Space Fantasy: Nagaoka Shusei’s Contributions to Afrofuturist Visual Culture


DATE
Wednesday February 26, 2025
TIME
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

JAPAN STUDIES LUNCHTIME SPEAKERS SERIES, 2024-2025

The foundations of Afrofuturism lie in the efforts and aspirations of African, African American, and other African diasporic actors. And yet in the realm of African American popular music there was a special window in time when a diasporic Japanese illustrator based in Los Angeles, California—Nagaoka Shusei (1936-2015)—worked to create some of the most iconic and well-loved album covers in the Afrofuturist pantheon. This talk examines in detail his contributions to such Afrofuturist visual culture, primarily through the lens of his album cover work with the African American super group Earth, Wind & Fire. Organized around the images of space and fantasy (including the Japanese renaming of the classic EWF track “Fantasy” as “Space Fantasy”), it is a story of Japanese and African American synergies, sympathies, and respect.

Co-sponsored by UBC’s Music Colloquium Series, African Studies, and the Asian Library.

This talk is free and open to the public. No registration is required.

Date & Time:
Wednesday, February 26, 2025 | 12:30pm – 2:00pm (PST)

Location:
Asian Centre Auditorium, 1871 West Mall, Vancouver

Speaker

Nathan Hesselink is Professor of Global Musicology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of P’ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance (University of Chicago, 2006, winner of the 2008 Lee Hye-Gu Award by the Korean Musicological Society), SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture (University of Chicago, 2012), and Finding the Beat: Entrainment, Rhythmic Play, and Social Meaning in Rock Music (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023).

Related Exhibit

The Asian Library exhibit Space Fantasy: Nagaoka Shusei’s Contributions to Afrofuturist Visual Culture showcases the visionary universe of the diasporic Japanese illustrator Nagaoka Shusei through album covers, interviews, artworks, and books highlighting his legacy in Japan. This exhibit, which notably includes the first known example of Afrofuturistic artwork attributed to Nagaoka, will run from mid-February to late April in the Asian Library Upper Level. The exhibit will include a self-paced guide to what’s on display.

On Wednesday, February 26, 2025, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. the library will also stream music from the albums on display.



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