The Afro Future
By Naomi André, Ph.D.
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In 2017, Opera Philadelphia presented We Shall Not
Be Moved, a new work by composer Daniel Bernard Roumain and librettist Marc
Bamuthi Joseph. The opera follows five North Philadelphia teens as they find
refuge at the headquarters of the MOVE organization, where a 1985 standoff with
police infamously ended with a neighborhood destroyed and 11 people dead.
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In her final essay of this three-part series, Seattle Opera
Scholar-in-Residence Naomi André speculates about the future of Black Opera.
Using the lens of Afrofuturism—a cultural aesthetic that combines
science-fiction, history, and fantasy to explore the African American
experience and aims to connect those from the Black diaspora with their
forgotten African ancestry—André charts one path forward. In this essay, she uses
historic events, music, and the writings of Octavia E. Butler to point the way.
Naomi André is a professor in the University of Michigan, where her
teaching and research focus on opera and issues surrounding gender,
voice, and race. Her writings include topics on Italian opera,
Schoenberg, women composers, and teaching opera in prisons. Her
publications include Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement and African Performance Arts and Political Acts (2021), which she co-edited. She has served as Seattle Opera’s Scholar-in-Residence since 2019.