Futuristic Fire Music
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Moor Mother's Free Jazz as Liberation Theology
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A Note on the Metaphysics of Justice

Black Quantum Futurism (see below) is the result of a collaboration between Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips.  It is an imaginative, prophetic, and practical expression of the idea that an open future is part of the very fabric of each present moment, and that acts of the imagination can fill that future with possibilities which, if actualized in practical ways, bring into existence new ways of living and new modes of consciousness.  In the present moment the inherited actualities of the past (some deeply traumatic) and the not-yet-actualized possibilities for the future (some liberating) are co-present such that the very experience of time can be one of imaginative simultaneity.  The traumas can be re-membered for the sake of transformative healing, and amid the re-membering fresh possibilities arise in the very yearning for alternatives.  In the simultaneity of the present, there is both anger and hope: prophetic denunciation and prophetic annunciation.  With its many projects, Black Quantum Futurism shows the importance of the arts (writing, music, film, visual art) in evoking and nurturing the kinds of consciousness needed for this experience of imaginative simultaneity.  Its music and spoken word poetry, for example, are the metaphysics of justice in sonic form.  Listen.

​Free Jazz is a way of conjuring up a new understanding of the world and a reimagining of the spaces we inhabit.

'One of the last lines of actual dialog on the record comes as Ayewa does a bit of meta-commentary on free jazz. Truly a mark of the avant-garde, an artist comments on her art, through her art. On her latest record, Moor Mother uses all at her disposal to conjure up a new understanding of the world and a reimagining of the spaces we cohabitate. The forces of Afrofuturism, free-jazz, poetry, dance, science-fiction and temporal mechanics, all work to reinforce her vision. If there is one more reason to hope for the pandemic’s end, it is to go and see this performance live.'
​'The ‘big tech’ institutions which have assumed such monstrous proportions now constitute “a machine so big you can’t see it”, casting monumental, suffocating shade upon those whose individual dreams – be they start-up businesses or creative endeavours – they assimilate in the their all- consuming globalisation; these “invisible giants” wage “god wars” high above the heads of those they exploit.
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The vision is bleak and compellingly evoked, but there is a prospect of escape from Circuit City. ‘No More Wires’ promises that “we finally getting out of here”; free jazz is the liberation technology, just as it was for Ayler, Baraka, Shepp, and Sun Ra before Moor Mother, whose own assemblage creates a spacey, bracing racket worthy of Afrofuturism’s forebearers...Hers is a goal of severance from the wiry and intrusive tendrils of mega-corporations, severance achieved through reclamation of both beauty and ugliness “of our own design”. More than that, she aches for a “return to a time with no time”, a true home immune to and outside of the trail of history which has scarred so many generations with the black trauma she references at the album’s start. Circuit City carries its narrative intensity consummately from the stage to album format and represents the most conceptually accomplished project of 2020 from one of our era’s most urgent voices."

- Clash Music, Alex Holt

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Moor Mother

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Moor Mother Photo by Chris Sikich

Rasheedah Phillips

Black Quantum Futurism

Excerpts from Black Quantum Futurism Webpage

What is Black Quantum Futurism?​

Black Quantum Futurism (BQF) is a new approach to living and experiencing reality by way of the manipulation of space-time in order to see into possible futures, and/or collapse space-time into a desired future in order to bring about that future’s reality. This vision and practice derives its facets, tenets, and qualities from quantum physics, futurist traditions, and Black/African cultural traditions of consciousness, time, and space. Where these three traditions intersect exists a creative plane that allows for the ability of African-descended people to see “into,” choose, or create the impending future. 

Under a BQF intersectional time orientation, the past and future are not cut off from the present - both dimensions have influence over the whole of our lives, who we are and who we become at any particular point in space-time. Through various writing, music, film, visual art, and creative research projects, BQF Collective also explores personal, cultural, familial, and communal cycles of experience, and solutions for transforming negative cycles into positive ones using artistic and wholistic methods of healing. Our work focuses on recovery, collection, and preservation of communal memories, histories, and stories.
Who is Black Quantum Futurism?

"Black Quantum Futurism Collective is a multidisciplinary collaboration between Camae Ayewa (Rockers!; Moor Mother) and Rasheedah Phillips (The AfroFuturist Affair; Metropolarity) exploring the intersections of futurism, creative media, DIY-aesthetics, and activism in marginalized communities through an alternative temporal lens. BQF Collective has created a number of community-based events, experimental music projects (ANTI-KY-THE/RA released on Deep White Sound label), zines (NonLocality Series; Sun Ra, Synchronicity, and Superposition), and an anthology of experimental essays on space-time consciousness called “Black Quantum Futurism: Theory & Practice Vol. 1 (featured in the Unveiling Visions exhibition at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). BQF Collective is a 2016 A Blade of Grass Fellow, 2015 artist-in-residence at West Philadelphia Neighborhood Time Exchange, and had their experimental short, Black Bodies as Conductors of Gravity, premiere at the 2015 Afrofuturism Now! Festival in Rotterdam. BQF Collective frequently collaborates with other Black Futurists Joy KMT,  Irreversible Entanglements, Thomas Stanley, Ras Mashramani, Alex Smith to produce literature, present workshops, lectures, and performances.
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Photo from mripp
Open Horizons