A Sonic Imagination

Tracing Afrofuturism through sound offers essential ways to recover the legacy of black speculative practice. My work as curator for the 2021 Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities allows me the opportunity to highlight the role of sound in our collective understanding of Afrofuturism.

An analysis of Afrofuturism rooted in sound provides the potential to see layers of connection through time, space, and instruments that highlight the complexity and accessibility of Afrofuturism. Sound theorist Dr. Erik Steinskog asks us to consider "multimedial transmission" at the heart of sound's role in Afrofuturism. His words call our attention of how sound is a technology accessible to black people that provides them a tool to provide information and serves as a communal archive that transmits stories about black existence to future generations.

Sound allows black people to disseminate knowledge of the past, critique the present, and imagine the future without constraint. From the black church and the spiritual life it fostered to contemporary Hip Hop, sound offers black people a space to examine traumas, fears, and hopes that shape their world.

Check out my sound section to learn more!!