Quale afrofuturismo per l'etnomusicologia? Riflessioni sul metodo

As late globalization, multiculturalism, migrations, multiple identities and complex networks have redefined the ethnomusicological borders, a branch of researchers have consequently refocused their insterests towards the musical practices that minority subcultures experience in the context of large Western urban areas. The afrofuturistic cultural aesthetic — a literary sort of panafricanism from a political-technological-distopical perspective —, with its references to the afrodiasporic question, its reflections on the overwhelming role of information technologies on symbol production and its fabled imagery, captured the attention of anthropological observers. Nonetheless, despite some afrofuturism-related artists (such as Sun Ra or the Detroit techno pioneers) happen to have features that go far beyond a generalised journalistic interest, every kind of music conceived in the Western industrialised world inevitably connotes itself as popular music. Even when preserving symbolic codes coming from non-Western traditions, such sorts of musical languages need the support of a cultural-sociological perspective to be wholly acknowledged.