Afro House is a company of professional artists in Baltimore “committed to the development of a music culture that is disruptive, exuberant, innovative, emergent, and transformative”. Founded by husband and wife team Scott and Alisha Patterson, Afro House has been growing in popularity and receiving much recognition throughout the Baltimore art and music scene as a result of their current work-in-progress, an Afrofuturistic opera-ballet called Cloud Nebula. They now have an animated short, Sun Saw Her Face, premiering in this year’s virtual Sweaty Eyeballs Animated Festival taking place in Baltimore. We sat down with Scott and Alisha to talk more about their new animated short, producing an epic sci-fi trilogy and their choice to shift from theatrical to film production.
Scott and Alisha Patterson, creators of Afro House.
First, Congratulations on having your music featured in the Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival!
SCOTT & ALISHA: Thank you!
Why did you choose to have your song “Sun Saw Her Face” produced as an animation?
SCOTT: “Sun Saw Her Face” is actually one of my favorite songs from our sci-fi tone poem, Ebon Kojo: The Last Tribe. I always wanted to see the imagery in the song actualized. So, when the opportunity to work with the Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival came again, I quickly threw this song into the ring.
How did you build a relationship with Towson University and their students to produce this animation?
ALISHA: Phil Davis, Founder and Creative Director of the Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival, reached out to Afro House with a fantastic idea – animators create an animated music video for an already recorded piece of music by a local band/musician. We instantly loved the idea and said yes! Phil is also an Associate Professor of Digital Arts & Design at Towson University. He led his students in the creation of the animated video for “Sun Saw Her Face”. Early in the development process, Scott met with the students virtually to talk about the inspiration and meaning behind the song, as well as answer their questions. He was also able to check-out their preliminary ideas for the animation.
Still from Sun Saw Her Face.
You had another song featured in Sweaty Eyeballs previously. What other works have you produced as an animation? Was it connected to this piece?
SCOTT: Last year, I composed for the film Early Abstractions by Harry Smith for the Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival. It was my first composition for animation and I really enjoyed the process of composing for an animated film. Later in the year, I incorporated the music into the theatrical production of Cloud Nebula.
You’ve been working on the Afrofuturistic opera-ballet Cloud Nebula, which is also a trilogy, for some time now. And recently, Scott became a Saul Zaentz fellow and you announced that you would be turning Cloud Nebula into a film. Why the shift from a theatrical production to a film production?
SCOTT: The more my collaborators and I worked on the story and the world-building of Cloud Nebula, the more we began to realize that we have a deep desire to visually capture the vastness of Cloud Nebula in a way that only film can do.
Will your film be live action or animation? Or do you intend to have both?
SCOTT: This film will be live action. However, our goal is to create a new visual experience for sci-fi and Afrofuturism, so we are exploring various film styles that will complement the live action.
Will the storyline for the film stay true to the original theatrical productions of Cloud Nebula? Or has the work itself changed/evolved over the last couple of years?
SCOTT: Overall, the story and the work have evolved considerably. Moving Cloud Nebula to film has opened our minds to numerous possibilities that we are now hungrily diving into.
Image from a performance of Cloud Nebula.
Do you intend to complete the trilogy as a film? Or will each part of the trilogy be produced in different and various ways?
SCOTT: Yes! We absolutely intend to complete the trilogy as film. We also see the storyline as an episodic series on a streaming platform and a graphic novel.
Will you be turning parts of it into a film and other parts into a series and graphic novel?
SCOTT: While there will be three feature length films, characters, situations, etc. from the films will be developed into episodic series, graphic novels, etc.
Cloud Nebula was at one point called Afropunk, but you were served a cease and desist due to trademark. I remember having conversations with you Alisha and seeing posts on Afrohouse’s wall discussing social movements and who truly “owned” them or had a right to trademark the names of those movements. How has that experience and the challenges that came with it impacted your organization and the ways in which you approach your work moving forward?
ALISHA: In 2019, we received a cease and desist letter from AFROPUNK. At that time, our sci-fi, Afrofuturistic opera-ballet was called Afro Punk Ballet. The cease and desist letter informed us that “Afro Punk” is trademarked and therefore, the name belongs to AFROPUNK. While we did change the name, temporarily calling it the Cease & Desist Ballet before landing on Cloud Nebula, we were both baffled and hurt by AFROPUNK’s decision to issue the letter. To us, Afro Punk, like Afro House, is a genre of music that belongs to everyone. At the time, we would have welcomed a conversation with AFROPUNK, and we would still welcome a conversation about how to further expand upon the Afro Punk ethos in a collaborative manner.
Image from a performance of Cloud Nebula.
Your work with Afro House has been receiving a lot of awards and recognition over the last couple of years. Most notably, Scott was awarded the Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize through the Baker Artist Award in May of 2019, which is kind of a big deal. Has that recognition changed the way you approach and achieve your mission at all? How has it informed your work and its production?
SCOTT: It was indeed an honor to receive the Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize last year. The award opened many doors for us that may have otherwise been harder to access. The award itself hasn’t changed our approach in achieving our mission, but it has given us the breathing room needed to focus, organize, and calmly continue to build Afro House.
Aside from producing films, what’s next for Afro House?
ALISHA: Afro House is doing everything it can to see itself on the other side of this pandemic.
Afro House’s animated film Sun Saw Her Face premieres on Friday, October 23 at 7:30 PM as part of the Sweaty Eyeballs Animated Festival’s opening night Animated Music panel. For more information, go to the Sweaty Eyeballs Animated Festival website.
For more information on Afro House and their work, visit their website.