Afro-Punk

"The Boot" Tamar Kali, featured in Afro-Punk: The Rock n Roll Nigger Experience

About a year ago, in my exploration of natural hairstyles... I stumbled across a whole new movement I was unaware of called "Afro-Punk".

These women are attendees of the annual Afro-Punk Festival  in Brooklyn, NY. They are featured on the Tumblr, le coil.

I was to discover the documentary entitled Afro-Punk: The Rock n Roll Nigger Experience produced, directed, and edited by James Spooner. In an interview with NPR (listen! nice to hear the directors perspective and also encourage you all to watch the actual documentary) James Spooner states that Afro-Punk "was created for the black community....to open up a discussion" and that the documentary at the core "is a story about identity" also "a black liberation movie...by people who I would consider my peers".

Although the directors targeted audience was the black community, Afro-Punk does not shy away from the alienation felt by black punk rockers in the dominantly "white sub genre" or as discussed in the NPR interview, "a process a lot of black Americans go through...punk or not". 

Below is the trailer for Afro-Punk, pay attention to the Youtube comments (as well as the comments left for the music video posted above) that people leave...and the discussion surrounding the "Afro-Punk" movement: 

I did a post that highlighted the Queercore movement , and in its creation it was addressing the "masking" aspects of the punk movement--a movement about counter-culture but (seemingly) it inherently holds mainstream cultural ideals.