Blacktronika: Afrofuturism In Electronic Music – US DJ, producer and educator King Britt’s new undergraduate course at the University of California San Diego – proposes a broader and Blacker understanding of the history of electronic music. With guest lectures from a who’s who of electronic music innovators like Goldie, Dexter Wansel, Honey Dijon and more, Blacktronika seeks to expand and deepen our understanding of how people of colour have made significant contributions to contemporary music. Writer John Morrison sat down and spoke with King about his course and building a new pedagogy around electronic music and its history.

John Morrison: For starters, could you tell me how you started working with UCSD and how the idea to do this course came about?

King Britt: Yes, I'm an assistant teaching professor at UCSD and my area of focus is electronic music. We call it computer music, which is an old term in academia. We're actually trying to shift from these old kind of colonial terms. Maybe that'll change in the future. But anyway, when I got here at UCSD my main focus was to teach electronic music production. So, recording, mics, setting up drums, all of that stuff, but also mixing and electronic music production using a DAW. I also incorporate storytelling within my music production.

All the young people that are here, undergrads, they're really into EDM, they're into dubstep and all of this stuff, and they don't really know the history. I started looking at all the different colleges. No one's talking about how important pioneers of colour have contributed to the advancement of electronic music. I'm like, “wait, there's no voice in academia”. House, drum and bass, Detroit techno, the LA beat scene, all of it is extremely important to the advancement of where electronic music is now.

So, I felt this is important and I can definitely talk about it because I live it. I contributed to it and I know a lot of these pioneers. And so I was like, okay, I want to use the word “Blacktronica”. Charlie Dark from Attica Blues, he had an event called Blacktronica in the early or mid-2000s in London. So I hit Charlie up. I'm like, “Yo, can I use the term “Blacktronica”, just out of respect. He's like, “Come on, man. Run with it, run with it.” I just changed it to “Blacktronika” with a 'K' and then it went through all the channels quickly. It was to start two weeks before the pandemic hit, so I had to shift everything to have it online, which wasn't as hard as I thought [...] The blessing of it was that I could call all my friends and heroes and they’re home. Nobody was touring.

Home and wanting to talk to somebody! I'm curious how the course plays out. Is it a mixture of the lecture stuff and a lab where they get to create their own music?

So this is strictly a lecture course, right? But the way I structure it, the pedagogy is very immersive. Every quarter kind of shifts and changes because I have guests.

It's a three hour class. The first hour is a lecture, my footage and my storytelling. [There's] also, of course, lots of listening, but also exclusive video stuff. So, we had director Jenn Nkiru (Black To Techno) in class, as well as Carl Craig, Juan Atkins, Waajeed, Ash Lauryn and DeForrest Brown Jr...in one class.

Oh, wow. Round table style.

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't even believe it was happening. Like I had James [Poyser], Jill [Scott] and Questlove in one class. We were breaking down Common’s Electric Circus.

But anyway, the first hour is lecture, music and giving the history and origins of what we're discussing. So I usually start with the Dogon tribe in Mali and talk about what Afrofuturism is, I talk about Uhura on Star Trek. I had [African-American music writer and Afrofuturist author] Greg Tate and Ytasha Womack in, you know? And then we go into Sun Ra, the origins, his whole history, like deep in it. And then we listen [...] It's a wind down, and they're immersed in the sound of what we've talked about. Also, it prepares them for their next class, because three hours is a long time.

Right, everybody's tired.

One of the house music assignments was to pick your favourite house song from a classic house mix, you know, Marshall Jefferson, all this stuff. Pick one of your favourites and make a dance video to dance and get into your body. This is dance music; music to move to, not just to listen to.

My dream is to teach Blacktronika in a club. I had started before the pandemic a little bit, but it wasn't called Blacktronika. I think it would really build a nice community. [The course] already has, but it's an even stronger experience in person with the subs, with the club.

I'm real curious about how students have responded to this kind of unique approach to building a class – the historical, but also the physical. You want people to dance and move – how have students been responding to that?

Dude. Everyone's trying to get into class. Everyone can take this course, you don't have to be in the music department. So I'm like, well, what exercises can I create? What assignments can give them a little creativity musically, and also teach the ins and outs of what we went through. It's a fun class, you learn better when you're having fun learning it.

Just hearing you talk about that and about wanting to prioritise [the physical] […] It reminds me of how Black folks engage with electronic music in general. You know what I'm saying? As opposed to, or different from, you know, the academic approach to electronic music, you know, Pierre Henry, that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a different kind of electronic music.

Absolutely. And I talk about that origin of electronic music, you know, musique concrète, all of that stuff more in my production class. In Blacktronika, I mention that [Egyptian composer and musician] Halim El-Dabh was doing tape manipulation and experiments in Cairo two years before Pierre and those guys in France. So I bring that up and that's powerful, man [...] But yes, the approach to teaching about Black origins of electronic music is a whole different pedagogy. It's gotta be in the body a lot more.

Could you talk a little bit about how Black folks and people of colour have engaged with electronic instruments from their earliest beginnings?

You know, we talked a little bit about Halim El-Dabh, who was creating these electronic pieces using the wire tape machine. But in my class, I start with Sun Ra because visually, the iconography, just his whole history and how he approaches music, it's a perfect way to start. And he's like the father of Afrofuturism musically. He was the first musician that Bob Moog was like “I need to get you the Minimoog model B”. Model D was the consumer version, but B was the prototype. He only made two, one for himself and one for Sun Ra.

And then Sun Ra’s whole entourage went to the Moog factory in Asheville, North Carolina, and went to get that Moog. Bob knew how Sun Ra was presenting himself. He really believed he was not from earth. And what better person to use this instrument than Sun Ra and to change the course of jazz? […] Right after that, that's when Patrick Gleeson, who was using the ARP 2600, got with Herbie [Hancock] and they combined forces. And when Herbie was doing Mwandishi and Sextant, he incorporated the ARP 2600.

I had [jazz fusion composer and synthesist] Dexter Wansel in and he said in his early years at Philly International it was his job to program the 2600, we're talking 1973. He would get a hundred bucks a session to program the 2600 to incorporate within some of those early Philly International songs. He might not have been credited or whatever on some of those things, but that was his job because no one knew how to use it.

Could you talk a little bit more about some of the guests that you've had in Blacktronika so far?

Every single interview was just mind blowing. But for me, in my top three was Marshall. Marshall Allen, of course. Oh man. We talked about him being a Buffalo Soldier […] and how all these jazz musicians used to converge at this club in Paris and he was in the army.

Another favourite was Miss Tahloulah May and Nightmares On Wax together. That was really powerful and, unexpectedly, super informative. Like, I knew I was going to get nuggets. But, wow. I've known George Nightmares On Wax for a long time. But he was telling me about Leeds [UK] and the beginnings of [Sheffield label] Warp records – he was the second signed record on Warp. To hear about the Leeds scene, which I didn't know about at the time, it was really powerful, man. And his origin is West Indian. So, hearing about all the West Indian influences and how much that was a fabric of what they were doing and that's why they gravitated... the early Nightmares On Wax has so much bass.

And Tahloulah May, from Suriname and growing up right outside of Amsterdam, and being one of very few persons of colour in the city. [I asked], “How did you even get into making beats and hip hop?” and she was like, that's what she needed to, to ground her. So it was really beautiful, that class.

The class with the highest applause was Honey Dijon, like, oh wow. Beyond. It was unbelievable. She's incredible. Incredible, incredible. And the history, her story; beautiful.

Can you give me a final word about what you've learned about how Black folks engage with electronic music from teaching this course?

For us, these are just tools to enhance what we already have in our existence, in our DNA, as far as rhythm. So if you want to talk about Dilla – the drum machine and samplers enhanced what he already had in him, right? The way he beat programs, not using quantification on everything, he's putting his humanness in. All Black folks put their humanness into the electronic instrument. The tools propel what our sound is to a whole other level.

Read Raymond Cummings’ review of King Britt's event Blacktronika: Sound For Humanity inside The Wire 449. Wire subscribers can access the article via the digital archive.

A virtual Blacktronika exhibition curated by Britt is also available to explore online.