Amid increased backlash to the business of Afropunk, a host of collectives, festivals and artists of color have continued the punk resistance elsewhere

'We still need to be seen': behind the rise of black punk culture

'We still need to be seen': behind the rise of black punk culture

In the summer of 2001, a young first-time film-maker traveled across the US, shooting a documentary about an overlooked subject: black people inside the predominately white punk rock counterculture. Even with the established, historical contributions of African Americans to rock music and outsider culture – from Jimi Hendrix to Funkadelic – black people in punk rock was, at the turn of the 21st century, still an unfamiliar and unaddressed topic.

Having himself grown up as a black person in the punk scene, James Spooner knew from experience that there was usually at least one black punk kid in every American town, and he sought to amplify their voices, to let them know they weren’t alone.

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“In 2001, when I set out to make the documentary, there was a need for it,” Spooner says. “This conversation wasn’t happening on a broad enough scale. There were always black kids and brown kids peppered throughout the scene, but I literally had to drive across the country just to meet, like, 80 [of them].”

Afro-Punk was released in 2003 to wide acclaim. In 2005, Spooner, along with Matthew Morgan, who’d also served as the film’s co-producer, organized the first Afropunk Festival in Brooklyn – spread out over four days in early July, with performances from black punk bands, film screenings, and an impromptu picnic at Fort Greene Park. The festival has since grown at an exponential rate, with annual festivals not only in Brooklyn, but also Atlanta, London, Paris, and Johannesburg, drawing tens of thousands of attendees.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest James Spooner. Photograph: Courtesy of James Spooner

Though it could be viewed as a successful model of a global black-owned and black-centered music festival, Afropunk has faced criticisms from the grassroots POC punk community, particularly for its sponsorships from companies like Red Bull and Coors Light; and for promoting fewer punk rock headliners in favor of popular R&B or hip hop acts like Lauryn Hill, Lenny Kravitz, Ice Cube, and Tyler, the Creator. These criticisms even caused the New Yorker to ask in 2015 whether Afropunk had abandoned its punk rock roots.

“I do think it’s provided a lot of visibility, giving bands a chance to play on the same stage as all of these mainstream musicians,” says the singer Jasmine Nyende of the all-female Los Angeles band Fuck You Pay Us (or Fupu). “But I think when the mainstream is privileged above the DIY and the grassroots, then it’s not punk any more.”

On 30 March, the Texas-based feminist punk collective Xingonas in the Pit (XITP) hosted an event billed “Afropunk in the Pit”. More than 200 attendees crowded into La Botanica, a San Antonio vegan Mexican restaurant, to watch five Texas-based African American punk bands, followed by a screening of the Afro-Punk film, with a talk by Spooner.

On 10 April, the collective received an email from Afropunk’s lawyer, Gerard Anthony, declaring that Afropunk was a federally registered trademark owned by Afropunk LLC. Attached to the email was a cease-and-desist letter.

“Our trademark serves as an important distinctive representation of our products or services as well as the goodwill of our company,” the letter stated. “We find it important and necessary to protect it against any misrepresentation that may cause substantial harm to our business or prospective opportunities.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tyler, the Creator performs during the 12th Afropunk festival in Brooklyn in 2017. Photograph: Kris Connor/Getty Images

“We will not hesitate to exhaust all legal remedies if you fail to heed this letter,” the letter concluded.

Though Afropunk in the Pit had been intended as only a one-time event, intended to celebrate the Afro-Punk film, the experience still shook the XITP collective. They decided to share the letter on social media.

“We wanted to be transparent about how hypocritical, how hurtful that was to us,” says Daisy Salinas, a founding member of the collective. “To be threatening working-class punks of color? Like, how fucking punk.”

The Afropunk CEO, Matthew Morgan, explains that any enterprise, whether an individual artist or a global business, has an interest in protecting its brand from misuse.

“Afropunk has become a word that people use in popular culture. It becomes descriptive,” Morgan says. “And when you have a mark that you’ve spent 20 years building – if not challenged when people use it, you can lose it. So it becomes something that we have to do, whether we want to do it or not, because, ultimately, if we don’t do it, we will lose the mark.”

Whether as a reaction against Afropunk’s perceived betrayal of punk values, a result of today’s political climate, or an increasing demand for visibility for marginalized communities, the past couple of years have been a watershed moment for independent black and brown punk festivals and punk bands of color across the US.

Monika Estrella Negra and Donté Oxun, two queer Chicago transplants, wanted to find a way to bring together isolated QTIPOC (queer, trans, and intersex people of color) communities in their adopted city, while also supporting local, radical causes.

“I was just like, ‘Wouldn’t it be a great idea if we just made our own festival, in order to raise money for grassroots organizations or bail support?’” Etrella Negra tells me. “We wanted to keep a radical practice in our organizing, and we wanted the idea to spread to other QTIPOC spaces.”

Estrella Negra and Oxun started the Black and Brown Punk Show Collective in 2010 and organized the first festival that August, with bands, DJs, artists, and activists of color.

Shawna Shawnté, a DJ and multimedia artist, was inspired by what she’d seen in Chicago. She returned home to Oakland, California, and, together with the multidisciplinary artist Jade Ariana Fair, organized The Universe is Lit, a three-day festival in August 2017, with music, art, and film, centered on the local QTIPOC community. The festival was rebranded as The Multivrs is Illuminated for its 2018 festival and is planning its next event for August 2020.

“Even though we’re including everyone that’s a person of color, we are prioritizing black people,” Shawnté says. “Because we still need to be seen and to be prioritized and to be acknowledged.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maafa performing at the Break Free Fest Photograph: Farrah Skeiky

In 2017, independent black and brown punk festivals launched in three major cities: Deep Cuts in New Orleans; Break Free Fest in Philadelphia; and Decolonize Fest in London, a multi-day festival organized by the London-based collective DIY Diaspora Punx. Decolonize Fest held its third annual festival in June 2019. Break Free Fest also hosted its third festival on Memorial Day weekend 2019.

The Break Free Fest organizer Scout Cartagena explains what she sees as the driving force behind her and other independent black and brown festivals: “We want to be heard, but we also want a space to be joyful without white profit.”

Punk Black, an Atlanta-based collective, has held 60 events since 2015, in Atlanta, Brooklyn, Oakland, Chicago, and Washington DC, featuring people of color in music, art, and cosplay. “We’re definitely in an era where more and more POC are being empowered and empowering themselves through the media,” says Punk Black’s Von Phoenix. “So this is a great time for all those collectives to spring up.”

The upsurge of festivals and collectives of color has also seen a rise of POC punk bands. The Muslims, from Durham, North Carolina, formed shortly after the last presidential election. The band, who released their second album, Mayo Supreme, in April 2019, write songs about white supremacy and the anxieties of disenfranchised people in the Trump era.

“I write to get my feelings and my thoughts and my rage out, because I know I’m not the only one feeling it,” the singer and guitar player Laylatul Qadr says. “There are black folks that are feeling this angry, there are queer folks that are feeling this angry, there are Muslim folks that are feeling this angry.”

Téa Campbell is singer and guitar player of Meet Me @ the Altar, a pop-punk band consisting of three young women of color, who released their latest album, Bigger Than Me, in July 2019. Campbell sees her music and her band as providing inspiration to future generations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Meet Me @ the Altar. Photograph: LA Rodgers

“We didn’t have representation growing up as kids,” Campbell says. “We didn’t have people who looked like us, playing the kinds of music we liked, but we want to change that for the little girls of color out there now.”

Spooner sees the recent surge of independent black and brown punk festivals as a natural response to the criticisms levelled at Afropunk. He had already begun to distance himself from the Afropunk Festival by 2008, for its increasing reliance on corporate sponsorships; but during the fourth Afropunk Festival, after a rap-reggae band had performed a cover song by the Jamaican dancehall singer Buju Banton, with lyrics espousing violence against gay people, Spooner walked onstage and told the audience that the festival owed all its gains to the contributions of the queer black punk community. He then walked away from the festival for good.

“Punk rock has always been reactionary,” he says. “Black and brown punks didn’t have something to rally against until Afropunk. It’s almost like I inadvertently made the thing that I wanted, because now there’s like eight to 10 black and brown punk collectives, in the US and England alone, that are working completely autonomously and making real scenes.”

While Afropunk had, in its early days, been primarily the work of one or two men, the black and brown punk community has since become decentralized and is now being led predominately by queer black women. Spooner says he’s reached out to festival organizers at Break Free Fest, Xingonas in the Pit, and others, but only to offer his encouragement, support, and gratitude.

“I took it upon myself to write them and thank them and say, ‘You are totally picking up where I left off and/or sold out,’” he says. “‘You’re doing everything that I could hope for from this generation. Thank you.’”

Salinas explains that the cease-and-desist letter hasn’t stopped the collective from going forward. The next Black and Brown Punk Fest TX is scheduled for 31 August in San Antonio. Her motivations reflect the motivations of other POC punk bands and organizers across the US and beyond.

“We want to make it a little bit easier for the next generation of punks of color, non-binary punks of color, disabled punks of color,” Salinas explains. “All of the work we’re doing, there’s a purpose and meaning behind it. And as long as we can make it easier for the next generation, like Spooner did for us, that’s all that matters.”