The Afrofuturist Evolution

The spaces revealed through time manipulation in Black cultures lend themselves to storytelling, a time-hopping process that integrates memory and community. Drawing on disparate philosophies and science behind electronic beat-making, lyricism, dance, memory, myth, and cosmology in the African and African Disaporic traditions, this book seeks to demonstrate relationships between rhythm, space, and being as an articulation of futures and alternate realities made present. Infused with author and Afrofuturist educator Ytasha Womacks own practice and contemplations, this book, rich in anecdotes, will interrogate Afrofuturism as an experience that unfolds through combinations of being a maker and theorist. Readers will take a creative journey that allows them to bring Afrofuturist practices into their own lives. The goal is to expand imagination, rootedness and possibility. From Senegalese poet, political theorist, and politician Leopold Sedar Senghors ideas on the plastic arts and Negritude to writer Malidoma Patrese Somes articulation of water symbolism in Burkina Faso; from tap dance exercises to composer, DJ and recording artist King Britts Blacktronica, The Afrofuturist Evolution aims to demonstrate Afrofuturism as embodied theory in practice. Finally, this bookin simple, straightforward, but powerful waysinvites readers to bring these practices into their own lives.