My band, The Scene: that's me on the right. |
So I’m struggling with this tag AFROPUNK. Is it a style? A movement? Is it claiming to be something new?
Yesterday morning, my go-to NPR station announced that it is “supported
by the Afropunk Music Festival. For details, go to Afropunk.com.” So I did. And
the festival, which runs this weekend in Brooklyn, NY – a doable drive from my
house – looks like my kind of music-centric party. Big, loud, and
super-multicultural. I’m even tempted to take my young, dainty daughters to
witness the spectacle of all those amped up concertgoers letting their freak
flags fly.
But one of my girls would undoubtedly ask, “What’s Afropunk?” And
I’d have to explain to them that, from what I understand, Afropunk started out as an empowerment movement for
disenfranchised African-American youth (what, mommy?) but that it seems to have
mutated into a branding tool, labeling something old as if it’s new. It reads like a marketing ploy, the coopting of a subterranean youth movement. AND
I HATE THAT SHIT!
I suppose “Afropunk” implies that these artists are out of
the norm, or anti-establishment, or super-bold in their uniqueness. You know, like James Baldwin and Angela Davis were for my parents' generation. Talk about afropunks.
I can
appreciate the feel-good embrace of claiming all of that good music as “ours.”
But I don’t dig the racial branding of music. Especially now. When we claim to be working toward the abolition of race labels.
Even the (mixed race) filmmaker James Spooner, who is
credited with launching “Afro-Punk” into the vernacular, has his doubts about
the festival and its commercial expansion.
In a past life, I worked for a number of large music festivals in an administrative role. And I much prefer a transparent corporate branding of an arts
festival to the for-profit mask of a revolutionary movement.
As far as this old fart is concerned, the marketing gurus
should leave afro- and punk-rock alone, and come up with an authentically
multicultural name for their festival - something that references this century.
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