¾ Afrofuturism
, on Dust (YouTube)The series consists of five episodes, narrated by Little Simz. She begins episode 1 by saying that the term Afrofuturism was first coined in an article called "Black to the Future" by Mark Dery in 1994 (though Wikipedia says it was 1993; the year 1994 is likely a reference to the publication date of a book in which the essay was included). The first episode is about musical artist Sun Ra (aka Herman "Sonny" Blount). The episode... well, it takes a kind of sci-fi perspective on Sun Ra's life and career, based on the artist's own claims about himself and his mission, given to him by aliens who transported him to Jupiter, before returning him to Earth. (Wikipedia says Saturn.) I won't get into too much detail, though; I'll let you watch the video for yourself. (It's less than three minutes long, and the other episodes are closer to two minutes.) The video also mentions Sun Ra's film Space Is the Place, which I'd certainly like to watch sometime. And... I dunno what else to say, except I'd probably also like to listen to some of his music.
In episode 2, Lt. Uhura from Star Trek is discussed as one of too few Black characters in science fiction, and how she was an example of positive representation. Episode 3 is about George Clinton. I don't know much about his music, but I suppose I'd like to listen to more of it sometime. Episode 4 is about Jimi Hendrix, whose music I'm a little bit more familiar with. But it specifically talks about a night in 1966 when he apparently dethroned Eric Clapton as the god of the guitar. (I have no idea if that's true; really he just jammed with Cream, but Clapton was certainly quite impressed with Hendrix's skill.) Episode 5 is about Missy Elliott, and how a lot of her music videos have sci-fi elements. That's not something I ever really thought about, and I guess I'm familiar with rather little of her music. So I should probably try to check out more of her work sometime.
Anyway, I find it a bit odd how much of this series is specifically about music, rather than other aspects of Afrofuturism, like books and movies and stuff like that. So, I wish there were more episodes, but I also wish the episodes themselves were longer. There's barely enough here to even begin to whet the appetite for the cultural phenomenon of Afrofuturism. It does make me want to learn more about it, but then again, I already had an interest in anything sci-fi-centric, in any medium, and certainly wanted to partake of a greater diversity of artists within that general field. So, whatever, I liked the series, but it definitely had greater potential than it lived up to. It's still cool, though, particularly the animation (even if it isn't very animated) and the narration.