Afrodelic Space Program

At the the back end of the 1960’s black America embraced all things African - from dashikis to pyramidology. Afrocentric jazz was born at a time of struggle against the prevailing orthodoxy. The banks of the Hudson, became the banks of the Nile. At the same time musicians started looking beyond the constraint of earthbound thought to the Universe as a whole. What was out there, was “cosmic” jazz. It was a trend that only lasted into the mid-seventies. But now a new generation of musicians, not least Kamasi Washington, are embracing and reinventing that genre. Out beyond the edge of the universe Sun Ra is blending with the harmony of the spheres and digging on the irony of it all.

Afronaut photograph by Cristina de Middel http://www.lademiddel.com