Playlist: Dig it! Jon Daniel’s Afro Supa Hero Soundtrack
Who wants to get funked up? To celebrate his Afro Supa Hero exhibition, currently on display at the International Slavery Museum, we asked designer Jon Daniel to make us the perfect soundtrack…
In a recent TDN interview, our writer James West asked graphic designer and art director Jon Daniel if Afro Supa Hero — his current exhibition at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool – had a soundtrack. His answer? “No, although if it did it would be P-funk, no doubt about it.”
A heartfelt and biographical journey through pop cultural heroes and heroines of the Black diaspora, and a loving nod to the often neglected history of black comic books and superheroes, Afro Supa Hero name-checks some of the best known musicians from the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s. As Daniel explained: “Like most people, my first real collection was music; when I was 14/15 I got into P-Funk [funk music associated with George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic collective], and that superseded everything. I got into buying all of the different vinyl: Parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, you name it.”
The exhibition, which you can see until December, not only acts as a kind of snapshot of Daniel’s personal history, but as a summary of that time. “That was really what the ’70s was about”, Daniel says; “this explosion of culture that people found universally cool. Even though it’s politicised and has a racial dynamic through Blaxploitation and the rest of it, the one thing you can’t get away from is the coolness.”
So when we asked Daniel if he would actually make a super cool Afro Supa Hero Soundtrack for us, we were thrilled when answered: hell yeah! And consequently spent a “mad fun” day putting it together. “I think you’ll dig it!”
So what have we got? ”The soundtrack”, he explains, “is bookended by my brothas [pictured]. Not ALL P-FUNK, but all 1970s. All African diaspora. And all seriously supa cool.” First up, The Last Poets: When The Revolution Comes (1970), which is “the year my younger brother Damian was born”; and last, Earth, Wind & Fire: September (1978), because “21st September is the birth date of my older brother Tony, my first Afro Supa Hero”.
So all’s that’s left to say is put your Out of Office on, reach for your sunglasses, and get funked up to Jon Daniel’s Afro Supa Hero Soundtrack. Thank you Jon.
Laura Robertson
Read “The real heroes have not been celebrated” — The Big Interview: Jon Daniel, Afro Supa Hero
See Afro Supa Hero at the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, 13 May to 11 December 2016 – FREE
Follow the show on Twitter @SlaveryMuseum #afrosupahero
