Afrofuturism: Aliens from Saturn end racism

 

The term “Afrofuturism” was coined by the American author Mark Dery in 1993 and is supposed to describe a cultural aesthetic. This meaning is closely related to special clothing but the whole concept is also transported through literature, filmmaking and music. Alienating people with African roots by Sci-Fi elements invites to thoughts and discussions about how close they really are to Western society and blend in without letting aside the cultural differences and their heritage. Personally, I have never heard of Afrofuturism before and it still seems like a niche for black artists. The only encounters I had with something relatable to Afrofuturism were due to gaming. The Final Fantasy series, a Japanese gaming franchise, features a black cyborg called Barrett that leads you through a dystopian world. The Mortal Kombat series has an African American soldier in a very prominent role, too. Again, the character called Jax is a cyborg with bionic arms.

The need for Afrofuturism developed long before these games were made. During the 20^th century, there was an American mainstream of white artists being present in everyday life. The moon landing in 1969 also set a turning point for interest in Sci-Fi, so the niche of Afrofuturism seems even summoned by the circumstances rather than just being created by marginalized African Americans to talk about representation of black people in the art industry.

One of the retrospectively called pioneers of Afrofuturism is Sun Ra, a jazz musician and leader of the band “The Arkestra”. He lived  He was the first to experiment with modern electronic instruments in jazz music, but especially his appearance in his later career set him apart from other musicians. He often presented ancient Egyptian clothing in combination with his modern music. The Arkestra was dressed up in also supported the merge of African culture and space imagery with Sun Ra as the main attraction due to outrageous large cloaks and headpieces. The probably most remarkable thing about Sun Ra’s presentation about himself is that he claims aliens from Saturn taught him knowledge about the future. According to him, aliens teleported him to Saturn and brought him back after telling him to stop attending college and start playing music to the world that sinks in chaos. He clearly saw himself as a philosophical figure and was not only entertaining the crowds. His dedication to music indeed was inspiring: He had a 60-year-long career before leaving the stages forever, but besides that he spread his ideas of people being played off against each other. That the chaos is neither black nor white people’s fault; instead an extrinsic force creates this chaos and profits from it. I think that this idea of a common enemy can be beneficial to settle racial conflicts, even though the religious presentation as some kind of priest on stage seems too drastic. Maybe drastic presentation was perfectly right at that time to get the publicity this topic needed.