»Some artists make records. Others build worlds.«
Since 40 Acres N Sum Mula, JuJu Rogers has developed a body of work that resists easy categorisation. The music may draw from a wide range of traditions and genres, yet those frameworks alone are too small to contain the broader cultural, historical and spiritual conversations unfolding within it. Across music, visual language and cultural practice, JuJu has developed an artistic vocabulary rooted in cultural continuity, radical thought and self-determination; one that understands identity and art not as fixed categories, but as living processes shaped through history, memory and lived experience.
Rooted in New Orleans, based in Berlin and moving within a wider Black Atlantic continuum, his work occupies a space where inheritance and reinvention remain in constant dialogue. Across 40 Acres N Sum Mula, Buffalo Soldier Tape and now Pink Guitars, Spaceships N Voodoo Dolls, certain ideas refuse to disappear. Mardi Gras Indian traditions. Rastafari consciousness. Black Atlantic spiritual traditions. Afrofuturist thought. They surface again and again, not as references or aesthetic gestures, but as recurring coordinates within a larger cultural map.
What makes JuJu’s work compelling is the way it approaches culture as a living practice. Memory, spirituality, resistance and imagination move through the work as interconnected forces, linking past and future without collapsing either into nostalgia or abstraction. Rather than treating art as a space of representation alone, his work approaches it as a site of self-determination: a place where alternative ways of understanding, organising and inhabiting the world can be explored and made visible.
There is a lineage of Black artists who approached art in much the same way. From the architects of Black Classical Music to the visionaries of Afrofuturism, from New Orleans cultural traditions to Rastafari thought, their work was never solely concerned with expression. It functioned as memory, transmission, resistance and possibility all at once. What united these traditions was not genre, style or aesthetics, but a refusal to accept the world as given. Art became a means of articulating realities that exceeded the limitations of the present and of making visible futures that dominant culture often struggled to imagine. JuJu Rogers belongs to that conversation.
My relationship to that conversation is also personal. As the designer behind the visual worlds of 40 Acres N Sum Mula and Buffalo Soldier Tape, I had the privilege of contributing to projects that profoundly shaped my own understanding of authorship, artistic autonomy and cultural expression. What began as collaboration evolved into an ongoing dialogue about history, spirituality, identity and the ways culture moves across time.
These exchanges did not simply influence my practice as an artist; they fundamentally reshaped how I think about cultural production, self-determination and the possibilities that emerge when inherited assumptions are questioned. That dialogue continues with Pink Guitars, Spaceships N Voodoo Dolls.
Opening the album with Sun Ra, the project immediately situates itself within a tradition of Black radical thought. Yet its ambitions extend far beyond homage. Psychedelic guitars, Punk urgency, Black Classical Music, Soul, Funk, Hip-Hop and spiritual traditions of the African diaspora move freely across its landscape, forming what JuJu describes as Afrophunk.
Much of the album’s sonic character is shaped through the longstanding collaboration between JuJu Rogers and producer Dhanya Langer, whose production has become a defining thread across his last three records. The record also brings together an expansive cast of producers, musicians and featured artists whose contributions help push its sound in unexpected directions, including Raga The Son, Zino Mikorey, Silvan Strauss, Jamila Woods and Pink Siifu, to name just a few.
More than a sonic or aesthetic framework, Afrophunk becomes a method of questioning inherited assumptions and imposed limitations. It proposes identity not as something fixed, inherited or performed, but as something continually shaped through history, memory, place, struggle and self-determination. In doing so, it opens space for alternative ways of imagining and practicing life beyond the boundaries of the present.
At a moment when culture is increasingly flattened into content and complexity is often sacrificed for visibility, Pink Guitars, Spaceships N Voodoo Dolls insists on something else. Multiplicity. Contradiction. Depth. The freedom to exist beyond imposed limitations. This commitment extends beyond the music itself.
Alongside the album, JuJu continues to expand the broader framework surrounding his work through Counterkultur, an independent platform dedicated to creating space for artistic autonomy, experimentation and self-determination.
For Heavy Feelings, we sat down to discuss Afrophunk, New Orleans, Black Classical Music, Afrofuturism, cultural inheritance, artistic autonomy and the ongoing challenge of carrying culture forward while creating the conditions for different futures to emerge.
»The sky is a sea of darkness. When there is no sun.«
Pink Guitars, Spaceships N Voodoo Dolls opens with a Sun Ra sample: "The sky is a sea of darkness when there is no sun." Before we hear a single word from you, we hear the sample as an introduction. What was it about that passage that resonated so deeply with you?
I'd say that's already an interpretation. It was not just about Sun Ra himself. I don't think that was necessarily the intention behind it. Obviously Sun Ra helps set the tone. He's one of the forefathers of Afrofuturism and cosmic Black music. But what really resonated with me was the idea of darkness itself. Before creating the album, I was in a moment of disorientation. I didn't know exactly which direction to go, and the darkness analogy made a lot of sense to me. At the same time, it's a deeply spiritual understanding of beginnings.
»If there's no sun that can guide you, no moon that can show you a path, then you either surrender yourself to the darkness or you create your own path.«
Even the Bible begins with darkness. Darkness is the absorption of all light. The idea of darkness as both the current condition and a chance to create, not recreate, but create something entirely new was incredibly appealing to me. I was paying attention to the word darkness. Originally, the song was called Darkness, not No Sun. The funny thing is that people often want to understand the creative process afterwards. But when you're actually creating, it doesn't work like that. You follow a feeling. You try things. You fail many times. Eventually you find something that resonates. It's like searching for a frequency. I don't think creativity can really be rationalized. Things align afterwards and suddenly they make sense. But when you're in the process, most of the time you're simply following instinct.
Across your work, certain figures and traditions keep resurfacing: Sun Ra, Malcolm X, Rastafari, Mardi Gras Indian culture. They never feel like references in the conventional sense. What kind of relationship do you have to those histories?
Carefulness. Awareness. Political understanding. Understanding where these traditions come from, why they exist and who benefits from them. I don't feel a responsibility in that sense. I'm just a human being creating stuff, and I'm responsible for the things that I do and say. But obviously I'm aware of where these traditions come from, what they stand in and what made them emerge. I think it's important to ask who is being represented and who is actually profiting from that representation. If your audience is a mainstream white audience in Germany, for example, it's important to ask yourself whether the people and cultures you're referencing are benefiting in any way or whether you're presenting them to an audience that may have no connection to them and perhaps even a history of exploitation connected to them.
What makes your work feel different is that these histories don't seem preserved as symbols. They feel practiced. Lived.
I try. I find it difficult to put myself on a pedestal and say that I'm keeping anything alive. I try to the best of my ability, and inshallah it works to some extent, to live my life in a way that honors my ancestry and the tradition of resistance that I stand in. That's very important to me. But I'm a human being like everyone else. I fall for the matrix. I struggle. I make mistakes. I think it's important to be honest with yourself. To reflect. To self-criticize when necessary. I try to live according to the best of my knowledge, and that means constantly learning; spiritually, politically and culturally.
»I try to live my life in a way that honors my ancestry and the tradition of resistance that I stand in.«
You often resist being reduced to genre. Listening to your work, I'm reminded of Miles Davis' idea of Black Classical Music; not as a genre, but as a cultural tradition that exists beyond imposed categories and outside dominant Western frameworks. What does freedom look like when culture is understood as practice rather than genre?
Freedom is probably the thing I'm searching for most. Not only in music, but in every aspect of my existence. I've always struggled with the question: "What kind of music do you make?" People say it's Hip-Hop. But what does that actually mean? Hip-Hop itself contains countless influences and contradictions. I've never been particularly interested in categories.
»I just want freedom. I just want to create.«
I just want to make. Especially in a moment where everything needs to be categorized, labeled and placed into a box. There's a fetish in Europe and in the West for categorizing everything. Everything needs a definition. Everything needs a category. Everything needs to fit somewhere. Sometimes things just need room to breathe. Let things breathe. Let them become what they become.
»Maybe we're so obsessed with categorising things that nothing new gets the chance to emerge.«
Sometimes I ask myself: How is it possible that we constantly created new genres until the 1990s—and then suddenly stopped? Hip-Hop was barely fifty years old and changed the entire world. So where are the new forms? Maybe we frame everything too rigidly.
Do you think categorisation limits our ability to understand culture on its own terms?
A lot of these categories come from outside the cultures they're attempting to describe. People often approach music through existing frameworks rather than asking what the work itself is trying to do. Black Classical Music was never really about genre. It was about recognizing a lineage, a tradition and a way of creating that exceeded those categories.
New Orleans seems to occupy that role throughout your work. It appears not only as a place, but as a source of continuity. What keeps drawing you back?
New Orleans is one of my roots. It's a place where many of the cultural traditions that shaped me remain visible and alive. What fascinates me about New Orleans is the way different histories, cultures and spiritual traditions continue to coexist and influence one another. It's one of the few places where you can still feel those connections in everyday life. That's something I've always been drawn to. Not because it's nostalgic, but because it's alive. A lot of what inspires me comes from living traditions rather than historical artifacts. New Orleans represents that for me.
It feels like those traditions don't simply appear in your work. They actively shape the way you think about culture itself.
Definitely. I think culture is something that has to be practiced. Something that has to be lived. Otherwise it becomes performance. What interests me are traditions that continue to evolve while remaining connected to where they come from. That's something New Orleans has always represented for me.
Across 40 Acres N Sum Mula, Buffalo Soldier Tape and now Pink Guitars, Spaceships N Voodoo Dolls, there is a consistent visual conversation taking place. The imagery never feels decorative. It feels connected to the same traditions and histories that shape your music. What draws you to these particular images?
I've always loved documentary photography and archival photography. Three of my recent projects have used imagery connected to New Orleans in some way. Whether it was BIG CHIEF DEMOND MELANCON on 40 ACRES N SUM MULA or the STEVE MANN´s photograph on PINK GUITARS, SPACESHIPS N VOODOO DOLLS. What's important to me isn't only the image itself. It's the tradition behind the image. The cover of PINK GUITARS, SPACESHIPS N VOODOO DOLLS features members of the NORTH SIDE SKULL & BONE GANG, a tradition that has existed in New Orleans for generations. Every Mardi Gras morning they move through neighborhoods reminding people of mortality. Their message is simple: "You're next." Not as a threat, but as a reminder that life is precious and temporary. That tradition means much more to me than the image itself. The image becomes meaningful because of what it carries.
Finding that image ended up becoming a story in itself.
Yeah. We spent almost four months trying to find Steve Mann. We knew who took the photograph, but we couldn't get in touch with him. We tried everything. Instagram. Email. Friends of friends. Photography agencies. Nothing worked. At some point we were ready to move on and use something else. Then suddenly a friend of his reached out and connected us. And once we found him, everything happened very naturally. Sometimes things arrive when they're supposed to. What's important to me isn't only the image itself. It's the tradition behind the image.
The album introduces another term that feels important to understand the project: Afrophunk. It doesn't really feel like a genre. It feels more like a refusal. A rejection of imposed boundaries and expectations.
Afrophunk is really a combination of different impulses that have shaped me. There's the Afrofuturist side of it. The psychedelic side. The spiritual side. But then there's also Punk. And when I talk about Punk, I'm not primarily talking about a musical genre. I'm talking about an attitude. For me, Punk means questioning conventions. Questioning expectations. Questioning structures that people have accepted as natural. Reflecting on them. And maybe smashing some of them.
So Punk becomes less about a sound and more about a way of moving through the world?
Exactly. People often hear Punk and immediately think about a particular aesthetic or a particular style of music. That's not really what interests me. What interests me is the willingness to challenge assumptions. To refuse limitations that have been imposed on you. To imagine yourself differently. To create yourself differently.
One thing that kept coming back to me while listening was the question of expectation. Not only musical expectations, but expectations placed on Black artists more broadly.
Absolutely. Especially in Europe. Questions appear immediately. How are you supposed to dress? How are you supposed to speak? What kind of music are you supposed to make? What kind of politics are you expected to represent? And after a while those expectations can become internalised. I think Frantz Fanon wrote brilliantly about this. About the danger of seeing yourself through the eyes of others and slowly becoming trapped inside an image that was never yours to begin with. Part of Afrophunk is trying to break out of that. Not becoming the cliché. Not becoming the gimmick. Not becoming somebody else's idea of who you're supposed to be.
This line in the AFROPHUNK INTERLUDE where you say: "I AM NOT A CLICHÈ. I AM NOT A GIMMICK. FUCK YOUR EXPECTATIONS OF ME." It feels like one of the clearest statements on the entire record.
Because expectations can become prisons. People decide who you are before you even open your mouth. They decide what kind of artist you are. What kind of music you make. What kind of politics you're allowed to have. What kind of person you're supposed to be. Afrophunk is about rejecting that. It's about claiming the freedom to define yourself.
One thing that stood out to me throughout the record is that the political dimension never feels separate from the personal one. The album constantly moves between intimate moments and larger social realities. What role do you think art should play in relation to the world around it?
Nina Simone said that it is an artist's duty to reflect the times. That's something I've thought about a lot. I don't reflect the algorithm. I want to reflect the times. The world is changing rapidly. People are living through wars. Economic instability. Displacement. Isolation. All kinds of uncertainty. As artists, we don't exist outside of those realities. We're part of them. The question is whether we're paying attention.
So the goal isn't necessarily to provide answers?
No. I don't have the answers. I'm posing the questions. I think that's one of the most important things art can do. It can create space for reflection. It can create space for different possibilities. But I'm very suspicious of artists who claim to have all the answers.
On WEST you repeat: "THE OLD WORLD WE KNOW IS DYING. THE NEW STRUGGLES TO BE BORN." Do you feel we're already living through that transition?
Absolutely. I think we're already in it. The question isn't whether the old world is collapsing. The question is what comes next. We're living through a period of enormous instability. Politically. Economically. Socially. Ecologically. A lot of the structures people assumed were permanent suddenly don't feel permanent anymore.
Afrofuturist thought isn't simply concerned with imagining the future. It's concerned with making visible alternative ways of organising society, community and life itself. What realities do you think still require entirely new ways of imagining the world? And what kind of world becomes possible once we stop treating the current one as inevitable?
»I believe in a liberated society.«
I believe in solidarity. I believe in people standing with one another. I think the nation-state as we currently know it has to be questioned. I think systems built on domination have to be questioned. I think our relationship to nature has to be questioned. The oppression of people by people. The exploitation of people by people. The exploitation of nature. All of these things have to be challenged. I don't claim to have the answers. But I think we need to keep imagining alternatives. Otherwise we're left believing that the current order is inevitable. And I don't believe that it is.
A lot of what you're describing comes back to the ability to envision realities beyond the systems and structures we inherit. Looking back, were there any works, albums, books, films, artworks or ideas, that fundamentally shaped your understanding of the world and expanded your sense of what might be possible?
That's difficult. There are so many. But if I had to choose a few, I'd probably start with MARX. Not because I agree with everything MARX wrote, but because his critique of capitalism helped me understand the world in a different way. It gave me a language for understanding exploitation, power and economic systems. Another would be MIDNITE. Not just because of the music itself, but because of the way VAUGHN BENJAMIN approached art, spirituality and community. There's a depth in that work that continues to inspire me. And then I'd probably say EXODUS by BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS. That album has stayed with me throughout different periods of my life. There's something timeless about it. The political dimension. The spiritual dimension. The humanity of it. It continues to reveal new things to me.
For me it was never enough to just consume the work of someone. I wanted to understand the context around it. Almost like following a trail. You start learning about the Panthers. You start learning about Rastafari. You start learning about socialism. One thing leads to another. And suddenly you've entered an entire world.
What connects those choices for you?
Freedom and a desire for liberation. Different languages. Different forms. Different historical moments. But ultimately a similar concern. How do we become free? How do we become more human? How do we build a better world? But all of them are searching for freedom.
»Everything out of the ordinary was appealing to me.«
Throughout our conversation we've been talking about freedom, self-definition and the conditions that allow culture to exist on its own terms. Counterkultur feels like a continuation of those ideas. Not simply a label, but a framework through which the work can exist independently. What made ownership important to you at this stage of your journey?
Ownership has always been a political question within Black music. When you look at the history of the music industry, there are countless examples of Black artists creating culture without owning the means through which that culture circulates. For me, ownership isn't simply a business decision. It's about self-determination. It's about being able to decide how the work exists in the world. How it's presented. How it's distributed. How it's preserved.
Did reclaiming that ownership change the way you think about your work?
Absolutely. Because ownership creates possibilities. It creates room. It allows you to move differently. To experiment differently. To take risks that might not make sense within other structures. Counterkultur emerged from that desire. The desire to create according to my own values and my own terms. Not because independence is inherently better, but because certain kinds of work require certain conditions.
In that sense, Counterkultur positions itself as a cultural position.
»Ownership is a political question within the history of Black music.«
Exactly. The name itself says a lot. Counterkultur. It's about creating space for things that don't comfortably fit within dominant frameworks. Things that move differently. Think differently. Imagine differently.
We've spoken about ancestry, resistance, freedom, ownership and the future. When people encounter your work twenty years from now, what do you hope remains?
Hopefully they can see somebody who struggled and fought for a better world for everyone. Not a perfect person. Not somebody with all the answers. Just somebody who tried. Somebody who cared. Somebody who believed that things could be different. And somebody who dedicated his life to creating from that belief.
Thank you so much, Ju.
What has stayed with me most throughout my work with JuJu is a shared interest in how culture shapes the worlds we inhabit and the worlds we might still create. Questions of ancestry, identity, ownership, freedom and transformation. Questions that rarely arrive with clear answers and perhaps were never meant to.
In a moment where artists are increasingly expected to become brands, commentators or symbols, I appreciate JuJu’s willingness to remain a student of the process; committed to searching, reflecting and becoming. Perhaps that is what connects revolutionary figures like Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, Curtis Mayfield, Prince, Bob Marley and so many others. Their significance was never simply artistic excellence. It was their understanding that art and culture could operate as something far greater than entertainment or self-expression.
Each, in their own way, treated art as a site of self-determination. Sun Ra imagined Black futures beyond the limits of the present. Hendrix transformed inherited musical languages into something radically his own. Curtis Mayfield gave voice to the political and spiritual tensions of his time. Prince fought for ownership and autonomy in an industry designed to separate artists from their work, while challenging prevailing ideas of identity, sexuality and Black masculinity. Bob Marley approached music as a vehicle for consciousness, spirituality and liberation.
What united them was not aesthetics, genre or ideology. It was a refusal to accept the world as given. The most powerful art does not provide answers. It expands our sense of possibility. It unsettles certainty. It creates space for new ways of seeing, thinking and becoming. Art becomes a space where alternative values, relationships and possibilities can be explored long before they become visible elsewhere. As a challenge to the assumption that the present order is inevitable.
And there is vulnerability in all of that. No artist fully inhabits the ideals they articulate. We all contradict ourselves. We all lose direction. Yet growth begins precisely in that discomfort, in the willingness to question inherited truths, confront uncertainty and continue searching for new ways of understanding ourselves and our place within the world.
Parissa Charghi
