When James Spooner started working on his documentary Afro-Punk: The “Rock n Roll Nigger” Experience two and a half years ago, he was motivated by his own experiences of alienation. The filmmaker–who’d been in bands, put out zines, and started a label, Kidney Room Records–“basically wanted to tell my life story through the mouths of as many other people as I could find,” he says. But by the time he finished he seemed well on his way to helping mitigate that alienation for many. Made on a shoestring budget with credit cards and funds from benefit shows played by friends’ bands, Spooner’s 75-minute film traces the stories of four black punk rockers as they make their way through the labyrinths of ethnic identity, subculture, stereotype, and individual passion. Interspersed with their stories are interviews with about 80 other black punks from all over the country.
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Spooner, who “found punk” in Apple Valley, California, and moved to New York at age 13 (he’s 27 now), says he thought getting black punks to talk about their lives might be hard to do. “Race is a difficult subject to speak on,” he says. But as he started looking for interview subjects–through “blind e-mails to punk sites, record labels, anything punk-related”–word of his project spread and names flowed in.
“Rachel came into [the scene] through riot grrl, in the early 90s,” says Locks. “I started around…oh, 1982 or so. There were lots of black people in the D.C. music scene. Lots of [black] people in bands, and also punk bands would play shows with go-go bands, reggae bands….In D.C. the shows had to be in affordable halls, and a lot of those were in black neighborhoods. So all the underground scenes were mixed together, and I didn’t really feel alienated. In the early 90s things had become more stratified. I think the scene became more Caucasian, and the bands became more strictly rock oriented. The collaboration with other ethnicities kind of dried up.”
Afro-Punk: The “Rock n Roll Nigger” Experience will be screened Sunday, August 10, at 5:30 and Thursday, August 14, at 8:15 as part of the ninth annual Black Harvest International Festival of Film and Video at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State. Tickets are $8. Call 312-846-2600 or see Movies for more information.
