Reflections on Afrika Bambaataa’s Universal Zulu Nation: horizons, hip hop, and hybridity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using Hans-Georg Gadamer’s famous discourse on horizons and modern postcolonial theories on black religious pluralism, this article examines Afrika Bambaataa, along with the organization he founded, the Universal Zulu Nation. The emphasis of the analysis is on his overcoming of material borderlands, interventions in cultural knowing, and forming of hybrid identities with reference to the vitality of religion. This methodology not only intimates pragmatic epistemologies that elucidate transmissions of knowledge and ethics across geographic landscapes but also fosters a more general framework of social analysis regarding shared human heritages. An evaluation of how Zulu horizons operate between local communities and global cultures demonstrates how interreligious dialogue and polyethnic belongings that extend across transnational spiritualties and societies signify ways of transgressing difference and sameness within ideological systems. After a discussion of cultural hermeneutics as a mode of interpreting the histories of ontology and Otherness to obtain a basis for understanding peripheral societies and faiths, the article then investigates how the Zulu Nation belongs to an Afrocentric pluralist tradition within those constellations of ideas and ideals, before the conclusion focuses on the way recent allegations of Bambaataa’s sexual assault affect his legacy of social consciousness for scholars of contemporary religion.