Afro-Punk

Image Entertainment

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MOVIE REVIEW:
In the movie Chasing Amy, a gay black comic-book artist sums up his place in the world by saying, "I got to deal with being a minority in a minority of a minority, and nobody supports my ass." That seems, in part, to be the worldview of some of the passionate black punk-rockers in James Spooner's 2003 documentary Afro-Punk. An examination of what it means to be African American in a music scene dominated by white kids, Spooner's award-winning movie splices together conversations with rockers, zine writers and fans who, it seems, have all shared the experience of being "the only black kid at the show." Spooner uncovers myriad ways expectations about race influence people's dating habits, mindsets and music and doesn't try and sell some mythical common experience. In the same film, you hear one female punk talk about the ways piercing and spiked hair helped her forge a connection with African tribal culture and another talk about how being a punk gets her heckled in her own hood for dressing like a "white bitch." It's a complicated and fascinating subject, especially when you consider, as many interviewees point out, that black artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard invented rock and the pioneering black group Bad Brains is a hardcore legend. Afro-Punk captures all its multi-layered complexity. Most telling is the scene with black singer Moe Mitchell of the band Cipher. After a scene where he's seen rocking out with white fans (who turn out to be oblivious to his lyrics), Mitchell says he's singing songs about slavery, meant for his people.

DVD FEATURES:
For a doc that spawned a film festival in New York and was the subject of relentless buzz in the music press, the DVD release is pretty thin on extras. A standard set of deleted scenes, bonus interviews and live concert footage doesn't expand much on the themes of the already dense film, though there are a few great stories, like Chaka Malik of Orange 9mm describing how a bouncer brought a crowd of white power kids under control during a Pennsylvania show. It's surprising there's no mini-doc chronicling the history of black bands in rock and punk, or interviews with some of the pioneering bands mentioned in the footage. This film has gone a long way in forming a community of black punk-rockers. A more in-depth history lesson would make it all the more effective.

By Patrick Sisson