Afrofuturist hip-hop in Oakland? Yes, yes, y’all. The cosmology of beats and rhymes and cyclic reality of cipher sessions has manifested through the Town Futurist Sessions, a monthly party at the Legionnaire which envisions avant-garde, often improvised, live hip-hop throwdown as ritual space:  a place where the sacred and the spiritual meet experimental electronic rhythms.

At the first Town Futurist Sessions in March, emcee Sunru Carter,  producer Korise “Big Tunes” Jubert and sound engineer Dejah Fortune (aka Frequeasy Collective) presided over an impressive bill of experimental hip-hoppers, singers, and instrumentalists, including Kev Choice, Antique, Aima the Dreamer, Cole, Dakini Star, Davu, Uriah Duffy – even a burlesque dancer. It was, Carter says, a “frequeasy” vibe which covered “innerground” territory.

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“You didn’t know exactly what was going to happen that night,” Carter recalls, adding, “We just opened that sh*t up and it was straight up magic. It was just seamless beats with every different vocalist that touched it … half the people I haven’t even seen in my life… but they were flowin’!”

Everyone inside the venue, he continues, seemed “directly connected to the room.  That’s that old magic. Where you just conjure something that’s beyond [you]. You create that place for everybody to get healed.”

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The next day, he says, it was clear that something religious had happened. “People said they felt healed. They felt moved in themselves. So that’s church, when you can move people. When they feel moved, and they feel elevated and evolved, you’re not just doing a show anymore, you’re creating a container to evolve.” In that moment, he says, the Legionnaire’s upstairs room became “ritual space, where identity is lost and we tap into our ancestral currents.”

 

A flurry of back-and-forth messaging was exchanged through social media; video clips and photos began to circulate. Carter and Jubert realized they had something special, and quickly assembled a Facebook page and began making plans to document future Sessions, and spread the Town Futurist concept through networking with like-minded individuals all over the world.”There’s a futurist in every town,” says Carter, a snazzy, flamboyant dresser known for making his own outfits which blend the tribalism of the African diaspora with b-boy flair and metaphysical touches.

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An entirely different group of artists came out for the second Futurist event on April 2nd. These included Holly Saucy, Orko Elohim, the Genie, Ras Ceylon, Fantastic Negrito, Hunny Tinted, Syar Dali, Ka Ra Kirsey, Future Perfekt, the Town Futurist house band and Carter’s rock band, the Last Dragons. Visuals were provided by Deadeyes, Sage Stargate, Safety First, and Smithstonian in addition to a photostream of artist images from the first event on the wall.

The sense of mystery, of leaving expectations at the door, was just as prominent. Dynamic vocalist Kimiko Joy made two separate appearances, one during a long freestyle session — which also saw Legionnaire proprietor (and former “full time b-boy”) Prozack Turner rip the mic raw – and later with Future Perfekt. Ceylon’s revolutionary-minded flows were also on point, while Fantastic Negrito, accompanying himself on piano, evoked the “Voodoo Soul” of a New Orleans dive bar. Big Tunes’ tunes – all original beats and remixes – kept a mostly midtempo pace, while a sweat-drenched Carter stripped down to his tattooed, bare chest as he clawed his way through “Russian Roulette,” a garage-y, apocalyptic rave-up which sounds like the progeny of The Stooges, Bad Brains, and K-Rob & Rammellzee.

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Who are the Town Futurists? you might ask. According to Carter, they are “the ones who have come from the ancient future to save the world. Or directly affect the reality with their art. Or with their expression. So it’s the ones who are here now, who tap into the lineage of art, of culture.”

A Town Futurist session, he adds, “thrives off of collective energy, it thrives off of the alignment of the stars. Every alignment of the stars reveals a different aspect of the story. Every star that enters the cipher brings another element of the story.  Anybody that shows up, no matter if you’re on the bill or not, it’s all about the energy that’s in the room.”

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The Frequeasy Collective aren’t new to this – Carter was previously a mainstay of The Grow Sessions, a solar-powered organic hip-hop party which happened on the (since-shrunken) expanded First Friday footprint South of W Grand. He’s been repping the futurist vibe for years; on 2010’s “Big Cities,” he raps, “rise to the occasion/ yes we’re facing a total situation/ and we can’t even change the station.” Jubert, meanwhile, started off back in the 90s as a member of Boogie Shack, which branched out from throwing after hours house parties into artist production, before becoming a co-founder of the Towntroniks collective, known for making Afrofuturist EDM with a Bay Area flavor.

 

If all goes well,  the Town Futurist Sessions could manifest in other cities (much like “Motown on Mondays”), becoming what Carter calls an “innerground railroad,” allowing artists to freely network with each other. Carter and Joubert say they’ve received favorable responses from Los Angeles and as far away as Japan, though neither have plans to abandon the Bay Area. But in order to make that future a reality here and elsewhere, he says, “We have to create our own buzz.” 

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​by Eric K. Arnold oakulture.com

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