Weekend Music: Afro-Punk Festival 2010

Afro-Punk 2010 – Images by S. Kamau Mucoki

Images from day 1 of the 2010 edition of the Afro-Punk Festival in the County of Kings. There were fewer attendees (remote location? entry fee?) but a strong artist billing (I caught sets by The 54, the always ribald Ninjasonik, God Forbid, kid punks The Bots and punk OGs Bad Brains)

In the aftermath of watching the ‘Brains I believe that HR and Dr. Know have had the same deep impact on popular music AND the black experience as George Clinton and Bootsy Collins did, but in totally different music worlds.

Without knowing a damn thing about his life off stage you could see and hear that this dude is about one complicated brother and his complexity matched our own, those of us that is who were young black and trying to figure out what it meant to be Black in post Civil Rights America before hip hop provided us with the collective answer. But for those whose identity questions could never simply be answered by joining the hip hop or crossover r&b, or jazz neo-classicist camps, for those who embrace the chaos, confusion and flux of the rainbow, HR and Prince and their later acolytes, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore and Living Colour’s Corey Glover, functioned as heralds, dark angels sent to scream and shout that yes it was possible to be in love with being Black and have mad love for Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten too.

Greg Tate on Bad Brains’ Paul Hudson (aka HR).

See Also: “Stick Up Kids”, The Time-esque ’soul/funk from Bad Rabbits who played the festival on Sunday. Currently in heavy rotation here at casa forota.