FUPU (FUCK U PAY US)
FUPU is the white male patriarchy’s reckoning. It’s dressed in an all-Black, femme & them punk band, but it’s the war for reparations incarnate. FUPU does not represent the same ol’ coy request for equality, it’s a declarative statement: we have BEEN understanding and humble to the point of detriment, so new rules - FUCK U PAY US and SUCK MY NAPPY BLACK PUSSY.FUPU is an acronym for the aforementioned demand for compensation and it consists of vocals, guitar, bass, and drums. It formed first in the imagination of THE UHURUVERSE (vocals/guitar) who loves punk music but never heard it expressed through a Black Woman. In fact, The Uhuruverse first picked up the guitar to start playing with FUPU--before that, she had dreams of becoming what she calls “Prince Hendrix”, a legendary hybrid which needs no introduction.The Uhuruverse met the band’s lead vocalist, Jasmine Nyende, while she was singing “Violet” by Hole for karaoke. She was so impressed she asked the No Sesso model to join an all-black woman punk band she was starting called FUPM (Fuck U Pay Me). The name was soon changed to FUPU, because: 1.) Jasmine liked the ties to the hip-hop clothing line FUBU, and 2.) A band is more than one person!The Uhuruverse found the original FUPU bassist and drummer via friendly recommendation and Facebook. When all the elements were in play the band started rehearsals. They posted a video of a rehearsal and it went viral—over forty thousand views—before Facebook stopped counting, and shortly after internet stardom, the band played their first show: FEMMES TO THE FRONT, at The Forest in Long Beach, CA. They used a substitute drummer that night because their official drummer was in jail, and after that show the bassist—who couldn’t handle the band’s rapidly budding success OR the responsibility of its free, black message—quit.While the stars were shifting her out of the way, AYOTUNDE OSAREME was dreaming about being at an “Afropunk industrial goth event.” When she woke up, she had a Facebook message from The Uhuruverse asking if she wanted to be in an Afropunk, goth band. FUPU started rehearsals again but their drummer, though released from jail wasn’t showing up so the band drew up contracts for accountability. Once the clause was broken, so were ties to the drummer who made way for TIANNA NICOLE—a seasoned drummer who was moving close by. When The Uhuruverse contacted Tianna, she’d already heard of the band, loved it, and agreed to make it a priority. Thus, FUPU was re-born and the players in place.
MEMBERS: Jasmine Nyende, Arielle Bapiste, Uhuru Moore, Sunny War
JASMINE NYENDE — lead vocalist, artist from South Central Los Angeles. Her focus is writing, textile production, weaving and herbalism. Through fiber based textiles, music, performance and writing, she hold care as a time for the body to feel supported within community, in rage in motion and with each other. Black Femmes deserve reparations for the stealing of indigenous, african and culturally feminized cultures stripped away with the american assimilation project. She returns our practices through weaving workshops in her studio and the music of FUCK U PAY US.
IG: @standardized_sext
ARIELLE BAPISTE — drummer, a music producer and incredible musician bringing electric rhythm to punk music.
IG: @bapari
THE UHURUVERSE — who started playing guitar Summer 2016 when FUPU formed, believes music is in everything and makes up the entire Universe. Her priority is sustaining and prospering #SNATCHPOWER—a safe space for all of the oppressed.The Uhuruverse is a Los Angeles-based PROTEST ARTIST who uses multiple mediums and performance styles to speak against oppression and demand and encourage liberation.
As a musician, The Uhuruverse can be best described as experimental. Best known as the electric guitarist for the band Fuck U Pay Us (a four piece Black femme/them punk band demanding land reparations for the African Holocaust and free self defense training for femmes), the Uhuruvese also raps and sings. The artist enjoys exploring other genres including but not limited to: Hip Hop, Punk, Funk, Disco, Vogue, Blues, Jazz, and New Jack Swing.
The Uhuruverse spliced together their own, original dance style that combines Burlesque and Butoh. The dancer uses burlesque and nudity in protest for womxn’s sexual liberation and gender nonconformity. Butoh’s founder created the dance to mourn Japanese deaths in World War II. The Uhuruverse performs the “dance of death” to honor those slain during the African Holocaust.
The Uhuruverse performs drag and invokes interactive art and improvisation in their live performances. The Uhuruverse is a producer and curator of live shows that include mixed media and live performers. In 2016, The Uhuruverse directed the psychedelic film noir, “FIGHT IN HEELS”, a collaboration with the #SNATCHPOWER artist collective & also founded #SNATCHPOWER in 2014.
Common Themes in The Uhuruverse’s Work:
● nature
● LGBTQIA/Black/poor/disabled inclusivity
● afrofuturism
● lolita/kawaii fashion
● recycling
● anti-capitalism
● minimalism
“I will make protest art until humanity is free and balanced. Eventually I’ll expand my art until I no longer exist and all that is left is a free universe. THE UHURUVERSE.” -The Uhuruverse
IG: @Uhuruverse
SUNNY WAR — Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter and guitarist Sunny War (née Sydney Lyndella Ward) was born to a single mom in Nashville. She had what's she's described as a nomadic childhood, moving around from Michigan, Colorado, and living on the streets of San Francisco. Now in her mid-20s, War settled down in Los Angeles as a teenager, and became known for her street playing in Venice Beach.
War is a fantastic guitar player. She learned her plucking style by playing "Blackbird" by The Beatles, and by falling in love with the blues. "I feellike I am a blues guitarist, but I don't think I'm a blues artist," she says. "I only use the scales and techniques that I know, and the only time I was trained in music was on blues guitar. I really love Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt," says War.
Citing influences as diverse as Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Tracy Chapman, Joan Armatrading and Black Flag, the songs on War's forthcoming album, With The Sun, evoke a wondrous, breathless beauty and are filled with hypnotic, acoustic calm. Her songs are exemplified by her tender voice, her unique style of guitar playing and her ability to touch the listener's heart with her lyrics. On her 2015 full length, Worthless, War aimed squarely in the blues-folk genre. On her forthcoming release, she maintains elements of blues and folk, but has matured into a more traditional singer-songwriter style.
IG: @sunnywar
FUPU has now been featured on AFROPUNK.com, VOGUE Italia, Dazed & Confused Magazine, LA Weekly, and LA Times for their radical and overdue message of “reparations or bust.” And it’s very nice that you like the band,
but: FUCK U, PAY US!
Michelle Cruz Gonzales
Michelle Cruz Gonzales holds a BA and MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College, where she minored in Ethnic Studies. With a focus on Dystopian and Ethnic literature, Gonzales, teaches English and Creative Writing at Las Positas Community College in Livermore, California, where she has had tenure since 2008. As a community college instructor, Gonzales’ primary focus is the practice of teaching and mentoring youth, and she teaches in and coordinates the Puente Program, a learning community that focuses on increasing transfer for Latinx students. She is also involved in Umoja, a learning community that focuses on the same for African American students. Additionally, Gonzales lead her college to stop using standardized testing as the primary form of placement into Math and English courses, a practice that disproportionately misplaced students of color and low-income students into lower level classes that they did not need.
In the 1990s, Gonzales was a member of three all women punk bands, Bitch Fight, Kamala and the Karnivores, and Spitboy. Never interested in playing music with men, Gonzales, primarily a drummer and lyricist, toured nationally and internationally with Spitboy whose lyrics focused on women and gender issues. In 2016, Gonzales published The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band, about her experiences as the only person of color in Spitboy and what it was like being a person of color in the predominately white Bay Area punk scene. Gonzales and Spitboy are featured in the 2017 documentary, Turn it Around: Story of East Bay Punk.
Gonzales who writes about the intersections of race, class, and gender has published writing in anthologies, literary journals, and more recently Latino Rebels, Fierce by Mitú, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Gonzales is currently at work on a dystopian satire novel about forced intermarriage between whites and Mexicanos for the purpose of creating a race of beautiful, intelligent, hardworking people.
Raquel Gutiérrez
Raquel Gutiérrez is a writer of personal essays, memoir, art criticism, and poetry. An adult child of Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants, she was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona where she is a semester away from completing an MFA in Poetry and Non-Fiction from the University of Arizona. Raquel is a 2017 recipient of the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. She also runs the tiny press, Econo Textual Objects(est. 2014), which publishes intimate works by QTPOC poets. Her poetry and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Open Space, The New Inquiry, Zocaló Public Square, Entropy, FENCE, Huizache, and are forthcoming in Río Grande Review, The VOLTA and Hayden’s Ferry Review. Raquel is currently working on two manuscripts, a work of poetry and a collection of essays.Follow Raquel on Twitter (@raquefella)
