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10 Of Afropunks and Other Anarchic Signifiers of Contrary Negritude
- Wayne State University Press
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155 GREG TATE 10 OfAfropunksandOtherAnarchic SignifiersofContraryNegritude Like other emblems and aspirants of civilization, the black bourgeoisie has produced a unique set of discontents, malcontents, miscreants , and class traitors. In the 1940s and 1950s some escaped from their class obligations by becoming beboppers and beatniks; in the 1960s a rebellious new generation eschewed Cadillac dealerships and croquet to become Freedom Riders, Black Panthers, revolutionary poets, and free jazz musicians like Cleveland’s teen-golfing-champion-turned-dada-saxophonecolossus , Albert Ayler. The 1970s saw some of my Chocolate City Gold and Platinum Coast homies rise up en masse as fans and even members of Parliament Funkadelic ; Mandrill; Earth, Wind and Fire; Rufus; and the Ohio Players. Hip-hop has of course spawned a host of suburban and urban street poets—like Ice Cube, the product of a two-parent home with a college degree in architectural draing, who once answered my question of whether he was ever in a gang by saying, “Oh, hell, no, Dad wasn’t having it.” The 1980s and 1990s would also see the advent of the black punk rocker, a species recently anthropologized in James Spooner’s epochal docu- 156 Greg Tate mentary Afro-Punk. This group was shown to have its own peculiar set of behaviors around the thickets of racism, racial identity, Afrocentricity, class alienation, class privilege, class betrayal and interracial dating, black rage, black pleasure, and black feminism. What can now be said about the Afropunks—an “only in America” diasporic tribe—is that they were the kids who found that their pent-up urges for rebellion, authenticity, or negrocity could not be satisfied with hip-hop, R&B, or participation in Jack and Jill. They were part of the first black MTV generation, which meant they were the kids who knew their Spandau Ballet from their Clash, their Depeche Mode from their Flock of Seagulls, their Slits from their Smiths, their X-Ray Spex from their Bow Wow Wow. The groundbreaking black punk-inflected bands of the 1980s, such as Bad Brains, Fishbone, and Living Colour, were actually populated with musical virtuosos and black music historians who could have played any single genre they chose—jazz, reggae, soul, calypso, country, gospel, hip-hop—but instead chose a genre that allowed them to mosh them all up as the creative moment inspired—and they oen did so, with extremely pronounced senses of irony, wit, style, outrage, and outrageousness. So for the District of Columbia’s own Bad Brains, that meant not just bending reggae, punk, funk, fusion jazz, and metal into a seamless lightningfast hybrid but becoming Haile Selassie–worshipping Rastafarians instead of the pharmacology majors and Olympic swim team members their parents had envisioned. For LA’s own Fishbone, whose assimilation blues ensued from being bused out of South Central to the San Fernando Valley, the decision to go punk and ska meant becoming a black PoMo Circus bent on exploding and caricaturing everything from blaxploitation movies, nuclear holocaust flicks, and Pentecostal church services to Jamaica’s the Skatalites and the Sex Pistols. For Brooklyn’s own Living Colour, this meant creating a musical space where Van Halen, John Coltrane, and the Mighty Sparrow were all fair game for a race-mixing and sometimes race-baiting musical orgy, as heard in such songs as “Elvis Is Dead” and “Funny Vibe.” In the latter Living Colour sings, No, I’m not gonna rob you No, I’m not gonna beat you (Beat you) [54.211.203.45] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:03 GMT) Afropunks and Other Anarchic Signifiers 157 No I’m not gonna rape you . . . And I try not to hate you, so why you want to give me that funny vibe? We know now that these bands were ramping up the common everyday black schizophrenic and rhizomatic experience and using their code-switching facility to conjure up a highly skilled musical and visual spectacular in the process of offering yet another stylish testament to New World African modernity. All three bands, Bad Brains, Fishbone, and Living Colour, established a new tradition of excellence and bravura in African American music that continues to inspire those who come aer and also seek to render unto Jah, Jezebel, and Jehosophat a twenty-first-century black music, one capable of drawing on the entire legacy of Euro-Asiatic Afro-diasporic instrumental and vocal performance forms as they damn well please. Their heirs apparently include Tamar-Kali, Whole Wheat Bread, FunkFace...