underwater
Drexciya
Electronic music duo from Detroit, consisting of James Stinson and Gerald Donald.
Part of the Underground Resistance production.
With albums such as Deep Sea Dweller (1992), Drexciya 2: Bubble Metropolis (1993), Drexciya 4: The Unknown Aquazone (1994), The Quest (1997) and Neptune's Lair (1999), the Myth of the Drexciyans is a central element of their electronic music.
Techno/house music is the ground of black music technology in the 80s and 90s (especially in Detroit).
WHY DREXCIYA TOOK DETROIT ELECTRO UNDERWATER
An introduction to the Detroit electro music duo and the mythology of Drexciya:
Parliament and Drexciya
P-Funk mythology was based on a Black Atlantis, or a place where one can "dance underwater without getting wet" (from Deep). In this song, the citizens of Atlantis raise their home out of the sea. They sing, “We need to raise Atlantis from the bottom of the sea, dancing til we bring it to the top.”
The Quest (1997)
Inner sleeve liner notes with a map that illustrates Drexciya's origin mythology and is divided into four stages:
1. The Slave Trade
2. Migration Route of Rural Blacks to Northern Cities
3. Techno Leaves Detroit, Spreads Worldwide
4. The Journey Home (Future)
Sound (in this case electronic music) as a vehicle for self-determination.
Journey to Drexciya
Tracks on the album Drexciya 2: Bubble Metropolis can be read as a journey into the underwater world: The record begins with ‘Aqua Worm Hole’, then we arrive at ‘Positron Island’, ‘Bubble Metropolis’, ‘Danger Bay’ and, finally, we are welcomed to the sonic world of Drexciya itself.
Listen to the intro of "Bubble Metropolis" :
Paul Gilroy and the Black Atlantic
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1992)
Drexciya's project evokes Gilroy's image of a ship - a living microcultural, micropolitical system in motion - that was later replaced by Parliament-Funkadelic's metaphysical mothership.
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Transatlantic slave trade laid the foundation for modern capitalism.
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The Atlantic as a fluid space that connected Western Africa, Europe, the Caribbean islands, North and South America.
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The ship as a vehicle for cultural exchange and commodity exchange.
The Ocean as Multidimensional Element:
Ocean as the realm where the life of Middle Passage survivors continues, and where the African Diaspora is united in rhythm and music.
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Space of alternative worlds and realities
Ocean in the electro music:
Their sound combined funk and futurism and imitates the movement of waves so that their music flows freely like the water referred to in their tracks.
Listen for example "Neon Falls" from their album The Quest 1997:
Drexciyan Myth
Drexciya's Influence other Artists
Lamin Fofana, an artist from Sierra Leona, releases "Other World" (2015), including a song called Lampedusa. This refers to the several hundred African migrants who died in route to Lampedusa (in South of Italy) between 2013 and 2015.
The Book of Drexciya (2020)
Graphic novel based on the Afrofuturist works of the electro duo Drexciya.
Developed by Detroit-based visual artist Abdul Qadim Haqq and Japanese screenwriter Dai Sato. Vol. 1 covers the first five vivid chapters of this powerful mythology.
The myth of Drexciya was invented by the electronic duo of the same name. It represents an underwater country, populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women, who, thrown off of slave ships during the Middle Passage, had adapted to breathing underwater.
Emergence of a new (superior) species (underwater hybrids: "wave jumpers", "deep sea dwellers")
Drexciya reimagined the cultural and geographical development of the new generations of Afro-Americans and descendants from African slaves.
Learning to adapt to underwater life, the deep-sea dwelling
Drexciyans, as the allegorical ancestors of Africans in the Americas, provide a model that privileges cultural hybridity.
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Creation of a new aquatic organism and new life in an unknown space, superior to all other species on Earth.
In the post-colonial context, hybridity refers to the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization.
New forms of culture and cultural identity emerge in this contradictory and ambivalent space (Bhabha).
Hybridity
Homi Bhabha: The Sonic Third Space
Drexciya is what post-colonial scholar H. Bhabha would refer to as the third space of enunciation or expression in which cultural systems are constructed.
"The transnational dimension of cultural transformation – migration, diaspora, displacement, relocation – makes the process of cultural translation a complex form of signification"
-Bhabha
The Drexciyan world represents a space between the ocean and island worlds and reinforces the notion of a utopian or even heterotopian space.
"The non-synchronous temporality of global and national cultures opens up a cultural space -- a third space--where the negotiation of incommensurable differences creates a tension peculiar to borderline existences."
-Bhabha.
The material on this page was compiled, created, and arranged by Monika Ciemiega and Serena Nicolaci.
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