*(Via Color Lines) – Where do alternative minded black folks go in a city that prides itself on being different? For roughly the past seven years, it’s been Brooklyn’s Afro-Punk festival.
The free, two-day affair made its triumphant return over the weekend after a freak hurricane made landfall in New York City last year. Black skaters, artists, hip-hop heads, and self-described nerds joined some of the industry’s most celebrated alternative black singers like Erykah Badu and Janelle Monaé at what’s become one of the city’s premiere summer music showcases. And all of it leads to the question: Has being black and different sorta become the norm?
Of course, it depends on who you ask — and where you ask the question. But the absence of an affirming environment for black kids who grew up reading comic books, wearing Converse, and standing out at punk rock shows is what led to Afropunk’s development in the first place. In 2003, music industry veteran Matthew Morgan teamed up with writer and director James Spooner to produce the film Afro-Punk, a documentary that followed a handful of black folks in the punk scene. The point of the film wasn’t just to show their trials and tribulations, but to showcase their presence as legit participants in, if not originators of, punk, hardcore, and metal scenes across the diaspora.
The film became something of a cult classic. “Alternative urban kids across the nation (and across the globe) who felt like outsiders discovered they were actually the core of a boldly innovative, fast-growing community,” according to Afro-Punk’s website. In 2005, that explosion of energy led to the first Afro-Punk music festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Read/learn more at Color Lines.
I wish I could’ve attended this. Funk music also incorporated alot of rock (or electrified blues, I’d say) into the music from the 70s. Reminds me alot of what Parliament/Funkadelic was doing back then. I tend to think that Funk music has been unfairly compartmentalized as just a music with a heavy bass, guitar, keyboards, drums and maybe some horns. The whole James Brown way of thinking of Funk. But it was actually more progressive than folks gave it credit for. Ricky Vincent wrote a book about it. The only thing I found disappointing is that he did not mentioned the contribution of women such as Labelle, Betty Davis and Parlet. Anyway, this festival is grandbaby of Funk.
I never heard of this festival but do love electric guitars. If you haven’t seen “Thunder Soul” yet…please do. They incorporated funk/jazz from the 70s. I’ve fallen in love with this documentary tribute to Conrad O. Johnson (Kashmere Stage Band – Houston) and watched it countless times. I feel like I want to pick up my electric bass now!!!!
Melody, the irony is that alot of those 70s musicians were heavily into jazz like the Ohio Players, The JBs, the Meters, etc. I never heard of the documentary you mentioned and will check it out. It sounds interesting.