George Clinton and the Mothership – Envisioning Black Futures

Futuristic visions are mostly characterized by Western ideas of future. They are occupied with new inventions, technical innovations and journeys to distant planets. The improvement of oppressed people’s living conditions is not seldom disregarded. Afrofuturism is changing this by imagining a society in which Black people can enjoy equality. Black artists are developing utopian worlds in music, literature and film. In a sense, Black people are experiencing a science fiction horror vision as another civilization, white Europeans, abducted their African ancestors from their home countries and enslaved them on the American continent. Similarly, Black artists speak of their role as aliens in Western society and refer to the racism and discrimination faced by Black Americans. Now they regain the control of their history back and reveal new perspectives on and new narratives about a newly created world where Black people, their culture, tradition and future are respected and valued.  

 

George Clinton, the innovator of funk music and pioneer of Afrofuturism, founded Parliament-Funkadelic and has been enriching the world with his psychedelic music, the music that is beyond its time and radiates a different kind of energy and aesthetic of Blackness. Clinton and P-Funk allowed themselves total aesthetic freedom in their work, style and stage props. Interstellar travels play a major role in the P-Funk mythology. When promoting their album Mothership Connection, Clinton’s group Parliament lets an art piece that depicts the Mothership land on stage during concerts. Before its landing, the band generates excitement and enthusiasm by repeatedly singing “I think I see the Mothership coming. I think I hear the Mothership coming”. Suddenly, a large UFO-like spaceship is let down on the stage. The “spacey” atmosphere is assisted by fire sparks and smoke coming out from the Mothership, sci-fi sound effects and bright and blinking lights. What sounds like trumpets welcomes the artistic flying object. After the landing, Clinton steps out of the Mothership as his alter ego Dr. Funkenstein, wearing an outlandish costume. With their music and performances, Clinton and P-Funk made unbelievable events happen, for instance the fact that Black people can be in outer space – a place or situation nobody had ever deemed possible, but Clinton and other Black artists endeavored to realize Black people in spaces no one ever imagined.

 

Attending Parliament’s concerts meant diving into another world or, more precisely, into a world of the mythology invented by Clinton’s music collective. Its fictitious characters even had appearances at the shows and addressed the crowd. The groovy and science-fiction-themed songs, group members dressed up as the extraterrestrial characters, spectacular theatrical properties and audience involvement provided for a unique experience that brought the fantastic and utopian P-Funk world to life and closely connected it with the reality. The music is otherworldly and futuristic but also empowering. It seeks to foster unity and to overcome racial and ethnic discrimination. Afrofuturism is a vision of a better world without oppression and racism as well as a vision of a future in which Black people are present and thriving.