In this class we will explore the poems and music of Sun Ra, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dorothy Ashby, George Russell, Julius Eastman, Ornette Coleman, Gene Toomer, MF Doom, Madlib, Gil Scott Heron, Andrew Hill, Eluard Glissant, Kamau Braithwaite, Alice Coltrane etcetera. We will listen to a lot of music in the classroom in addition to looking at texts and liner notes, and we will map the gentrification and eviction of black artists from the avant garde. We will explore how the use of mythos serves as a shock absorber for this eviction and how the landless back avant-garde has gone on to occupy and dominate the cosmos, inventing and reifying an afro-futurist sensibility and a kinetic indifference to the places from where they have been excluded. We will try to re-map a solidarity between the two vanguards, one not based on otherness but aware of the stalemate in place. We will learn how to live sustainably in the afro-future and we will ask ourselves if any room remains for black artists alongside their western counterparts or if both have come rely upon the stagnant echo between them, and more importantly, why would anyone want to leave the Cosmos/home. Is the black avant garde at home in space.
- Dates
- February 2, 2010 at 7:00pm
February 4, 2010 at 7:00pm
February 7, 2010 at 7:00pm
February 9, 2010 at 7:00pm - Location
- 951 Chung King Road, The Public School
- Facilitator
- Nonstophome
- Limit
- Infinity
- Fee
- $20 ($5/meeting for 4 meetings)
Comment
Hey, man . . . don't forget Albert Ayler . . . sounds like a cool class !
28 Nov 2009 3:05PM
This sounds absolutely amazing!!!
1 Dec 2009 7:03PM
Can't wait for this! there is a little slice of wisdom by alice coltrane at the end of this video that i find myself ruminating on all the time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgqimZjJZ3U
16 Dec 2009 7:39PM
I am posting this reminder that this class begins tomorrow night at 7pm. It is a sort of short and fast seminar that meets 4 times in the next week, always at 7pm!
1 Feb 2010 5:07PM
Hey team,
Here's a link to that website I mentioned last class - http://wayneandwax.com/
Wayne Marshall's a musicologist focusing mostly on global permutations/transmissions of blacktronica, hip hop and dancehall, and I think his work is a great introduction to a discussion of afro-futuristic music production as an ongoing, current practice. Wayne's work is a great illustration of that tension we discussed in the post-Last Angel of History moment: Afrofuturism basically "wins" as a practice - sonically, culturally - and yet the black future turns out to not be what was imagined.
the discussion Wayne has been leading on bass v. treble is pretty crucial, I think. Bass is to fantasies of space as treble is fantasies of cyberspace, and I would argue that post-1990s trajectory of Afrofuturism (away from bass) mirrors a shift that we have seen across the board in all New World futurisms - from megascale fictions to microscale fictions.
A good jumping off point into Wayne's discussion of treble culture is here - http://wayneandwax.com/?p=2365 - At the risk of being slightly provocative, I think it's important to note that the phrase "avant garde" does not appear very much in Wayne's writings. I guess one of things I'd be curious to discuss is what we see as the upside of remmapping links between Afrofuturism and the western avant garde. Obviously there is real history that needs to be
Unrelated, but in closing:
1 - DJ Willam Morris - "Black men break beats and win the battle, and the thing that they thought was insufferably corny comes about in spite of victory, and when it comes it turns out to not suck ass as completely as they feared, and white kids get to party for what black men meant at ciphers anchored by archeologically black beats and a lone black body."
2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZwQ2VqK_1A&feature=response_watch
3 - http://www.snotr.com/video/93
gary
4 Feb 2010 10:48AM
Hey team,
Here's a link to that website I mentioned last class - http://wayneandwax.com/
Wayne Marshall's a musicologist focusing mostly on global permutations/transmissions of blacktronica, hip hop and dancehall, and I think his work is a great introduction to a discussion of afro-futuristic music production as an ongoing, current practice. Wayne's work is a great illustration of that tension we discussed in the post-Last Angel of History moment: Afrofuturism basically "wins" as a practice - sonically, culturally - and yet the black future turns out to not be what was imagined.
the discussion Wayne has been leading on bass v. treble is pretty crucial, I think. Bass is to fantasies of space as treble is fantasies of cyberspace, and I would argue that post-1990s trajectory of Afrofuturism (away from bass) mirrors a shift that we have seen across the board in all New World futurisms - from megascale fictions to microscale fictions.
A good jumping off point into Wayne's discussion of treble culture is here - http://wayneandwax.com/?p=2365
Unrelated, but in closing:
1 - DJ Willam Morris - "Black men break beats and win the battle, and the thing that they thought was insufferably corny comes about in spite of victory, and when it comes it turns out to not suck ass as completely as they feared, and white kids get to party for what black men meant at ciphers anchored by archeologically black beats and a lone black body."
2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZwQ2VqK_1A&feature=response_watch
3 - http://www.snotr.com/video/93
gary
4 Feb 2010 10:49AM
From the kitchen sink:
Fifty years after Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in the “colored” ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital, her daughter finally got a chance to see the legacy she had unknowingly left to science. A researcher in a lab at Hopkins swung open a freezer door and showed the daughter, Deborah Lacks-Pullum, thousands of vials, each holding millions of cells descended from a bit of tissue that doctors had snipped from her mother’s cervix.
Ms. Lacks-Pullum gasped. “Oh God,” she said. “I can’t believe all that’s my mother.”
When the researcher handed her one of the frozen vials, Ms. Lacks-Pullum instinctively said, “She’s cold,” and blew on the tube to warm it. “You’re famous,” she whispered to the cells.
Minutes later, peering through a microscope, she pronounced them beautiful. But when she asked the researcher which were her mother’s normal cells and which the cancer cells, his answer revealed that her precious relic was not quite what it seemed. The cells, he replied, were “all just cancer.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02seco.html?ref=books
5 Feb 2010 8:30AM
Hey all, I am seeing who is coming to tomorrow's final meeting... if nobody posts here by noon, then I think we should call it off. In either case, I wonder if it would be a good idea to post some YouTube videos and poems to the "notes" section (http://la.thepublicschool.org/node/add/tps-blog/class/1871) since our conversations about the film and the avant-garde have taken up most of our conversation so far?
8 Feb 2010 11:33PM
I'm in for tonight if you have a session, but don't keep the light on just for me!
9 Feb 2010 10:55AM
We're on! We also will have a guest from the Elsewhere Collaborative in North Carolina. Anyone else who signed up but hasn't been able to come so far is more than welcome
9 Feb 2010 11:26AM
Hi class,
Not wanting everyone to trudge through the weather & traffic this evening, in lieu of class we would like to suggest the inauguration of an online forum for thinking through the issues and works that have comprised the constellation of materials for our seminar. If anyone has suggestions per the format, etc., please do share. Otherwise, thank you for coming out and discussing.
We may hold a series of events in the near future related to the class; stay tuned as things unfold.
In the meantime, please take a few minutes and enjoy this short Sun Ra documentary: http://vimeo.com/3164191
9 Feb 2010 5:36PM