Tracking Afro-Punk’s 20-Year Impact: From Y2K’s Underground Enclaves To Modern-Day Social Feeds

“Afro-Punk”, a name global Black communities across niches, identities, and interests, have come to find refuge in over the past twenty years, has widely been associated with alternative, label-defying expressions of Blackness. The movement’s grassroots origin cemented itself as a unique festival model amongst the rest and it steadily transitioned into more commercialized versions that sought to platform Black talent across genres as the years went on. A term that once held a hyperspecific meaning became synonymous with a pro-Black community of global peoples seeking to break the confines of restrictive, performative ways of being. AFROPUNK became the soft landing for unique, gender-expansive, sex-positive, genre-blending, disability-centering, and autonomy-respecting Black people, inspired by its anti-establishment, alternative roots. 

While many may know today’s iteration of the platform as both a media and musical hub championing Black diversity across culture and art, fewer know where the term hails from. 2005 marked the inaugural AFROPUNK Music Festival in Brooklyn, New York, signifying the anniversary of an annual festival-turned-cultural movement. But what came before the festival, and what sparked the need for it to begin with? 

In 2003, two years prior to the initial festival, James Spooner, director and punk enthusiast, released his documentary film Afro-Punk. The 66-minute film followed four young Black punk musicians (Matt Davis, Mariko Jones, Moe Mitchell, and Tamar-kali Brown) across America as they traversed alternative and hardcore music scenes, often as the only Black person in the venue. The film featured many Black punk performances from the iconic Bad Brains to the subjects themselves, and particularly featured their experiences as they reckoned with being othered in mainstream Black culture and white-dominated alt spaces alike. Sitting with their identities as Black alternative people they highlighted anti-establishment politics, uncomfortability with interracial dating, and longing for more Black connections in alt spaces, ultimately making a case for why the Black racial experience and alternative experience overlap. The film went on to show at many festivals, winning several independent film awards, and inspiring the first of many Black-centered alternative concerts hosted by Spooner and collaborator Matthew Morgan. Their initial shows, “The Liberation Sessions,” then advanced into the very first AfroPunk Music Festival in 2005, which at the time was free admission, marking the first anniversary of the existing platform we know today. 

The festival has since undergone many evolutions, including a departure from Spooner in 2011 due to organizational and philosophical differences, the expansion to multiple cities including AFROPUNK Atlanta, Bahia, and Johannesburg, inclusion of Black acts across genres, and the implementation of monetary tickets. Last year’s 2024 AFROPUNK at Prospect Park struck a balance between the festival’s origins and larger bills, stacking the lineup with local Black alternative acts and concluding the night with legendary act, Erykah Badu. AFROPUNK has ebbed and flowed over the past two decades, shifting with the culture, and making space for the many forms alternative Black experiences can take.

Rooted first and foremost in punk music, AFROPUNK seeks to highlight the validity of this form of Black music and expression. The punk genre and all of its categories can be particularly emotive, not unlike the blues, pop, or even rap. Diverging still, it serves as a container for the unbridled anguish that comes with living in the margins of a popular, binary society, allowing it to stretch and release itself in cathartic ways of sound and movement. As the documentary reflects, the four subjects occupy the margins and speak to these experiences.

 Taking the sentiments of Afro-Punk’s original subjects into account, AFROPUNK sits down with a few of today’s budding Black punk musicians to understand their experiences and where they situate themselves within the larger ecosystem of Black alternative life.

Matt Wainwright, Brandon Aviles, and Duck Burris of Inland Empire-based, post-hardcore shoegaze band COLD GAWD call in from humid Chicago, mid-tour. Music has taken them from the inland desert suburbia of Southern California to Chicago and across the sea, something of a dream for suburban kids of color with few artistic outlets to turn to. In another setting, we touch base with fera, an LA-based musician who is acutely aware of her identity as an alt-Black girl in the industry. Her post-hardcore, grunge sounds packed with resonant vocals proudly assert her presence as an expressive Black femme in the space.

While the young punk musicians were not as familiar with the documentary itself, they were intimately familiar with the feelings expressed throughout the film. Immediately, Burris places us in a modern example: 

“There are [some communal Black spaces] where, yeah, we celebrate and support each other, we’re circulating our money and whatnot, but at the same token, it kind of feels like, if you aren’t like us, if you aren’t the ‘right type of n*gga’, you’re kind of gonna be ostracized,” they begin. “For somebody, at least like myself and other Black queer punk folk that I was kicking it with at the time, going in those spaces, it’s still love, but you can kind of notice a disconnect. Vice versa, as a Black punk going into white-dominated spaces that are playing punk, hardcore, anything in the alternative genre of music, there’s always the threat of tokenization. There’s the threat of, more than likely, having a racialized experience at some point.”

They note, along with bandmate Wainwright, that there is a sense of community now at alt shows that their predecessors like Death, Bad Brains, or even Soul Glo, worked to create, but the disconnect still exists. In their formative years, they were able to find community in the handful of other Black or brown alternative fans amidst the sea of white counterparts who couldn’t bother to tell them apart.

fera

fera offers a similar perspective in that, “gravitating towards alternative spaces for me has always simultaneously (and unintentionally) meant gravitating towards white spaces.” She felt more welcomed in alternative queer spaces for those aspects of her identity, but isolated as a Black person, which is why connecting with Black peers in alt spaces feels so special. 

We discuss the pressures to conform between spaces, and Wainwright believes that as he’s aged and experienced both environments throughout the years, he’s been able to move away from that pressure. Today, he sees himself and his Black peers expressing themselves authentically through their multitudes. This means keeping their language consistent, and embracing aspects of both cultures they gravitate towards, such as wearing a fitted cap to metal shows, “that’s Black culture! No white kid is getting a new era cap.” 

“I always felt compelled to assimilate into the scene and become what I thought alternative was, but sharing my music and my experiences has shown me that being Black in the scene is an entirely different experience and community in itself,” fera explains to us. “Seeing how

the two worlds can fuse, has been validating to say the least. Being a part of this community has

helped me explore my style more and learn how much influence Black people had on it.”

Her style is both wholly Black and wholly punk, with her precise lip liner and versatility found in her naturally curly, braided, and straight hair styles. In a way, her exploration through personal style mirrors that of Tamar-kali Brown’s experience back in 2003. In Afro-Punk, Brown finds that the styles and adornments associated with punk culture were derivatives of Afroindigenous stylistic practices, further proving the early 2000s cohort’s sentiments of Blackness being inherently punk, and vice versa.

fera feels that being both alt and Black means finding ways to participate in the culture’s beauty and hairstyles that feels authentic to her. “Finding alt Black people to be inspired by on the internet has been really helpful in staying true to my style in ways that are possible and accessible as a Black girl.” She notes how creative and experimental the styles can get, true to form for Black girl beauty practices.

The musicians also discuss how their physical environments contributed to their longing for community. For COLD GAWD, growing up in the Inland Empire meant a lot of creating something out of nothing, because the scenes they desired were nonexistent in an established manner. In this region of Southern California, “DIY” is a constant theme, and for them, that meant relying on friends to host shows in backyards, the second floor of coffee shops, or anywhere available. “The nature of DIY, though, is sort of fleeting, which is unfortunate. There’s something to be said about the proximity to LA,” Wainwright remarks as he breaks down the social landscape for us. “In suburbia, if you don’t subscribe to that way of life, you’re starved for culture. Where are the punk shows at? Growing up, whatever I wanted was not here, so I had to chase it.” He reflects on how similar that experience is now for his own fans, “we played in D.C., and we had people come from Ohio to see us.” 

Much like the young people featured in Spooner’s film, this shared sentiment of needing a creative outlet led COLD GAWD and fera to their own sounds. 

“For me, we needed something to express ourselves. We all had hardcore punk backgrounds, but we are also emotional. It created this [opportunity] to be vulnerable, but aggressive, because we feel a lot of things at once, altogether. I think that’s also what drove us all together, because we found that with each other and that naturally led us here,” offers Aviles. 

Adding to that thought, his bandmates expand on their shoegaze genre of music, where they can be angry and expressive but in the same breath sing sultry love songs, and “talk about how much I love my wife,” as Wainwright says earnestly.  

fera describes the strong influence her punk-loving parents had on her interests: “My dad was a guitarist in a rock band in the ‘90s and early 2000s, and my mom was a tattooed, vegetarian, rockabilly, British rock-enjoyer. Naturally, by middle school I was an avid post-punk fan.”

Burris notes their introduction being SLC Punk! (1998), and then classic Black punk bands, whose morality, ethos, and perspective felt aligned with theirs. “It made so much sense. Who is more punk than Black folk? Who has more reason to have disdain for governing bodies, to believe in things like anarchy? When I found that there was a genre of music that shared a disdain for cops and the criminal justice system, filled with genuine, decent people who want peace,it all clicked.” 

Seated in this perspective, Black alternative music finds itself in the company of every other Black musical genre that aims to contextualize Black sociopolitical life. We continue to draw parallels between seemingly different musical traditions, and identify the ways Black artists have always bridged these gaps sonically, as if it were intrinsic to them. It’s why for some audiences, COLD GAWD mixing Chief Keef and Future samples into their sets might feel confusing, but to Wainwright and peers, it makes all the sense. It’s why AFROPUNK 2019 saw both Jill Scott and Rico Nasty on the lineup, and the fans pressing the barricade for Rico were the same ones pushing to the front for Jill. 

If anything, the legacy of AFROPUNK demonstrates that the Black diasporic tradition of music is and has always been in conversation across genres. 

This strong sense of political values and recognition of connected modes of Black artistic expression aligns with AFROPUNK’s ethos and underscores the importance of the platform and Black alternative communities today. 

Across her social platforms fera often makes it clear that while her music is for everyone, she creates for the alt girls who look like her. “Punk music and culture is heavily driven by the emotions and struggles faced from being or feeling different, alone, and outcasted. Having a space to be supported and understood in such an isolating experience is so important, and keeps the scene (and the people in it) alive.” As for her place in this legacy, “I see myself being one of the many talented artists that inspires young Black creatives to lean into their authenticity in a world that doesn’t necessarily make it easy. Black artists today are adding on to the legacy of the Black artists who made the scene what it is. We not only celebrate those who made it possible, but evolve the ever-changing alternative world and inspire those who will come after us.”

In that same tune, COLD GAWD shares similar sentiments. When asked who they make music for, the answer is straight forward: “for the little n*ggas.” They are embracing the young Black punk kids that are searching for creative outlets as they once did. For Aviles, who comes from an immigrant background with Costa Rican and Salvadoran roots, seeing people in the crowd that can connect to his experience means everything. Seeing that their band is making music for young Black, brown, and largely marginalized youth to feel seen and understood means everything, and still feels utterly surreal.