-Funk, among them the geographical connection
of Detroit, as both Ben Williams and Nettrice Gaskins argue (Williams
2001; Gaskins 2016b). This is also of interest for the sonic side of techno,
as the funk of P-funk and the machines of techno meet, thus, among
other things leading to the question of how a machine can be funky. In a
sense this is another version of the question of the human, in relation to
the robot as well as to the posthuman. The inspiration of Kraftwerk is
important for understanding techno, and a common robotic subjectivity
is at stake. That such a robot-like understanding can be seen in relation
to techno’s reference to a post-industrial Detroit is arguably not surpris-
ing. It is more surprising if the sounds of Drexciya, in its arguably aquatic
mode, are understood along the same line of argument.
Writing about techno, Ben Williams, in “Black Secret Technology,”
writes that “as with any musical genre, it is difficult to conclusively pin-
point a single moment as the ‘beginning’” (Williams 2001, 155). This
statement is, and should be, a truism for writing about music, and the
most crucial part is that genres are emerging more than beginning. In
hindsight, one may find the genre’s characteristics, and thus arguably find
the “first” key tracks. Williams singles out Model 500’s “No UFO’s”
(1985) as “the blueprint for what came to be known as Detroit techno”
(Williams 2001, 154), and thus points to Juan Atkins, and his pseud-
onym Model 500, as some kind of originator. It is interesting, also for the
history of techno, that Atkins released his music under a pseudonym, as
another version of renaming than the one found, for example, with Sun
Ra. Williams reads Model 500 into a contemporary context related to
“the presiding utopian—and dystopian—prophecies of its time: Alvin
Toeffler’s book The Third Wave (published in 1980), Ridley Scott’s movie
Blade Runner (released in 1982), and William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer
(published in 1984)” (Williams 2001, 154f ). These same references are
also found in Eshun’s More Brilliant Than The Sun, and tell us something
about similar futurist, utopian or dystopian ideas between the contexts of
techno as well as of Eshun’s writing. When discussing the musical dimen-
sions of techno, Williams at first describes a number of musicians work-
ing with technology:
The story begins at a variety of far-flung points: the electronic fusion jazz
of Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis introduced abstract machine-generated
textures into a polyrhythmic framework; the synthesizer playing of Larry
Young and Parliament/Funkadelic’s Bernie Worrell layered electronic
blocks of sound with little concern for harmony; the sequencer disco of
Italy’s Giorgio Moroder drew erotic overtones from repetitive rhythms; the
sixty-minutes-plus mantra of Manuel Gottsching’s fusion guitar and drum
machine piece E2E4 exploited repetition for its ability to produce a sense
of timelessness; and early English pop adaptors like the Human League,
Depeche Mode, and Simple Minds used synthesizers to create doomy
atmospheres of New Europe. (Williams 2001, 155)
However, he singles out Kraftwerk as the main precedent, with the

focus on the symbiosis of “man and machine” (Williams 2001, 155). It is
crucial that this “metaphor” (if that is what it is) is gendered. As Susan
McClary writes, in a somewhat different context, about Laurie Anderson:
“If her work refuses the option offered by the traditional Man-versus-
Machine dichotomy, it is in part because she is not a Man. The fact that
hers is a female body changes the dynamics of several of the oppositions
she invokes in performance” (McClary 1991, 137f ). The gendering of

the machine, or rather of the relation to the machine, however, is not the
sole dimension of interest in this context, because, as Williams, Lewis
(and others) also point out, technology has also been interpreted differ-
ently within the context of race. The man/machine dimension is not only
related to Kraftwerk, of course, but could be seen in relation to the his-
tory of blacks in the USA (cf. Moten 2003). At the same time it chal-
lenges the racial or racialized understanding of machine interaction.
When Underground Resistance and Drexciya are understood in an anon-
ymous sense, there is also the “removal” of race—as if the machines lead
to some kind of “passing.” This, however, is in stark contrast to the under-
standing communicated via the album sleeves, the titles, etc., where
“blackness” is inscribed to a large extent. Thus, even in this sonic environ-
ment the third dimension of Lewis’s triad is inscribed, but how could this
be read if one at the same time follows Lewis in thinking sound without
the titles and references? The man/machine dichotomy is also of interest
in the gendered understanding of the term/dyad. How do we read techno
in relation to a non-masculinist rhetoric or understanding? (The use of
the term militarist is of interest here as well, a term seemingly referencing
a certain strand of masculinity too).
When it comes to Drexciya, Williams underscores the change from an
outer space metaphor to the underwater context. Here what Spillers
called the oceanic is simultaneously made broader and more precise. This
is also a part of how the music is listened to or felt, as Williams writes:
“The mapping of these new global spaces is not, however, limited to outer
space metaphors: indeed, it finds its most explicit representation rather
closer to home: beneath the ocean, whose watery embrace supplies a sim-
ilarly fluid context” (Williams 2001, 167). And there is something
intriguing about the Drexciya mythology.
Rather than the rapture of cosmic jazz, Drexciya turned back toward the
wilfully clunky sounds of electro in order to create a suitably squelchy
atmosphere for their amphibious mythologies. Speculating about a race of
‘Mutant Gillmen (An Experiment Gone Wrong)’, who surfed the
‘Aquabahn’ to a ‘Bubble Metropolis’, Drexciya pursued a raw sound remi-
niscent of Model 500, but replaced the futuristic sheen of Juan Atkins’s
work with sequencer patterns that sound like bubbles rising to the surface
of the ocean, heavily synthesized vocal soundbites, and peculiarly tactile
textures (memorably described by Kodwo Eshun as ‘acrid frequencies
(that) clench the nerves like tazers’). (Williams 2001, 168)
The sounds of bubbles, but also the tactility, are telling; with the tac-
tile, listeners are also placed in a “watery embrace,” as if embedded in
sound, an experience dance music often contributes, but here with an
added context. With the release of the compilation The Quest (1997),
there is a map that is divided into four stages:
1. The Slave Trade (1655–1867)—a triangular route between Africa,

southern Europe, and the Americas.
2. Migration Route of Rural Blacks to Northern Cities (1930s–1940s)—a
large circle radiating from the South with arrows pointing West,
North, and Northeast.
3. Techno leaves Detroit, Spreads worldwide (1988)—arrows pointing in
every direction from Michigan.
4. The Journey Home (Future)—multiple routes pointing from North and
South America to Africa.13
Here, then, is the history of African Americans in the USA, from the
slave trade until the music heard on this album spreads across the globe
(even if the illustrated arrows emanate from Detroit, they are obviously
meant to show the music spreading around the world), and, further on
and most importantly, a future journey home. The sleeve notes, then,
both illustrate the story around the music heard on the album, and relate
it to a geopolitical (and oceanopolitical) situation in the past, present, and
future. Williams relates “the journey home” to what was written on the
sleeve of Underground Resistance’s debut album (Williams 2001, 168),
thus expanding the community of techno to include several acts. In addi-
tion to the real-world story of African Americans, past, present, future,
the sleeve notes also tell the story of the Drexciyans. As Williams writes:
The rest of The Quest’s sleeve notes, which are devoted to speculation about
the existence of a race of sea creatures mutated from pregnant African
slaves who were thrown overboard during the passage to America, supply a
corresponding subjectivity in the form of an origin myth.
Are Drexciyans water-breathing, aquatically-mutated descendants of
those unfortunate victims of human greed? Have they been spared by God
to teach us or terrorize us? Did they migrate from the Gulf of Mexico to the
Mississippi river basin and to the great lakes of Michigan? Do they walk
among us? Are they more advanced than us? How and why do they make
their strange music? What is their quest? (Williams 2001, 168)
There are some possible similarities here between the Drexciyans

migrating to Michigan on the one hand and Sun Ra’s statement about the
number of angels in the USA referenced in Chap. 2. The subjectivities of
African Americans are at stake, with different stories than the “subhu-
man” dimensions ascribed to them by white supremacy. Williams’s dis-
cussion continues with reference to Underground Resistance’s Interstellar
Fugitives (1998), and “a mutant strain of African American genes that has
produced such historical ‘warrior’ figures as Martin Luther King and
Nelson Mandela,” before establishing the relation between these
“mutants” and the cyborg: “What these mutant beings have in common
with the cyborg, rather than the robot, is their theorization of a funda-
mental technological alteration in, rather than extension of, what it
means to be human” (Williams 2001, 169). This is then a parallel to the
maps of The Quest, from the Middle Passage to a future home, from slav-
ery to a technological music spreading around the globe but simultane-
ously heading towards Africa. And there is also, as Williams makes clear,
a parallel to Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, where music’s circulation is inscribed
as well (Williams 2001, 170). Thus, from an underwater world in the
Atlantic, Gilroy’s Black Atlantic becomes a reservoir of sounds, oceanic
sounds that travel across the globe, showing, in one particular sense, that
the Afrofuture began a long time ago, and that it is still in the process of
unfolding.
Notes
1. A scholar continuing to investigate the chronopolitical is tobias c. van
Veen (cf. van Veen 2015).
Notes 105
2. The similarities between such a perspective and the ones presented by

Gayatri Spivak in her A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999) are more
than superficial.
3. While the term “implanted” sounds more like something out of Blade
Runner (1982), it is one of the terms Assmann uses.
4. Similar approaches to time—as African, mythical, and cyclical—are
found in the works of Black Quantum Futurism (cf. BQF 1 & 2).
5. Sue-Ellen Case suggests a somewhat different interpretation of Moses,
but in the context of discussing Sun Ra, in her Performing Science and the
Virtual (Case 2007, 190).
6. Here is also one place where Assmann’s distinction of history’s “two
faces” and “overt and covert history” may be of use.
7. Sun Ra did use the gendered term in his title, “The Black Man in the
Cosmos”, and is perhaps similar to Elijah Muhammad’s use in Message to
the Blackman in America (from 1965).
8. Another example could be Kool and the Gang, although they are a band
with arguably less afrofuturist dimensions in their music and perfor-
mance. That said, Michael Ray, who played with Sun Ra’s Arkestra from
1978 onwards, at the same time played with Kool and the Gang. So
from a sonic point of view, it is possible to discuss interactions and simi-
larities. (Cf., Szwed 1998, 340, as well as John Sinclair’s 1994 interview
with Ray [Sinclair 2010]).
9. The context of this quote from Eshun is also of interest, not only is he
discussing James, he also compares Stolen Legacy with both “realworld sci
fi” and Walter Benjamin’s discussion of history, more exactly with
Benjamin’s argument that “even the dead will not be safe from the enemy
if he is victorious” in the writing of history (Benjamin 2003, 390).
10. In this context it is worth thinking about both the question of music
streaming and the Internet, where at least in principle liner notes, images,
and the like should be easy to distribute, but even more the fact that the
LP did not disappear, but lives on beyond the time span Gilroy seems to
be writing about.
11. Other scholars commenting on the relation between Cohran and White
are Radano (1993, 83) and Lewis (2008b, 168).
12. Shabazz Palaces is also featured on a track from Flying Lotus’s
Ideas+Drafts+Loops (2013), thus taking part in even more connections
across the sonic space of Afrofuturism.
13. This is from the album sleeve and is quoted in Williams’s article (Williams
2001, 168).
Discography
Art Ensemble of Chicago. 1980. Urban Bushmen. ECM.
Deep Purple. 1978. When We Rock, We Rock, and Wrhen We Roll, We Roll. Warner
Bros.
Digable Planets. 1993. Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space). Pendulum.
Drexciya. 1997. The Quest. Submerge.
Earth Wind & Fire. 1974. Open Our Eyes. Columbia.
———. 1976. Spirit. Columbia.
———. 1977. All ‘N All. Columbia.
———. 1978. The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1. Columbia.
———. 1979. I Am. Columbia.
———. 1981. Raise! Columbia.
Electric Light Orchestra. 1977. Out of the Blue. Jet.
Flying Lotus. 2013. Ideas+Drafts+Loops. Brainfeeder.
Funkadelic. 1978. One Nation Under a Groove. Warner Bros.
Harris, Eddie. 1968. Plug Me In. Atlantic.
Jefferson Starship. 1976. Spitfire. Grunt.
Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy. 1986. Avant Pop. ECM.
Lewis, Ramsey. 1974. Sun Goddess. Columbia.
Model 500. 1985. “No UFOs.” Metroplex.
Parlet. 1978. Pleasure Principle. Casablanca Records.
Sun Ra. 1965a. Angels and Demons at Play. El Saturn.
———. 1965b. The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra Vol 1. ESP-Disk.
———. 1965c. The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra Vol 2. ESP-Disk.
———. 1989. Second Star to the Right.
The Undisputed Truth. 1979. Smokin’. Whitfield.
Underground Resistance. 1998. Interstellar Fugitives. Underground Resistance.
Wansel, Dexter. 1976. Life on Mars. Philadelphia International Records.
———. 1978. Voyager. Philadelipha International Records.
Bibliography
Assmann, Jan. 1997. Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western
Monotheism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 2002. The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the
Pharaohs.
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Bailey, Philip. 2015. Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire.
New York: Plume.
Bernal, Martin. 1991/1987. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical
Civilization. London: Vintage.
Case, Sue-Ellen. 2007. Performing Science and the Virtual. New York: Routledge.
Ellis, Trey. 1989. The New Black Aesthetics. Callaloo 38: 233–243.
Review 3/2: 287–302.
Foster, Thomas. 2005. The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory.
Gaskins, Nettrice R. 2016a. The African Cosmogram Matrix in Contemporary
Art and Culture. Black Theology 14 (1): 28–42.
———. 2016b. Deep Sea Dwellers: Drexciya and the Sonic Third Space. Shima
10 (2): 68–80.
Gilroy, Paul. 1992. The Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The cultural politics of
race and nation. London: Routledge.
———. 1993a. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.
London: Verso.
Serpent’s Tail.
———. 2000. Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race. London:
Routledge.
Greer, Olivia J. 2009. Yes We Can: (President) Barack Obama and Afrofuturism.
Anamesa: An Interdisciplinary Journal 7 (2009): 34–42.
Heble, Ajay. 2000. Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance and Critical
Practice. New York: Routledge.
———. 2007. The Virtual Discourses of Pamela Z. Journal of the Society for
American Music 1 (1): 57–77.
Music 2 (2): 139–153.
University Press.
Mayer, Ruth. 2000. ‘Africa as an Alien Future’: The Middle Passage, Afrofuturism,
and Post-colonial Waterworlds. Amerikastudien/American Studies 45 (4):
555–566.
McClary, Susan. 1991. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality.
Orwell, George. 2003. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin.
Radano, Ronald M. 1993. New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural
Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reed, Ishmael. 1998/1976. Flight to Canada. New York: Schribner.
Semmes, Clovis E. 2016. The Dialectics of Cultural Survival and the Community
Artist. Journal of Black Studies 24 (4): 447–461.
Sinclair, John. 2010. ‘I Know Everything You Need to Know About Music’: A
Conversation with Michael Ray. In Sun Ra: Interviews & Essays, ed. Jon
Sinclair, 77–84. London: Headpress.
Spillers, Hortense. 1987. Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar
Book. Diacritics 17 (2): 64–81.
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Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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van Veen, Tobias C. 2015. The Armageddon Effect: Afrofuturism and the
Chronopolitics of Alien Nation. In Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astroblackness,
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Books.
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Information Age. In Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life, ed.
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New York: New York University Press.
4
Vibrations, Rhythm, and Cosmology
In the prologue to Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man (1952), in the

scene where the narrator listens to numerous recordings of Louis
Armstrong’s “(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue” (1929) simul-
taneously, Ellison writes about the vibrations the narrator feels when lis-
tening to music as a particular form of sonic experience. As a kind of
“proto-hacker” (Yaszek 2006, 50), the narrator steals electricity to his
hiding place, and the multiple recordings at the same time speak to the
intersection of blackness and technology found within the Afrofuturist
discourse. Lisa Yaszek accordingly describes him as “a proto-Afrofuturist,”
in that he rethinks the relations of “his past and present” and maps “the
networks of power that would propel him into various futures not of his
own making” (Yaszek 2006, 50; 2005). This rethinking is obviously cru-
cial for the description of black lives in Invisible Man, and Yaszek demon-
strates not only how “a literature predicated upon both realist and
speculative modes of storytelling”—important in her definition of
Afrofuturism—is at stake in the novel, but also how Afrofuturist dis-
course can bring out this intersection of blackness and technology in
ways Ellison himself may not have been fully able to do.
From the perspective of black sound studies or “sonic Afro-modernity,”
a key element in this prologue is the differentiation between “invisibility”

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7_4
110 4 Vibrations, Rhythm, and Cosmology
and the audible. There are light bulbs, which may be seen as a technologi-
cal extension of the realm of visibility and which thus act as a contrast to
the sonic technology of the phonograph, but in this context the prologue
primarily highlights the sonic. As Alexander G. Weheliye argues in
Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity, this focus is intimately
related to dimensions of subjectivity as well, where he shows how “sound
occupies a privileged place precisely because it manages to augment an
inferior black subjectivity” (Weheliye 2005, 50). He writes, quoting cru-
cial passages from the prologue,
The electricity the protagonist reroutes from the large company also powers
his radio-phonograph, assuring that the aural component of the protago-
nist’s subjectivity and his scopic invisibility are fully interfaced. A single
radio-phonograph, however, does not do the job; the protagonist yearns
for five machines: ‘I’d like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong sing-
ing “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black And Blue” – all at the same time’ (8).
The reason, he claims, stems from the sonic characteristics of the basement:
‘There is a certain acoustical deadness in my hole, and when I have music I
want to feel its vibration with my whole body’ […]. (Weheliye 2005, 53)
Feeling the vibrations is what the narrator desires, and in the novel it
is explicitly written that he wants to “feel its vibration, not only with [his]
ear but with [his] whole body” (Ellison 2001, 8, italics in original).1
Playing five recordings at the same time will remove the “acoustic dead-
ness” of his “hole” and augment the sonic experience in taking the vibra-
tions to the fore. Listening to music in the state of invisibility gives
another sense of time, according to the narrator. It seems as if invisibility
intensifies not only the sonic experience, in a sense resembling how blind-
ness often has been described as a state where sonic awareness is height-
ened (cf. Rowden 2009), but also that the sonic establishes a different
temporality or sense of time. As the narrator explains,
Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you’re
never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind.
Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its
nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead.
And you slip into the breaks and look around. That’s what you hear vaguely
in Louis’ music. (Ellison 2001, 8)
4 Vibrations, Rhythm, and Cosmology 111
While one could argue for a rather classical narrative time in Invisible
Man, this passage—with its focus upon invisibility and sense of time, and
thus by extension of the sonic as sounding time—is related to how
Ishmael Reed discusses time in Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and Flight to
Canada (1976). In the first of these novels the relation between the past,
the present, and the future is staged in speculative ways, but as a way of
thinking time differently, whereas in the second novel Reed introduces
the term “pre-post-rational” in ways challenging the normative under-
standing of history, and thus contributing to the counter-histories also
found within Afrofuturism (cf. Foster 2005, xxvf ). In Alondra Nelson’s
references to Mumbo Jumbo, in “Introduction: Future Texts,” she focuses
upon how the past, the present, and the future intersect, how Reed’s
prose moves between the different layers, and thus it is another version of
counter-history (cf. Nelson 2002, 6). And in Mark Dery’s “Black to the
Future,” Greg Tate says that “all of Reed’s novels collapse time: ancient
time and things to come coexist, which is simultaneously a very African,
mythic, cyclical way of looking at time and a kind of prehistoric post-
modernism” (Tate in Dery 1994, 208). Of interest in the above quote
from Ellison is how it is invisibility and the sonic that heighten the aware-
ness of time, and make the listener aware of being ahead of or behind
time, being outside of a smooth flow, noticing dimensions of what Fred
Moten calls the break (cf. Moten 2003, 72).
I discussed questions of space and time in the previous chapter, but as
the discussion above makes clear, these questions are not settled once and
for all. The subject matter in this chapter, however, is the notion of vibra-
tions. Ellison’s reference to “vibrations”—what the narrator of Invisible
Man wants to feel when listening to Louis Armstrong—is crucial,
together with the reference to “lower frequencies” in the last sentence of
the novel: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for
you?” (Ellison 2001, 581). There is something frightening the narrator in
this perspective, but it is related to his invisibility. “Being invisible and
without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do?
What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes
were looking through?” (Ellison 2001, 581). The lower frequencies, then,
reference the sonic, as something happening that is also invisible, but
where the visible disrupts our ability to focus on the sonic. Paying
a ttention to the sounds opens up another kind of world; listening brings

what seems to be without substance to attention. It is not too much to
add either that the focus upon the lower frequencies brings our attention
to not only vibrations, but also the physicality of sound, the place where
sound becomes tactile, where, that is, sound and touch coincide. For this
place, this intersection, to be perceived, lower frequencies are crucial.
There, around 20 hertz, audible sound and tactile vibrations meet (cf.
Furlong 2011). Turn your reading to the lower frequencies, as if the act
of reading resembles listening to a radio where you can dial to a different
band, and your reading and listening simultaneously exist beyond the
division between seeing (with your eyes) and listening (with your ears),
and arguably brings out the touching or tactile dimensions of the text,
not primarily in the metaphorical sense, but multisensorial in the physi-
cal sense of vibrations. Ellison’s reference to the lower frequencies thus
brings out a kind of physicality of experience, while primarily pointing
towards music—or rather sound—rather than literature. The lower fre-
quencies are an inherent feature of sound, and point both to what the
sound consists of and also how it communicates. In the context of
Ellison’s narrator, the lower frequencies also point to interaction between
humans, between an “I” and a “you.” Taking a similar approach to music,
in the case of Sun Ra, for example, moves even further into such intersec-
tions, not only between an “I” and a “you,” but within a collective, and
subsequently between the human collective, the Creator, and the uni-
verse. Here, lower frequencies and vibrations are part of an aesthetic, a
cosmology, and an ethics.
As an entry point to discussing sound as sound (cf. Lewis 2008a),
frequencies are crucial as the material and acoustic dimensions of sound.
Frequencies also have the advantage that they are common both in dis-
cussing tones/notes and in discussing rhythm, thus, in this particular
sense, is the common denominator for all sonic instances. Material
sound is felt, as the frequencies vibrate in the air, communicating from
musical instruments (sonic production), including sonic technologies, to
the bodies (cf. Henriques 2011). This is, in a sense, the same feature
Ellison’s protagonist desires, wanting to feel music’s vibration with his
whole body, to be, in a sense, immersed in sound.
Sun Ra and Vibrations 113
In this chapter, I focus upon two musicians, Sun Ra and Flying Lotus
and use vibration as the key term for analysing their music. Unfolding
what vibrations can mean in their respective art, the music and sounds
are shown to be part of a much bigger picture. In the case of Sun Ra,
there are vibrations across the universe, and music can thus in a particular
sense bind the universe together. In the case of Flying Lotus, his album
Cosmogramma (2010) shows connections across a number of Afrofuturist
composers, but also with some deep relations to metaphysics.
Sun Ra and Vibrations
Sun Ra’s film Space Is the Place (1972) is, in many ways, a core text for
understanding his worldview. While ancient Egypt is hardly present in
the film, more or less everything else of Sun Ra’s system is in place. While
the film is science fiction—with reference to Blaxploitation as well—it is,
in one particular understanding, a realistic movie, in the sense that it
deals with the “unreality” of blacks in the USA in the early 1970s, some-
thing made abundantly clear in the scene where Sun Ra meets a number
of young people in a community centre in Oakland. As he says in the
scene:
How do you know I’m real? I’m not real; I’m just like you. You don’t exist
in this society. If you did, your people wouldn’t be seeking equal rights.
You’re not real. If you were you’d have some status among the nations of the
world. So we’re both myths. I do not come to you as reality. I come to you
as the myth because that’s what’s black. (quoted in Zuberi 2004, 88)
On the political level, this unreality is similar to the issues at stake for
the Civil Rights Movement, as can be seen in Sun Ra’s reference to people
“seeking equal rights.” But it is at the same time a statement of an almost
ontological or cosmological nature; black or blackness is myth. Is this the
incorporation of society’s way of ordering race relations? Is it Sun Ra giv-
ing up becoming included in the category “human beings”? There is a
strand in Afrofuturist discourse arguing in this direction, but where Sun
Ra’s solution is understood as bypassing the whole category of “the
human” to become super- or posthuman (cf. Eshun 1998, 155). However,

such a solution can also be seen as a kind of utopian striving, where the
utopian dimension necessitates leaving the category of “the human”
behind. As history shows, first during slavery, where blacks were under-
stood as “sub-humans” and later with the increasing inability of “white
America” to accept equal rights, the category itself is flawed.
But whereas the movie is realistic in its depiction of race relations, it
moves to science fiction for its solution (or one of its solutions): going to
outer space and finding a planet for blacks to create a new civilization. It
is, then, about imagining a future that seems unreal in the present. And
while Jerome J. Langguth argues for a “cosmopolitan” understanding of
this solution (Langguth 2010, 158), I do think the film presents this
future civilization as a black one, where the “myth” of blackness is lifted
outside time and history and is thus related to what Sun Ra terms
“MythScience.”
In the opening of the film, Sun Ra is seen walking amidst vegetation.
He is followed by a creature in a hooded cape with a mirror where a face
would normally be, a creature seen earlier in Maya Deren’s short film
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), and later throughout the video to Janelle
Monáe’s “Tightrope” (from her 2010 album The ArchAndroid), and thus
it also links classical American avant-garde and contemporary
Afrofuturism (cf. Steinskog 2014, 2017). Sun Ra hums, as if to set the
scene for a spiritual séance, before going into a longer monologue, the
first words heard in the movie:
The music is different here. The vibrations are different. Not like Planet
Earth […] We could set up a colony of black people here. See what they
can do on a planet all on their own without any white people. They could
drink in the beauty of this planet. It would affect their vibrations, for the
better of course. […] That would be where the alter-destiny will come in.
Equation-wise, the first thing to do is to consider time as officially ended.
We work on the other side of time. We’ll bring them here through either
isotope teleportation, transmolecularization, or, better still, teleport the
whole planet here through music.2
Music here is evidently important, and music is apparently more than

one thing. Music is fundamental to the differences experienced on the
two planets, the planet where Sun Ra is seen walking on the one hand,
and “Planet Earth” on the other. The passages “The music is different
here,” followed by “the vibrations are different,” undoubtedly also follow
in a long tradition of understanding music as vibrational (cf. Goodman
2009). Calling it a tradition is not so much denying the physics—and
thus realness—of understanding music as vibrations, it is rather to point
to this understanding as being part of a continuum where cosmological
thinking and speculation, science, and myth meet, and thus it is central
to Sun Ra’s “MythScience.”
This understanding of music as vibrations need not necessarily have
any consequences for the sound of the music (or the sound of the music
of the future), but a highly interesting possibility for using music follows
from this understanding. Music can be a means of transportation and not
only on the individual plane as an ecstatic dimension where the musician
moves “out of himself ” (cf. Washington 2008 about music in the Holiness
churches for a similar understanding). Rather, music is here understood
as a means of transporting a collective, and in this sense the Arkestra—
Sun Ra’s big band—is not just a “misspelled” orchestra, but becomes an
Ark, a kind of spaceship fuelled by sound. Understanding music as a
means of transportation is probably less paradoxical when thinking about
it than when first hearing it proposed. Still, there is another challenge to
such an understanding of the science fiction elements of Sun Ra as well
as of Space Is the Place. While I suggested above that Space Is the Place
could be interpreted as a realistic depiction of race relations in the USA,
it is also a science fiction film taking place in a parallel world and quite
possibly in the future. Or, perhaps it is better to understand the film as
moving at different times simultaneously, between Sun Ra on a distant
planet, Chicago in 1943, contemporary (early 1970s) Oakland, and
another plane where Sun Ra and “the Overseer” play cards for the destiny
of the world (cf. Stüttgen 2014, 121ff). Whether it is in the future or not,
it is still “on the other side of time” with different “vibrations.” As such it
raises this question: how does music sound, or vibrate, on the other side
of time?
In his book, A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism,
Paul Youngquist discusses Sun Ra and his relation to Afrofuturism. “Sun
Ra,” Youngquist writes, “frequently receives homage as the father of
Afrofuturism,” and while he never used the term himself, for obvious
reasons, Youngquist points to several reasons for such an understanding
of Sun Ra (Youngquist 2016, 246). Referring to vibrations, Youngquist
also argues for Sun Ra’s effects on later musicians:
The stories Sun Ra told about things to come may contain spiritual vibra-
tions stronger than those of his Afrofuturist heirs, but they set a course for
the future using musical technologies of propulsion and life support that
provided an inspirational precedent for later instrumentalists and afronauts.
(Youngquist 2016, 246)
It seems to me to be impossible to think about Afrofuturism without

Sun Ra. This of course does not mean that Sun Ra was an Afrofuturist,
whatever that is, but more that his system is fundamental for the very
thinking of Afrofuturism. Even calling it fundamental may be contrary to
whatever he hoped to achieve but from a certain perspective it will have
to be. Sun Ra’s system, however, in itself searched for different origins—
in ancient Egypt, in Africa, and in outer space. These different origins
also have sonic equivalents. As such the origins open up a space for fan-
tastic sounds, or for a sonic fantastic, as they reference unheard sounds as
well as sounds that can only be constructed by proxy or imagination.
The vibrations Sun Ra experiences on the planet seen in the opening
of Space is the Place are different compared to those on Planet Earth. In
other words, the difference is the vibrations, not the fact of vibrations
occurring. The difference is important as it testifies to a different atmo-
sphere or milieu, and as such points out how environment and sound are
interconnected. There is nothing in Sun Ra’s statement, however, that
seems to indicate that this is a banal interrelation. It is rather a profound
description of the sonic understood in all its breadth. That sounds rever-
berate through air is thus both a banal physical fact and is related to some
kind of metaphysical understanding, a worldview or belief system. As
such it is a sonic, vibrational dimension of what is known as MythScience
or Astro Black Mythology.3 While “sonic fiction” may be Kodwo Eshun’s
foremost contribution to the vocabulary of Afrofuturism, he also singles
out the importance of MythScience in More Brilliant Than The Sun. It is
a term, he writes, that his book uses as often as it can, and he defines it as
“the field of knowledge invented by Sun Ra” (Eshun 1998, −004).

Referring to MythScience as a “field of knowledge” is a good move on
Eshun’s part, as most terms that could be used to describe the “system” of
Sun Ra could potentially be problematized. Still, there is a a potential
conflict related to a scientific or scholarly vocabulary in the term as it is
presented—MythScience. The two terms, myth and science, are com-
monly understood in opposition, and as such the new term seems by
necessity to be esoteric, and as such points to a hidden layer of
understanding.
Bringing the admittedly speculative components of MythScience or
Astro Black Mythology more down to earth, one could see Sun Ra’s
understanding of “tone scientists” as a practical, musical parallel under-
standing. It is not as if the understanding of “science” is completely the
same, but there are some features in common, not least of which is a
version of what Paul Gilroy and Eshun call counterculture, counter-his-
tory or counter-memories, in the sense that the normative (Euro-
normative) understanding of tones is challenged (Gilroy 1993a; Eshun
2003). In his book, Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra, John
Szwed quotes James Jacson, woodwind player and percussionist in the
Arkestra, who describes how Sun Ra argued towards the notion of “tone
scientist”:
He once said to me, ‘Jacson, play all the things you don’t know! You’ll be
surprised by what you don’t know. There’s an infinity of what you don’t
know’. Another time he said, ‘You know how many notes there are between
C and D? If you deal with those tones you can play nature, and nature
doesn’t know notes. That’s why religions have bells, which sound all the
transient tones. You’re not musicians, you’re tone scientists’ (Szwed 1998,
112)
There is something about the notion of “tone scientists” that relates to

the notion of having one’s own sound in a similar vein to how George
E. Lewis writes about this in “Improvised Music after 1950” (Lewis 1996,
117). Following Lewis’s distinction between “Afrological” and
“Eurological,” the improviser’s “sound” is analogous to compositional
“style”—it is, in a sense, the musicians’s own voice. But as voice is often
understood as deeply personal, the “sound” here is also closely related to

the improviser’s subjectivity. “Notions of personhood,” Lewis argues, “are
transmitted via sound, and sounds become signs for deeper levels of
meaning beyond pitches and intervals” (Lewis 1996, 117). Taking Lewis’s
argument towards Sun Ra’s understanding of “tone scientist,” this is
simultaneously about much more than having one’s own “sound.” It is a
way to explore sounds, and by extension dimensions of personhood and
meanings beyond pitches and intervals. As Szwed writes, after having
quoted Jacson,
Tone scientists. Not musicians. This was the crucial distinction for Sonny.
They were exploring sound, experimenting, not re-creating what already
existed. Tones. Not notes. Every C note had to be sounded differently from
every other C, with a distinct timbre and volume. If you worry about notes,
you’re stuck with certain rules and systems; but once you hear music as
tones you can make any tone fit any other tone. (Szwed 1998, 112)
There is still an understanding of personhood or individuality in this

understanding of tone, in the sense that each musician has his or her own
tone (although few women ever performed with Sun Ra). But there is
also a collective dimension to it, on different levels. The first and most
obvious level is the sound of the full orchestra (or in the case of Sun Ra,
Arkestra). While in the quote above Sun Ra tells Jacson that he is a tone
scientists and should think about all the different frequencies between C
and D, as the leader of the Arkestra the musicians also realize the sounds
of Sun Ra. The collective of the Arkestra, while consisting of the indi-
vidual sounds of the musicians, also realize Sun Ra’s music, and all the
stories about the long rehearsals, with Sun Ra lecturing on a number of dif-
ferent topics, relate to how these sounds emerge from the meeting point
between Sun Ra’s vision (I’d much prefer an aural term rather than this
visual one) and his orchestration (cf. Szwed 1998, 119). The second level,
however, is in one sense a continuity of this collective, but it is even more
broadly conceived. In the quote this second level is presented by the term
“nature,” but it could easily be translated into the atmosphere, both as the
context of the sound, be it the concert stage or the studio, but also in an
even broader sense, as the space where sounds are heard, the space sounds
travel through. Here the sonic is part of what can best be described as a
cosmology, stating that the world is, so to speak, for listening, resembling
how Jacques Attali opens his book Noise: “For twenty-five centuries,
Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to
understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is
not legible, but audible” (Attali 1985, 3).4 Attali’s reference to “Western
knowledge” is of particular interest, as can be seen in interpretations of
African-American cosmology as inherently “premodern.” Szwed men-
tions such an understanding as well, but in addition he shows how this
“premodern” dimension at the same time conveys contemporary issues,
and as such how “science” in this context is never neutral.5
African Americans have always talked cosmology with a premodern ease, a

discourse distantly rooted in African conceptions of the cosmos, but yet
also shaped by modern science and tempered by a wariness of how that
science had sometimes been used against them. (Szwed 1998, 133f )
From this I would argue that “premodern” should rather be seen in the
context of counter-histories, as a challenge to Western knowledge, but
also as a challenge to “science.” Thus the other stories Dery references in
“Black to the Future” are found in an archaeological endeavour of under-
standing the sonic.
Sun Ra’s references to tone scientists are one such reinterpretation, and
arguably Paul D. Miller’s comparable notion of “rhythm science” is an
upgraded version of similar arguments. In the introduction to Rhythm
Science, it is clear that Miller sees the book in continuation with Sun Ra,
as he combines “rhythm science” with “myth science” (Miller 2004, 4).
When defining the term, however, he becomes more specific:
Rhythm science is not about ‘transparency’ of intent. Rhythm science is a

forensic investigation of sound as a vector of a coded language that goes
from the physical to the informational and back again. Rhythm science.
Rhythm time. Rough trade. Sound. Think of it as a mirror held up to a cul-
ture that has learned to fly again, that has released itself from the constraints
of the ground to drift through dataspace, continuously morphing its
form in response to diverse streams of information. Sound is a p roduct
of many different editing environments, an end result of an interface archi-

tecture that twists and turns in sequences overlaid with slogans, statistics,
vectors, labels, and grids. (Miller 2004, 4f )
His understanding of rhythm is undoubtedly indebted to technologi-

cal culture and vocabulary, moving from the technical to the environ-
mental. That this understanding can be seen as a continuation of Sun Ra’s
discussions also points to how tone, rhythm, and sound are different
terms used to come to grips with similar challenges and dimensions. One
could argue that these different terms at the same time partake in a num-
ber of what Eshun calls “sonic fictions.” Miller’s dependence upon com-
puter technology also becomes clear in his reference to “database culture,”
but here something additional becomes interesting, as the database is
understood as an archive across time and space.
Roam the interstices of globalization as a ghost in the machine as we fast-

forward past the middle passage and into the hyperlinks of a database cul-
ture whose archive routed and dissolved into almost every format of
memory we’ve thought about, and think about how to describe the experi-
ence. (Miller 2004, 9)
Reading Miller here it is almost as if he is quoting the Data Thief from

The Last Angel of History, and he is at the same time in close dialogue with
Eshun. Different formats of memory are found within this machine he
describes, and he claims that “a rhythm scientist begins as an archivist of
sound, text, and image” (Miller 2004, 16). It is difficult to clearly see how
this figure is something radically new. While Miller writes about this sci-
entist as intimately related to databases and the Internet, he at the same
time compares him with the flâneur of earlier times—more specifically, it
almost certainly has to be the flâneur of Paris in the nineteenth century,
embodied in Charles Baudelaire and described by Walter Benjamin.6
There are obvious cultural continuities in these figures, including how
urban culture, visual culture, and digital culture are seen as developments
along the same thread, and there are also dimensions here towards a gen-
eralized notion of rhythm. If, however, this is more explicitly related to
sound, there are questions about what “archivist” is supposed to signify.
The musicians or composers discussed in this chapter, primarily Sun Ra

and Flying Lotus, but also, to a lesser degree, Alice Coltrane, are clearly
also archivists of sound (and text and image). They arguably have more
features in common than those separating them, even if Flying Lotus’s
oeuvre is from “after” the analogue, in the sense that he too is part of
Internet culture (database, digital, etc.), the same one as Miller under the
moniker DJ Spooky. Flying Lotus (Steven Ellison) was born in 1983,
whereas Miller (DJ Spooky) was born in 1970. Those 13 years are impor-
tant, and the fact that Ellison’s first album, 1983, was released in 2006
(even if there exists unreleased material from before this)—whereas
Spooky’s first albums Necropolis and Songs of a Dead Dreamer came in
1996—also points to how the technological dimensions of music pro-
duction change.7 This is not, however, in itself important for the archival
dimension as such. Even in a pre-digital time musicians and composers
are or can be archivists, something abundantly clear in the case of Sun Ra.
In Sun Ra one could also see elements of the globalization Miller writes
about (Miller 2004, 9), although the results of globalization may be dif-
ferent based in how technology exists and is distributed. There are, quite
obviously, other possibilities of engaging with sounds from around the
globe today than there were in Sun Ra’s time of composition, not least
when it comes to instant accessibility. An idiosyncratic case in point is
Flying Lotus’s sampling of the Norwegian band That’s Why’s song
“Tiden,” from the album Children of the Future Age (recorded in the early
1970s), found on the track “An Xbox Killed My Dog,” from the 2013
mixtape Ideas+drafts+loops. Understanding composers as archivists, and
sample-based music (or just music consisting of lots of samples) as engag-
ing in archives and historical connections is both common and main-
stream. But Flying Lotus illustrates how material can move in unexpected
ways.8
DJ Spooky is also present in The Last Angel of History, as are what could
be called “archivists,” although the archivists are arguably better described
by Eshun. What is crucial in the movie, however, is that the archivists are
not only working in relation to the past, and to different pasts across time,
they also relate to the future. In one sense the main archivist of the movie,
the Data Thief, comes from the future, and moves through time and space
searching for data, which in this case is the “sound, text, and image” Miller
refers to (Miller 2004, 16). In the digital age, which is obviously the age
both Miller and Eshun are talking about in 1996, the fact of information,
in other words that sound, text, and image can be transmitted in digital
code, is of importance for the gathering of material. In one sense it is as if
the particularities of the former art forms disappear in digital code, con-
flating, in a sense, the difference between sound, language, and image. In
“Further Considerations on Afrofuturism” Eshun writes, “Through the
persona of a time-traveling nomadic figure known as the Data Thief, The
Last Angel of History created a network of links between music, space,
futurology, and diaspora. African sonic processes are here reconceived as
telecommunication, as the distributed components of a code to a black
secret technology that is the key to diasporic future” (Eshun 2003, 295).
In Miller’s description of rhythm science he is also describing his own
musical practices, and he writes about how the “sonic collage” as a result
of impressions from travelling is becoming his identity (cf. Stewart 2010,
355f ). This, he compares to earlier musical practices, going back to the
blues:
Blues musicians speak of ‘going to the crossroads’ – that space where every-
one could play the same song but flipped it every which way until it became
‘their own sound’. In jazz, it’s the fluid process of ‘call and response’ between
the players of an ensemble. These are the predecessors of the mixing board
metaphor for how we live and think in this age of information. (Miller
2004, 24)
The movement from the blues to jazz to the mixing board (and the
turntable should be added) is similar to how the black secret technology
is described in The Last Angel of History, and how the changing same of
genres can be thought (see Chap. 2). Here, however, it points to how the
descriptions of musical practices, the metaphors used, bring out dimen-
sions both of how musicians think, but also about how audiences per-
ceive the music. This, then, is also one reason why Spooky’s notion of
“science” is crucial. What is meant then by science in “rhythm science”?
“But at the end of the day, it’s all about the changing same, the core of
repetition at modern thought” (Miller 2004, 28). It is not that I disagree
with Miller, but given that “the changing same” is Amiri Baraka’s phrase,
The Heliocentrism of Sun Ra 123
there are reasons to believe that not everyone would agree on this being
“the core” of “modern thought” in a generalized sense. Rather, there are
reasons to believe that this is one of the places where African-American
culture can intersect with European thinking about repetition
(Kierkegaard, Bergson, Deleuze, and others), and contribute to the ongo-
ing conversation with a somewhat different perspective. And this is argu-
ably not least the case in discussing music, and repetition as one of the
key dimensions of music. If we take George Lewis’s distinction between
“Afrological” and “Eurological” perspectives as a point of departure, and
I believe there are good reasons to do so, then the differences when it
comes to repetition are as important, if not more, as the similarities.
The Heliocentrism of Sun Ra

What Sun Ra meant with his notion of tone scientist may not be explicit
when thinking about the actual sounds, and the notions MythScience or
Astro Black Mythology, while suggestive, are not particularly concrete
either, not simply because describing sound can be difficult, but because
Sun Ra’s is also a revisionist project. Graham Lock’s discussions of Sun
Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton in his book Blutopia (1999)
plainly demonstrates this revisionist dimension in all the three compos-
ers, as Lock also has it in the subtitle for the book: “visions of the future
and revisions of the past.” Given the time-travelling discourse of much
Afrofuturism, one could also discuss a revision of the future, even if that
notion at first glance may seem paradoxical. But rather than discussing
Sun Ra’s discursive explanations of MythScience, I will move on to a
more concrete discussion of one particular album: The Heliocentric World
of Sun Ra, Volume 2 (1966).
The album is the second of two, as The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra,
Volume 1 was released in 1965. The title’s reference to heliocentrism is
crucial, and the album cover of Volume 2 opens up a space for a reading of
relations across history. I mentioned the cover in Chap. 3, and I read it in
a similar vein as to how Eshun reads covers. The cover features a German
astronomical chart of the solar system, and a number of portraits, of
Tycho Brahe, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, and Pythagoras—
in addition to Sun Ra himself. With these scientists we are back in the

“early modern” and at a kind of beginning of modernity that is of interest,
and that Sun Ra—or the designer Paul Frick—explicitly references in the
context of this album. Whether it is audible on the album is another ques-
tion, but these references—both to the sun—including Sun Ra’s name, as
well as his heliocentrism—and to the thinkers, philosophers, or scientists
referenced, people from before the distinction between philosopher and
scientist makes modern sense— at least provide food for thought
In Infinity and Perspective, Karsten Harries writes about how Copernicus
exists on “the threshold separating our modern from the medieval world”
(Harries 2001, 8). For Harries this is related to the understanding of a cen-
tre of the cosmos. In the change from a geocentric to a heliocentric under-
standing of the cosmos both worldviews still involve a centre; it is only that
the centre changes from the Earth to the sun. In contrast, later thinkers—
Harries’s main protagonist is Cusanus (Nicholas of Cusa)—argue against
the very idea of such a centre (Harries 2001, 33), thus leading to a question
of perspective and an important change in the authority of reason and sci-
ence. Here then, is a scientific revolution, where the understanding of
“man’s” place in “the cosmos” changes. This new science, however, is also
related to dimensions of even more importance in the case of Sun Ra,
where the understanding of numbers and mathematics come to the fore.
Closely related to this claim is Galileo’s understanding of nature as a book

written in the language of mathematics. There is, however, an important
difference: Kepler’s God is not only a geometer but also a musician who
created the universe as a harmonious whole. To understand the cosmos we
have to attend to its music. In Galileo’s science such music had no place.
Only careful observation and experiment could open the book of nature.
(Harries 2001, 273)
Whereas in the history of science, normatively understood, the scien-

tific revolution and the new understanding of human reason may be the
most important results of this whole process, from a perspective more
closely related to Sun Ra it may very well be that the book of nature is not
really a book at all, at least not one to be read—even in the language of
numbers and mathematics—but a sonic book, or what Eshun calls “sonic
fiction.” And thus that Sun Ra is, in a sense, more closely related to Kepler
than to Galilei. In other words, if reason and science are the results of the
scientific revolution and this modernity, Sun Ra may continue to exist on
the threshold where the sonic is more important than observations. Here,
however, the fictitious broadens out to include the whole cosmos, and the
cosmos becomes a sonic entity. This is the most important dimension of
the heliocentrism of Sun Ra, where it may be different than that of the
early modern scientists, although it seems to be different than the domi-
nant reception of this science.
In other words, there are not many concepts here that could be taken
for granted. Rather it is about understanding how the references across
time and space speak into another understanding of cosmology, where,
arguably, sounds are as important as thinking in making sense of the
cosmos, and where, finally, Sun Ra’s lectures at Berkeley about “the Black
Man in the Cosmos” may make different sense (cf. Szwed, 1998, 294).
It is not that I take Sun Ra’s albums to illustrate or represent a cosmo-
logical theory. Rather, my belief is that the centuries-long tradition of
relations between sound and the cosmos are at stake in Sun Ra’s music
too. This is simultaneously metaphysical (as in the harmony of the
spheres) and materialist (as in the thinking of vibrations), but what I also
find fascinating is that it is related to “science” and sound, as well as to a
historical rereading—or a conversation with history. Sun Ra explicitly
sets up this conversation, he explicitly references the past, and I will argue
in doing so he also questions the notion of “premodern”—as well as
“modern” or any other European/Eurocentric notion. This he does, for
example with his references to Ancient Egypt, where one could argue
Pythagoras got his ideas from, as well as understood as a source for
counter-history throughout European history, another history found in
the archives, but perhaps with other consequences than the dominating
history. Still, however, this counter-history is not more “counter” than it
is also pretty well known, and the relation between what is well known,
what is esoteric, what is speculative, etc., is very much at stake in under-
standing Sun Ra’s project, his heliocentrism, and his cosmology.
While Sun Ra is known for using electronic keyboards (see Chap. 6),
on The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra the keyboard is not the dominat-
ing sound. Rather, the sounds that seem to dominate are bass, lots
of percussion, and woodwinds. This should not be taken to mean that

there is a total absence of electronic keyboards. On The Heliocentric
Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 2, Sun Ra plays the clavioline (an instrument he
also plays on The Magic City [1966] and Atlantis [1967]), whereas on
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1 he plays an electric celeste.
Rather than a focus on instruments, it is the overall sounds of the
Arkestra that is important, where one of the fascinating things about
Sun Ra’s oeuvre is the multiplicity of sounds available.
The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Volume 2 has a rather small band, but
uses the musicians in a rich variation of sounds. The three compositions
are clearly meant to be heard in relation to their titles as well as the title
of the album(s), meaning that George E. Lewis’s question about what the
sounds can tell us about the Afrofuture without focusing on the titles, is
hard to follow (cf. Lewis 2008a, 141). Rather, it seems like the titles, on
all levels, are integrated into the compositions, and that they function as
focal points, as entries into the interpretation and understanding of the
sounds. In that sense they resemble what Lawrence Kramer has called
“hermeneutic windows” in music (Kramer 1993, 12), and can be seen as
opening up a space for interpreting sounds rather than as narrowing
down the possibilities for interpretation. This, obviously, does not mean
that Lewis’s question, and his desire for a focus upon the sounds as
sounds, is by any means misguided.
The three compositions on The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Volume 2
are “The Sun Myth,” “A House of Beauty,” and “Cosmic Chaos.” Reading
the titles one can imagine a cosmic perspective, as if the titles tell a story.
At the same time it is, in a particular sense, as if this story is in a distant
past, as if the compositions evoke a primordial beginning where the sun
and some dualism of cosmos and chaos bring Creation—as a house of
beauty—into existence.
It is also telling that both “myth” and “chaos” are found here. The
“house of beauty” may even be seen as an aesthetic description of the
cosmos, where the heliocentrism referred to in the album’s title references
the interrelation of cosmos and beauty, found in ancient theories about
vibrations and harmony, and where the cosmos is organized according to
musical and mathematical relations, but where music and mathematics
are understood as different realizations of the same.
It is apparent that the compositions on The Heliocentric World of Sun

Ra, Volume 1 are written within a similar framework, but they are shorter,
and with additional sonic qualities—not least those brought about by the
presence of timpani, played by several of the musicians. The titles on The
Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Volume 1 are “Heliocentric,” “Outer
Nothingness,” “Other Worlds,” “The Cosmos,” “Of Heavenly Things,”
“Nebulae,” and “Dancing in the Sun.” Most of them reference the heav-
ens, but perhaps take things down to earth in the last track, even if the
sun is implied, and this is perhaps to be taken as a contrast to the perspec-
tive brought about by Volume 2. Still, the sun, as the heavenly body
bringing life, being the centre of the cosmos—as heliocentrism indi-
cates—is found on both albums, together with the aesthetic, or ritualis-
tic, in dance, as a result and answer to the sun.
“The Sun Myth” opens with Ronnie Boykins on bowed bass, before
the introduction of percussion instruments. While percussion instru-
ments are important, they contribute atmosphere rather than rhythm,
not, of course, in the sense that the music is not rhythmic, but in the
sense that it is neither swing nor beat they are contributing. The inter-
locking rhythms are rather to be heard as different pulses coming in and
out of focus, as if different feelings of time coexist. At the same time, the
sounds belong to different tuned areas—less so than with the use of tim-
pani on The Helioncentric World of Sun Ra, Volume 1 (although the tim-
pani are all pitched low)—but with less tonal difference than in
non-percussion instruments. When the wind instruments come in, it is
as if the saxophones grow out of this percussive field. Distinguishing
between the players can be difficult, and it is the sound of an ensemble
rather than of the different musicians, a dimension of interest also related
to the idea of each musician having his own sound. When Sun Ra’s clavi-
oline comes in, this sound too seems to grow out of the saxophone
sounds, before the sonic qualities of the instrument take over. Again it is
as if there is a continuum of sounds, where new sounds are introduced
from within the previous sounds and then gradually present distinct
sonic qualities. At points in the track the clavioline sounds like a slightly
distorted or manipulated bass clarinet or baritone saxophone (the two
instruments played by Robert Cummings and Pat Patrick respectively),
and it is as if Ra is altering the sounds ever so slightly to point to this
interrelation. In other words, it is as if the clavioline is not to be heard as

a keyboard instrument at all, but rather as a sound found in-between the
different bass instruments, both the bowed bass and the deep woodwinds.
Hearing this as music recorded in 1965, and following a more common
understanding of jazz history, it is understandable that these composi-
tions were challenging the ears. Even with a small ensemble, it sounds
like a free jazz big band, much more than even the extended free jazz
groups of Ornette Coleman’s 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective
Improvisation or even John Coltrane’s 1965 album Ascension. Hearing The
Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Volume 2 from a later historical perspective
it sounds as if there is a conductor or mastermind behind the sounds,
despite much of the music being improvised.9
“A House of Beauty” begins with a piccolo and claviolin passage, and
again it sounds as if the claviolin is a wind instrument more than any-
thing else. That the synthesizer is monophonic is one reason, but more
important are the sounds chosen, how the instrument is played, and the
interaction between the claviolin and the surrounding instruments. The
interaction between acoustic and electronic instruments establishes a
continuum between the two, rather than any clear-cut division, meaning
that the sounds coming from the claviolin—the sounds of electronic civi-
lization—at the same time sound outside of history, as related both to the
past (even the distant past) and the future. Szwed writes about this com-
position as gesturing towards Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, but
argues that the bass introduces another layer in its counterpoint to the
other two instruments (Szwed 1998, 217). When the bass appears the
tonal spectrum between the piccolo and the bass is not what is in focus,
rather the instruments sound together despite the tonal difference. The
track develops into a lyrical piano and bass duet, and when Sun Ra
switches from the piano to the claviolin the latter instrument again starts
out sounding almost like a baritone saxophone.
“Cosmic Chaos” begins with a quite conventional “chaos” sound, but
quickly moves to a number of saxophone lines, following much of avant-
garde saxophone playing in the early 1960s. What is striking, however, is
how the piano contributes to presenting layers of sound—drums and
bass contribute too—as if the wind instruments operate on different tem-
poral layers played over and against the piano. The result is both swinging
and free improvisation simultaneously. In this case it is hard not to see the
title as a way of indicating that the cosmic and the chaotic are to be
understood as more closely related to each other—perhaps another kind
of continuum—rather than as the dichotomy it has been made to be
within many an understanding. It is as if the music brings out these rela-
tions, as if the different players, together, in a music saying “we”; a music
in a plural voice, so to speak, shows how listening to the collective reveals
how cosmos and chaos are two sides of the same coin rather than cosmos
understood as an organization of an amorphous chaos.
The discussion of cosmology is of course also historical, not least in the
sense that the understanding of cosmos has a history. It is here that the
reference to the Renaissance—found in the portraits on the cover of The
Heliocentric World of Sun Ra, Volume 2—becomes of interest. What roles
should be associated to Tycho Brahe, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus,
and Galileo, on the one hand, and Pythagoras on the other, the latter
obviously related to ancient Greece rather than the Renaissance? In one
sense it is arguably easier to answer this question when it comes to
Pythagoras, and this answer is less about him as a person and philosopher
and more about the reputation he had and has within the history of phi-
losophy, from Plato on, a reputation also of importance to understanding
music theory, and thus—less surprising than one should first expect—to
cosmology. This relation between music theory and cosmology is well
known, but should be reiterated, as it seems to be one of the backgrounds
upon which quite a bit of Afrofuturist discourse on the sonic can be
understood as well. This is, or will be, a way into what could be termed a
sonic cosmology. Or, as Eshun writes, referencing this new world and
new science,
Machine Genealogist Lewis Mumford presses the Control key on the

Assemblage file: ‘Only one thing was needed to assemble and polarize all
the new components of the megamachine: the birth of the Sun God. And
in the 16th C, with Kepler, Tycho Brahe and Copernicus officiating as
accoucheurs, the new Sun God was born’. On the cover of ‘65’s The
Heliocentric World of Sun Ra Vol 2, next to Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho
Brahe and Kepler, there’s an illustration of Ra. By travelling back in time
and inserting himself into the 16th C, Copernican heliocentricity is turned
into European sunworship. Renaissance astronomy becomes a thriving

branch of Egyptian god worship. Egyptian MythSystems abduct the
Christian universe. Their cosmology serves Ra’s ends. (Eshun 1998, 162)
Eshun’s metaphor—if that is what it is—of Sun Ra time travelling

back to the sixteenth century is thought provoking, and indicates one
version of moving across time rather than keeping within linearity. Still,
this metaphor can be taken to illustrate the standard history after all, as
going back in time but still within the same time. Szwed, on the other
hand, seems quickly to move from the sixteenth century back to
Pythagoras, being more interested in discussing the esoteric dimensions
of the Pythagoreans as well as Pythagoras learning from Egypt. The latter
is of interest, as this arguably takes place simultaneously as Europe (in
one way or another) is emerging. Cutting the thread back to Egypt can
be said to be one way of lifting Europe up, claiming that philosophy is
the invention of the Greeks, rather than being a transformation of a lon-
ger history. A similar break can be seen in theoretical discussions claiming
that what is happening in Greece is a move from mythos to logos, from the
mythical, pre-rational to a worldview based in rationality and reason,
and, in opposition to myth, history. Pythagoras would here be localized
within this break, and the interpretation of his theoretical discourse as
being between the old and the new, reading how the new unfolds from
dimensions of his thought. One could argue that the Renaissance is local-
ized in a similar break, perhaps even a break leading to “modernity,” and
that what is happening in the cosmological debates is one sign of this.
Galileo could stand in for such an interpretation, where his heliocentrism
is part of a movement from religion to science. Again, then, these are
dimensions of history pointing backward and forward simultaneously, a
presence filled with both the past and the future.
Cosmic Drama
I have already mentioned Flying Lotus in relation to Paul Miller’s rhythm
science, but his music too can be understood as one continuation of Sun
Ra’s project. It is nowhere as noticeable as on the album Cosmogramma
Cosmic Drama 131
(2010). The title, he has revealed, is his mishearing of Alice Coltrane (his
great-aunt) lecturing and saying “cosmic drama.” The reference to Alice
Coltrane is of interest, as it points to another kind of Afrofuturism, or
cosmic music, than the one found in Sun Ra. These differences are not
only or primarily differences in thought systems, but differences in sound,
and in the case of Alice Coltrane represents another inheritance from
1960s spiritual jazz than what is more dominating in the sounds of Sun
Ra. Flying Lotus (born Steven Ellison, 1983) is the grandnephew of Alice
Coltrane (born Alice McLeod) and the son of Marilyn McLeod. Both of
these relations are often referenced in connection to his music, the first
with attention to the spatial and spiritual dimensions in his music, the
second with reference to more traditional popular music and to Motown
(McLeod wrote, among other songs, Diana Ross’s “Love Hangover”). But
while biographically it arguably makes more sense to relate Flying Lotus
to Alice Coltrane, there are a number of references to Sun Ra as well, the
most obvious being the album cover of Cosmogramma (2010) which visu-
ally quotes Sun Ra’s Some Blues But Not the Kind That’s Blue (1977) or
Sleeping Beauty (1979) with what may be a sun, but which also may be
interpreted as comparing with some kind of cosmogram (cf. Gaskins
2016a), which would make sense given Flying Lotus’s title.
Flying Lotus’s track “Transmolecularization” is an outtake from
You’re Dead! and features Kamasi Washington on saxophone and was
first played on his BBC Radio 1 sessions (May 14, 2015). The title of
this track is a clear reference to Sun Ra, both to the opening of Space Is
the Place, and to a particular scene in the film, from the Outer Space
Employment Agency where transmolecularization is one of several
terms Sun Ra uses to explain the relationship to outer space and to
space travel. By using this term in the title of a track Flying Lotus sig-
nals an inheritance of Sun Ra. Besides this, however, the track demon-
strates inheritance on many levels, as for example in the sound of
Washington’s saxophone. Rather than sounding like the music from
Sun Ra—or rather the Arkestra’s saxophone players—Washington is
closer to the sound of John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and the “space
jazz” or “spiritual jazz” of the 1960s and 1970s. Pharaoh Sanders is not
incidentally one of the musicians that may be seen as a link between
Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane. He played on Sun Ra’s Featuring Pharoah
Sanders and Black Harold (recorded in 1964), and also on three albums
by Alice Coltrane: A Monastic Trio (1967), Ptah, the El Daoud (1970a),
and Journey in Satchidananda (1970b). Sanders also played together
with Alice Coltrane on several albums by John Coltrane. If one were to
focus on the saxophone sounds in relation to Flying Lotus, one possi-
bility would be to hear Ravi Coltrane as a continuation of John Coltrane
(although of course not as any kind of copy) and Kamasi Washington’s
sound as closer to Pharoah Sanders. Ravi Coltrane is heard on two
tracks Cosmogramma, “Arkestry” and “German Haircut,” so these dif-
ferent aspects of saxophone sounds are heard across Flying Lotus’s
albums. Again there is an important dimension for Afrosonics or
Afrofuturist sound in that it exists both on singular tracks and across
complete oeuvres, and that there are differences between them.
There might be a paradox here, not only in Washington’s playing, but
in Flying Lotus’s production more generally. If what is at stake is “the
sound of the future,” what happens when the musicians go back in time
to find this sound? In other words, what kind of historical thinking is at
stake in producing the sound—or music—of the future? The sound of
“Transmolecularization” is a mixture of Washington’s saxophone, samples
close to both 1960s jazz, and electronic music and, as such point to an
understanding of the future as a combination of elements from the past.
Compared to Flying Lotus’s earlier albums, You’re Dead! is more of a
jazz album, with references to the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“Transmolecularization” is a case in point, with Washington sounding
like Pharoah Sanders or Joe Henderson, for example, and the way they
play on Alice Coltrane’s Ptah, the El Daoud (1970a). Here, then, the ref-
erence to Sun Ra is in the title, showing music as a means of transporta-
tion, but the actual sonics are closer to Alice Coltrane and what is arguably
another strand of Afrofuturist music. And while any clear samples are not
in the forefront of the mix, the music still shows central features of hip
hop aesthetics as an art of recombination, allusions, and quotes—both of
particular songs or tracks, or of a more general aesthetic or vibe. Here,
even history becomes a kind of technology, a kind of sonic time travel
where the sounds of the past re-emerge in the present together with the
sounds of the (imagined) future. On the other side of time, the whole
cosmos is vibrating, echoing across the universe.
Cosmic Drama 133
The Arkestra provides similar fortitude to the music of Flying Lotus (Steven
Ellison), a Los Angeles producer who, as a relative of Alice Coltrane and
her grandson Ravi, provides a living link to the freer passages of jazz. The
track ‘Arkestry’, from Cosmogramma (2010), asserts a heavy musical pedi-
gree that other tracks confirm: ‘Intro // A Cosmic Drama’, ‘Sateliiiiiitee’
and ‘Do the Astral Plane’. Synthetic sounds weave and warp alternative
worlds in a service to Sun Ra’s message of uplift, as Flying Lotus confirms
in an interview. (Youngquist 2016, 253)10
The heritage of Sun Ra on Flying Lotus’s music is obvious. But the

same can be said about the music of Alice Coltrane. At the same time
there seems to be a tendency within the literature on Afrofuturism to
understand Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane as highly different musicians—
when it comes to sound, but also to aesthetics and metaphysics. How,
then, can they be combined? One reason for the seeming opposition
between Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane in the writings of Afrofuturism seems
to be as banal as a question of gender. While what Eshun writes about
Alice Coltrane is interesting and good, she does not get nearly enough
space in his exposition of the sonic fictions. Still, he values her “remix” of
John Coltrane, seeing it as the imaginative act it is, rather than as sacri-
lege, as some have been eager to argue. But he also seems to see her in
continuation with John Coltrane, almost to the degree that she hardly
has a place of her own. Then, however, he manages to highlight, in con-
tinuation with her remix of John Coltrane, her use of strings and how
they are heard, a wonderful dimension of much of her music. In these
strings, another world becomes audible, and also another kind of remix.
This is not least the case with “Spring Rounds” from her 1975 album
Eternity, a versioning of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Another dimen-
sion seemingly out of reach for Eshun’s interpretation is more related to
metaphysics, but in this case metaphysics is intimately related to sounds.
In the case of Alice Coltrane the relation to Indian thinking is audible;
it is not simply a part of her theoretical, philosophical framework, it
is also given sound. A challenge, however, may be to theorize—and
hear—what “Asian” sounds are doing within an Afrofuturist framework.
There are several possibilities here: (1) seeing a generalized people of
colour dimension, which could also be seen more precisely as a criticism
of Europe/Eurocentrism, (2) thinking about the “Afro-Asiatic,” as, for

example, written about by Martin Bernal, (3) comparing with, for exam-
ple, Wu-Tang Clan and their use of Asian dimensions, and from there
discuss the “remixing” of different traditions, belief systems, worldviews
within Afrofuturism.
On Cosmogramma, there are a number of references to Afrofuturist
traditions, and whereas many of them are from the visuals and the titles,
this should not take away from the importance of the sounds as well.
Take “Arkestry” as an example, the track mentioned in the Youngquist
quote above. The title signifies on Sun Ra, Ravi Coltrane plays tenor sax,
and the harp of Rebekah Raff echoes Alice Coltrane. In other words, it is
a very obvious track for interacting with a number of Afrofuturist dimen-
sions. “Drips//Auntie’s Harp” very clearly reference the family context,
that is to say, Alice Coltrane, and I would say so does “Do the Astral
Plane,” a track that is more Alice Coltrane than Sun Ra, even if Sun Ra’s
catalogue includes “Other Planes of There” (track on the album Other
Planes of There, recorded 1964, released 1966, reissued 1992)—that is,
pretty close in time to his album featuring Pharoah Sanders. And in con-
trast and continuity with these sounds of the 1960s, there is “MmmHmm”
with a sound closer to ‘70’s fusion, not least audible in Thundercat’s voice
and bass.
While Flying Lotus comes from laptop-based electronic music,
Cosmogramma has much more in the way of live instruments. The sounds
are thus more “organic”—as is the term often used by both journalists
and academics. On later albums the “live” feeling, or something close to
“jazz,” is even more obvious, whereas on Cosmogramma, if heard as an
album, the music moves between the electronic—perhaps nowhere as
clear as on the opening track—and the acoustic/live/organic dimensions.
This kind of production is implicitly and explicitly at the same time a
way of making references to history, as sounds having historical refer-
ences are layered above each other or subsequently, thus giving the lis-
tener an opportunity to focus on different dimensions and thus in a
particular sense move across time. The opening track, “Clock Catcher,”
sounding like a computer game, then moving on to a harder electronic
sound but in combination with the harp. There can be little doubt that
the harp, while also being an inherent part of the sound of the album,
Notes 135
simultaneously references Alice Coltrane (nowhere as clear as on “Auntie’s

Harp,” but from there it is folded out throughout the album). When the
strings come in on the track “Intro//A Cosmic Drama” the echo of Alice
Coltrane is unmistakable—if one has heard Alice Coltrane, that is. But
from that short track, the next one, “Zodiac Shit,” is much more heavily
electronic. The strings are still there, but these electronic surroundings
show some of the movements in time—and style—between Alice
Coltrane’s albums from the 1970’s to Flying Lotus’s own reimaginings of
similar soundscapes.
What Flying Lotus’s albums make clear, at least from Cosmogramma
on, is an explicit work with sounds, between the acoustic and the elec-
tronic, the historical and the contemporary, and also between the per-
sonal—including biographical references—and the cosmic. As such his
music is not only in dialogue with Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, and Afrofuturist
traditions, but also with the ongoing developments of electronic music
across genres. The echoes of history, however, at the same time underline
how the new and contemporary music and sound takes part in a revision
of the past, in line with the counter-memories of Afrofuturism.
Notes
1. I do not know why the reference to the ear has disappeared in Weheliye’s
quote.
2. From the opening of Space is the Place.
3. Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones also use the term Astro Black
in their edited volume Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness
(Anderson and Jones 2016).
4. Here Attali establishes what is almost an opposition between “legible”
and “audible,” and it is tempting to read this opposition in relation to
Dery’s reference to the “search for legible traces of its history” in “Black
to the Future” (Dery 1994, 180). Such a search for audible traces of his-
tory is what the musicians and composers discussed in this book argu-
ably partake in.
5. There are similarities between this argument and Tate’s discussion of
cyclical time as well as the theoretical (and speculative) endeavours of
the Black Quantum Futurism collective in Philadelphia (referenced in

Chap. 3).
6. Cf., Benjamin on the flâneur in The Paris of the Second Empire in
Baudelaire (Benjamin 2003, 3–92, in particular p. 18ff).
7. In a sense these years are the same ones Alondra Nelson discusses in rela-
tion to the digital divide (Nelson 2002).
8. It should be added, however, that a collection of That’s Why’s music was
released in 2012, and so it is less surprising that Flying Lotus got to hear
it than if he’d had to dig up the vinyl from 1970/71.
9. Not that a conductor by necessity should be understood as a master-
mind. Some of the recordings of Butch Morris, for example, seem to
indicate that the conductor can be a facilitator rather than a “dictator,”
as someone contributing to musicians playing and creating together
rather than someone keeping the different musicians within the same
frame.
10. There is a mistake here, as Ravi Coltrane is Alice Coltrane’s son, not
grandson.
Discography
Coleman, Ornette. 1960. Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. Atlantic.
Coltrane, John. 1965. Ascension. Impulse!
Coltrane, Alice. 1967. A Monastic Trio. Impulse!
———. 1970a. Ptah, the El Daoud. Impulse!
———. 1970b. Journey in Satchidananda. Impulse!
Flying Lotus. 2010. Cosmogramma. Warp.
Sun Ra. 1972. Space is the Place. Impulse.
———. 1977. Some Blues But Not the Kind That’s Blue. El Saturn.
———. 1979. Sleeping Beauty. El Saturn.
Bibliography
Anderson, Reynaldo, and Charles E. Jones, eds. 2016. Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise
of Astro-Blackness. Lanham: Lexington Books.
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Gilroy, Paul. 1993a. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.
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turisme. Kritik 211: 87–94.
———. 2017. Performing Race and Gender: Erykah Badu Between Post-Soul
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5
Interstellar Space, Outer Space and
Inner Space
Outer space or the grander cosmos are within Afrofuturism found both
as a speculative dimension and as a direct inspiration for sounds and
spirituality. John Coltrane’s album Interstellar Space (recorded 1969,
released posthumously in 1974) is among the most famous within the
jazz tradition, whereas within the Afrofuturist tradition Sun Ra’s album
Space is the Place (1972) is arguably the best known, although much of
Sun Ra’s oeuvre could be interpreted within such a context. The sounds
on these two albums are different. Interstellar Space has Coltrane playing
tenor saxophone and bells together with Rashied Ali on drums, whereas
Space is the Place consists of Sun Ra and his Astro Intergalactic Infinity
Arkestra, often quite dominated by voices and woodwinds, as well as Sun
Ra’s Farfisa organ, which the credits on the album refer to as a “space
organ.” Some sonic similarities can be heard in the use of percussion, and
there are similarities in the way the saxophonists play, but Coltrane,
pushing the tenor saxophone with an extreme intensity, is still different
from the playfulness often heard on Space is the Place.1 What these two
albums demonstrate, however, is that there need not be too much of a
difference between Afrofuturism and albums within the jazz tradition less
often discussed within the context of Afrofuturism. These similarities go
to show that the borders may not be very clear, and there are no substantial

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7_5
140 5 Interstellar Space, Outer Space and Inner Space
reasons for not including Interstellar Space in an Afrofuturist discourse; I

argue that it has comparable aesthetics to albums by Sun Ra, and takes
part in a similar story. Again, as in earlier chapters, one question could be
whether it is the title of the album, as well as of the compositions on the
album—“Mars,” “Venus,” “Jupiter,” “Saturn,” and on the CD version of
“Leo” and a variation of “Jupiter”—that establishes a framework for hear-
ing the album within the Afrofuturist context. If it is the titles that estab-
lish such a context for interpretation, then questions about the sounds are
actualized.
Thinking outer space within this context expands on the cosmological
dimensions found within Afrofuturism, and does so both in historically
and geographically. Beginning with Ancient Egypt through to the Middle
Passage, on to a segregated USA, and to the globalized world of today,
outer space is, in a sense, the next step in the story. In addition to such an
expansion, there is the historical context of what in the 1950s and 1960s
was known as the Space Race.2 This context, embedded in the Cold War,
and the race for being first with a number of achievements in space—
including having a man on the moon—is often referenced in relation to
the emergence of Afrofuturism, and it is probably not a coincidence that
the origin of Sun Ra’s Arkestra is to be found in this same time. Focusing
on going to outer space and grounding the interpretation in material his-
tory, it makes sense to see the emergence of sonic Afrofuturism as taking
place at this time, and thus why the late 1950s and 1960s are important.
Perhaps this historical coincidence is a major reason for Sun Ra becoming
a kind of founding figure of Afrofuturism. A speculative framework,
however, may at the same time be able to push these dates further into the
past, and thus expand also on the musical and sonic material under dis-
cussion. Here other ideas about space, such as found in ancient astron-
omy, come to the fore.
Returning to the desire to go to outer space, it is important to see that
the reasons for wanting to do so may be different depending on who
expresses them. The US officials within the Space Race had, obviously, a
very different project than the one Sun Ra presents in the movie Space is
the Place. Dery’s reference, in “Black to the Future,” to African-American
voices having other stories to tell, testifies to such differences, and these
other stories, as Sun Ra alerts us to, are also about establishing a new
5 Interstellar Space, Outer Space and Inner Space 141
black civilization on another planet with different vibrations. This is not

solely escapism but a necessary next step in a narrative that could be
established in three main phases: an African phase (pre Middle Passage),
a US phase (after the Middle Passage, through slavery and the Civil
Rights Movement), and an intergalactic phase (after having left planet
Earth). One can find another version of a similar narrative in the music
video for Erykah Badu’s “Next Lifetime,” but in Badu’s story there is a
major difference as the futurist phase is not localized in outer space but in
a futurist Motherland (Africa) (cf. Steinskog 2017a). This difference is
telling, as it points to a number of outcomes such a story could take, and
thus to different imaginations of the future (cf. Womack 2013, 146).
Badu’s version apparently implies that the utopian impulse (if that is
what it is) could equally well be realized on this planet, where Sun Ra
seems to claim that the only possibility is leaving Earth behind, that, as
he wrote, “this planet is doomed” (cf. Sun Ra 2011). As such, the differ-
ent understandings of planet Earth can also be seen as taking part in the
dichotomy of utopian versus dystopian narratives. This, however, needs
also to be discussed in relation to whether the end of the world is local-
ized in the future or as having already taken place in the past.
Afrofuturism started out as a question of black people in the future
and African-American science fiction. One central author is Octavia
E. Butler. In this chapter, Butler will meet the AACM (the Association
for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) in the work of Nicole
Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble. In the first half of the chapter, I will
discuss her Xenogenesis Suite (2008) and Intergalactic Beings (2010), two
albums based on Butler’s Xenogenesis series (1987–2000). While Mitchell’s
work combines traditions from jazz, experimental music, and chamber
music, and while on a surface level it is more in the vein and aesthetics of
the Art Ensemble of Chicago and other groups known from the AACM,
this is music explicitly inspired by science fiction, thus it raises the ques-
tion of what science fiction sounds like. In that sense, there are some
differences at stake in how the sounds of the future are heard. Mitchell’s
music is primarily played on acoustic instruments, although the
Xenogenesis Suite has been performed with electronic musicians as well,
at a concert in California in October 2016, when Ras G was part of the
ensemble. My argument is that the Butler reference brings out a hidden
layer in the AACM-related music. Not hidden for insiders, but hidden in
the sense that the AACM has not been as important as Sun Ra for the
Afrofuturist discourse. In A Pure Solar World, Paul Youngquist describes
Art Ensemble of Chicago as “the street-wise, terrestrial counterpart to the
Arkestra’s cosmic space machine” (Youngquist 2016, 241), and in A
Power Stronger than Itself, George E. Lewis writes that “from the mid-
1950s until his departure from Chicago in 1960, Sun Ra’s work was a
major aspect of Chicago’s experimental musical atmosphere, and it would
be reasonable to assume that his influence would have carried over to the
younger generation” (Lewis 2008b, 156). Still one could argue that there
are underexplored relations between the AACM and Afrofuturism, and
that Mitchell’s work is the obvious place for such a discussion. By explic-
itly relating the music to Butler, she contributes to another view on the
relation between AACM and Afrofuturism. The second half of this chap-
ter will contrast my interpretation of Mitchell with an interpretation of
the music of Ras G (Gregory Shorter, Jr.). In that reading “outer space”
gets another twist, as it is, in a sense, more closely related to an inner
space. These two dimensions are, however, in some ways interrelated, and
the use of instruments as well as the sounds can be used to unveil some of
these relations.
Whereas outer space or the cosmos can be seen as a utopian space, as
is arguably the case with Sun Ra and his plans for transporting the black
population to a new planet and building a new civilization, there is an
equally strong case for outer space to be perceived as hostile. Here is a
parallel to Dery’s description of African Americans as “descendants of
alien abductees” (Dery 1994, 180). In a sense they are aliens themselves;
thus the definition of alien is a matter of perspective. A similar argument
could be made in relation to Sun Ra, as “a different order of being,” a
stranger, an alien from Saturn. The question of perspective is also relevant
for the distinction between utopia and dystopia, where many utopian
places are utopian only from a certain perspective, and would be dysto-
pian from other perspectives. This is, quite evidently, one key insight in
the background of Afrofuturism. It is clear that both utopian and dysto-
pian perspectives are found within speculative fiction. Given this, one
should perhaps expect the same in speculative sonics, or in Afrofuturist
music. On the other hand it might be difficult to say what utopian and
5 Interstellar Space, Outer Space and Inner Space 143
dystopian would mean in sound. In other words, how do sound (or

music) represent or present a utopian or a dystopian future? The impor-
tance of Butler’s dystopian dimensions for this book is a kind of antidote
to the more utopian stories about a different future. In other words, that
Afrofuturism is not only dealing with traumatic historical memory and a
troublesome present, but it also contains the possibilities that the future
will not be very bright. This perspective at the same time leads to a some-
what different relation to my argument in that a question arises as to how
this dystopian scenario may be given sound. The relation between music
and literature found in Mitchell’s work at the same time challenges the
focus upon the sounds. Remembering Lewis’s focus on what sound can
tell us about the Afrofuture, in contrast to “suggestive song titles” (Lewis
2008a, 141), when it comes to Mitchell’s compositions understood as
programme music, the titles must be understood differently than in
music without such a programmatic intent.
Let me first take examples from the AACM context. One important
composer associated with the AACM is Anthony Braxton, and through-
out Braxton’s oeuvre there is a tendency for “neutral” titles to be attached
to his work: “Composition 1,” “Composition 8A,” “Composition 26 J,”
and so on. At first sight these titles appear as more “neutral” than when
Braxton records “All The Things You Are,” and not only because the latter
is a jazz standard. His neutral titles still lead to questions about their sig-
nificance. Is his “sound” more open to interpretation when the titles are,
so to speak, “un-suggestive” (in contrast to Lewis’s reference to “sugges-
tive song titles”)? And what about Braxton’s graphic titles? It could be
argued that they are even more abstract than the ones referencing compo-
sition numbers, and they are in addition unpronounceable, and thus dif-
ficult to communicate in any other sense than written form. Here the act
of writing music is put into focus, as the written form is highlighted even
in communicating the titles of the compositions. This is important in the
context of a seemingly near absence of “non-white” composers in the
tradition of compositional music, but at the same time underscores the
written dimension rather than the improvisational, and as such may
introduce other dichotomies into the musical landscape that get in the
way of interpreting or understanding what is at stake. The graphic titles
would probably still not be included in Lewis’s notion of “visual
iconography.” But they are arguably as related to musical works in the

European avant-garde tradition as to the Afrofuturist one, and may thus
be seen as questioning the distinction between the Eurological and the
Afrological. According to Braxton himself, however, his titles are any-
thing but neutral. As Graham Lock writes,
Braxton has said that in the beginning he had no particular system or goal
in mind regarding his titles. But as his music evolved, so did the diagrams.
By the mid-1970s the mystical – always a factor in his compositions –
began to assume increasing prominence. The early ‘formula’ and ‘alterna-
tive coding’ titles, which had encoded structural calibrations as well as
personal references such as chess moves and friends’ initials, gave way to
‘dimensional drawing’ and later to color and shape diagrams that resem-
bled Braxton’s use of color and shape in his scores (as graphic notation, for
example, and for designating certain kinds of improvisation), a develop-
ment that drew in turn on his research into astrology, numerology, and
systems of correspondence that he traced back to ‘the ancients’ and in par-
ticular to ancient Egypt. (Lock 1999, 164)
In other words, they are—or can be seen as—hieroglyphs. “In the early
1990s,” Lock reminds us, “Braxton began to talk of his music system as
analogous to a place, an imaginary world that provided locations for his
stories” (Lock 1999, 165). Thus, these composisions can be understood as
science, hieroglyphics, and stories. Braxton’s music can thus clearly be seen
in an Afrofuturist tradition too. As such, his music can be seen as a sonic
world-building, but with the huge difference from literary world-building
that interpreting this “imaginary world” is difficult, as the sounds are less
concrete than words. Even related to Eshun’s take on sonic fiction, Braxton’s
world is a challenge. I cannot help, however, but remark that Braxton’s
thinking draws on an interest in ancient Egypt, and thus there is an obvious
parallel to Sun Ra.3 When writing about “Composition 151,” Lock argues
for Braxton’s “story” pieces being scenes within a story, “a scene that fea-
tures the location of the story, as if the titles were a ‘window’ into the com-
position’s imagined topography” (Lock 1999, 165). The metaphor of the
title as a “window” into the composition is telling, and can be employed in
a general sense, where the title is not understood as narrowing the possible
significance of the musical piece, but rather as a way of opening it up in
Nicole Mitchell, Octavia Butler, and Xenogenesis 145
one or several particular directions. I am also reminded about Lawrence

Kramer’s use of the metaphor of the “window” in Music as Cultural
Practice, 1800–1900, where “textual inclusion” is one type of what he
calls “hermeneutic windows” (Kramer 1993, 9), the others being “cita-
tional inclusion” and “structural tropes” (10). Each of these three dimen-
sions can fruitfully be translated and adapted into an interpretation of
Afrofuturist music.
icole Mitchell, Octavia Butler,

N
and Xenogenesis
Mitchell’s Xenogenesis Suite: A Tribute to Octavia Butler (2008) is a suite
based on Butler’s trilogy. It is a tribute, an adaptation, and Mitchell’s own
construction of a speculative world. Whereas it works well also without
knowing anything about Butler’s novels, there can be little doubt that if
the titles are known associations to Butler’s work and probably also to her
importance within the Afrofuturist tradition will be part of how the work
is perceived and interpreted. Intergalactic Beings: Xenogenesis II is the fol-
low-up to Xenogenesis Suite. First performed April 22, 2010, and released
as an album in 2014, it is another suite in nine movements, although
with only discrete transitions between some of the movements. Mitchell’s
earlier work, Hope, Future and Destiny (2004), is a suite dedicated to
Alice Coltrane with multiple references to topics known from
Afrofuturism. I also see her dedication of the suite to Alice Coltrane as
highlighting a female dimension in her own music, and inscribing herself
into a female tradition. It is not a separate tradition, but one in constant
interaction with male musicians, although it testifies to the importance of
discussing gender within Afrofuturism. Whereas Alice Coltrane’s pres-
ence may be heard on Hope, Future and Destiny, on Xenogenesis Suite it is
Butler that is the major point of reference, excplicitly the Xenogenesis tril-
ogy, also known as Lilith’s Brood, consisting of the three novels Dawn
(1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989).
It is of interest that Mitchell explicitly sees her work—or at least part
of her work—as related to Afrofuturism. In an interview from April
2017, she references the term and also expands upon her relation to it
when mentioning Butler, and how she used to work with the publisher
Third World Press:
When reading through manuscripts I realized that there are three types of
work made by Black artists: Historical (the past), Now (focused on a cri-
tique or description of our present moment), and Visionary (looking
towards the future). I wanted to create visionary worlds through music. I’ve
realized that Afrofuturism is a great vehicle to ask questions about society
in a way that people are willing to imagine, and sci-fi is a great way for
audiences to encounter creative music, because their minds are more open.
I feel our imaginations are underutilized, and I try to create alternative
worlds through music. (Arlene and Larry Dunn 2017)
This is an artist’s description of Afrofuturism in general and of its

musical or sonic dimensions. The three types of work (or literature) she
mentions might at first sound pretty obvious, but it is interesting to think
about how these three dimensions of temporality are unfolded both in
her compositions and within an Afrofuturist framework. As I argue
throughout this book, one key insight in Afrofuturism is that time is
open, the past and the future are here in the now, and one can move
through time both to the past and to the future and back again, as the
Data Thief does in The Last Angel of History or as Dana does in Butler’s
earlier, arguably more famous, novel Kindred (1979).
Dana does not travel to the future in any other sense than returning to
her present, but she is changed, as her experiences in the past are with her.
In that sense there are multiple futures at stake. What happens to her when
she moves back in time stays with her upon her return. In Kindred time
travel is arguably the most important part of the narrative, as Dana moves
back in time to the pre-Civil War age of slavery, but also gets attached to
the slave master’s son. During the novel, she returns to the present (the
1970s) and moves back again, and this traveling through time changes her.
In a sense this is also a literalization of the trauma of slavery, where Dana’s
experiences are real, felt on her body, in another sense than present day
African Americans, but where this literalization simultaneously shows how
the trauma of slavery is also haunting contemporary US society. The rela-
tion between the slave masters and the slaves is also found in the story
as Rufus rapes Dana’s great-great-great-grandmother. This rape can also
be seen as resembling what is happening in Dawn, with the Oankali

wanting to interbreed with humans, and where Lilith can be seen as this
novel’s “version” of Dana. The two novels, Kindred on the one hand and
Dawn—and the Xenogenesis trilogy—on the other, also demonstrate
some of the challenges in thinking about time travel, where there seems
to be differences in going to the past and going to the future. Valérie
Loichot claims that Lilith is “a character who has much in common with
Kindred’s Dana: both are twenty-six years old at the beginning of their
adventures; Lilith wakes up 250 years after her time, Dana 150 years
before” (Loichot 2009, 43). One interesting dimension in this compari-
son is how time travel is mirrored, with the possibility of traveling both
forward and backward in time. And it is also of interest how the aliens of
the future and the slave owners of the past seem to occupy similar posi-
tions within the narrative. Among other things this is related to the ques-
tion of world-building, where the challenges seem to differ. When
Mitchell says that she wants to “create visionary worlds through music”
(Dunn and Dunn 2017) she is simultaneously implicitly referring to the
same dimension in music. But in a different sense, perhaps, than in litera-
ture, the artistic results may be seen as depending on different issues being
resolved or problematized, simply due to the difference in aesthetic mate-
rial. That is to say, the difference is between literature on the one hand and
sound on the other. But with these dimensions in place we might ask ques-
tions regarding Mitchell’s concrete musical adaptation of Butler’s litera-
ture? What is the visionary world brought about through music that she
envisions or imagines when taking her albums as a point of departure?
In a 2008 interview with Ellen Waterman, Mitchell is asked about her
inspiration, and she answers:
Octavia Butler is one. I just did a piece called Xenogenesis Suite […] that
was inspired by her book Dawn. She’s considered an Afro-futurist, being a
science fiction writer, and she definitely used her imagination, almost sci-
entifically, to explore different possibilities and social situations – and not
necessarily utopian ones. It was a real challenge to do Butler’s work, because
I think my music tends to be very joyous and celebratory. So this was
exploring another part of myself, to face head on the process of fear through
the music and convey that feeling through music. That was a really chal-
lenging project, and I felt that I grew a lot as a composer doing it. It helped
me to explore parts of myself that I might otherwise avoid. You can be all
happy and cheerful, but when you’re making a transformation you still
gotta deal with those hard times. (Waterman 2008)
There are important insights here on the part of the composer, how the
material at hand changes compositional style. The dystopian dimension,
the presence of fear and darkness, are compositional and sonic challenges.
Her “Composer Notes” to Intergalactic Beings is another important and
interesting source to her thinking about these compositions, and to her
transforming literature into music. This is not to say that she should
“control” the interpretations of the work, but more to highlight some of
the dimensions in Butler’s work that Mitchell focuses on; her writing
opens up the work and reveals how she has thought it vis-à-vis Butler’s
novels. She is explicit that she is not translating the narrative into music,
but rather that she attempts, through sound, to interrogate some of the
same issues Butler works with. She creates “sonic experiences” meant to
confront the listener, and her compositions express, through sound, the
issues in the novels she has chosen to focus on. These issues are collected
into six questions:
What would it be like …
. … to be abducted?
1
2. … to be subjected to horrifying creatures that are repelling to one’s aes-
thetics of beauty?
3. … to understand that your life depends on mating with these non-
humans, and the act will end human life and begin a new hybrid life?
4. … to be seduced, knowing that in contrast to your desire to resist, these
‘aliens’ can give you sensual pleasure beyond your wildest dreams?
5. … to be aware that life will meet and join with life in spite of

difference?
6. … to believe that fate (and in this case, metamorphosis) is inevitable?4
These are not, strictly speaking, questions of sound or music, but points
of departure for her sonic adaptation of the novels. And whereas sound or
music is more often than not described as being non-referential or non-
representational, other understandings of music at least creates an opportu-
nity for music or sound being able to signal emotions or affects on the one
hand or establish an atmosphere on the other. Rather than referencing

notions of “the musical and the extra-musical,” it makes more sense to
see these albums as program music, an idea that makes perfect sense in
relation to Mitchell’s suites. It is not as if this is a direct translation, but
the musical sounds are more than simply inspired by the literature or
novels. This is one place where program music might be upgraded to a
twenty-first-century Afrofuturist context, not only as a sonic fiction, but
more specifically as black speculative sonic fiction. Mitchell’s music par-
takes in creating “visionary worlds.” In other words, the music relates to
the old dichotomy between program music and absolute music—and in
this context the question could be whether Braxton’s “Composition 1”
should be seen as “absolute music” whereas Mitchell’s is programmatic.
And in this context it should be remembered that Heble writes about the
music of the Art Ensemble of Chicago in the context of an “autono-
mous” music (Chap. 4), and that given the AACM affiliation it would
not be surprising if Nicole Mitchell was read in a similar vein. Reading
Mitchell’s music as programmatic is also how Margasak discusses it,
where he singles out Xenogenesis Suite as a highpoint in her production,
while simultaneously underlining how the literary material was a musical
challenge:
Since her 2003 theater piece VisionQuest: Hope, Future and Destiny,
Mitchell has been exploring programmatic compositions – that is, pieces
with some sort of organizing principle located outside the music itself –
and the suite dedicated to Alice Coltrane that she’ll present in Millennium
Park this week is perhaps her most ambitious yet. But it was Xenogenesis
Suite that was the biggest challenge for her to write: though Mitchell
admires Butler’s fiction, it’s far darker than any subject matter she’d tackled
before – and the music is likewise darker, giving some indication of her
range. Brooding and sometimes harrowing, it combines lyrics and nonver-
bal vocals with jagged, dissonant instrumental arrangements to convey the
story of a black woman abducted by aliens after humanity nearly kills itself
off in a nuclear war – her captors need to interbreed with other species to
remain genetically viable, and she’s asked to recruit other humans to help.
‘I feel that Africans being transported into slavery experienced that in a real
brutal way, and then they had to find some kind of humanity even in their
captors’, says Mitchell. ‘To write music based off of that was hard’.
(Margasak 2007)
But how are these questions answered in Mitchell’s compositions? The

different movements of Xenogenesis Suite are entitled:
1. Wonder
2. Transition A
3. Smell of Fear
4. Sequence Shadows
5. Oankali
6. Adrenalin
7. Transition C
8. Before and After
9. Dawn of a New Life
While Mitchell is explicit that she is not following any sequence of

events in Butler’s novels, there still seems to be a narrative at stake,
although in a more abstract sense. The first track, “Wonder,” opens with
percussion, followed by chords gradually being transformed into melo-
dies in the strings. Then a screaming voice enters, but the vocal character
changes quickly, although so far there are no words. But even without
words, it feels as if the voice is also a way to mark a human presence. The
track continues with cascades of piano figures in a free jazz tradition,
where the percussive dimensions of the piano are underlined, together
with strings and interrupted by chords in the horns. Then, towards the
end of the track the voice seems to sing in a “foreign” language, a sound
continuing on “Transition A.” While both the screaming and the singing
voice may be interpreted as a human presence, the “foreign” language
challenges this interpretation. There is the possibility that the language
for some listeners is not foreign at all, and in that sense the act of listening
as well as of communicating is inscribed into the music. One could also
claim that when listening to singing it is not really necessary to under-
stand the words to have an aesthetic or musical experience, which would
make sense in many situations. Perhaps the singing only signals that there
is singing, there is a human presence, there is an act of communication,
rather than any concrete communicative content. This happens when the
voice sings without words, and why would it necessarily be a big differ-
ence if the voice articulates words the listener cannot understand?
In the context of the Xenogenesis Suite, however, it seems more likely

that the use of a “foreign” language is a sonic way to indicate dimensions
of the alien. It is obviously not the only way alien-ness can be performed,
but it is a telling one, because both the voice and language at the same
time sound “human.” In other words, the one speaking or singing in a
foreign language is almost like “us”—although not quite. The “other” in
a sense becomes less “other” by the fact that he or she (or it) is singing.
Later in “Transition A” the text disappears from the voice, so that the
voice is heard alone (so to speak) (cf., Chion 1999, 1 quoted earlier).
Whereas the “foreign” language is difficult to understand, when language
is absent from the singing voice it is something other than signification
that is communicated. At the same time what is heard is more than a
voice alone; it is explicitly a female voice. This also makes sense related to
Butler’s novel, where, in Dawn, Lilith comes to consciousness abroad the
Oankali ship. While Mitchell’s piece is not a direct adaptation of the
story of Butler’s novel, the different voices could thus also be understood
as representing Lilith, humanity, and the Oankali, in different ways, and
while it may be difficult distinguishing which subject is being voiced, the
general play of difference becomes important in interpreting the voice as
well as the whole suite. The presence of a female voice also opens the
question of gender, a question made more complicated when remem-
bering that there are three genders among the Oankali: male, female,
and Ooloi. Translating such a three-gender system into sounds, if the
understanding of voice is based in a two-gender system of male versus
female, is difficult. Thus, in this context the interplay in the interpreta-
tion taking place while listening to the piece as an adaptation of Butler’s
novels provokes us to question what we are hearing. Perhaps the voice
speaking a foreign language is the Oankali, but sometimes it is more
likely a human voice. In the movement entitled “Oankali” the voice is
heard with a v ariety of colours, moving in and out of different sonic
qualities. This too points to the importance of the voice in the suite,
and, in a supposedly non-representational art form it may be the clearest
sign of representation still.
In Dawn, the Oankali do speak, and besides Lilith’s internal mono-
logue in Chap. 2, the first voice we “hear” in the novel is Jdahya speaking
here name: “‘Lilith?’ The usual, quiet, androgynous voice” (Butler 2007,
11). She must have heard the voice before, both because it is described as
well known and because when she answers she realizes that rather than
coming “from above as it had before,” this time there is a figure in her
room/cell, “the shadowy figure of a man, thin and long-haired” (Butler
2007, 11). He is, he tells her immediately, not a human being, and some-
what later the gendered categories become blurred. When Lilith asks “are
you male or female?,” he turns out to be male, while simultaneously
underlining that “it’s wrong to assume that I must be a sex you’re familiar
with” (Butler 2007, 13). These dimensions, then, are setting the stage for
Lilith to understand where she is and what context she finds herself in.
Whereas Jdahya’s voice is described as androgynous, and Lilith is in
doubt whether he is male or female, another detail in the communication
is that they speak English. Lilith asks, “Why do you speak English so
well, anyway? You should at least have an unusual accent,” and he answers,
“People like you have taught me. I speak several human languages”
(Butler 2007, 14). Linguistic communication is thus similar to that
which occurs between human beings, and the absence of an accent almost
removes his alien-ness. Perhaps, however, what Lilith hears as androgy-
nous contributes an element of the foreign; at least it would seem like
that since she at first is unable to categorize his voice—and his body—as
male or female. This phenomenon, however, is more difficult to “trans-
late” into music. How would Mitchell write the music so as to distinguish
between the alien/non-human and the human? How would she compose
the alien’s voice or sound? It seems that the different instruments are used
so as to open the sonic material to the possibility that different voices are
heard, and in this context it is of interest both that the different musical
instruments’ parts are commonly referred to as voices and that having a
“voice” can be such a crucial dimension for the musician. In the last
movement of the Xenogenesis Suite, “Dawn of a New Life,” a text in
English is clearly recognizable. This could be a human being, but at the
same time it could be a storyteller commenting on the transformations
having happened in the suite. There is dawn of a new life, most likely the
new human-Oankali hybrid race that the story hinges on. Text as mean-
ingful words in combination is in one particular sense the endpoint of a
continuum from vocalese to words, and in Xenogenesis Suite different
stages within this continuum are heard. On “Before and After,” for exam-
ple, the movement before “Dawn of a New Life,” words are recognizable,
without becoming sentences, where therefore the single sounds become
sonically meaningful; in that movement it is primarily the sound “i,”
exemplified in the word “time.”
Throughout the suite, however, there are also other instruments playing
melodies in a way that could invoke voices, and so vocality does not
depend on the human voice. Foremost among them is the flute, Mitchell’s
own instrument. In the movement “Transition C” Mitchell is singing in or
through her flute, and thus adds another voice to the sounds. In combina-
tion with the human voice alone, this voice/flute combination establishes
a bridge between instruments and voices. That it is one performer doing
the combination—in a tradition heard from Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and
also known from Ian Anderson—makes this bridge different than having
one voice and one flute sing/play in unison. Here, rather than the unison,
the sonic palette opens up for something different. It is as if the difference
between voice and flute in some passages is removed, the flute-becoming-
voice and the voice-becoming-flute in the same phenomenon. The sound
is complex, while at the same time we hear something akin to a sonic
duck-rabbit image, depending on whether the aural focus is on the flute or
the voice may be dominating, but rather than such a dual logic, the sound
seems to establish the point in-between voice and flute as a stable point.
In the interview with Waterman, Mitchell describes quite explicitly
that the combination of voice and flute is about gender, and thus also
politics.
A lot of people ask me about my use of the voice in my playing. I sing into
the flute, I sing the flute, I sing and then I just play the flute. So I have all
these combinations of the relationship between the voice and the flute. Part
of that comes from the desire to leave evidence that a woman was here.
Because, you know, it is a very male dominated field. Even without a video
or picture of that music, I want to leave that mark, that aesthetic of what-
ever is coming through me as a woman, as a channel for that feminine
energy. I think that people get this idea about what that creative feminine
aspect is, and it’s usually not understood. Because there’s a real power and
strength, just as there is to the power of nature, and the power of mother –
and the fact that each living being comes through a mother. That power
isn’t really celebrated in our society right now. (Waterman 2008)
Focusing on this creative feminine aspect is in agreement with Ytasha

L. Womack’s exploration of the divine feminine in her book Afrofuturism:
The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, which she does in the same
chapter where she mentions Mitchell. Describing Mitchell as “equally
influenced by sci-fi writer Octavia Butler and jazz pioneer Sun Ra,”
Womack references a conversation with Mitchell about her work with
Butler’s material:
The experience pushed Mitchell to alter her music-writing style. She

employed singers to sing without using words and envisioned sounds that
took her beyond the scale. ‘I can write pretty traditional scores, but in this
piece I wrote a graphic score as a way to get the real expression out for the
musicians. I just didn’t want it written out note for note. Not only did it
use traditional musical notations, but also using drawings, and poetry to
get what I needed’. Although she had worked with most of the musicians
for a while, her approach often went ‘against their intuition to get what I
wanted’, she says. She continues, ‘I might want the saxophonist to make
bird sounds. Writing out bird sounds would not be as fluid, if they were
trying to read some crazy high notes, so I gave them a picture and a graphic
of what I was looking for. It’s just about finding the most effective way to
communicate with the musicians and sometimes you have to get off the
page’. (Womack 2013, 71f )
It is, then, not only in the combination of instruments and voice that
Mitchell is pushing her musical vocabulary. Using different modes of
communication with the musicians, besides a more traditional score, was
needed for her to get the sounds she wanted. This also, as Mitchell tells
Waterman, had to do with the relation between composition and impro-
visation and between the single musician and the sound of the
ensemble:
Each composition has its own aesthetic and its own structure that I’m
reaching for. The Octavia Butler work was definitely more collectively
focused. People listening felt that there wasn’t all that much ‘soloing’ going
on, because the approach to improvisation was actually so guided by the
aesthetic of what I was trying to do in each movement. The improvisation
had a definite relationship to the fabric of the composition, and there was
a certain direction that I wanted the improvisation to go. (Waterman 2008)
On “Before and After” another version of the same phenomenon of

combined flute and voice is heard, although here it sounds like it is the
singer and the flutist contributing the sounds. The mix of flute and voice
in this way creates a space for thinking sonic metamorphoses, where the
concrete musical work demonstrates a number of possible transforma-
tions in the concrete sounds. Towards the end of “Transition C” there is
a passage where the saxophone sound moves from tone to noise, a kind
of metamorphosis on the sonic level that at the same time challenges
whatever “sound” may be. Another metamorphosis taking place in the
same piece is when the bass’s function moves from rhythm to melody,
thus demonstrating that the different musical parameters may be seen as
existing on a continuum.
Another voice among the instruments is the cello melody in “Smell of
Fear.” The movement opens with a sound combining flute, trumpet, and
voice, thus producing a sonically mixed sound in which timbre exists in
the meeting point of the different instruments. The figure these instru-
ments play is then interlocked with another figure in piano, bass, and
drums, the two figures having different rhythmic qualities resulting in
music moving in different paces simultaneously, to the degree that the
music feels like it is both (almost) standing still and moving at the same
time. A cello melody comes in and establishes another kind of dynamics.
It sounds almost like a deep voice, but only almost, which becomes clear
when the singing voice enters. The dualism between the cello voice and
the singing voice makes it possible to ask whether the cello is supposed to
be a non-human voice, and the question is difficult to settle. But given
that the suite is so explicitly based on Butler’s novels, it is hard not to
present this possibility as highly likely. The knowledge that the piece is an
adaptation colours my listening and interpretation at least. Hearing the
voice on “Sequence Shadows”—the track following “Smell of Fear”—I
cannot help hearing a scared voice. I am quite sure my associations (or
interpretations) would be less precise, or if as precise based on something
very different, without the background of Butler’s novels, as well as the
quasi-narrative laid out in the titles of Mitchell’s movements. It would be
wrong to call this a problem. Whereas the idea of an autonomous music
may be worth upholding, it is not easy to determine when it makes sense.
In the case of Braxton, pieces with “abstract” (or “neutral”) titles are still,
by him at least, seen as referencing the world, history, or mythology. And

Mitchell’s statements about wanting to build visionary worlds through
music indicate that there is nothing wrong in having associations and
speculations about her music.
On “Adrenaline” there is a duet between saxophone and voice with
another take on the sonic differentiations in each instrument (here, the
voice understood as instrument too). The presence of both the saxophone
and the voice, however, at the same time creates an opportunity for think-
ing about and listening to both instruments differently, as their interac-
tion brings out something more than each instrument could do on its
own. At first it is almost inaudible, but there are elements of text in this
movement. Increasingly the words are distinguishable, and a scream is
heard: “Am I dead?,” followed by references to the space around the
singer/speaker. I say singer/speaker as in one sense we cannot be sure
whether the song is meant to represent speech or singing. As a musical
piece adapting a novel (even if the adaptation may not primarily be dra-
matic), the Xenogenesis Suite is related to music–theatre, where one con-
vention, at least in opera, is that singing is the primary form of vocal
communication, but is also a musical representation of speech. This is
not a problem when listening to the piece and interpreting it, but it cre-
ates the possibility of focusing on the voice both as singing and as speak-
ing. When there are words present, the voice could thus be both singing
and speaking, but this at the same time means that the voice without
words, a more “pure” vocality, perhaps is not human at all. It could also
be seen as a humming voice, or even as a representation of singing. Thus,
the voice without words is even more multifaceted, more open to inter-
pretation, than the one with words. The different sounds, then, create
new directions for interpretation. Here, in “Adrenaline,” the scream and
the references to space actually make it possible to localize where in
Butler’s Dawn this scene takes place.
The last piece of the Xenogenesis Suite, “Dawn of a New Life” opens
with a lyrical piano, with percussion accompaniment, before the flute
enters in a low register melody. The melody expands tonally, and is beau-
tiful with a hint of something unknown. The interaction with other
instruments sounds as if the lyrical cannot be allowed to dominate the
movement, or as if “lyrical” is about to become something else, still lyri-
Intergalactic Beings 157
cal but with minor changes. This would be in accordance with the AACM
thinking, where there is no lack of beauty, but where beauty—in a post-
avant-garde sense—is different than the banality of beauty found in some
melodic ideologies. The music of the piece grows with other melodies
being added in the background, but where background and foreground
at the same time are negotiated. Flute, voice, and cello take centre stage,
but of the three the flute seems to be the most important. Interpreting
the piece, and the whole suite, it would seem that the flute is the main
character, not only of the ensemble, but as representative in relation to
Butler’s novel(s), as if, in other words, the flute is Lilith.
Intergalactic Beings
The Xenogenesis Suite was Mitchell’s first adaptation of Butler, and “Dawn
of a New Life” thus is the ending of the suite. Until the debut of
Intergalactic Beings, there was no way to know if there would be more
Butler adaptations, and from such a perspective the ending of Xenogenesis
Suite is even more final. This raises the question about whether the sonic
material is supposed to illustrate the dawn of a new life, and whether the
beauty of the piece at the same time shows a utopian reading, a welcom-
ing of a new hybrid being. That Mitchell has continued to write music
inspired by Butler—first Intergalactic Being (2010, released in 2014), and
then in 2017, together with Lisa E. Harris, EarthSeed (at the time of
writing to be premiered in Chicago June 22, 2017)—is not in itself an
argument for hearing Xenogenesis Suite differently than if it had been the
sole work adapting Butler (or being inspired by her). Thus, the possibility
of a utopian listening should be kept open. To me at least, Intergalactic
Being demonstrates that there is even more potential in sonically working
further with the ideas Mitchell has found in Butler’s work, demonstrating
the possibilities for an even broader sonic interpretation. The movements
of the second suite are entitled:
1 . Phases of Subduction
2. Cycle of Metamorphosis
3. The Ooli Moves
4. Dripping Matter
5. Negotiating Identity
6. Web of Hope
7. Fields of Possibility
8. Resisting Entanglement
9. The Inevitable
An interesting difference between Xenogenesis Suite and Intergalactic

Being is the instruments heard in the Black Earth Ensemble (an Ensemble
of a number of musicians, where Mitchell seems to chose among them
for her different projects). Whereas the piano, played by Justin Dillard,
has a prominent role on Xenogenesis Suite, there is no piano on Intergalactic
Being. Instead, there is an electric guitar, played by Jeff Parker (also a
member, since 1998, of Tortoise), and the introduction of electricity con-
tributes very different sounds even if they can be described as continuing
some of the same musical strategies as heard on Xenogenesis Suite.
Electricity is heard, literally, on “The Ooli Moves,” where after overlaying
figures of increasing complexity the sounds get electric and more stereo-
typical “future” or sci-fi than the more chamber-music-like qualities of
the majority of movements. The sonic production is of interest by itself,
but even more interesting is to think of this as an electric field taking over
the soundscape. After a break the ensemble returns to something that
from this perspective sounds “pre-electric” (and rather than acoustic, the
presence of electronics have, arguably, changed the qualities of acoustic
instruments, so that they are heard in opposition to electricity rather than
alone by themselves). There is something sounding like “alien dance
music” appearing, as if the Ooli moves differently than human beings,
thus needing a different kind of dance music.
Electricity is also present in the movement “Negotiating Identity.”
There is also a return, in relation to the Xenogenesis Suite, of Mitchell
vocalizing while playing the flute, and here she does so also in duet with
the singer. Having herself pointed out how this singing and playing at
the same time is a way for her to underline the female presence in the
sound production, this phenomenon becomes interesting when con-
tinuing in what sounds like a duet between electronics and voice. If the
voice is understood as the most “human” sound in this music, it would
Intergalactic Beings 159
probably not be much of a stretch to claim that the electronic sounds

are perceived as being farthest away from the human. The electronic
surroundings in this piece could be interpreted as the environment the
human voice finds itself in, or it could be seen as a more general for-
eignness. The sonic complex, on the other hand, also expands the
sounds of Mitchell’s Butler adaptations, so as to broaden the sound-
scape even more, and when staging the interaction of voice and elec-
tronics the sonic complex establishes some kind of weak continuum
even between these seemingly disparate sounds.
The last track of Intergalactic Being, “The Inevitable,” opens waltz-like
with a melody in violin and voice. It sounds almost like an undated Kurt
Weill. A drum intermezzo follows and from there it is as if the music
starts to move in different directions simultaneously. Sonically it is inter-
esting that the guitar plays with an almost clean, undistorted sound. It is
as if the only electric instrument in the ensemble moves towards the
acoustic. It is difficult to say what is inevitable, but the use of different
sonorous qualities in the guitar at least gives a hint that another dimen-
sion of metamorphosis might be at stake.
While neither the Xenogenesis Suite nor Intergalactic Being are direct
translations of literature into music, it is almost impossible as a listener
not to try to figure out how the works are related—at least this is the
case if one has read the novels and knows about the adaptation.
Whereas this adaptation could have been done on several levels—as an
homage to Butler, perhaps even as a fellow female artist, as creating an
atmosphere based in Butler’s work, and so on—it could also, which I
take to be Mitchell’s work here, become a particular form of specula-
tive sonic fiction.
The most important issue in Mitchell’s reading of Butler, as found in
her notes, seems to be metamorphosis, and here it is possible, quite pre-
cisely, to express something similar in or through sounds, both on a for-
mal level, as for both the overall piece and the different movements, but
also on a micro-level as transformations of the sounds of the instruments,
where a melody is written out between different instruments. Another
example of transformation or metamorphoses is found when Mitchell
sings and plays the flute at the same time, thus blending two different
sound sources into one sound. Yet another is found when the singer
Mankwe Ndosi on both these suites mixes song with text and non-texted
vocals, where the presence of words is not the only dimension of the sing-
ing voice, but rather one among a multitude of possible modes of expres-
sion. If the story of Butler’s trilogy primarily is understood as the
inevitability of human beings ending and a new hybrid species begin-
ning, then thinking the music as giving sound to a continuous metamor-
phosis—or transformation—makes sense. According to Mitchell’s notes,
“Intergalactic’s music is not as much an expression of victimization as it
is an expression of resilience.” This she does by “humanizing” the aliens.
In other words, throughout the suite there are sounds that the composer
thinks of as representing the aliens on the one hand and human beings on
the other. There is a “humanity” found in and through sound if we are to
take the composer at her word. This, one could say, is one place where the
distinction between a utopian and a dystopian sonic world is given
expression as well, as a kind musical reading—or sonic expression—of
what is found in the narrative, but more difficult to express in music. Or
is it? Obviously, discussing this music from the point of view of references
to the past, the present, and the future creates the possibility for some
kind of narrative in the music, or at least some way that sounds can point
towards or hint at other times than in the now where it sounds. This
should be of no surprise, and I would say that the interesting question is
not whether music can give such directions of time, but how? And in con-
tinuation of this there is an obvious way where traditionally it has been
easier to reference the past in music than the future. There are also parallels
between Lilith and Shori in Butler’s last novel Fledgling (2005), not least
in relation to the hybrid constructions between humans and Oankali on
the one hand and vampires (Ina) and humans on the other. In that sense
one could discuss whether the relation between hybrids and metamorpho-
sis, the integration of a new entity based on two older ones, either by
sexual or technological means, is one major dimension found throughout
her writing. This would also be a way where blackness and technology
interact—two of the dimensions Lewis singles out, but here, obviously
sound is “absent.” Mitchell, however, introduces sound as the major
dimension in bringing Butler’s work to the acoustic or sonic domain, with
the result that the story is less concrete; it is impossible to see her work as
a translation of the narrative, but it is arguably equally powerful in raising
questions of change, metamorphosis, hybridity, and the future.
Ras G and the Afrikan Space Program 161
Ras G and the Afrikan Space Program

Another kind of sonic material deeply embedded in an interstellar space
that might at the same time be an inner space is found in the music of Ras
G (Gregory Shorter Jr.). In a tradition of instrumental hip hop, and asso-
ciated with other acts from the record label Brainfeeder, his production
of space—in his music and as sonic fiction—is different than Mitchell’s
predominantly acoustic music. In the case of Ras G my argument is
about the relation between outer space and inner space. While employing
classical spacy sounds, as well as titles, cover art, etc., referencing the tra-
dition of Sun Ra and the Space Age, there is at the same time a strong
relation to dub and reggae, as well as a relation between dope and inner
space. These two spaces, however, are intertwined, and thus point to how
sounds do not represent space as much as create it.
Both Thomas Stanley, in The Execution of Sun Ra, and Paul Youngquist,
in A Pure Solar World, mention Ras G as one of the foremost musical
descendants of Sun Ra. “Much more aggressively than most of his peers
do, Ras G explores the deep space of sounds freed from the constrains
even of instrumentation,” Youngquist writes (2016, 254). And to
Youngquist this relation has everything to do with sounds, and with
development of sounds:
The Arkestra’s joyful noise morphs into spattering hiss and ambient skitter-
ing, as on the first track from Back to the Planet (2013), and the Afrikan
Space Program voyages into worlds beyond human tolerance […] where
only electronics can go. […] Or better, perhaps, he serves as a translator,
coding space music into digital tongue. (Youngquist 2016, 254f )
Ras G’s focus on electronics and the digital makes his music very dif-
ferent from Mitchell’s, and thus his work is much more closely related to
Flying Lotus’s (Chap. 4). There is still something of interest in also trying
to think Ras G in relation to “space,” be it interstellar, outer, or inner.
These differences seem also to be at stake in one of the interviews where
Ras G is asked about Afrofuturism. When Senay Kenfe refers to
Afrofuturism, Ras G says: “You say futurists, I say timeless. Time encom-
passes everything, the past, the present, and the future. So I say timeless”
(Kenfe 2015). Simultaneously he adds that time is “everything and noth-
ing,” “the beginning and end and everything.” Whereas this could be seen
as a reluctance to be framed within a category, as many artists being
referred to as “Afrofuturists” seem to be, it is also a view from another
place, a view insisting on another way of framing the question of time
than what Ras G hears in the word “Afrofuturism.” It also sounds like
echoes of something Sun Ra could have said, and thus refers back to Sun
Ra in a way similar to Youngquist. And finally, it seems to be a statement
about how to listen to his music, as if time in this music is on another
level, as if the music has another kind of relation to time, or to different
layers of time. If timelessness at the same time is understood as every-
time, then time as we used to know it seems to no longer exist. This
notion of timelessness, however, at the same time challenges any under-
standing of music, at least when music is understood as “sounds in time.”
Ras G’s most common moniker is Ras G and the Afrikan Space
Program. The 2011 album Space Base is the Place, an album whose title
explicitly references Sun Ra, however, is released under the name Ras G
and the Alkebulan Space Program. Alkebulan is an old name for Africa,
an Arabic term meaning “the land of the blacks.” The term has primarily
been used within Afrocentric or African/Black nationalist discourses, but
has at least one musical predecessor to Ras G’s use of it. James Mtume
released an album with the Mtume Umoja Ensemble called Alkebu-
Lan—Land of the Blacks in 1972, with participation from, among others,
Gary Bartz (saxophone), Stanley Cowell (piano), and Leroy Jenkins (vio-
lin). While musically very different from what Ras G is doing, this refer-
ence is of interest because it bridges historical differences between the
early 1970s music culture (and political culture), and the sound-spaces of
Ras G, if not for anything else than these references are signs pointing to
an understanding of “black sound.” Giving sound to “Alkebulan” is, in
this understanding, an explicit attempt to question what black sound is
or can be, and is shown as well with taking along an ancient term. This is
therefore another version of what the Art Ensemble of Chicago called
“Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future,” and the reference to
Alkebulan functions similarly to other Afrocentric terms, for example,
Kush and Nubia. The question of how Afrocentric one should read these
examples may be up for discussion, but there is a relation to the
Motherland inscribed in this use of terms, and there is also an explicit
counter-historical dimension in that the use of “non-European” terms at

the same time questions the legitimacy of the European terms. Take Sun
Ra’s album The Nubians of Plutonia (recorded in 1958–1959, and released
in 1966). Sun Ra’s album includes the tracks “Nubia,” “Africa,” and
“Aethiopia,” thus referencing “Ancient Africa” in explicit terms, and the
sonics of Sun Ra’s album are related to a similar project, where a sound of
the distant past is heard. This is a version of what I have called “sonic time
travel,” and whereas it is difficult to claim that this is the actual sounds of
ancient time, it makes sense to hear these tracks as imagining how it
might have sounded once upon a time, while at the same time being an
attempt to bridge between the ancient and the future. The “Plutonia” of
the album’s title is heard more explicitly on “Plutonian Nights,” but the
most telling dimension of the album’s title is the combined reference of
Nubians and Plutonia; this is “ancient to the future” and references the
continuous existence of black civilization. There is also the track “Ancient
Aiethiopia” on Jazz in Silhouette (both recorded and released in 1959),
referenced in Chap. 2, and with the literal references the titles of compo-
sitions contribute, this shows a constant presence of “Ancient Africa” in
Sun Ra’s output. Ras G’s reference to Alkebulan is still somewhat differ-
ent. The fact that Ras G has changed his moniker, substituting “Afrikan”
with “Alkebulan,” would seem to be a sign of a more Afrocentric or
“nationalist” idea. Even when he refers to it as “Afrikan,” as he does on
most albums, there is a pan-African dimension to the references, some-
thing underlined with the “Ras G” name, and the references to
Rastafarianism throughout his oeuvre. They are more often than not
hidden from plain sight, and are more explicit in interviews than in his
music, but in the way I interpret “Afrofuturist texts,” with “text”
including the sonic side as well—even though I am concerned that
thinking everything as texts may have limitations—then the “texts” of
Ras G include sounds, titles, as well as interviews. Still, there is an
openness to these texts, not least when trying to focus on the sonic side
of the music.
The combination of the terms “Afrikan Space Program” may not be too
surprising, but in such a combination introducing “Alkebulan” contrib-
utes another kind of constellation. If taken to be an ancient name for the
African continent, then the addition of the “space program” is more of a
paradox. What would an “ancient space program” say? Here one could go
for an interpretation of the Dogon cosmology, as well as the astronomy of
ancient Egypt, and say that “space” understood as outer space, as related
to the heavens and stars, is also part of the understanding of the world
and cosmos in ancient times (cf. Womack 2013, 84ff). But the notion of
a space program is more “modern” in the sense of a technological pro-
gram for space travel, a scientific exploration of the heavens. This would,
obviously, be a more anachronistic understanding of ancient times, or—
perhaps—the more speculative understanding of aliens having visited the
Earth, and people believing humans originated in the heavens. There is
nothing immediate to suggest that this is on Ras G’s mind on this album,
however. On the other hand, the title of the album Space Base Is the Place
(2011) ups the ante for such an understanding. While the title is an obvi-
ous reference to Sun Ra, there are no sonic references to Sun Ra’s work on
the album; this includes the movie Space Is the Place, the soundtrack to
the album, Sun Ra’s album Space is the Place, and the song/composition
“Space Is the Place.” Whereas Ras G has sampled from Sun Ra on a num-
ber of albums and tracks, no such samples are heard on this album. The
Sun Ra reference is there to read, but not to hear, at least not in any direct
or specific sense. There are a couple of samples recognizable on the album,
but even they are rather few. One track on the album, “Disco 4000,” is
hard not to think of as a reference to Sun Ra’s Disco 3000 album (from
1978), which also contains a track with the same title.
The sounds on Space Base is the Place are distributed as layers of music.
There are a number of elements known from Ras G’s oeuvre, not least his
signature “Oh Ras” shout, often accompanied with an echo effect. On
this album it is not until the fourth track, “On 4 Steve EL,” that this
signature is heard for the first time. But if one listens to his albums as an
ever-increasing oeuvre, one begins to recognize both this signature and
other samples he often uses. The shout “Space Base is the Place,” for
example, hardly heard on this album, but found on many of his other
albums, establishes connections, establishes an oeuvre, in the midst of the
different soundscapes he uses, in what could be seen as the most banal
intertextual approach, but where the effect is less banal.
On “Requiem 4 Mr. Yancey” there are a number of voices in the midst
of synthesized “space sounds.” It is a very clear reference to stereotypical
sci-fi sounds on the one hand, but the voices make it sound like some-
where between a computer game and film music. Surrounding these
sounds are the bass and rhythmic figures established in layers, and thus it
is possible to move in and out of focus in relation to the different layers,
making the overall sound quite complex. The next track, “Stick Em Up,”
has other kinds of voices in the opening, sounding more like a reggae
track, a dimension also found in the reference to vibrations in the lyrics.5
The groove has a certain halting feeling to it, an interesting way of estab-
lishing a focus upon the rhythm, where the halt makes one pay attention
as well to how it could have sounded with a more traditional groove.
“HollyHood/Where Dem Trees” combines a bass groove with the
computer-game sounds already established as sonically important on this
album. It sounds somewhat like an arcade game. A manipulated voice is
heard deep in the mix, sounding vocoder-like, before another voice comes
in with “where dem trees,” but the synthetic sounds continue to domi-
nate. The soundscape feels closed off from the outer world, another
dimension resembling the arcade game.
The title of the track “Ancestrial Echoes” seems to indicate that these
are echoes of old time, and this is one of the tracks where I will argue that
knowing the title will cause one to listen differently than if “only” listen-
ing to the “music itself ” without knowledge of the title. The use of loops
makes the track feel like it is almost standing still. It is not that there are
no dynamic dimensions in the music, but the loops’ continuous sounds
are more present than any sonic changes. In this, the echoes of the title
are partly heard, but what about the ancestral? Could this, in a parallel to
Sun Ra’s construction of his “Ancient Aiethiopia” track, for example, be a
way of using interlocking rhythms to reference ancient practices, and that
the echo is a kind of distortion of the past that at the same time makes
the past’s sound contemporary? The sounds of “Ancestrial Echoes” are
not unlike what could have been heard on some Flying Lotus albums,
which is probably also the case for the track “Silly Earthlings.” The latter
track consists of sounds similar to telephones or computer games with a
percussive bass under them them. There is a synthesizer playing a melodic
line in a bass register, giving a feeling of seasickness. And with the sam-
pled voice speaking about “reality” and “real persons” it sounds like a film
soundtrack, while resembling Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma. Where “Silly
Earthlings” resembles something Flying Lotus could have done, on

“Ascension from Nigga 2 Negus” there is, in-between the electronic
sounds, something that sounds almost like an mbira. It is pretty clear it is
not, but as a reference it is still telling in this context.
The track where the different layers of sound are most persistently
challenging the listener is on “Love Something ….” There is lots of echo
on the drums, and echoes are obviously one way of signalling space (cf.
Weheliye 2005, 102). There is also a deep voice as well as synthesizers
seeming to come from another place than the voice, and yet another
place than the drums. In this way the track sounds like three different
spaces existing simultaneously, as if one is present in a multilayered spa-
tial place, where it is not what Eshun calls a chronopolitics that is distrib-
uted, but what could perhaps be called a topiopolitics, if one takes time
and space, understands it as chronos and topoi—in the chronotope
known from Bakhtin, and developed further by Gilory, and then distin-
guishes the difference between time and space as political entities that
may or may not interlock, but where here it sounds as three different
layers of topoi—place—although it could also be thought of as space.
Something similar takes place on “Psilocybin,” where the voice seems to
come from further afar than the bass, in other words, where Ras G uses
the mix to create space and distance, making space audible, and where his
signature “Oh Ras” is heard as “oh oh oh Ras,” with the echo used for the
early part of the signature rather than in the end as is more common in
his output.
Ras G’s EP Other Worlds (from 2015) has five short tracks. Opening
with the “Oh Ras” signature, Ras G & The Afrikan Space Program moves
through more hip-hop related material than on Space Base Is The Place.
There are other albums between these two, so this is not a reference to
chronology, but rather an attempt of comparison between the two
albums. While this move is important, the sounds are still recognizable as
Ras, not only because of his signature, but also because of a number of
the samples he uses and the way he puts samples together. He shouts out
Los Angeles, another dimension that makes it interesting to compare him
with Flying Lotus. There are “business connections” between the two, as
Ras G has released albums on Brainfeeder (Flying Lotus’s record com-
pany)—this is particularly important with Back on the Planet (2013)—
but there is also the geographical relation, to Los Angeles, as well as the
possibility of reading them as different versions of instrumental hip hop,
producer–DJ dimensions within the same historical times. Ras G’s debut
album Beats of Mind is from 2008, although he has released EPs since
2005. Flying Lotus’s debut album 1983, on the other hand, is from 2006.
But in the beginning of their respective careers the “extra-musical” refer-
ences of the two are very different, with Flying Lotus referencing the year
he was born on his debut 1983, and the place he is from on his second
album, Los Angeles (2008). This is, one could claim, a more down-to-
earth approach to record production than what is found with Ras G,
although Flying Lotus arguably makes up for it with his Cosmogramma.
This is analogous to the comparison between Flying Lotus and DJ Spooky
in Chap. 4, and shows possible connections between what could be
described as a network of Afrofuturist sounds, comparable to how
Thomas Stanley, in The Execution of Sun Ra, sees Ras G as one of the
descendants of Sun Ra, as part of “a bold generation of black musicians
working to add a Cosmo-Kemetic dimension to hip hop’s urban renewal
program,” where he in addition to Ras G singles out Flying Lotus and
Shabazz Palaces (Stanley 2014, 119).
Ras G’s 2016 album, The Gospel of the God Spell, samples voices and
short groovy pieces, and cuts them up so that the rhythmic loops build
up tension but at the same time give release. It is interesting that these
releases often follow classical harmonic logic, as on “42 Laws of Maat vs
10 Commandments” where the tonic sounds like a classic pop or gospel
song. While the sonic environment is gospel-like, the title points towards
Ancient Egypt and the 42 Negative Confessions from the Papyrus of Ani,
set in contrast to the ten commandments of the Bible. It is not difficult
to see a parallel in Ras G’s reference to the Egyptian “commandments” or
“laws” on the one hand and the Jewish (and Christian) commandments
on the other, as another version of how Eshun reads Sun Ra, when he
claims that “He [Sun Ra] desires to be alien, by emphasizing Egypt over
Israel, the alien over human, the future over the past” (Eshun 1998, 155),
at least in the sense that Ras G on this track, in the midst of the gospel
influences, points towards a struggle between the laws of Ma’at and the
Commandments. Eshun insists, “Sun Ra breaks violently with Christian
redemption,” in the sense that “underlying Southern gospel, soul, the
entire Civil Rights project, is the Christian ethic of universal love. Soul
traditionally identifies with the Israelites, the slaves’ rebellion against the
Egyptian Pharaohs” (Eshun 1998, 154). Ras G complicates the dichot-
omy Eshun is still working with, where the sonic side of Ras G’s track
(and album) follows the gospel tradition while still underlining the 42
laws of Maat. This could, perhaps, be called a deconstructed gospel if one
focuses on how he mixes the sounds, although the building blocks of
much of this album are still clearly more on the side of “soul” (in Eshun’s
terms) than in the “posthuman” dimensions Eshun seems to favour. So
when Eshun writes about how “Black Music” fell from the “grace of gos-
pel tradition” with disco (Eshun 1998, −006), Ras G’s album challenges
this. On “Psalm 82:6” this is also a way of building tension, using a cover
version of Andraé Crouch’s “My Tribute (To God Be The Glory)” (origi-
nal from the 1972 album Keep On Singin’ by Andraé Crouch and the
Disciples). The biblical references on the album are set in combination
with more esoteric references on the one hand, and Egyptian references
on the other.
The layers of music function as an art of recombination, and Ras G’s
technique could thus be described as a recombinatorial sonic construction.
This is partly a result of the sampling techniques used, but also a principle
of construction. One of the really great things about Ras G’s music is that
he has a catalogue of sounds/samples he uses again and again, in different
contexts, creating effects that heighten rememberability of the sonics,
insisting on dimensions of a signature, and also demonstrating how his
oeuvre is continually a work in progress.
When Ras G contrasts the notion of Afrofuturism with thinking about
timeless, he simultaneously challenges important dimensions in Eshun’s
framework. There are still good reasons to interpret Ras G within an
Afrofuturist thinking, but the future seems to be different, in a similar
way as to how space moves between outer space and inner space. The
timelessness of Ras G, however, should not be seen as synonymous with
what Eshun is describing as “beatless” when dealing with the music of the
future. Discussing the differences between these two terms, however, can
bring about a clearer picture of both the thinking of time and history, but
also the rhythm of the future. While in one sense these two dimensions
are unrelated, I think they relate to each other for conceptual reasons, and
also in the many descriptions of this music where one relates both to “the
sounds” and to the “extra-musical” dimensions of the sounds, or to
“sound architecture” on the one hand and a “metaphysical” dimension on
the other. This is also one place where the intersection of Afrofuturism
and black sound studies may be said to exist. Eshun’s description of the
traditional music of the future as beatless is found in his entry into a dis-
cussion of “the breakbeat.”
Traditionally, the music of the future is always beatless. To be futuristic is

to jettison rhythm. The beat is the ballast which prevents escape velocity,
which stops music breaking beyond the event horizon. The music of the
future is weightless, transcendent, neatly converging with online disem-
bodiment. Holst’s Planet Suite as used in Kubrick’s 2001, Eno’s Apollo
soundtrack, Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack: all these are good records –
but sonically speaking, they’re as futuristic as the Titanic, nothing but
updated examples of an 18th sublime. (Eshun 1998: 67)
Ras G’s reference to the timeless is, at least at first sight, radically dif-
ferent than Eshun’s “beatlessness.” In an almost paradoxical sense, the
notion of timelessness could be found in reference to something eternal,
something existing outside of history, something for example claimed
about not a few pieces of art. That art should transcend the historical
conditions from where it is made and “speak to” audiences across time
and space, where timelessness also could be seen as some kind of universal
entity, where universal is meant to signify outside of both time and place.
I do not think this is how Ras G would define the term, but there are still
interesting dimensions to such an understanding, because it raises the
question about the perceived opposite of the universal, the particular,
which could be said to relate to how art—sound, music—originates or
emerges from a particular setting, geographically and historically, and
where the audience’s perceptions will have to be discussed differently.
One way of presenting timelessness could be to minimize the difference
between temporal layers, either by pointing out the similarities, or by
making them interrelated in one way or another. When Ras G samples
the voice of Sun Ra, for example, he both seems to reference the past, as
an echo, but also lifts Sun Ra out of this past by inserting him (or his
voice) into a new context, where the sample becomes contemporary with
the sonic surroundings. Another example is found on The Gospel of the
God Spell, where most of the samples are from gospel music, but where
the tracks are distorted or manipulated. Whereas the sample practice, in
its abstract form, is the same as in Ras G’s other productions, this raises a
question about the content of the samples as well. In the context where
Rastafarianism is highlighted—and that is not the context of The Gospel
of the God Spell, but of other Ras G albums—the gospel songs may be
seen to point in another direction. On the other hand, in the context of
Christianity within Afrofuturism there are also conflicting interpreta-
tions. Eshun, for example, argues that Afrofuturism (even if he hardly
uses the term) is in opposition to Christianity. This is perhaps clearest in
what he writes about Sun Ra, but he clearly references a much broader
context. There is, however, another dimension to the religious in Eshun’s
readings, which at the same time is closely connected to the understand-
ing of history. “At the Century’s End, the Futurhythmachine has 2 oppos-
ing tendencies, 2 synthetic drives: the Soulful and the Postsoul,” he
writes, but all music is made up of these two tendencies or drives. But he
claims simultaneously that “Disco remains the moment when Black
Music falls from the grace of gospel tradition into the metronomic assem-
bly line” (Eshun 1998, −006). This is, in other words, also a question
about “the human”—and Eshun’s strong focus upon the posthuman—
and thus postsoul—as it seems intrinsically intertwined with his version
of Afrofuturism. The future of Eshun seems thus to be related to machines
and cyberculture, to such a degree that “the human” is on the verge of
obsolescence. It is not that Eshun’s “posthuman” perspective is wrong,
but one could, in a movement similar to how Ras G questions futurism,
discuss whether there is also something lost in leaving “the human”
behind. Eshun’s claim that “from the outset, this Postsoul Era has been
characterized by an extreme indifference towards the human. The human
is a pointless and treacherous category” (Eshun 1998, −005). There is an
important strand within black technoculture that would agree, but this is
not the whole story. More importantly, in what sense is this narrative too
teleological? If the history of black music is understood as a movement
from subhuman slave via a humanity never granted to a post- or superhu-
man future, this seems to be not only teleological, but to actually affirm
some kind of erasure of the past. Memories and the past in these passages
are seemingly not even present as background, and it is almost as if the

slightly later proposed theory of countermemories (in Eshun 2003) is not
in place yet. But how does this opposition to Christianity or the gospel
tradition play out in the actual music—or sound—of Afrofuturism?
Arguably the clearest example that refutes Eshun is found in Parliament’s
version of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” —not least in the live-version—
where the gospel song and the reference to the chariot becomes the
Mothership. This movement from a Christian to extraterrestrial symbol-
ism is also found in the preacher A. W. Nix’s sermon “The White Flyer to
Heaven,” a sermon Lock argues that Sun Ra may have heard, or at least
may have heard similar stories with similar metaphors during his upbring-
ing (Lock 1999, 31f ). Here the Baptist sermon prefigures a scenario of
abduction, as well as something resembling so-called UFO cults. When
Parliament sings “Swing Low” and the text becomes “I think I see the
Mothership coming,” it is also, while still being playful, a more serious
reference to the relations between the chariot of the spiritual and the
Mothership of the Parliament narrative. As such it differs from Dizzy
Gillespie’s “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac,” also a playful version, but closer
in lyrics to a materialist perspective, where the heavenly perspective is
changed to the automobile. This song, however, would be on the wrong
side of Eshun’s equation, and rather be the implementation of the
oppressor’s perspective. From this perspective it becomes almost like a
kind of Nietzschean slave morality, with an African-American twist as
well as concretization, and stands in contrast to how Eshun values the
Egyptian or Pharaonic perspective. Parliament is not the only reference
here, however. When Sun Ra taught at the University of California,
Berkeley, he included the Bible on his syllabus, and there are a number of
biblical references in his speeches and writings, including, interestingly
enough, the speech Ras G samples on “Natural Melanin Being” from
Back on the Planet (2014), where Sun Ra, among other things, quotes
from Matthew 7:7. This does not take away the fact that Sun Ra argued
that the Bible has been transformed to something totally different from
what it originally was, and thus it needs to be read with care. And it is
more than likely that Sun Ra would agree with George James’s Stolen
Legacy that Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt/North Africa, and
he would probably also expand on this to include Egyptian sources of
Judaism as well (something that can be seen in a number of discourses on
Moses—with or without Akhenaten). The fact that some of the music of

Afrofuturism is related to spirituality, means these questions are interwo-
ven in the production of meaning at least. And Eshun’s discussion of the
questions of religion is important, and obviously also relates to the sonic
dimensions, not least when he talks about the gospel tradition in relation
to black music. The gospel sonic can arguably be determined with more
precision, and will be a recognizable sonic sign even in a secular context.
Notes
1. It should probably be added that there are many other performances
within Sun Ra’s oeuvre where the saxophone players, among them John
Gilmore, sound more like Coltrane—or are in a similar vein of jazz saxo-
phone as Coltrane.
2. This is an important part of Graham Lock’s argument in Blutopia, not
least in his interpretation of Duke Ellington, including Ellington’s essay
“The Race for Space” (Lock 1999, 39; Ellington 1995, 235ff).
3. “Like Sun Ra, he upholds ancient Egypt as a symbol of great black civili-
zation” (Lock 1999, 165).
4. Mitchell, “Composer Notes,” found on the Bandcamp page of Intergalactic
Beings https://fperecs.bandcamp.com/album/intergalactic-beings
5. This is not to claim that reggae is the only musical genre referencing vibra-
tions, but it is one of the genres with a tradition for such a reference.
Discography
Flying Lotus. 2008. Los Angeles. Warp.
Mitchell, Nicole. 2004. Hope, Future and Destiny. Dreamtime.
———. 2008. Xenogenesis Suite. Firehouse 12.
———. 2010. Intergalactic Beings. FPE.
Ras G. 2011. Down 2 Earth (The Standard Edition). Leaving Records.
———. 2013. Back on the Planet. Brainfeeder.
———. 2014. Down To Earth Vol 2 (The Standard Bop Editon). Leaving Records.
———. 2016. The Gospel of the God Spell. Street Corner Music.
Sun Ra. 1972. Space is the Place. Impulse.
Bibliography 173
Bibliography
Butler, Octavia E. 2007. LILITH’S BROOD (“The Xenogenesis Series”). New York:
Hachette Book Group.
Chion, Michel. 1999b. The Voice in Cinema. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Dunn, Arlene, and Larry Dunn. 2017. 5 Questions to Nicole Mitchell
(Composer, Flutist). I Care If You Listen, April 20, 2017.
Ellington, Duke. 1995. The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Review 3/2: 287–302.
Kenfe, Senay. 2015. The Afrikan Space Program: Future Through the Eyes of
Ras G. The Hundreds, January 7.
Lewis, George E. 2008a. Foreword: After Afrofuturism. Journal of the Society for
University Press.
Loichot, Valérie. 2009. We are all related’: Edouard Glissant Meets Octavia
Butler. Small Axe 13 (3): 37–50.
Margasak, Peter. 2007. An Improvised Life. Chicago Reader, August 2. https://
www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/an-improvised-life/Content?oid=925581
Stanley, Thomas. 2014. The Execution of Sun Ra: The Mysterious Tale of a Dark
Body Sent to Earth to Usher in an Unprecedented Era of Cosmic Regeneration
and Happiness. Vol. II. Shelbyville: Wasteland Press.
Steinskog, Erik. 2017. Performing Race and Gender: Erykah Badu Between
Post-Soul and Afrofuturism. In The Routledge Research Companion to
Popular Music and Gender, ed. Stan Hawkins, 242–252. London:
Routledge.
———. Forthcoming 2017b. Metropolis 2.0: Janelle Monáe’s Recycling of

Fritz Lang. In The Black Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art, and Design, ed.
Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Sun Ra. 2011. This Planet Is Doomed: The Science Fiction Poetry of Sun Ra.
New York: Kicks Books.
Waterman, Ellen. 2008. ‘I Dreamed of Other Worlds’: An Interview with Nicole
Mitchell. Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critique en improvisation 4
(1).
6
The Sounds of the Future
When Afrofuturism is discussed in relation to the Space Age, the techno-

logical focus is often on technology as a part of the expanding world—
and cosmos—as rockets and later spaceships are constructed to go first
into orbit and later to the moon. There is an inherent dimension of the
future in this expansion, linearity is inscribed into the world’s historicity,
and within science no one claimed, as George Clinton would later, that
going to the stars was a return, a going home. Science fiction had, in a
somewhat different sense, already been to outer space, and this is one
reason for thinking about science fiction as predicting the future, as in a
sense writing a blueprint of reality or history. That science fiction could
as well be seen as a distortion of the present is another angle that is of
interest to Afrofuturism, not least because of the imagination of the
future—rather than its coming into being—is a way of imagining other
futures, where the presence of blacks in the future is a key dimension.
Whereas rocketry/rocket science and the entirety of technological devel-
opment related to space explorations are spectacular, less spectacular
technologies were developed as well, for example, in the field of electron-
ics. For the history of sound in the twentieth century, electricity may be
more important than space technology, but in a particular sense these
different technological developments may be seen as interrelated.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7_6
176 6 The Sounds of the Future
When Mark Dery defines Afrofuturism as speculative fiction that

treats African-American themes, he explicitly writes about it in “the con-
text of twentieth-century technoculture” (Dery 1994, 180). There is no
big surprise in seeing postwar culture as intimately bound up with tech-
nology, but as I have argued throughout this book, technology can also
be understood in a much broader sense. This broad sense, however, does
not take away the importance of a narrower view on technology, but it
can be used as a way to, at one and the same time, interrogate technologi-
cal developments that have over time become everyday objects, and as
such they may have lost dimensions not only of newness but also may
have ceased to be noticed. When technologies get old, some become
obsolete, some are hardly noticed, and some are used in new ways.
In his book Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture (2001)
Timothy D. Taylor has chapters both on “postwar music and the techno-
scientific imaginary” (Chap. 4) and on “music in the space-age 1950s”
(Chap. 5). Taking as point of departure the general culture of new tech-
nologies after the Second World War, he discusses electronic music, both
in the tradition of compositional music as well as in a more popular vein
with Space-Age music, often found in atmospheric sounds, and closely
related to what has come to be known as easy listening. The ubiquity of
electronic sounds since the 1950s may take away some of the newness of
the music produced in this time, and if one focuses on examples from
easy listening, then the ears are hardly ever challenged either. But there is
more than one history of electronic sounds to be told, although several of
these histories are also related to the Space Age and to imagining the
sounds of the future.
In this chapter, I will begin taking Dery’s musical examples as a point
of departure. What are his criteria when he mentions music treating
African-American themes and addressing African-American concerns in
the context of twentieth-century technoculture? Given his musical exam-
ples, I take for granted that “speculative fiction” in his phrase includes
“sonic fiction.” But on an even more mundane level, it is of interest to see
which sounds he references at the beginning of the Afrofuturist discourse.
One should remember, however, that he adds that he thinks about fiction
(and in my context that includes sonic fiction) as “African-American sig-
nification” appropriating “images of technology and a prosthetically
The Beginning of the Sound of the Future 177
enhanced future” (Dery 1994, 180), and from these thoughts he men-
tions ideas about what Afrofuturist sounds may be. The main part of this
chapter, however, is about the sounds of the future in a somewhat nar-
rower sense. I am not concerned with all kinds of sounds that may be
described as Afrofuturist. Rather, I try to come to grips with how the
sound of the future is both imagined and realized, how musicians can be
said to play the sounds of the future, in the paradoxical situation that this
future comes to sound in the here and now. Thus, again, this is arguably
a version of what I have referred to as sonic time travel, but here the focus
is on the future more concretely, and how musicians can, so to speak,
bring the future to the listener in the here and now. In this I focus primar-
ily on the use of the guitar and keyboard instruments, somewhat less on
voices and samplers, and on a dimension of time where there is a refer-
ence back to the previous chapter’s discussion of timelessness.
The Beginning of the Sound of the Future

Whereas Dery does not primarily write about music in “Black to the
Future” there are some references to music, and they are within the later-
developed canon. “If there is an Afrofuturism,” he writes, “it must be
sought in unlikely places, constellated from far-flung points” (Dery 1994,
182). First mentioning paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and the films
The Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles) and Born in Flames (Lizzie
Borden), he continues:
in records such as Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, George Clinton’s

Computer Games, Herbie Hancock’s Future Shock, and Bernie Worrell’s
Blacktronic Science; and in the intergalactic big-band jazz churned out by
Sun Ra’s Omniverse Arkestra; Parliament-Funkadelic’s Dr. Seussian astro-
funk, and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s dub reggae, which at its eeriest sounds as if
it were made of dark matter and recorded in the crushing gravity field of a
black hole […]. (Dery 1994, 182)
There are probably two parallel historical narratives here, but these
references would be from mid 1950s, with the first recordings by Sun Ra,
to Worrell’s Blacktronic Science from 1993, which was thus contemporary

with Dery’s writing. In addition to the three primary figures of Sun Ra,
George Clinton, and Lee “Scratch” Perry, Dery also singles out Jimi
Hendrix, Herbie Hancock, and Bernie Worrell (and Worrell’s album is
arguably within the same orbit as Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic).
One thing I find intriguing with these examples is how electronics, the
future (future shock), and science are key terms in the album titles he
references. In this, the contemporaneity (of electricity, contemporary in
an almost McLuhanesque understanding), the future (in the futurity of
the Future Shock, with the mixture of Alvin Toffler, Curtis Mayfield, and
the synthesizer universe of Hancock), and some kind of past or alterna-
tive timeline (Worrell’s Blacktronic Science is arguably contemporary in a
parallel world) are at stake. It is also fascinating that the examples Dery
mentions about music and Afrofuturism are related to the electric guitar
(Hendrix) and synthesizers/keyboards (Hancock, Worrell) first and fore-
most, and the reference to Clinton should probably equally well be
related to the reference to Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelic (with Clinton
as the mastermind), and Lee Perry, the three Corbett calls “brothers from
another planet” (Corbett 1994). Of course, Worrell could be related to
the Clinton/Parliament-Funkadelic vein too, as the keyboardist in the
bands, but it is still of relevance that Dery singles out his album Blacktronic
Science. It is also worth noting the importance of titles within the
Afrofuturist universe—titles of compositions and of albums. In one sense
this can be seen as a problem, as George E. Lewis seems to suggest in
“Forewords: After Afrofuturism.” Why would the music need titles to
communicate what is happening, or to show the futurity or futurism of
its endeavours? But the titles are not necessarily external to the music;
rather they are—together with lyrics where they are present—an inherent
part of the compositions and performances. This can also be seen in
Dery’s references: Electric Ladyland, Computer Games, Future Shock, and
Blacktronic Science. Electricity, computers, future shock—with its obvi-
ous reference to Toffler, but also as a remake of a Curtis Mayfield song—
and science, none of these references are particularly black, but Worrell’s
album makes up for it with the neologism “blacktronic.” These titles
taken together offer a sonic answer to the implied question of Dery. If
African-American voices have other stories to tell about culture,
The Beginning of the Sound of the Future 179
technology, and things to come, the question would be “how do these

stories sound?,” a question strikingly similar to Lewis’s question: “what
can the sound tell us about the Afrofuture?” (Lewis 2008a, 141).
Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland was released in 1968, George Clinton’s
Computer Games in 1982, Herbie Hancock’s Future Shock in 1983, and
Bernie Worrell’s Blacktronic Science in 1993. As such, Dery’s examples
cover 25 years of sonic Afrofuturism, and when Sun Ra is included as one
of the predecessors, there are crucial dimensions of canon formation in
place with this list. While the 1970s at first seem absent, that decade is
represented by Parliament-Funkadelic (and thus Clinton and Worrell are
included here as well), but obviously also by Hancock’s oeuvre—from Fat
Albert Rotunda (1970, recorded in 1969), via Mwandishi (1971), Crossings
(1972), Sextant (1973a), Head Hunters (1973b), Dedication (1974a), and
at least to Thrust (1974b). A fascinating dimension within Hancock’s
album is elements of Afrocentricity, where one could argue that he is thus
referring what Salim Washington terms “the Afro-technological.”
In “Black to the Future: Afrofuturism (3.0)” (from 2016), Dery’s
examples, when it comes to music, are “Sun Ra, Hendrix and Miles Davis
at their most science-fictional, George Clinton, Afrika Bambaataa,
P-Funk, Detroit techno, Rammellzee, Grandmaster Flash, Lee “Scratch”
Perry, Jean-Michel Basquiat” (Dery 2016). While it is a stretch to include
Basquiat in this list, even if he did make some music, it is tightly related
to the canon. “Afrofuturism 3.0” is also Dery looking back on the term,
so it is not surprising that there is a hindsight to it. However, if we do not
focus on the historical narrative, but rather on the sonics of Afrofuturism,
there is a highly significant question related to how Afrofuturism sounds,
how science fiction sounds, or, perhaps even more persistent, how the
future sounds. An argument can be made that the musicians Dery men-
tions are sonic visionaries. They want, along lines similar to those Nicole
Mitchell thinks about, to create alternative worlds through music. One
way this creation is being done is by experimenting in sound, but also in
experimenting with sound sources. There are, in a sense, no sounds with-
out sound sources, and the most down-to-earth, almost banal, sound
source may be seen as a technology. Such a view may be surprising when
it comes to drums or voices, but even here dimensions of a broadly under-
stood technology are at stake.
Decentring Electricity (Hendrix)

With Charlie Christian amplifying the guitar and Hendrix’s use of elec-
tronic feedback, it is clear that electricity is of key importance for the
new sounds (Washington 2008, 236). Hendrix was once asked what
the difference was between the old blues and the new. His answer was
“Electricity” (Waksman 1999, 88), an answer in accordance with
Marshall McLuhan’s thesis that after the mechanical age, human beings
have entered an electronic age. This transformation, according to
McLuhan, implies that instead of extending our bodies in space, “we
have extended our central nervous system itself into a global embrace”
(McLuhan 2002, 3). It also implies, he writes, an abolishment of space
and time. Of course, this is somewhat imprecise, in the sense that not
everyone has equal access to the means of electronic civilization.
However, as an understanding of some of the moods of the 1960s it still
tells us something about how electricity signals something new. Hendrix
definitely plays this new—electric—blues, and it has a viscerality that
might be compared to playing on the public’s nerves. Examples of such
new blues are “If 6 Was 9?” from Axis: Bold as Love (1967b) and “Red
House” from Are You Experienced? (1967a), but this bluesness is heard
more or less throughout Hendrix’s production. In The Gutenberg Galaxy
from 1962 McLuhan describes his own time as “an electric or post-lit-
erate time when the jazz musician uses all the techniques of oral poetry”
(McLuhan 1997, 2), and this oral (or sonic) dimension of modern cul-
ture becomes even more obvious within media of storage and
reproduction.
When discussing Hendrix in his book Darker than Blue, Paul Gilroy
argues that “any convincing critical engagement” with his music
“becomes polycentric.” He also quotes Caetano Veloso’s description of
Hendrix as “half blues, half Stockhausen” (Gilroy 2010, 130), and
thus creates a place for Hendrix within the pantheon of creators of
modern “sound.” In describing the creation of this sound Gilroy also
refers to Hendrix’s military background as an “ex-paratrooper,” one
who employs sonic technologies such as the Univibe to construct new
soundscapes:
Decentring Electricity (Hendrix) 181
Among the most important are the history and phenomenology of the
electric guitar, a consideration of the pivotal point where music making
became a matter of electronic sound, and the interesting tale of how inno-
vations derived from military research found peaceful uses in the emergent
realm of musical sound-processing technologies. The use of the Univibe –
an early pedal-based phase shifter that simulated Doppler effects – in the
historic Band of Gypsys recording ‘Machine Gun’ provides the best exam-
ple of that particular irony. (Gilroy 2010, 140)
Gilroy’s reading is close to Friedrich Kittler’s argument about “the

entertainment industry” as “in any conceivable sense of the word, an
abuse of army equipment” (Kittler 1999, 96f ), but more to the point in
my context, his reading is close to Delany’s notion of “miss-use” of tech-
nology within black culture, and Washington’s arguments about “the
Afro-technological.” “Machine Gun,” then, is the sound, both of contem-
porary popular culture, of the interaction of technologies from different
spheres of life, and of the creation of new sounds. This newness is also
“modern” in many senses of the word. The post-Copernican decentring
might find its echo in Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun” from Are You
Experienced? (1967a), a song where the sound of the future is “an abiding
example of how Jimi made the same revolutionary feeling audible and
attractive” (Gilroy 2010, 135). The revolution Gilroy refers to concerns
the sound of the future partaking in a renegotiation of modernity, coun-
tering racism, and envisioning a new planetary future. This, Gilroy argues,
comes about as a result of a new view of the planet, “captured for the first
time from outside Earth’s orbit by cameras on the Apollo spacecraft in
1968” (Gilroy 2010, 137). And space, in the sense of outer space, is found
throughout Hendrix’s oeuvre, as a means, perhaps, of pointing towards
another picture or image of the world, but an image that is, paradoxically,
a sound. As such, Hendrix partakes in the sonic counter-history to visual
modernity, to the “Ensoniment” (Sterne 2003, 2; Weheliye 2005, 10)
that might be one of the crucial contributions of the Afro-modern. In
Midnight Lighting: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience, Greg Tate
writes, slightly hyperbolically, (something unavoidable, he claims, when
writing about Hendrix), that Hendrix was “the electric guitar’s Einstein if
not its Edison.” Hendrix redefines the sound of the guitar, spatially and
temporally, coming up with sounds (almost) not of this world (Tate 2003,
33). Whether the sounds are worldly or otherworldly is partly a question
of perspective, but in Gilroy’s argument of the “not-yet” understood as a
utopian dimension, a kind of future is heard, where the worldly is chal-
lenged. Glimpses of another world, however, are brought about by the
technological resources, such as, for example, the technological exten-
sions of the guitar, from the different gadgets available for altering the
sound, to the amplifier, and, in the end, the studio. Moving back and
forth between tradition and modernity, between the blues and sonic
experimentations, and with the constant presence of electricity, another
future is presented and prefigured. As Gilroy writes, “it is not that Hendrix
was ahead, but rather than he was able to pronounce another time”
(Gilroy 2010, 132).
In Washington’s argument, inventing new instruments or new uses of
old instruments are two of the practices that are key to “the Afro-
technological.” And Washington’s claim about new uses of old technol-
ogy resembles Samuel Delany’s reading of technology. “At the material
level,” Delany claims, “our technology is becoming more and more like
magic” (Dery 1994, 192), and when discussing “black youth culture as a
technological culture” he argues for a different use of technology among
black youth: “scratch and sampling begin, in particular, as a specific miss-
use and conscientious desecration of the artifacts or technology and the
entertainment media” (Dery 1994, 193). What if, then, this miss-use is
part of what Washington calls “the proliferation of black techniques
applied to conventional European instruments” (Washington 2008, 236)?
In Washington’s reading, he discusses Hendrix under his first heading,
where “the Afro-technological impulse has manifested” itself “in the
invention of instruments themselves” (236). The examples of this include
“Charlie Christian and the amplified guitar, Jimi Hendrix’s use of elec-
tronic feedback, the synthesizers of Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock,
and Grandmaster Flash’s pioneering turntablism” (236). Dery does not
mention Christian and Wonder, but the reason for Washington adding
them is in agreement with Dery’s discussion, except that this has nothing
to do with science fiction, but with technological innovation.
In his “Foreword: After Afrofuturism,” Lewis writes that Eshun’s term
“sonic fiction” is an “extraordinary powerful term” (Lewis 2008a, 144).
One of the strengths of the term is that it focuses on the sonic, but an
equally important dimension is that by focusing on “fiction,” the term
can be used in discussing imagination and the imaginary without having
to deal with the visual connotations of “image” in the imaginary. Why is
this important? The visual bias of philosophical and aesthetic thinking
has been documented several times, and is found in the vocabulary of
most aesthetic discourses (cf. Jay 1993). One example could be how
“reflection” relates to mirrors and visuality, where the acoustic equivalent
would seem to be echo. In other words, time and space are at stake, and
our way of perceiving time and space, as well as our way of thinking those
same categories, proves important, for example, in one of those places
time and place interact, in reverberation. That is, in what sense is our
language determining what we can say about the phenomena under scru-
tiny? When it comes to the music or sound of the future, these aspects
might prove themselves important in several senses. But, and this is also
in accordance with Lewis’s argument, it does not necessarily have to do
with language and the categories available for discourse. It could also
relate to how sound is “imagined” or fictionalized and, perhaps even
more importantly, what kind of fantastic scenarios are available. In other
words, “sonic fiction” could, along the lines of Afrofuturist discourse,
relate to the “sonic fantastic.”1 In Lewis’s article he wants to challenge
Afrofuturism for what he seems to suggest is too strong a focus on what
was previously known as “the extra-musical,” although in the earlier arti-
cle, “Improvised Music after 1950,” he seems to argue that “the extra-
musical” does not exist, as he references “areas once thought of as
‘extra-musical’, including race and ethnicity, class, and social and political
philosophy” (Lewis 1996, 94). In “After Afrofuturism,” on the other
hand, he at least seems to think this distinction has some merit, as
becomes clear when he asks “what can the sound tell us about the
Afrofuture?” (Lewis 2008a, 141). It might be that sound (as sound) is an
under-theorized dimension of Afrofuturism, although at the same time
Lewis’s question echoes a more traditional musicological discourse related
to “the music itself.” From such a perspective one could argue that
“sound” as such hardly exists in the sense that it can “tell us” anything
about the Afrofuture—or, for what it is worth, any other futures. The
sound here is inscribed in contexts where, for example, “dress, visual
iconography, witty enigmas, or suggestive song titles” are part and parcel
of what is heard. This is particularly the case with music (“songs”), includ-
ing lyrics. If the claim is that lyrics, including the semantic content, are
not a part of the sound, this is difficult to uphold. With these consider-
ations in mind, however, there are still good reasons to think along the
lines Lewis suggests, exploring, in a heuristic sense, what “sound,” in an
arguably more narrow sense than I described above, can reveal. And then,
perhaps, the contextual dimensions can be added afterward. What I am
arguing for, then, is a change of perspective, and I think this is one pos-
sible reading of Lewis’s question. The caveat I introduce, which at first
feels necessary for me, is not necessarily fair with regard to Lewis’s discus-
sion. While the question’s focus on “sound,” and the explicit exclusion of
“dress, visual iconography, witty enigmas, or suggestive song titles,” seems
to argue for something close to a “sound itself,” this is almost immedi-
ately challenged by Lewis himself, when he argues for broadening the
conversation, making it possible to theorize “the triad of blackness,
sound, and technology” (Lewis 2008a, 142). In particular I am concerned
with “the triad of blackness, sound, and technology,” as this brings us
closer to dimensions of Afrofuturism.
The term “speculative fiction” is close to a visual metaphor—specula-
tion (from Latin, “act of looking”)—and thus, in the case of music, gives
rise to Eshun’s term “sonic fiction.” Still, what is meant by speculative
fiction could still be fruitfully used in thinking about the musical side of
Afrofuturism. And while sound is not mentioned in Dery’s more explicit
definition of Afrofuturism, the other two dimensions of Lewis’s triad—
blackness and technology—are clearly present. While Dery writes about
“images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future,” there is a
small step to sonic imagery, and thus relations between sound and tech-
nology. The paradox of Lewis’s title, “After Afrofuturism,” should not be
lost. The article was published in 2008, whereas Dery coined the term in
an article first published in 1993. Why would Lewis claim that we are
“after Afrofuturism”? There seems to be, in Lewis’s understanding, an
under-theorization of music in classical Afrofuturism or, rather—and
probably better—he seems to suggest that there are other ways of
approaching the triad of “blackness, sound, and technology” than through
an (arguably narrow) Afrofuturist lens. That might very well be. On the
other hand, in the years since Lewis’s article, discussions of Afrofuturism
have become more common, a number of new musical acts are being
discussed along the lines of Afrofuturism, and academic and activist pub-
lications dealing with Afrofuturist themes are becoming more common.
In other words, there are few signs that we are really “after” Afrofuturism
(although this also depends on what is meant by “after”; according to Sun
Ra we are “after the end of the world”). So while Lewis might not want
to engage with the term Afrofuturism, his discussion of the triad of black-
ness, sound, and technology is of importance for the dimensions I am
occupied with in this chapter. Lewis’s suggestions for broadening the con-
versation are to the point, but “sound” is no longer isolated. It is part of
the triad of blackness, sound, and technology. Why is it that blackness
should be a term on another level than dress? Or why does Lewis approve
of technology but seemingly not of suggestive song titles? For the second
question the answer should be obvious: technology is a means of produc-
ing—and manipulating—sound; it is, in other words, inscribed in the
sound, and not something external to it. Similar arguments could be
made for the other “extra-musical” dimensions, but this fact does not
take away the validity of the argument. “Blackness,” on the other hand, is
in this context a trickier notion, but one that could be solved by claiming
that blackness itself is a technology. An example of such an understand-
ing is found in Ytasha L. Womack’s Afrofuturism, in a statement from
Cauleen Smith: “When I met artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith in July
2011, she best summed up race as creation: ‘Blackness is a technology’,
said Smith. ‘It’s not real. It’s a thing” (Womack 2013, 27). Notice the
“unreality” of blackness in this statement, a kind of echo of Sun Ra’s
myth. Smith is also the filmmaker behind the Solar Flare Arkestra
Marching Band Project where, in 2010, she directed a form of flash mob
in Chicago, including a marching band playing Sun Ra’s “Space is the
Place.” There are, then, relations between Smith’s aesthetic practices and
her work in understanding the background for her films, with echoes of
Sun Ra and his Chicago days as an important part. In claiming that
blackness is a technology, and adding that “it’s a thing,” Smith points
clearly to some of the complex historical trajectories needing to be
addressed to get a full understanding of what blackness can be said to
be—past, present, and future. Within the discourse of Afrofuturism,
one particular discussion has been in regard to the absence of people of
colour in the imagined futures of science fiction and fantasy. Connected to
science fiction this is in particular a question about the future, but given
that science fiction more often than not is understood as a distorted
notion of the present, it simultaneously opens up a different perspective
on the present. Fantasy arguably can equally well be about the past; but
here another thread is found too, in that Afrofuturism questions the past
as well as the future. The most obvious example is found in Sun Ra’s refer-
ences to Ancient Egypt, where he claims a different understanding of an
afterlife of ancient Egypt. In his understanding, Egypt was, and still is,
unmistakably African, and it is the past, and the past greatness of Egypt,
that is his main focus. Here he follows George G. M. James’s Stolen
Legacy, a book claiming that Greek philosophy, and thus, in a sense,
European thinking, was stolen from Egypt, manipulated, and its origin
erased. This erasure continues throughout European thinking, as an era-
sure of race, as making universal a certain European understanding of the
world. Given the history of blacks in the USA or—to broaden the under-
standing even more while simultaneously quoting the title of Sun Ra’s
lecture series at the University of California, Berkeley in 1971—given the
place of “The Black Man in the Cosmos,” this European understanding
has demonstrably led to hierarchical understanding of race as well as his-
tory. But, as Sun Ra says, “History is only his story; you haven’t heard my
story yet” (in the film Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise from 1980, directed by
Robert Mugge). And Sun Ra’s is a revisionist story, about another kind of
origin, in Ancient Egypt, as a technological civilization, the pyramids
testifying to this. But with the Middle Passage, and with the history of
slavery, blacks were not included in the category of human beings; they
were “things.” As Fred Moten opens his book, In the Break: The Aesthetics
of the Black Radical Tradition, “The history of blackness is testament to the
fact that objects can and do resist” (Moten 2003, 1) . Moten’s argument,
that blacks were objects, things, or commodities, fits with the history of
slavery and simultaneously underlines that from the abolition of slavery
and until the Civil Rights Movement, a fight for inclusion in the category
“human” was important for the black population in the USA. One thread
within the Afrofuturist discourse, arguably most clearly present in Eshun’s
writing, seems to argue that this inclusion did not happen, and that another
solution was found in going beyond the human to some kind of super- or
posthuman existence that should be followed by beginning a new black
civilization on a distant planet. The rationale for this thought seems to be
The Traditional Music of the Future 187
the continuous presence of white supremacy and racism in the wake of

the Civil Rights Movement’s victories beginning in the 1960s. What
would it mean to say that blackness is a technology? One possibility is to
follow posthuman theory which references different forms of enhance-
ment, for example, to discuss the body in relation to technology. This
seems to be in accordance with Dery’s definition of Afrofuturism where
he writes about “a prosthetically enhanced future” (Dery 1994, 180).
Another angle on the same phenomenon is Lewis’s distinction between
“prosthetic” and “incarnative”—an opposition he takes from Doris
Lessing. In Lewis’s article it relates to how “a largely prosthetically tech-
nological imaginary” is said to dominate Dery’s references in his writings
about Afrofuturism (Lewis 2008a, 139); this criticism highlights rela-
tions between the body and technology other than enhancement. In
another article, about Pamela Z, Lewis writes:
Z’s strategic placement of BodySynth electrodes – eight small sensors that

can be positioned practically anywhere on the body – moves past the pros-
thetic readings envisioned by the technology’s creators towards the dynam-
ics of the incarnative, the embodied, and the integrative. Z gradually
developed a use of the technology that was fundamentally rhythmic, pro-
viding sonic markers of empathy that allowed her to personally guide the
listener/viewer through the complexity of her work. (Lewis 2007, 59)
Here it seems as if the incarnative is a way of moving “past the pros-

thetic readings,” and this is another use of technology. That it is “funda-
mentally rhythmic” is of interest because the sounds are the result of these
interactions between body and technology. It is also useful for under-
standing the “Afrological” dimensions of music found in Lewis’s thinking,
not least in his important article “Improvised Music after 1950.”
The Traditional Music of the Future

In More Brilliant Than The Sun, Eshun writes about the music of the
future as “traditionally” being “beatless.” It is, he adds, “weightless, tran-
scendent, neatly converging with online disembodiment” (Eshun 1998,
67). His examples are an interesting mixture: Gustav Holst’s The Planet
(written between 1914 and 1916), Brian Eno’s Apollo soundtrack (1983),
and Vangelis’s soundtrack to Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). “Sonically
speaking,” he writes, they are not more futuristic than the Titanic and are
“nothing but updated examples of an 18th C sublime” (Eshun 1998, 67).
Holst’s music is explicitly related to its use in Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi clas-
sic 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as such is moved out of its immediate
context. Given later developments within Afrofuturism, one could
equally well discuss how exactly this work by Holst is related to the music
of Jeff Mills, to the degree that he has reimagined Holst’s Planets from
within his own musical experiments. This afterlife found with Mills, and
arguably related to some of Carl Craig’s experiments within techno, is not
primarily a critique of Eshun; he could not know this when he wrote his
book, but it is of interest in relation to his final judgment of the “beatless-
ness” as an old-fashioned sublimity. Eno’s Apollo and Vangelis’s music to
Blade Runner are also crucial here. In one sense Blade Runner could be
seen as a later version, culturally, of what 2001 was—and perhaps The
Matrix was about to become. That is to say, some films in a sense seem to
colour a full generation, and become a point of orientation for thinking.
Such points of orientation seem to be part of Eshun’s description, not
primarily when he deals with the eighteenth century sublime, but when
he discusses “weightlessness, transcendent, neatly converging with online
disembodiment” (Eshun 1998, 67). Eshun’s terms are like an echo of
how William Gibson in Neuromancer describes cyberspace as well as of
cybertheory in the mid-1990s. In hindsight this relation is obvious for huge
parts of the Afrofuturist discourse, not only Eshun, but the Data Thief of
The Last Angel of History and the fact that Dery’s “Black to the Future” after
having been published in South Atlantic Quarterly is his own contribution
in the collection Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. In other words,
the metaphors of cyberspace, cyberculture, and cybertheory are so inter-
twined with the origin of the discourse of Afrofuturism (the discourse
where this term is used, not where one discusses the phenomena the term
refers to) that these intertwinements have been taken for granted. It is not
as if cybertheory is unimportant, but one risks overlooking other elements
that could equally well be classified or discussed as Afrofuturism if the
connection to cybertheory is understood as necessary. The musical refer-
ences found in Neuromancer are not necessarily beatless either. This may
The Traditional Music of the Future 189
be used to challenge my interpretation here. Another interesting dimen-

sion with regard to the references to Eno and Vangelis is that their syn-
thesizer-based music, contrary, it seems, to what Eshun is claiming, has
been seen as the music of the future. Of course, this is in line with Eshun’s
claim that this is the “traditional” music of the future. And so, there must
be some difference in other versions, those that are related to “beat,” not
only in the digital–analogue meeting, but also in what could be called a
pre-digital age. While Sun Ra’s music is generally seen as “music of the
future,” from Eshun’s perspective it is better understood as untraditional,
and coming to the musical parameters this should seemingly be related to
beats rather than to synthesized sounds.
There are important dimensions to this understanding, but underlying
it all there are some fundamental questions that need to be addressed.
When Eshun writes about “beatless music,” I, in one sense, could not
agree more. And related both to Sun Ra and to the Afrofuturist tradition,
there is clearly some kind of focus on “the beat.” Here, however, beat
must also be understood as rhythm in a more general sense, and what
needs to be addressed is how Eshun’s other examples relate to rhythm. In
other words, in what sense is “beatless” music rhythmic? Obviously, non-
rhythmic music does not exist, as rhythm is the way of organizing time
and temporality in the sonic material of sound. “Beat,” however, is some-
thing different. When Eshun introduces the notion of weightlessness and
transcendence, and compares it with “online disembodiment,” he is, by
contrast, very close to a discussion of a dichotomy between “headmusic”
and “bodymusic”—this discussion, in consequence, would claim a tran-
scendent position as being disembodied in contrast to an embodied
musical practice as seen in, for example, dancing. Dance music would
understandably focus on the beat, and it would thus be one way of provid-
ing a contrast to the beatlessness of the traditional music of the future. But
is this not at the same time a simplified interpretation that cannot really
be of much help here? First, evidently some kind of dance is also possible
to a beatless music, if Holst, Eno, and Vangelis exemplify “beatlessness.”
Second, Eshun also argues that hip-hop is “headmusic” (Eshun 1998, 46)
and thus he is clearly not working within this dichotomy, although, because
he uses concepts related to the dichotomy, it is more difficult to figure out
what he is really arguing (or using the concepts for). Third, the sonic
dimension of Holst, Eno, Vangelis, and a host of others—even if it should

be the eighteenth century’s sublime as a reference—is important in imag-
ining the sound of the future (perhaps more the sound of the future than
the music of the future). This is not least the case, with Eno and Vangelis’s
use of synthesizers.
In the case of Sun Ra it seems clear that one “sound of the future” is
related to electronic sounds, or, more precisely, to electronic keyboards.
He was among the early users of a number of electronic keyboards, and,
for example on the cover to Space is the Place, he is credited with playing
“Farfisa (Space) Organ.” Here, then, the sound of the electronic organ is
the sound of space, not necessarily the same as the future, but still within
a futurist vein. Given that the film Space is the Place also opens with Ra’s
statement that “It’s after the end of the world” and that we live on “the
other side of time,” there are temporal markers of a future in the film.
These notions, however, also relate to another important dimension of a
future thinking or a thinking of the future—the relation to time. “After
the end of the world” means that “time has officially ended,” and thus
that “the other side of time” is a time after time, a non-time that takes
over after time has ended. In this one could argue that it does not really
make sense to talk about the future either. The future, at least in one
understanding, will have to be related to time, will have to be the coming
time, a time to come, but a time still within—or on this side of—time.
After time has ended the future will never happen, even the future has
stopped, and thus this is, at least in this particular sense, a kind of apoca-
lyptic understanding. “Apocalypse has been in effect,” as Public Enemy
has it. Within a history of music it is also tempting to see this as a replay
of a line from Richard Wagner’s Parsifal (while it is clearly a pure coinci-
dence that Wagner’s birthday—May 22—is the same as Sun Ra’s arrival
day—101 years before), where Gurnemanz says that “in this realm time
becomes space” (“Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit”). This thought from
Wagner, however, can also be used in a more general sense to describe
some of the music of the future. Temporality or time is challenged in
thinking the future, and what is often described as timeless music is in a
sense characterized by making possible thinking the spatiality of sound
instead. Being such a timeless atmospheric, music also makes it possible
to think the sound of the future differently, as the timeless is not only a
Synthesizing the Future 191
time after time, but also a kind of parallel time, existing, so to speak,
outside of time but simultaneously with it. In this, possibilities are cre-
ated for a music without a clear direction, that is to say without dynamic
codings for continuity, for progress, and thus for some kind of futurity
inscribed in the musical logics. The “ancient” sounds of Sun Ra—from
Ethiopia, Africa, Europe—that is, the imaginary past he references, are
thus in another sense than the electronic keyboards “on the other side of
time.” Whether or not such a way of thinking about time creates possi-
bilities for time travelling or should be seen as more of a cyclical or spiral
understanding of time is perhaps a question of perspective. But it does
challenge the understanding of the future. How does this relate back to
the futurism of Afrofuturism? In Sun Ra’s understanding, that is in his
statement about the music, in interviews, in titles, etc., there seems to be
some kind of future. And I do not want to distinguish here between what
was called within musicology for some time “the musical” and “the extra-
musical”; the words are an integrated part of the music. At the same time
this way of thinking challenges what Eshun calls “sonic fiction” in a dif-
ferent way. If we for heuristic reasons discuss the music alone, what are
the sounds of the future? And how can we hear this future in the here and
now?
Synthesizing the Future
Understanding the synthesizer as related to the future, and thus also to
history, is not very surprising and might also be seen in line with develop-
ments within the avant-garde of non-popular or so-called compositional
music. Following Eshun’s take on the tradition of the music of the future
as “beatless” these synthesizers can also be used within the tradition, as
seen in the work of both Eno and Vangelis. The change, it would seem,
would be whether or not “beat” is central to the sound. Simultaneously,
perhaps the synthesizer could be seen as an axis of negotiation between
different understandings of the music of the future. As Eshun writes:
“Whoever controls the synthesizers controls the sound of the future, by
evoking aliens” (Eshun 1998, 160). When read in the context of Dery’s
understanding of Afrofuturism, Eshun’s statement echoes the quote from
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four that Dery uses as one of his epi-
grams: “If all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history
and became truth. ‘Who control the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls
the future: who controls the present controls the past’” (Orwell 2003,
40). Controlling the different modalities of time —the past, the present,
and the future—is a constant negotiation of tales as well as of technolo-
gies. The synthesizer becomes a control board not only for the sounds of
the future but also for the sounds of the future’s past and the past’s future.
The timeliness of synthesizer sounds is a way of manipulating the sound
waves and the vibrations in relation to, or in contrast to, the dominating
tales of how the future is supposed to sound. Dery’s discussion of time
and history is also related to a major difference between the normative
understanding of history known from Europe and a question arising
whether this same understanding makes sense within an African-
American context. As he asks in a timely way, “The notion of Afrofuturism
gives rise to a troubling antinomy: Can a community whose past has been
deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been con-
sumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible
futures?” (Dery 1994, 180). In other words, the past is a necessary com-
ponent in imagining the future. If the past is lost or erased it will have to
be recreated as a means of perceiving a future. And if Orwell’s party slo-
gan is followed, this past is a result of controlling the present. Sun Ra’s
intervention in the present and the sounds he makes—alone or with the
Arkestra—is giving sound to an intersection of the present, the past, and
the future, and understanding the future—imagining the future—is thus
intimately related to all other modalities of time. The synthesizer, then, is
deeply embedded in the temporalities of sound, including the sound of
the future, but there are two other important dimensions to Eshun’s
quote above: the reference to “control” and the reference to “aliens.”
Controlling the synthesizer is more than playing it; it is also a matter of
programming the sounds—or rather to work with the sounds themselves
rather than simply making audible the default sounds of the synthesizer.
This, obviously, is of prime importance when industry-standard sounds
became the norm in popular music. And it is one place where Sun Ra also
meets Herbie Hancock and Bernie Worrell, as different takes on the
sounds of the synths.
Keyboards: Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, Bernie Worrell 193
eyboards: Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock,

K
Bernie Worrell
Making the sounds of the future is strongly connected to the use of elec-
tronics, in the case of musical instruments as well as studio production.
In the case of Sun Ra it is often underlined that he was among the first to
use electronic keyboards in his work. This is obviously one way to expand
the sonic palette—a term that should be used even if it connotes visuality,
as he thereby expands the number of colours or nuances also in the sonic
domain. But in addition to such a sonic expansion, the electronic key-
boards are also such an integrated part of the history of popular music
and technology, that it is worth delving into how he at the same time
inscribes these sounds into an ever-expanding imagination of the future.
In this he is following along the lines of an “Afrological” understanding
of sound, in his concrete use of sonic technologies in this case. In what
Lewis calls an “Afrological” conception of sound, having your own
“sound” is crucial. This is part of the socio-musical dimensions of impro-
visation and music making, and not least within an African-American or
Afro-diasporic context (Lewis 1996, 117). It is not least through the use
of synthesizers that Sun Ra’s music is in a tradition of “traditionally”
understood “music of the future.”
In “After Afrofuturism” Lewis explicitly writes about Sun Ra’s use of
electronics: “Ra’s use of electronics is a crucial component of the claim to
‘pre-science’ (a metanalysis Ra might have enjoyed). Yet no academic
treatise of which I am aware has historically traced and contextualized
Ra’s use of sound technologies […]” (Lewis 2008a, 145). While not being
that academic treatise, this chapter takes Lewis’s statement as point of
departure for a discussion of Sun Ra’s use of electronics and sound tech-
nology, in particular the use of electronic keyboards (organs, Moog). In
addition to Sun Ra, and following Dery’s examples of Afrofuturism in
music, I will also discuss the keyboards in relation to Herbie Hancock
and Bernie Worrell. In many ways a continuation of the aesthetics and
experiments of Sun Ra, they can be seen partly as settling some future
uses of the keyboards, as moving into other genres than Sun Ra, and as
partaking in the more general history of electronic music. They could
also, in another sense, be seen as part of a mainstreaming of electronic

keyboards, where, due to the musical genres, their experimental, or futur-
ist, dimensions can be more difficult to see (hear). The same could be said
about Stevie Wonder, although he is hardly ever discussed within any
Afrofuturist discourse, but is mentioned by Washington in his discussion
of “the Afro-technological” and is obviously important for discussing the
use of synthesizers with the somewhat different perspective of a black
sound studies. And Wonder’s “Saturn” could be constructed as an hom-
age to Sun Ra, even if Wonder should have been unaware of this. With
the introduction of Worrell and Hancock, developments of electronic
keyboards as well as a more generalized electronic music are foreshad-
owed, and the chapter follows this line of thought by way of a shorter
discussion of studio and computer technologies.
It is the synthesizer, then, or more broadly the use of “sound technolo-
gies” that is crucial not only for understanding Sun Ra’s music, but also
including jazz—broadly understood—in the Space Age or in the electronic
era.2 As John Szwed writes, “to Sonny it (the Moog synthesizer) was above
all a space-age instrument; and except for the keyboard, it did look like the
control panel of a rocket ship” (Szwed 1998, 276). In one sense, of course,
a synthesizer does not have to have a keyboard at all; the keyboard is a way
of controlling the electronics. But whereas synthesizers controlled by wind
instruments, guitars, and computers have been important for experiment-
ing with sounds, synthesizers have primarily been understood as keyboard
instruments, something that can be seen from the musicians themselves
obviously, but also in the sense that the history of the synthesizer is often
seen as a continuation of other electronic keyboards: the electric piano,
organ, Rocksichord, and others. In this context it is of importance to dis-
cuss the keyboard both as a sound-producing technology, but also to con-
sider how those sounds are related to their sonic environment. It is, I will
argue, in relation to the environment that Eshun’s argument about the
beatless music of the future makes sense. That is to say, Eshun focuses on
the rhythmic or percussive dimensions, whereas the synthesizer could
equally well have other functions. But how would Sun Ra’s music fit with
Eshun’s description? The question would not least relate to the beat—and
Sun Ra’s relation to “beat” or “beatlessness”—on the one hand and his
use of synthesizers on the other. But discussing “beatlessness” will lead
not only to the eighteenth century’s sublime but to any other under-
standing of the music of the future (or the sound of the future). The
importance of synthesizers for Sun Ra’s sonic future cannot be overstated.
He was one of the first pianists to explore electronic keyboards, and these
keyboards are key for him constructing his version of the music of the
future. In some examples, the use of synthesizers is not that different
from Eno or Vangelis while, in other examples, Sun Ra explores the key-
boards more as noise creators in the tradition of academic electronic
music (or music in the so-called classical tradition). Here, the music and
vibrations are different and Sun Ra bends, for example, the Moog synthe-
sizer to previously unheard sounds, as for example on “Outer Space
Employment Agency” from the 1973 album Concert for the Comet
Kohoutek that morphs into a version of “Space is the Place” (cf. Langguth
2010, 152).
The Moog synthesizer is, in one sense, a symbol for Sun Ra’s use of
electronic keyboards, and for a number of reasons. As Jon Weiss relates
when Sun Ra went to Trumansburg in 1968 visiting the Moog shop,
He came to Trumansburg back in 1968. This was a fairly rigid sleepy little
New York state town, and here’s this bizarre looking Black guy in his robes
and stuff sitting down in the local ice cream parlor … It was in the days of
the Mini-Moog; he saw one and thought that he wanted to incorporate it
into his act … I happened to hear this machine, and he had taken this
synthesizer, and I don’t know what he had done to it, but he made sounds
like you had never heard in your life. I mean, just total inharmonic distor-
tion all over the place, oscillators weren’t oscillating any more, nothing was
working, but it was fabulous. He had taken the machine and somehow,
I know he hadn’t gotten inside of it; who knows what he had done or what
it had been subjected to, but he created these absolutely out-of-this- world
sounds, that the engineers could never have anticipated. (Pinch and Trocco
1998, 24)
The fact that the engineers could hardly understand what he was doing
with the synthesizer is telling, also for ways of understanding musical
technology. It is not as if the music is a result of the engineers’ work, as if,
to use Weiss’s terms, the engineers could anticipate how the new tech-
nologies will be used in creating music. On the other hand, it is obvious

that the sound production, what Sun Ra is doing with the synthesizers, is
dependent upon the possibilities in the technology. A key album for the
development of Sun Ra’s electronic keyboard sound is My Brother The
Wind, Vol. II (1969). He had just purchased a Farfisa organ that he fre-
quently used around this time, but also started to use the synthesizer.
Szwed writes:
But it was his new synthesizer on the second side of the record which was
the surprise. Sonny had been hearing about the idea of the synthesizer for
years. It was just the sort of thing he had dreamed about: a self-contained
system which generated sounds out of electricity, sounds which could be
musical in a conventional sense, but was also capable of producing sounds
which had never been heard before, unearthly sounds, he thought. He first
heard Robert Moog’s synthesizer in 1966. Shortly after Raymond Scott
and Walter Carlos began to use synthesizers as novelties. Paul Bley then
showed that it was possible to use a synthesizer in jazz, recording in 1969
on a large model that he also somehow managed to tour with. (Szwed
1998, 276)
It is a keyboard for the Space Age, controlling sounds as if he was con-

trolling a rocket or a spaceship. In hindsight it is obvious why this instru-
ment attracted Sun Ra. But in addition the Moog could be used for
expanding the sonic pallet. As when visiting the Moog shop, on his
albums he also used the instrument idiosyncratically: “Sun Ra seemed to
be testing it for its melodic possibilities, working on its sliding chromatic
capacities, trying out whole tone runs, and for the moment he seemed
happy just to be able to get a celeste or marimba-like tone out of the
instrument” (Szwed 1998, 276f ). The composition “The Code of
Interdependence” from the My Brother the Wind, Vol. II employs the
Moog to the uttermost degree, and demonstrates at one and the same
time a number of possibilities for timbre—from sinus noises, via some-
thing resembling steel pans (listen in particular to the opening), to cas-
cades of melodic noise, clearly underlining that it is an electronic
instrument we are listening to. The electronic dimension, in other words,
is not something hidden; rather it is a key element in this long track.
Which, besides John Gilmore on percussion, is a solo Moog track, until

the saxophones come in at 9.35. But even after the entry of the saxo-
phone, this is a Moog track, perhaps one of the foremost in Sun Ra’s
oeuvre.
There is a long distance from “The Code of Interdependence” to “Flash
Light,” from Sun Ra’s experiments with the Moog synthesizer in 1969 to
Bernie Worrell playing Moog bass on the single from Parliament’s
Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome (from 1977). While Parliament
had Bootsy Collins playing bass, he plays drums on “Flash Light.” And
the Minimoog bass gives a different “electric” sound to the song, arguably
primarily challenged by the presence of the solo passages from the saxo-
phone, but also, of course, by the voices—and, with the presence of the
Moog I would argue that even the guitar sound changes (due to the con-
text) to become something more similar to an “acoustic” instrument. It
is, obviously, still an electric guitar—played by Phelps Collins (Bootsy’s
brother)—but the electric dimensions of the synthesizer sounds make the
electric dimension of the guitar stand out less, thus changing the overall
sound. The bass playing of Bootsy Collins is still worthwhile mentioning
in this context, and in the context of the album as a whole (where he
plays bass on every track except “Flash Light”) as he often uses the bass in
a relatively high register, making a popping, electronic sound that is of
interest. Anne Danielsen claims that both “Bop Gun” and “Flash Light”
show “some signs of influence from the new fad,” meaning disco, and as
such have another rhythmic feel (more 4/4) than the funk focus on “the
One” (Danielsen 2006, 137). But this is of little relevance, I would claim,
to the use of synthesizer and bass in these tracks. Rather it might be said
to take part in the dualism of the album, where “Funkentelechy” is on the
one side and “the placebo syndrome” on the other, in what sounds like a
strict dualism, even when presented in a playful manner. The “popping”
bass sound can, for example on “Bop Gun,” sound almost like a synthe-
sizer too, but with a focus upon a percussive sound rather than the bass
dimension one would expect. This example, and it could be expanded even
more, says something about how the presence of synthesizers establishes a
different kind of continuum between and within the different sounds
being made by the whole band. The synthesizer, in other words, functions
as an independent instrument, and can contribute sounds to the ensem-
ble best described as “synthesizer-sounds.” But from another angle, and

also due to how the synthesizer is used/played, it either functions by sub-
stituting other instruments, or it is played instead of other instruments;
both of these versions establish new sonorities in familiar places. This
overall dimension of the synthesizer can also be said to change with the
development of digital synthesizers, and not least with synthesizers based
on sampled instruments where the sonic differences between the synth
and the instrument it stands in for are less audible. Parliament is not the
only musical act to use the synthesizer as bass, of course. Given the pres-
ence of African-American popular music, one could equally well mention
keyboard/synthesizer players like Wonder, where “Superstition” (1972)
and “Boogie on Reggae Woman” (1974) are among the best known, and
if the focus is on sonic technology alone, they would also be good exam-
ples in discussing whether the same sounds are understood as Afrofuturist
in one context but not in others. On “Boogie on Reggae Woman” from
Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974), Wonder plays all the instruments except
some of the percussion. And the Moog bass is clearly recognizable in the
mix, and drives the song forward. Interestingly enough, the next track on
the album, “Creepin’,” features Minnie Riperton on background vocals
(with Wonder still doing almost all of the music), and Riperton is of
course one of the singers Lewis mentions as important in his challenging
of the Afrofuturist canon.
Whereas the use of electronic keyboards is commonly interpreted as
Sun Ra being at the forefront of the development of technology, and
while this in many ways is true, there is an interesting exception in his use
of the Rocksichord. The Rocksichord is an electric keyboard from the late
1960s, manufactured by Rocky Mount Instruments, but rather than
being an electric piano, its sound most resembles the harpsichord. From
the point of view of acoustic instruments, then, its roots are old, and
could give associations to the sounds of European baroque and classi-
cism. As an electronic instrument, however, this association is only by
proxy, and while I would not call it timeless, there is something almost
ahistorical to the sound. Perhaps it is telling, then, that one of the most
important Sun Ra albums featuring the Rocksichord is Cosmos, recorded
in France in 1976 and released in 1977. The Rocksichord is actually Sun
Ra’s only keyboard instrument on this album, thus making its sound even
more dominating than on albums where he in addition uses synthesizers,

organ, and piano. On some tracks on the album the Rocksichord is only
discretely present, for example, in the opening of “The Mystery of Two”,
where it sounds almost like a guitar, but where the keyboard dimensions
become clearer as the track proceeds. On “Interstellar Low Ways,” on the
other hand, a swooshing keyboard opens the track, and the “plucked”
dimensions resembling a harpsichord are heard in both melody and har-
monic accompaniment. It is not that it sounds ancient at all, but more
like a keyboard run through a guitar phaser, as if the sound is continually
filtered in real time. While a similar effect could be done on a synthesizer,
this still sounds different, and it is probably no accident that the
Rocksichord is primarily known from so-called psychedelic music. It
almost sounds like the swoosh is connected to a pedal being turned on
when the track begins, sounding beneath the music during the track,
only to be turned off when the music stops. Still, describing it as beneath
the tracks is not completely correct, as it at the same time is integrated
into the overall sound. To me the swooshing sound brings to mind a
seascape, even if it does not really sound like the sea at all. It is more that
the “swoosh” has oceanic associations. And I am reminded of Sun Ra’s
lyrics: “The sky is a sea of darkness when there is no sun” on the one
hand, but also the interpretation of the spaceship as an “upgraded” ship,
which will take the black Afronauts to a planet in a way comparable to
how ships took West Africans across the Atlantic during the transatlantic
slave trade. An argument could be made for the piano being a “classical”
instrument as well, and historically it is, but it makes sense to see much
more of linearity in the development from the classical piano to the elec-
tric piano. The Rocksichord, on the other hand, seems almost ahistorical,
as if the inventors have tried explicitly to create a “strange” or unexpected
sound.
Another musician taking the synthesizer as a steering device for a
spaceship, also in a quite literal sense, is Herbie Hancock. On the cover
of the album Thrust (1974b), Hancock is seen in a spaceship heading for
what looks like a foreign planet, but with mountains seemingly inhab-
ited. As an Afronaut, Hancock is the pilot, but his steering board is clearly
a synthesizer, with keyboard as well as programming devices—including
a screen. The picture is similar to how Sun Ra is depicted in Space is the
Place, where he too seems to use the synthesizers to steer the spaceship,
and where music or sound—electronically produced sounds to be more
exact—seems to be what fuels the spaceship. An interesting dimension
with Thrust is that the composition “Actual Proof ” was originally written
for the 1973 movie The Spook Who Sat by the Door, directed by Ivan
Dixon, based on the 1969 novel by Sam Greenlee. Hancock wrote the
music for the film, but “Actual Proof ” is not included. While first thought
of as film music, and then as a key composition on an Afrofuturist album,
it is of interest that Hancock himself also thought of the song as related
to Buddhism.
I decided to name the tune ‘Actual Proof ’ – the Buddhist concept of a
concrete example of the practice working in your life. It’s a cornerstone of
Nichiren Buddhist belief, the visible evidence that it’s working and a
motivation to continue practicing. I had started incorporating some ele-
ments of. Buddhism into my album covers, and this would be another
one. The complex rhythms of ‘Actual Proof ’ were a challenge to the lis-
tener, but they were a challenge to the musicians, too. One time when we
were in the studio, I heard Paul Jackson working something out on his
bass. A couple of minutes later I said, ‘Okay, let’s do “Actual Proof.”’ The
engineers started recording, but when I counted off, Paul jumped in a
completely different bass line from the one we’d been playing on the road.
(Hancock 2014, 189)
The Buddhist dimension may come as a surprise within an Afrofuturist

framework, but it goes to show some of the complexities of this frame-
work when it comes to religion or spirituality. This is not the place to
go into these complexities; it suffices to say that there are a number of
religious and spiritual practices that, at least from the musicians’ point
of view, are found alongside music that is or can be interpreted as
Afrofuturist. This is not solely Afrocentric practices, although they are
found as well, and neither is it only practices related to Christianity or
Islam, although these are found too. In the case of Hancock, his
Buddhism is still mixed with practices related to African thinking, and
these two are primarily found represented visually, but also with the
names the musicians in the Mwandishi Band took for themselves, a
self-naming that is consistent as well with practices found within the
African-American community. Hancock plays a number of keyboard

instruments on Thrust, foremost among them a number of ARP
synths—ARP Odyssey, ARP Soloist, ARP 2600, and ARP String
Ensembles—and they are played in combination with a Fender Rhodes
electric piano and a Hohner clavinet. The result is what today sounds
like older sounds (coming from the Rhodes and the clavinet) in combi-
nation with what were then the newest sounds possible (the ARP com-
pany in competition with Moog). Using this double reference to how
the sounds may have been perceived at the time of the album’s release
versus how it may sound today is misleading however, as these older
synthesizers still may sound old today. Again this is an example of how
sounds are in one sense timely, intimately related to the contemporary
means of sonic production, but where the imagination put into making
these albums, and the sounds coming from the instruments at the same
time, is a way of showing a direction into the future, playing with the
newest sounds, and as such these sounds—on this album, and others—
are about producing sounds that indicate the future. That later listeners
may feel they are listening to the past does not challenge this interpreta-
tion, but rather shows how the future is also a historical entity, and that
this is, in an important sense, the past’s version of the future, and not
necessarily what the future became. This also goes to show that “the
sounds of the future” is a historical entity, and that dimensions of his-
torical imagination are important to enable listeners to interpret the
sounds. In this the musician becomes, as Eshun writes, something akin
to a pilot:
As the pilot-composer of the Arkestra, Ra is captain of Spaceship Earth:

Destination Unknown. The synthesizer turns the producer into a navigator,
moving through fictional space. Iannis Xenakis: ‘With the aid of e lectronic
computers the composer becomes a sort of pilot: he presses the buttons,
introduces coordinates, and supervises the controls of a cosmic vessel sail-
ing in the space of sound, across sonic constellations and galaxies that he
could formerly glimpse only as a distant dream.’ The Arkestra is a ‘cosmic
vessel sailing in the space of the sound’, the sonic spaceship which leaves
Saturn, travelling to Plutonia, to Nubia, Atlantis on an Intergalactic Space
Travel in Sound. After the Arkestra come the audiovehicles of the 70s: The
Upsetter’s Black Ark, Creation Rebel’s Starship Africa, Parliament’s

Mothership – and artist Robert Springett’s Moogship, on the sleeve of
Herbie Hancock’s ‘74 Thrust. The Futurist builds conceptual soundcrafts,
new arks for exploring unheard soundworlds. (Eshun 1998, 159f )
Eshun’s quote from Xenakis is taken from Formalized Music first pub-
lished in French in 1963 (cf. Xenakis 1992, 144). This shows that ideas
of electronic music—be it computers or synthesizers, as entities exploring
space, including metaphors of outer space and space travel—are also
found in other compositions than in the African-American tradition, be
it as Afrofuturism or something else. It is also of interest that Xenakis’s
thoughts are from the early 1960s, where Sun Ra can be said to have
similar ideas, but where the execution of the ideas are different.
For the cover to Thrust, Hancock’s an Afronaut – a pilot operator looking

disdainfully out of the bubble window, as his fingers play the synthesizer-
control panel that will guide his ufo down through the purple mists and
onto the mountain-top runway. The runway is Assyrian tech, with a city
carved into the plateau. A giant moon, its mauve craters like planetary
pustules, looms overhead, blocking out the sky. (Eshun 1998, 009)
Eshun may have found the metaphor of the pilot in Xenakis’s

Formalized Music, first published in 1963, and with a second English-
language edition published in 1992, but it is equally possible that the
Xenakis quote simply fit his interpretation of both Sun Ra and Herbie
Hancock, given visual form in Space is the Place and on Thrust respec-
tively. They are, obviously, some kind of pilots in these images, using
the synthesizer as a control panel for their spaceships. Eshun also estab-
lishes the connection between a number of vehicles, and as such relates
the sonic dimensions of Afrofuturism to a more concrete thinking of
transport. Whereas Hancock is on his way to another planet, this planet
is visibly inhabited, or at least there are buildings. Eshun calls it
“Assyrian tech,” but to me it seems more like South America than
Assyria, and I am reminded of Ernest Hogan and his Chicano-futurism
(if that is the term one wants to use), for example with High Aztech
(1992) or Cortez on Jupiter (1990). This is not necessarily particularly
important when it comes to Hancock’s album, but it raises the question
about why Eshun would say Assyrian. What is of interest, however, is

that this distant planet that Hancock is “thrust” towards, is, in a way
comparable to the cover art of many albums by Earth Wind & Fire,
simultaneously related to the distant or ancient past. His term “audio-
vehicles” (Eshun 1998, 159) is a collective term taking Sun Ra’s Arkestra
as a point of departure, and arguably Parliament’s Mothership as the
best-known later version. Eshun also sees it as a sonic upgrading of
Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Liners:
In the 20s, Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, the ‘Black Moses’, named his
shipping fleet Black Star Liners, to plug the notions of repatriation, of
return to the patria, the fatherland, into that of interplanetary escape. Ra
zooms this lost Africa into a lost Pharaonic Egypt. By reversing this lost
African Egypt out of the past, and fastforwarding it out into the interstellar
space of Saturn and Plutonia, Ra swaps Garvey’s politics of secession, radi-
cal at a point when imperial capital demanded reserves of black labour, for
a MythScience system assembled from George M. James’ New Philosophy
of African Redemption in ‘54’s Stolen Legacy. (Eshun 1998, 156)
Notice the gendering in the above quote, with the “fatherland” and a
Pharaonic Egypt that, in Eshun’s descriptions, sounds distinctly male.
Here is arguably a contrast with Parliament’s Mothership, with the evok-
ing of Africa as the “motherland,” and also with Royster’s readings of the
masculinity of P-Funk (Royster 2013, Chap. 3).
The description of Xenakis quoted above, however, is also the practice
of Sun Ra when he plays the synthesizer:
With the aid of electronic computers the composer becomes a sort of pilot:
he presses the buttons, introduces coordinates, and supervises the controls
of a cosmic vessel sailing in the space of sound, across sonic constellations
and galaxies that he could formerly glimpse only as a distant dream.
(Xenakis)
Pressing buttons, programming, controlling knobs, the synthesizer

becomes a vessel too, giving sound to travels to other worlds. “There Are
Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of ),” as one track from his
Lanquidity (1978) is called.
Robotic
One update of Sun Ra that Eshun focuses on is the Jonzun Crew’s album
Lost in Space (1983), in particular the track “Space Is the Place.” With this
title, the Sun Ra reference is apparent, but Eshun’s focus is on the alterations
of the voice: “On Jonzun Crew’s Space is the Place, the Arkestral chant
becomes a warning blast rigid with Vadervoltage. Instead of using synthesiz-
ers, tones to emulate string quartets, Electro deploys them inorganically,
unmusically” (Eshun 1998, 80). For Eshun, the significance of the vocoder
voice is that the voice is turned into a synthesizer and, as such, the voice is
synthesized too or, one could argue, it is dehumanized. The terms used, how-
ever, will also raise question regarding how one thinks about “music,” “voice,”
etc. When Eshun claims that the synthesizers are used inorganically, it is not
necessarily a negative judgment. Rather, it should be seen as an extension of
Eshun’s writings about the movement from the human to the posthuman. In
that sense “dehumanizing” would be wrong too, as in relation to black music
the very notion of “the human” is very much at stake. The focus on the
vocoder and its relation to black posthumanism is also found in Alexander
Weheliye’s article “Feenin’” where Weheliye claims Eshun as “the foremost
theorist of a specifically black posthumanity.” This is in contrast to the then
emerging theories of the posthuman (in the aftermath of, not least,
N. Katherine Hayles), showing the “literal and virtual whiteness of cyber-
theory” (Weheliye 2002, 21), thus potentially erasing people of colour from
posthumanity. In Weheliye’s point of view, an important way to alter this
discourse, and to also engage black cultural production, is “to realign the
hegemony of visual media in academic considerations of virtuality by shift-
ing the emphasis to the aural” (Weheliye 2002, 21). He writes, “Incorporating
other informational media, such as sound technologies, counteracts the mar-
ginalization of race rather than rehashing the whiteness, masculinity and
disembodiment of cybernetics and informatics” (Weheliye 2002, 25).
Weheliye’s focus is the vocoder, “a speech-synthesizing device that renders
the human voice robotic, in R&B, since the audible machinic black voice
amplifies the vexed interstices of race, sound, and technology” (Weheliye
2002, 22). These interstices—the places where race, sound, and technology
meet—question the place of blackness in cyber-theory, but at the same time
Robotic 205
relate to what Lewis discusses when interrogating “the triad of blackness,

sound, and technology” (Lewis 2008a, 142). The vocoder is a part of this
triad in a very particular sense, given that the technologization of the
voice contributes to a different take on “the human” and on blackness.
Simultaneously, going back to the Jonzun Crew highlights another
dimension of “the music of the future.” While the mechanical, robot-like
voices heard on this track sound like science fiction—and the long tradi-
tion of talking robots or aliens from HAL in 2001 to Samantha in HER—
it is also the sound of a particular, historical understanding of inhuman
sounds. With HAL, the robotic is audible, whereas Samantha sounds like
a regular female voice and her artificiality is impossible to hear. A similar
argument can be made for Janelle Monáe, whose alter ego Cindi
Mayweather is supposed to be an android, but whose singing voice is
identical with Monáe’s (cf. Steinskog 2016). Monáe’s overall concepts for
her albums, including the performance of the android, is thus half of the
story of the future in/human voices, where the other half, arguably, is the
auto-tuned or technologically modified voices. The vocoderized voices of
Jonzun Crew belong to the second half of this same imagination, and
show us one of the past’s imaginations of (another) future.
Fiction is not the same as “imagination,” but in this scheme of things
there are definitely relations to story-telling and world-building. If we are
on the other side of time, or if music is a kind of prophecy, a sonic imagi-
nary of the future, then a sonic fiction can be about the sounds of this
non-heard (or unheard) music. There is a paradox in all these formula-
tions in that “imagination,” in its linguistic root, seems to point to the
sense of vision. Thinking the sonic imaginary—despite the linguistic
paradox—is clearly necessary for the sound of the future to be present.
But this, at the same time, also relates to one of the key questions of sci-
ence fiction: whether it is about the (or a) future or whether it is primarily
a slightly distorted picture of the present. Both understandings make
sense in relation to science fiction, but they are still important in trying to
be precise in analysing what we are doing. And even in the stories of the
future (rather than the present), these stories are about some future imag-
ined from the point of view of today. When it comes to music, including
Attali’s music as prophecy, the means of production are obviously found
here and now too, including, not least, the sound-producing devices.
While Jonzun Crew updates Sun Ra for the 1980s, and while it might
sound dated today, there are many contemporary musicians doing differ-
ent takes on the Sun Ra legacy too. Related to genre, many of them are
best thought of under the vague umbrella term “electronica,” but there
are good reasons to discuss them in relation to updated versions of
Afrofuturism. In that sense, they might be seen as challenging Lewis’s
understanding that we should be “after Afrofuturism.” I have already
mentioned Janelle Monáe, but my focus towards the end of this chapter
will be musicians who are DJs or producers.
Much of the current music understood as Afrofuturist is sample
based, opening up new possibilities for other ways of making connec-
tions across historical distances. Communicating with samples is an
inherent part of hip-hop aesthetics, and it is also related to quotes and
other ways of citing earlier music and performances in instrument-
based music; with samples, though, the signifying processes are differ-
ent. At the same time, such a practice is undoubtedly a use of technology,
opening new possibilities in the triad of blackness, sound, and technol-
ogy. With other tools than the synthesizer, these musicians too expand
on the sonic pallet, and use real-time technology, including samples, to
produce new music that simultaneously echoes the past. Interestingly
enough, a number of them explicitly reference Sun Ra, either by sam-
pling or as an aesthetic ideal.
I discussed Ras G in the previous chapter, and how he references Sun
Ra with album titles and aesthetics. These references are, in a sense, a
form of sampling, but he also samples Sun Ra in musical sounds. Take
the track “Astrohood” from the album Brotha from Another Planet
(2009) where he samples from Sun Ra’s “I’ll Wait for You” from the
album Strange Celestial Road (1980). The singing voices of Sun Ra’s
track are overtaken by electronic sounds—similar to the sounds or
noises of computer games—before a beat is introduced and later fol-
lowed by what is almost Ras G’s signature—voices shouting “Oh Ras”
with a heavy echo to it. Sun Ra’s song is groovy with a bass vamp lead-
ing into call-and-response voices, and it is these voices Ras G chooses to
sample, rather than the bass groove or Sun Ra’s discrete synthesizer
sounds. However, one would define the generic differences between the
two tracks as a transformation from a more or less funky bass dominat-
Robotic 207
ing the sounds to the electronic sounds dominating Ras’s track. If one
were to compare the two tracks the difference in length would be note-
worthy. “Astrohood” is short, only 1:55, whereas “I’ll Wait for You” is
16 minutes, and the latter develops into a jam where, under the saxo-
phone solo, Sun Ra is exploring the noisier spectrum of his synthesizer.
On another track, “Natural Melanin Being…” from Back on the Planet
(2013), Ras G instead samples Sun Ra from an interview where he
speaks about natural blackness as well as about ancient Egypt. Everything
in-between and around Sun Ra’s voice are Ras G’s electronic sounds.
The electronic sounds are layers of samples, with sonic references across
decades of music. In that sense, another version of “the other side of
time” is presented, a time where the past is potential for recreation and
revision and, as such, a technological parallel to the understanding of
history Sun Ra seems to relate to. On both albums there are also refer-
ences to Sun Ra in the aesthetics of the album covers and in the titles
so, in that sense, one would have to say it is a whole aesthetic rather
than simply a sonic ideal.
A different, but similar, case is found on Kirk Knight’s “Start
Running,” the opening track from Late Night Special (2015). Here Sun
Ra’s voice is heard again, this time with the famous words from the
opening of Space is the Place. The first sounds on the album are Sun Ra’s
voice saying “teleportation, transmolecularization, or better still, tele-
port the whole planet here through music.” After “better still” the rap-
per enters, rapping over the rest of the still audible words of Sun Ra,
moving into a contemporary alternative hip-hop track. Towards the
end of the track Sun Ra’s voice returns saying, “the music is different
here” and so on. Knight thus clearly signifies on Sun Ra’s statements
and in a particular sense can be said to attempt, for the rest of the
album, to present this “different music,” again re-inscribing African-
American music in a process of teleporting the planet. The sonic envi-
ronment around the first Sun Ra sample, however, is more related to
Alice Coltrane than Sun Ra. A sweeping harp is heard rather than a
synthesizer, and so it is another mode of combining acoustic instruments
and electronics. With the harp and the Alice Coltrane reference the track
is closer to Flying Lotus than to Ras G, and one track on Knight’s
album, “Dead Friends,” features Thundercat—Stephen Bruner—who
also collaborated with Flying Lotus. Thus there are connections here as
well to Flying Lotus’s “Transmolecularization,” as discussed in a previ-
ous chapter, where again the double historical references to Alice
Coltrane as well as Sun Ra are abundantly clear.
Flying Lotus’s You’re Dead! is, in many ways, a culmination of a col-
laboration between electronic sounds and live instruments—there are
several examples on his earlier albums. A related development can be
seen in the music of Hieroglyphic Being, even if the latter’s music has
been more electronically dominated for a much longer time. His 2015
album We Are Not the First might thus be an exception, but if so it is a
very interesting exception in the present context. Hieroglyphic Being
(born Jamal Moss, 1973) is better known for playing music based in
the house genre—he is from Chicago—but also in this context Sun Ra
is referenced, for example, in the track “Space Is The Place (But We
Stuck Here On Earth)” from the 2013 album A Synthetic Love Life.
Primarily working with turntables, drum machines, and a mixer, the
references to the “synthetic” should be seen in the mainstream tradi-
tion of human versus machine, but within the same tradition the DJ
becomes a kind of cyborg, where the machine and the human merge.
When adding musical instruments, this interaction of humans, instru-
ments, and machines becomes even more complex, as already heard on
Flying Lotus’s “Transmolecularization.” It is, however, not only a pro-
cess of more complex interactions; it is also a process where enhanced
sounds as well as incarnated sounds (following Lewis’s distinction) are
heard. In other words, a combination of different musical technologies
is used. Rather than simply moving the music into the domain of the
machine, much of Flying Lotus’s early work, as well as the majority of
Hieroglyphic Being’s output, give rise to a different negotiation
between live instruments (what would be understood as a past musical
practice) and the DJ (understood as one version of the new). In this
sense it is, on an aesthetic level, a continuation of Sun Ra’s own prac-
tices where his synthesizer and electronic keyboards are heard along-
side a traditional big band, even if that big band is expanded with less
traditional instruments. Hieroglyphic Being’s 2015 album, We Are Not
The First, sees him in company with live musicians, among them
Discography 209
Marshall Allen who played saxophone with Sun Ra from 1958 and
who currently leads the Arkestra. Allen’s participation on this album is
one way Sun Ra’s legacy is vibrant, but there are also other dimensions,
musically, aesthetically, and what I would call cosmologically.
Notes
1. “Sonic fantastic” might be seen as one possible dimension of what Richard
Iton calls “the Black fantastic” (Iton 2008), translated, so to speak, into
the sonic domain.
2. Lewis also references George Russell’s Jazz in the Space Age (1960) and
Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved By Nature (1968).
Discography
Eno, Brian. 1983. Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. EG.
Hancock, Herbie. 1970. Fat Albert Rotunda. Warner Bros.
———. 1971. Mwandishi. Warner Bros.
———. 1972. Crossings. Warner Bros.
———. 1973a. Sextant. Columbia.
———. 1973b. Head Hunters. Columbia.
———. 1974a. Dedication. CBS.
———. 1974b. Thrust. Columbia.
Hendrix, Jimi. 1967a. Are You Experienced? Reprise.
———. 1967b. Axis: Bold as Love. Reprise.
Hieroglyphic Being. 2015. We Are Not The First. Rvng Intl
Jonzun Crew. 1983. Lost in Space. Tommy Boy.
Knight, Kirk. 2015. Late Night Special. Pro Era Records.
Ras G. 2009. Brotha From Another Planet. Brainfeeder.
Russell, George. 1960. Jazz in the Space Age. Decca.
———. 1968. Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature. Flying Dutchman.
Sun Ra. 1978. Lanquidity. Philly Jazz.
———. 1980. Strange Celestial Road. Rounder Records.
Wonder, Stevie. 1972. Talking Book. Tamla (“Superstition”).
Bibliography
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7
Conclusion: New Suns/Sounds
In the epigram to the never-finished nor published Parable of the Trickster,

Octavia Butler wrote, “There’s nothing new/under the sun/but there are
new suns.”1 Having discussed the heliocentrism of Sun Ra as well as the
cosmological dimensions of Afrofuturism, the new suns are in a sense
comparable to new sounds. Thinking new sounds, however, leads to a
renegotiation with Amiri Baraka’s notion of “the changing same,” not
least due to an overall understanding of black music as rooted in a distant
past wherefrom it evolves and emerges in a constant process of change
and similarity. This would involve thinking about sounds as related to
Sun Ra’s understanding of “the Black Man in the Cosmos,” as he taught
at the University of California, Berkeley, in the sense that these sounds
are interrelated with blackness and the cosmic.
Throughout this book I have followed Mark Dery’s lead when he sug-
gests that “African-American voices have other stories to tell about cul-
ture, technology, and things to come” (Dery 1994, 182). But equally
important is that sounds not only take part in these stories, but indeed that
stories can be told through sounds. The sounds, then, can tell us something
about the Afrofuture, as George E. Lewis also implies in “After Afrofuturism,”
although his question, one that is much more interesting, concerns
what it is sounds can tell us about the Afrofuture. To answer this question

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7_7
214 7 Conclusion: New Suns/Sounds
is to imply that sounds tell stories, that the sonic is a part of the cultural
context from where both the past and the future are imagined and proph-
esized. But as is clear from the discourse on Afrofuturism, this cultural
context is at the same time deeply embedded in a material history where
the past and arguably the future impact on the stories that are possible to
tell. It is also, however, important to listen to the different frequency
bands found in these stories, whether it is sounds coming out of litera-
ture, or whether the sonic as such partakes in storytelling or, perhaps
better, world-building.
The different sounds heard between the lines of this book—I hope the
sounds I describe have accompanied the reading—relate to important
questions about black existence. How is music used to establish commu-
nity? What role does music have in the construction of tradition, in keep-
ing the memory of the past alive, and in imagining the future? Drawing
the different chapters together and summarizing my argument, the con-
clusion will also argue that the sounds indeed can tell other stories about
the future, but these sounds are diverse: digital and analogue, acoustic
and electric, from the past and (imagined) futures. As such the conclu-
sion will also raise further questions for black sound studies.
The historicity of black music makes the question of “the new” a tricky
one. As Don Moye said about the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s sounds,
they are not “new”: “We try to deal with forms that go back to the very
foundation of what our music is about, coming out of the African heri-
tage” (as quoted in Heble 2000, 68). By this Moye highlights the Art
Ensemble of Chicago’s motto of “Great Black Music: Ancient to the
Future,” while simultaneously pointing out a huge difference from the
aesthetic that has dominated the so-called avant-garde music and think-
ing in the European and American traditions of compositional music.
The very idea of the avant-garde has often been summed up in Ezra
Pound’s statement “Make it New,” a statement also used across the pro-
posed duality of avant-garde and modernism, as if all art in the twentieth
century had as its most important task “the new.” The notion of Afro-
modernity, and the counter-history of modernity found within black
studies, gives a theoretical grounding to Don Moye’s refusal of the term,
but does not in and of itself remove the idea of the new as a historical
entity and almost necessity.
7 Conclusion: New Suns/Sounds 215
Thinking the future and futurism of Afrofuturism, it is difficult not

to hear the echo of the European avant-garde movement of futurism,
a movement seemingly wanting the destruction of the old, wanting the
apocalypse, wanting to get beyond the world as it has been up until
now. But as Sun Ra reminded us, “it is after the end of the world,”
adding, “don’t you know that yet?” And with regard to the argument
about the world ending with the beginning of slavery, and thus that
modernity in a sense is another time, showing what to be “at the other
side of time” might be like, is crucial for an Afrofuturist discourse.
This thought, however, is still only audible in the margins. The history
that dominates our imagination assumes that the apocalypse may be
avoided. “No Apocalypse, Not Now,” to quote Jacques Derrida (1984),
in a similar way to how Alexander G. Weheliye insists on quoting Sun
Ra’s “it’s after the end of the world” in his Habeas Viscus: Radicalized
Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human (cf.,
Weheliye 2014b, 126). But what if the condition of modern life was
always different than the one presupposed? Not that the analysis of
modernity was wrong per se, but some of the premises may be. It is
necessary to pluralize “modernity” (and “modernism”). But really it
is decentring that is at stake, since the pluralization process still seems
to presuppose a hierarchy between a primary, and almost singular, ver-
sion, with a range of minority positions mentioned just for the sake of
our magnanimity and generousness. This position is wrong. A revision
is necessary.
In this the newness of the new sounds may be questioned. One impor-
tant dimension of “black sounds studies” is that it is not about making
everything new. Newness is overrated. History, however, is not. But the
historicity of black sounds is to be thought outside of the linear narrative
of a past moving through the present towards a future. This is one of the
things we have been taught by The Last Angel of History or by The Data
Thief—or, come to think of it, by the quote from George Orwell that
Dery uses as epigram. The future is, in one way or another, dependent
upon the present and the past, but—taking Nineteen Eighty-Four one
step further—the future is, in another sense, also interfering with us in
the here and now. This is one place where the notion of the imaginary
comes into being in a different light. It is not only that we imagine the
future, but rather that while imagining we also “fore-see” the future. It is
important to imagine that what we imagine when we imagine the future
is the actual future coming back to us. Not that we necessarily have to
believe this to be true, but so much happens when we can entertain this
fantasy, if only for a short time.
Perhaps it is not really about “new” sounds. Perhaps it is rather about
listening to sounds differently. If sound is a counter-history to modernity,
then paying attention to the sonic may have new effects even if the sounds
are “old.” And then perhaps even the dichotomy between the old and the
new is on the verge of becoming obsolete. When Baraka wrote about the
changing same he may have gestured towards this point, and whereas
change may be inevitable, there is, or at least this seems to be Baraka’s
argument, something that remains continuous even in this change.
Another reason “new” may not be what this discourse is about is related
to what I have been discussing as sonic time travelling. Here there is
something peculiar in the very experience of sound, both before and after
the invention of the gramophone. And that event is crucial in this con-
text, because with the introduction of the gramophone sounds became
both portable and repeatable as sound, or rather as the same sounds as
heard before. Sounds have, in a sense, always been portable and repeat-
able. Travelling musicians have probably been around longer than
recorded history, and a musician can always play the same song again.
However, there are other conditions than those initiated by the gramo-
phone, when “the same” sounds could be transported to another venue
and replayed at a later occasion. This, obviously, is an event in the
emphatic sense of the word when it comes to music, although it can at
the same time overshadow what had happened in millennia before, and
what is still happening today with music being repeated again and again
in different locations and with the minor differences that are still one of
the dimensions that fascinate listeners of music.
The changing same is also part of a historical archive. In Baraka’s argu-
ment one may detect an event with the emergence of the blues—as rag-
time plays a central role in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo—but these
musical forms or genres, are still versions or variations building upon a
long history—a longue durée. For Baraka it clearly goes back to West
Africa, and there are good reasons to believe he is right. But even if there
7 Conclusion: New Suns/Sounds 217
was no historical continuity that could be “proved,” this relation is still of

cultural importance. Constructing the past is, after all, what we do, and,
as Assmann points out, the way one remembers history is important for
history “as such.” History is, in one particular sense, what is remembered,
and thus also what is repeated. As such, the changing same is a historical
process, is the way history is kept “alive,” the way history becomes what it
is.
But whereas sound may be a continuous dimension of history, it still is
a counter-history, not only of modernity, but perhaps foremost within
modernity, as modernity is so important for the very notion of history.
But sound may, on another level, rather be a shadow, or a hidden under-
side of modernity—the other side of a dialectics of Enlightenment, the
place where the “ensoniment” is heard. In such a history, the event of the
gramophone is somewhat different, as it brings some kind of permanence
to the sonic. Whereas sounds have always been repeatable, one always
knew that it was “new” sounds, or at least not the same old ones. The
relation between the old and the new was still recognizable, and thus
there was a kind of continuity, but sound was, in an important sense,
fleeting or impermanent, disappearing as soon as it was heard.
A sonic Afrofuturism thus partakes not only in imagining the future
from the point of view of today. The thinking of a sonic time travel is
rather meant to indicate that the music constructs the future. In this, the
sonic imaginary or sonic fantastic become modes of listening as much as
of playing. It is as if the musicians I have discussed in this book resemble
time-travelling musicians bringing music from distant places, but also
from distant times. Such a statement is not difficult to follow with musi-
cians using historical source material. And this is the same in the case of
Sun Ra playing old jazz compositions, Shabazz Palaces using the mbira,
or Ras G sampling gospel. The past becomes audible in repetition. Using
the imagination to create past fantasy spaces is another way of inserting
musical material, arguably with anachronistic features, but where the
contextual dimensions become important. As for the future, however, it
is more counterintuitive to imagine musicians listening in on the future,
and communicating it to us as listeners in the present. Still, I would argue
this is how we should understand Sun Ra. While claiming he came from
Saturn, and thus from another place rather than time, his way of thinking
leads to the possibility of sounds from another place, and thus by impli-
cation also from a different time. This, I believe, is one reason for his
power within the Afrofuturist discourse, and why is inevitably seen as a
model for Afrofuturism.
Thus, as I have argued throughout this book, there are a number of
strategies for musicians to evoke another world. This other world is a
sonic, acoustic world, almost like a parallel to whatever has been domi-
nating a visually based culture. While sounds in principle are heard in the
here and now, they trigger the imagination, and through vibrations bring
the past and the future into the present. In this music does function like
a kind of technology that enhances the senses to hear the unheard.
Notes
1. Cf. Gerry Canavan, “‘There’s Nothing New/Under the Sun,/But There Are
New Suns’: Recovering Octavia E. Butler’s Lost Parables,” in Los Angeles
Review of Books June 9, 2014. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/theres-
nothing-new-sun-new-suns-recovering-octavia-e-butlers-lost-parables/.
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Index1
NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS Afro-technological, 12, 19, 64–66,

4 Hero, 28 179, 181, 182, 194
Akomfrah, John, 3, 37, 41
Ali, Rashied, 139
A Allen, Marshall, 60, 209
Abrams, Muhal Richard, 59 Anderson, Ian, 153
Adorno, Theodor W., 14, 55, 56 Anderson, Laurie, 101
Africa, 16, 43, 46, 50, 63, 78–80, Anderson, Reynaldo, 30, 135n3
84, 89, 95–100, 103, 104, Angels, 39–43, 104
116, 141, 162, 163, 171, 191, Apocalypse, 40, 190, 215
202, 203, 216 Apollo, 169, 188
Afrika Bambaataa, 179 Armstrong, Louis, 109–111
Afrocentric, 162, 163, 200 Art Ensemble of Chicago, The, 75–78,
Afrofuturism, 1–32, 37, 75, 109, 141, 142, 149, 162, 214
139, 175, 213 Artistic Heritage Ensemble, 96
Afro-horns, 62–64 Assmann, Jan, 81–83, 89, 92, 217
Afro-modernity, 6, 7, 14–16, 80, Association for the Advancement of
214 Creative Musicians (AACM),
Afrosonics, 10, 132 33n10, 76, 77, 96, 141–143,
157
Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refers to notes.
1

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66041-7
236 Index
Atkins, Juan, 102 C

Atlantis, 78, 97, 201 Changing same, The, 11, 13, 31, 37,
Attali, Jacques, 68, 119, 135n4, 205 122, 213, 216, 217
Avant-garde, 6, 7, 24, 28, 29, 31, Chicago, 22, 115, 142, 157, 185,
33n10, 43–46, 48, 54, 58, 67, 208
69, 75, 76, 78, 90, 114, 128, Chimurenga Renaissance, 96
144, 191, 214, 215 Chion, Michel, 17, 151
Christian Rich, 2
Christian, Charlie, 65, 180, 182
B Chude-Sokei, Louis, 16–20, 33n6,
Badu, Erykah, 30, 34n18, 51, 141 38
Baraka, Amiri, 11, 31, 39, 43, 44, Clinton, George, 22, 24, 26, 29, 90,
46, 48–62, 69, 122, 213, 216 175, 177–179
Bartz, Gary, 162 Cohran, Phil, 96
Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 26, 177, 179 Coleman, Ornette, 8, 30, 31, 128
Bearden, Romare, 62 Collins, Bootsy, 197
Benjamin, Walter, 39–41, 88, 120, Coltrane, Alice, 24, 30, 51, 121,
136n6 131–135, 136n10, 145, 149,
Bernal, Martin, 80–85, 89, 134 207, 208
Black Quantum Futurism, 1, 136n5 Coltrane, John, 51, 60, 62, 128,
Black secret technology, 37, 39, 42, 131–133, 139
49, 122 Coltrane, Ravi, 132, 134, 136n10
Black sound studies, 1, 109, 169, Corbett, John, 3, 22–24, 26, 33n4,
194, 214, 215 178
Black Speculative Arts Movement, 1 Cosmos, 88, 119, 124–127, 129,
Blues, 37, 43, 46, 49–53, 57, 60, 61, 132, 139, 142, 164, 175
122, 180, 182, 216 Counter-histories, 2, 4, 7, 8, 13–15,
Borden, Lizzie, 26, 177 58, 66, 77, 81, 82, 84, 86, 87,
Borges, Jorge Luis, 97 95, 97, 98, 111, 117, 125,
Bowie, Lester, 76 181, 214, 216, 217
Braxton, Anthony, 25, 26, 29, Counter-memories, 82, 97, 117, 135
34n17, 123, 143, 144, 149, Cowell, Stanley, 162
155 Crouch, Andraé, 168
Brecker, Michael, 60 Cummings, Robert, 127
Brown, James, 58, 61
Buddhism, 200
Burroughs, William S., 71n9 D
Butler, Octavia E., 24, 141–143, 145, Danielsen, Anne, 197
157, 159, 160, 213, 218n1 David, Marlo, 29
Index
237
Davis, Miles, 27, 58, 59, 101, 179 Eshun, Kodwo, 3, 5–7, 22–31,
Delany, Samuel R., 12, 23, 24, 33n4, 33n4, 38, 41, 42, 47–50, 68,
64, 66, 181, 182 70, 75, 79, 81, 82, 86–92, 96,
Deleuze, Gilles, 44, 123 98, 100, 101, 103, 114, 116,
Deren, Maya, 114 117, 120–124, 129, 130, 133,
Derrida, Jacques, 14, 33n9, 215 144, 166–172, 182, 186–189,
Dery, Mark, 1, 3–6, 22–24, 26, 31, 191, 192, 194, 195, 201–204
32, 33n4, 33n11, 38, 40, 45,
50, 52, 53, 65, 80, 81, 83, 98,
99, 111, 119, 135n4, 140, F
142, 176–179, 182, 184, 187, Fisher, Mark, 33n9
188, 191–193, 213, 215 Flying Lotus, 29, 113, 121,
Digable Planets, 97 130–135, 136n8, 161,
Disco, 29, 31, 47, 48, 51, 101, 168, 165–167, 207, 208
170, 197 Frequencies, 103, 112, 118, 214
DJ Spooky, 121, 122, 167 Freud, Sigmund, 14, 99
Dogon, 164 Futurism, 4, 6, 7, 19, 48, 81, 170,
Drexciya, 78, 97–104 178, 215
Dub, 13, 23, 161
DuBois, W.E.B., 6, 7, 14
Dumas, Henry, 12, 21, 61–66 G
Gaskins, Nettrice, 100, 131
Ghost, 13, 14, 23, 120
E Gibson, William, 34n12, 101, 188
Earth Wind & Fire, 29, 30, 78, 80, Gillespie, Dizzy, 171
90–97, 203 Gilmore, John, 172n1, 197
Echoes, 6, 13, 14, 16, 17, 23, 32, 39, Gilroy, Paul, 7, 14–16, 33n8, 33n9,
41, 52, 56, 67, 69, 70, 92, 80–85, 91–99, 104, 117,
100, 134, 135, 162, 164–166, 180–182
169, 181, 183, 185, 188, 215 Gospel, 47–51, 53, 88, 167, 168,
Echoplex, 59 170–172, 217
Egypt, 6, 67, 75, 78, 80–94, 113, Grandmaster Flash, 65, 179, 182
116, 125, 130, 140, 144, 164,
167, 171, 172n3, 186, 203
Ellington (Duke), 25, 26, 62, 65, H
123, 172n2 Hambone, 65
Elliot, Missy, 29, 30 Hancock, Herbie, 26, 27, 29, 34n17,
Ellison, Ralph, 13, 14, 109–112 65, 97, 101, 177–179, 182,
Eno, Brian, 169, 188–191, 195 192–194, 199–203
238 Index
Harries, Karsten, 124 King, Jason, 29, 30, 47, 48, 90

Harris, Eddie, 57–61, 80, 95 Kirk, Rahsaan Roland, 59, 153
Hauntology, 14, 33n9 Kittler, Friedrich, 181
Hayles, N. Katherine, 204 Knight, Kirk, 207
Heble, Ajay, 77, 78, 149, 214 Kraftwerk, 48, 100–102
Heliocentrism, 123, 213 Kramer, Lawrence, 126, 145
Henderson, Joe, 69, 132
Hendrix, Jimi, 26, 27, 65, 76, 93,
177–187 L
Henriques, Julian, 10, 11, 13, 112 Labelle, 29, 30
Hieroglyphic Being, 2, 208 Last Angel of History, The (film), 3, 5,
Holst, Gustav, 169, 187–190 7, 22, 26, 37, 39, 41, 49, 50,
Horkheimer, Max, 14 52, 66, 70, 81, 90, 120–122,
Hurston, Zora Neal, 61 146, 188, 215
Lawrence, Jacob, 62
Lessing, Doris, 65, 187
I Lewis, George E., 9, 12, 17–19, 27,
Irvine, Weldon, 92 28, 32, 33n10, 37, 38, 57–60,
Iton, Richard, 209n1 65, 77, 79, 95, 96, 102, 112,
117, 118, 123, 126, 129, 142,
143, 160, 178, 179, 182–185,
J 187, 193, 198, 205, 206, 208,
Jacson, James, 117, 118 213
James, George G. M., 80, 81, 84, 86, Lewis, Ramsey, 95
87, 89, 90, 171, 186, 203 Lock, Graham, 25, 26, 62, 80, 82,
Jenkins, Leroy, 162 83, 87, 88, 123, 144, 171,
Jes Grew, 11, 37, 39, 49 172n2, 172n3
Johnson, Robert, 37, 42, 49 Lower frequencies, 13, 111, 112
Jones Girls, 93
Jones, Grace, 30
Jonzun Crew, 204–206 M
Joyful Noise, A (film), 85, 88, 186 Marley, Bob, 76
Mayfield, Curtis, 178
Mbira, 95, 96, 166, 217
K McLeod, Marilyn, 131
Kalimba, 79, 94–96 McLuhan, Marshall, 180
Keyboards, 59–61, 93, 125, 126, Metamorphosis, 148, 157, 159, 160
128, 177, 178, 190, 191, Middle Passage, 6, 78, 80, 81, 98–100,
193–203 104, 120, 140, 141, 186
Index
239
Miller, Paul D., 119–122, 130 Posthuman, 47, 48, 86, 88, 100,
Mills, Jeff, 29, 188 114, 168, 170, 186, 187, 204
Mitchell, Nicole, 30, 141–143, Priester, Julian, 34n17
145–161, 179 Public Enemy, 40, 190
Monáe, Janelle, 2, 29, 30, 33n3, Puthli, Asha, 30, 31
34n18, 114, 205, 206
Monk, Thelonious, 62
Moog, 193–198, 201 R
Moor Mother, 57 Raff, Rebekah, 134
Morrison, Toni, 33n8, 62, 98 Rammellzee, 179
Moten, Fred, 38, 102, 111, 186 Ras G, 141, 142, 161–172, 206,
Moye, Don, 78, 214 207, 217
Mtume, James, 162 Rastafari, 22, 23
Mugge, Robert, 85, 88, 186 Reed, Ishmael, 7, 11, 37, 83, 88,
Myth, 41, 43, 64, 84, 87, 88, 99, 111, 216
100, 104, 113–115, 117, 126, Reverberations, 12–14, 23, 183
130 Riperton, Minnie, 95, 96, 198
Roberts, Matana, 57
Rocksichord, 194, 198, 199
N Rose, Tricia, 24, 33n4, 38, 39
Nagaoka, Shuzei, 90, 91 Ross, Diana, 131
Ndosi, Mankwe, 160 Russell, George, 209n2
Nelson, Alondra, 5–7, 11, 24, 33n5,
34n16, 83, 100, 111, 136n7
Nelson, Oliver, 52 S
Nyong’o, Tavia, 10–13, 15 Sanders, Pharoah, 131, 132, 134
Saturn, 87, 142, 194, 201, 203, 217
Sayles, John, 26, 177
P Science fiction, 1, 3, 8, 28, 31, 38,
Pamela Z, 58, 95, 187 62, 83, 84, 86, 99, 113–115,
Parker, Jeff, 158 141, 147, 175, 179, 182, 185,
Parlet, 91 186, 205
Parliament-Funkadelic, 26, 101, Scott, Ridley, 101, 188
177–179 Shabazz Palaces, 78, 80, 96, 97, 167
Patrick, Pat, 127 Sinker, Mark, 3, 23, 33n4, 40
Perry, Lee ’Scratch, 22–24, 26, 29, Sly and the Family Stone, 58
177–179 Small, Christopher, 53
Pharaohs, the, 87, 88, 168 Smith, Cauleen, 38, 185
Phonographs, 15, 63, 68, 110 Smith, Vincent, 62
240 Index
Snead, James, 44 Technoculture, 4, 6, 38, 84, 170, 176

Sonic fiction, 3, 5, 6, 9, 25, 27, 31, Technology, 4–6, 12, 15, 18, 19, 22,
67, 68, 79, 116, 120, 124, 23, 26, 27, 31, 32, 37–71, 84,
125, 133, 144, 149, 159, 161, 101, 102, 109, 120–122, 132,
176, 182, 183, 191, 205 160, 175, 176, 179, 181, 182,
Sonic technologies, 38, 60, 110, 112, 184, 185, 187, 193–195, 198,
180, 193, 198 204–206, 213, 218
Space-age, 91, 161, 175, 176, 196 Thundercat, 207
Space is the Place (film), 21, 22, 40, Toffler, Alvin, 178
41, 86, 87, 98, 113, 115, 116, Toomer, Jean, 62
131, 135n2, 139, 140, 164,
185, 190, 195, 199, 202, 204,
207, 208 U
Spaceships, 2, 98, 115, 175, 196, Underground Resistance, 102–104
199–202 Undisputed Truth, 29, 91
Speculative fiction, 1, 3, 5, 7, 142, Univibe, 180, 181
176, 184
Spillers, Hortense, 99, 102
Stanley, Thomas, 161, 167 V
Stepney, Charles, 59, 95, 96 Vangelis, 169, 188–191
Sterne, Jonathan, 14, 181 Varitone, 57, 59, 60, 80, 95
Stravinsky, Igor, 128, 133 Vernacular, 6, 45, 46
Summer, Donna, 48 Vibrations, 41, 109–136, 141, 165,
Sun Ra, 21, 34n17, 41, 55, 75, 172n5, 192, 195, 218
86–89, 112–131, 139, 177, Vocoder, 204, 205
193, 213 Voice, 4, 5, 12, 17, 26, 29, 31, 41, 53,
Sylvester, 29, 30, 34n17 54, 63, 111, 117, 129, 134, 139,
Synthesizers, 59, 60, 65, 93, 101, 140, 150–160, 164–167, 169,
128, 165, 166, 178, 182, 170, 177–179, 204–207, 213
190–204, 206–208
Szwed, John, 41, 62, 88, 117–119,
125, 128, 130, 194, 196 W
Wagner, Richard, 190
Wansel, Dexter, 93, 94
T Warwick, Dionne, 55
Tate, Greg, 3, 23, 24, 33n4, 45, 83, Washington, Kamasi, 131, 132
111, 135n5, 181, 182 Washington, Salim, 12, 19, 64–66,
Taylor, Timothy D., 176 179, 181, 182, 194
Index
241
Weheliye, Alexander G., 6, 10, X

13–16, 20, 23, 33n7, 46, 110, Xenakis, Iannis, 201–203
135n1, 166, 181, 204, 215
White, Maurice, 95, 96
Wiener, Norbert, 7 Y
Williams, Ben, 100–104 Yaszek, Lisa, 109
Womack, Ytasha L., 1, 33n5, 38, Youngquist, Paul, 21, 76, 77, 115,
141, 154, 164, 185 116, 133, 134, 142, 161, 162
Wonder, Stevie, 65, 182, 194, 198
Worrell, Bernie, 26, 101, 177–179,
192, 193 Z
Wu-Tang Clan, 51, 134 Zuberi, Nabeel, 29, 48, 90, 113

Palgrave Studies in Sound

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palgrave studies in sound

Culture, Technology, and Things to Come

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Sound

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954888

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: 20fifteen/gettyimages

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Closer to home I want to thank colleagues and students at the

1 Introduction: Afrofuturism and Black Sound Studies 1

2 Blackness, Technology, and the Changing Same 37

4 Vibrations, Rhythm, and Cosmology109

5 Interstellar Space, Outer Space and Inner Space139

6 The Sounds of the Future175

7 Conclusion: New Suns/Sounds213

© The Author(s) 2018 1

probably add that the phenomena described by the term Afrofuturism

Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses

t­echnoculture – and, more generally, African-American signification that

The definition highlights a number of central dimensions, foremost of

Afrofuturism can be broadly defined as ‘African American voices’ with

Quoting from the AfroFuturism online community that she founded

and seriousness,” that it is “difficult to conceive of Afrofuturism without

 lack Sound Studies and the Question

that “Afrofuturist sound”—or what could be termed “Afrosonics”—

reason is a question of literacy in the historical period of slavery, and

being differently coloured, a musical score is a guide to realization

beration in relation to transformation—across time and space—is

Black studies, in its diasporic variegation and antagonism, provides the

The reference to Ellison is a frequent one, but there is still potential in

This, he argues, is where Freud’s theory of the uncanny and DuBois’s

In Nyong’o’s discussion of Weheliye, he too employs the term “Afro-­

Again there is a possibility for a sonic counter-history, as Weheliye

Such an argument about the sonic as the principal modality of

discussions of black sound (as well as Afrofuturism) can come into

but would rather be a practice where a situation or a meeting is analysed

But perhaps nothing has been as influential to the use of technopoetics as

the notion of “Afro-” hides a particular African-American bias. The

An Afrofuturist Canon

Afrofuturism, and one of the things to c­ hallenge is the understanding of a

least those which engage more with spirituality (even spirituality as a

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s work in dub reggae is particularly interesting in its

same music they are discussing. These different choices in terminology

my own discourse, as there is a real question about whether it is primarily

important to figure out what is meant by avant-garde in this particular

As Jason King remarked at an Experience Music Project conference in

Preferring “music without vocals” seems to be a bygone phenomenon,

3. The panel can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/

12. This is a reference to William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

In the opening of John Akomfrah’s movie, The Last Angel of History

© The Author(s) 2018 37

sound, and technology” (Lewis 2008a, 142). My focus is on sound, but

The Last Angel

from within the European tradition of philosophy of history. Written in

An understanding of being after the end of the world is crucial for

transmission) across time and space. In Eshun’s United States of Africa,

Thus, while it may be stretching Sun Ra’s statement a bit, in at least

The Changing Same

paradoxical dimension to it that it is a “changing same,” in other words,

No, because you can be backward-looking and forward-thinking at the

I find it interesting that Tate says “backward-looking” and “forward-­

is to focus upon the vernacular. What could vernacular be said to be in a

1 Introduction: Afrofuturism and Black Sound Studies 1

2 Blackness, Technology, and the Changing Same 37

4 Vibrations, Rhythm, and Cosmology109

5 Interstellar Space, Outer Space and Inner Space139

6 The Sounds of the Future175

7 Conclusion: New Suns/Sounds213

technoculture – and, more generally, African-American signification that

lack Sound Studies and the Question

In Nyong’o’s discussion of Weheliye, he too employs the term “Afro-

An Afrofuturist Canon

Afrofuturism, and one of the things to c hallenge is the understanding of a

The Last Angel

The Changing Same

I find it interesting that Tate says “backward-looking” and “forward-

Electrifying (Eddie Harris)

Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (Henry Dumas)

Sonic Time Traveling

Earth Wind & Fire

a ttention to the sounds opens up another kind of world; listening brings