Astro-Afro Style

                                                         

February is Black History Month, and if there’s one thing I’ve always enjoyed about black culture is that early Seventies phenomenon of Astro-Afro style. This was a fashion trend that really hit its stride after the psychedelic glam of the Sixties. Some of the great style icons of this genre were Miles Davis, Parliament/Funkadelic led by George Clinton, Labelle, the OG space man Sun Ra, and a host of others too numerous to mention. I’m pretty sure that if Jimi Hendrix had survived 1971 he probably would have jumped that Space Ship.
                                                               

There’s even a movie that showcased Astro-Afro style, George Armitage’s insane “Darktown Strutters”, featuring a gang of female bikers dressed in their flashiest space drag. It was a sign of the times, a new style shoe-horned somewhere in between the psychedelic and disco era. What brought on this bizarre trend? Well:

1. An escape from the prejudice and stereotyping run rampant by society in search of a freer fantasy land. As Sun Ra expressed so well in his poem “Imagination”, “We came from Nowhere Here – why can’t we go Somewhere There?”
                                                                
2. Next to blaxploitation the most popular films that played in black theaters were science fiction films like The Omega Man (starring the great Rosalind Cash), Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes – all starring Mister Moses, Charlton Heston!, THX-1138, and a little bit later Logan’s Run and Capricorn One, all movies that employed more black actor and actresses than any other genre at the time. 
                                             

While I’m a big fan of glam fashion I’m also a huge fan of progressive, stretched-out music and many of the musicians listed above did not disappoint. It’s this pursuit of exploring new sounds that almost seems quaint in this day and age of crass and calculated junk that calls itself music.
                         

That Gutbucket Beat

Punk rock couldn't compete with the explosion in my teenage life of seeing Rahsaan Roland Kirk on stage at Carnegie Hall kicking beer cans off the stage, blind at birth, blowing three saxophones at once, and me young terrified young kid thinking, "This is what life is all about, a cool shit blind motherfucker blowing three horns at once!" Even real-time sex or superhype cocaine couldn't compete with this rush, baby.

One year later I saw Sun Ra, grizzled old spaceman drag genius with his big band, all ninety years old blowing nightmares and daydreams on their space horns and realizing God kissed them on their ear drums and they're sending it home to us Earthlings.

I remember Miles Davis pacing up and down the stage like a caged black panther at the Greek Theatre while LAPD helicopters were flying above trying to kill his frequency and failing, his electric trumpet sending messages to my cerebrum, "The frequency cannot be cancelled - you must submit".

The following year I saw Ornette Coleman with his double electric band playing harmolodics, which is like a mobius strip of jazz with a trash disco beat. Blowing a plastic alto saxophone, the hypnotic signal transmitting messages to my Earthboy mind, "The frequency will not be broken - you will join us and communicate".

After coping with losing my mother, an absentee father and Rabbis screaming at me all day in Hebrew school I knew I could find solace in my wise black hipster guardians from the bop dimension. For every day of my life, jazz has led the way towards my galactic salvation.