This paper considers the 5th Dimension song, Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (1969) through the lens of Afrofuturism. Both halves of the song are covers of two works from the 1967 musical, Hair, which centers the hippie countercultural reaction to the Vietnam War. I hear the 5th Dimension's medley as a deliberate displacement of these songs from their tragic, and white hippie origin to the Black and futuristic margins.

By engaging Afrofuturist scholarship (Dery, 1993; Nelson, 2002; Womack, 2013) in conversation with Neo-Riemannian and Transformational analytical techniques (Lewin, 1987; Cohn 1997; Rings 2011) this paper considers how the sudden chromatic harmonic changes, and the frequent gestural transformations can be heard as otherworldly. On a larger scale, the 5th Dimension's medley and accompanying music video can thus be situated within the Afrofuturist lineage and the reimagining of Blackness.