The Parliament Funkadelic Mothership
Built for George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic · 1990s replica of the 1976 original
A silver spaceship the size of a small car hovers in the music gallery, lights blinking around its rim. This is the Mothership, the stage prop that descended from the rafters at Parliament Funkadelic concerts in the nineteen seventies while George Clinton, in a fur coat and platform boots, emerged from it as the funk messiah Dr. Funkenstein. It turned a concert into a science fiction ritual and made P Funk one of the most theatrical acts in the history of popular music.
The original Mothership, built for the nineteen seventy six Earth Tour, was scrapped in the nineteen eighties. Clinton had this replica made in the nineteen nineties for a new round of touring, and it is the version that appears in countless photographs and videos of the band's later shows. Look at the riveted panels, the landing legs and the ring of coloured lights; it is a cheerfully home made object, closer to a carnival float than to Hollywood, and that was the point. Clinton's idea, that Black music could claim outer space as its own territory, became a whole tradition called Afrofuturism, running from Sun Ra to Janelle Monae and the Black Panther films.
Clinton donated the Mothership to the museum in twenty eleven, and it was one of the first big objects the public heard about, a signal that the museum would take joy and spectacle as seriously as struggle. It stands near Chuck Berry's Cadillac, a fitting pair of vehicles for the journey of African American music.
Did You Know? George Clinton kept the replica Mothership in a storage unit before giving it to the Smithsonian, and it was one of the first objects the museum announced to the public.
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