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PURCHASE “Why LaBelle Matters” by Adele Bertei NOW on Amazon, University of Texas Press, or your local independent bookstore!
Performing as the Bluebelles in the 1960s, Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash wore bouffant wigs and chiffon dresses, and they harmonized vocals like many other girl groups of the era. After a decade on the Chitlin Circuit, however, they were ready to write their own material, change their name, and deliver--as Labelle--an electrifyingly celestial sound and styling that reached a crescendo with a legendary performance at the Metropolitan Opera House to celebrate the release of Nightbirds and its most well-known track, "Lady Marmalade."
In Why Labelle Matters, Adele Bertei tells the story of the group that sang the opening aria of Afrofuturism and proclaimed a new theology of musical liberation for women, people of color, and LGBTQ people across the globe. With sumptuous and galactic costumes, genre-bending lyrics, and stratospheric vocals, Labelle's out-of-this-world performances changed the course of pop music and made them the first Black group to grace the cover of Rolling Stone. Why Labelle Matters, informed by interviews with members of the group as well as Bertei's own experience as a groundbreaking musician, is the first cultural assessment of this transformative act.
My definition of Afrofuturism is that it is, and is not, speculative fiction. It is born out of historical fact that imagines the future in the present. Afrofuturism was coined by cultural critic Mark Dery and alchemized by the artist/musician Sun Ra, the original musical genius and Afrofuturism proponent. Sun Ra’s words and sounds animate musical frequencies and vibrations which manifest in the symbolic dress, ritualized acts, prayers and repeated incantations (i.e. “Space Is the Place”), musical explorations and compositions, trance, dance, expressions of inner and outer rhythms, timeless space, is of now and not now. All his physical and nonphysical expressions are key tenants of the idea of Afrofuturism.
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