'You want to know about spaceships?" says the voice on the phone. "Well, one day Bootsy [Collins] and I were in a car. It was 11 in the morning, broad daylight, and we were only a few miles from home. Suddenly a beam of light from a UFO hit us and we couldn't see a thing. It felt like only a few moments later when I got to my house, but my daughter said it was late and she was ready for bed. I'm telling you, time disappeared on that journey. We were taken to a weird place!"
This Saturday, the British Library is hosting a sold-out talk by legendary cosmic funkster George Clinton about his lifelong obsession with space. Few, if any, former hairdressers have gone to as many weird places in weird ways as George Clinton. Born in an outhouse on the fringes of a tiny town in North Carolina, Clinton has been making music for 53 years. His bands Parliament and Funkadelic (before he went solo in 1981) played with rock groups such as MC5 and the Stooges, and both had roots in a particular strand of black consciousness – Afro-futurism – where black music, comic art and independent film met science fiction and technology, creating a uniquely black cosmic identity.
"There is a line that runs through Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis and what Funkadelic did," Clinton says. "We're all looking to the stars. The Dogon from Mali say they've had contact with extraterrestrials from Sirius and I can see that. I truly believe our planet was seeded and now we're getting ready to seed other planets."
In the mid-70s Funkadelic toured with their own mothership, a huge prop (now in the Smithsonian museum) that would appear on album sleeves and from which the band would emerge at live shows. Dressed in costumes that pointed both to the past and the future, Clinton and his Afronauts promised a new form of exodus. The music they created was irresistibly powerful. And ultimately it is still about cosmic salvation.
As Clinton says: "Afro-futurism gives you something to feel positive about. It makes you feel part of something bigger than whatever it is we can see."
