The Ethiopian-American hip-hop group CopperWire's science fiction themed album EARTHBOUND is released today. That's quite a lot to squeeze into one sentence but that's because this album is so many things at once. I once wrote an essay titled Is Africa Ready for Science Fiction? Since then, several African science fiction narratives have slowly emerged. Now in the musical arena, the pioneering continues.
CopperWire is a collaboration of Gabriel Teodros, Meklit and Burntface; all three are Ethiopian American artists with internationally distributed albums and years of social and cultural activism work. And all three love science fiction. According to the album description, "They named their collaboration CopperWire and chose outer space as their vantage point, stepped off the surface of the planet and claimed extraterrestrial roots to better make sense of our world." Cool.
How did I get involved? One day, Gabriel reached out to me. He'd been reading Who Fears Death as they recorded EARTHBOUND in the studio. He said he was digging the novel and wanted me to write the creative bios for the album. I listened to it and immediately was like, "Hell yeah!" I not only wrote the bios but I was utterly addicted to the album from that point on (and still am). It's phenomenal and I'm very proud to be an honorary member of CopperWire.
 |
| Read the full bios here |
Now EARTHBOUND has officially landed on earth. Purchase the album here.
 |
| Album CD. Isn't it pretty?! |
In celebration of the album's arrival, here is the video premiere of the single "Phone Home" (which includes footage from space, a 17th century castle in Ethiopia and the first Hip-Hop shows to ever happen in Gondar and Harar). Click here to view video (for some reason that I don't have time to figure out, this site won't let me embed the video directly here).
Comments