Co-founder of Cxffeeblack, BARTHOLOMEW JONES shares how we can use the method of sampling and the framework of Afrofuturism to reconnect to coffee’s Roots.

EDITOR’S NOTE: While we normally capitalize the word Black in contexts that relate to race, ethnicity, identity, and culture, we are following Bartholomew’s preference to use a lower case “b.”

I’ve been following Bartholomew Jones’s work—as an educator, poet, speaker, musician, and coffee visionary—since 2021, two years after he and Renata Henderson founded Cxffeeblack. Aside from our overlapping interests of music, education, and coffee, one of the things that I’ve been inspired by most is how they are leading a shift in reframing specialty coffee as a community built on shared preferences to one of mutual appreciation and connection. The difference between “shared preferences” and “mutual appreciation” may not seem significant, but it is. Shared preferences, built through rituals of taste and taste-making, can perpetuate exclusivity. In contrast, mutual appreciation, where we recognize effort and skill (even if we don’t enjoy the results), is inherently inclusive.

Whenever you’re consuming something—whether it’s drinking coffee or listening to music—you’re engaging in a multi-layered, socio-cultural process. Not only do we experience its sensory perceptions, we also tell the world a little about ourselves through our choices. When I first started working in specialty coffee, it felt like many of the signs and signals were subtle and difficult to understand without years of experience or knowing “the right people”: how could you effectively signal to someone else that you were “specialty enough”? It was a familiar feeling, especially after my time working with underground DJs as they navigated a changing landscape of education, practice, and community.

This seeming connection between the two communities in my life, music and coffee—at least in terms of how a sense of “taste” was created through subcultural capital[1]—has kept me fascinated for years. Over time, however, I’ve also come to understand it as a monochrome rendering of our relationship with the colorful and animated concepts of “production” and “consumption.”[2] Alexa Romano introduced a more nuanced version of this relationship in Issue 21 with “the prosumer: someone who both consumes and produces a product,” and their role as a co-creator of value.[3]

The practice of sampling in DJ-based genres is exactly this kind of co-creation where the roles of consumer and producer overlap. In its simplest form, sampling is the process of taking a small section of an existing song—a vocal, a beat, or even an entire snippet—and working it into something new. As Bartholomew alludes, the emergence of sampling as creative process is sometimes explained as a simple response to a lack of music education and instruments in schools. Rather than seeing sampling as something that only occurs in the absence of “better tools,” it’s far more interesting (and liberating) to see sampling as not only a site of co-creation, but—as Bartholomew demonstrates—a way to connect seemingly disparate ideas across space time while reinforcing a broad sense of belonging. His writing reminds us that coffee and community cannot exist without one another, and that both are to be celebrated in many different ways.

JENN RUGOLO
Innovation Officer, SCA

Sampling, a cornerstone of hip-hop culture, is the art of honoring the past while creating something new. It’s an act of recognition, transformation, and imagination. Just as producers like DJ Paul and Juicy J turned fragments of old songs into innovative compositions, coffee invites us to sample its origins, stories, and cultural meanings.

Through sampling, we can rediscover coffee’s African Roots. We can reimagine its role in the present and future, and by doing so, reframe the reclamation of the pre-colonial perspective of coffee in Africa as more than simply an act of representation but rather as a means of installing Afrofuturistic practice into communities throughout the coffee diaspora.

For those unfamiliar, Afrofuturism is a cultural framework blending African diasporic history with speculative thought, providing a powerful lens for imagining new solutions for communities whose imaginative vocabularies have been colonized through the violence of stolen land, language, and identity. It is our belief that coffee—though this may be surprising to some—has the potential to provide a powerful soil to fuel new fruit for the souls of colonized communities seeking to find futures of flourishing self-determination. By centering coffee within Afrofuturism, we can treat it not just as a commodity but as a vessel for storytelling, healing, and liberation.

This idea was inspired by Paulo Freire’s pedagogical insights on co-generative dialogues in his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed,[4] and, more specifically, Chris Emdin’s modern take on this through his theory of hip-hop pedagogy,[5] both of which were foundation theories for my work as a community hip-hop artist and educator before getting into specialty coffee. These brothers frame sampling as a means of cultural care and critical reclamation. Through their lens, sampling becomes more than a hack to make music for kids who had formal musical programming taken out of public schools in the 1980s. Instead, it becomes a tool for the African diaspora to redefine its own phenomena and reality, reclaiming agency in the narrative of identity through reimagining and rediscovering the past in their own gaze. Our community at Cxffeeblack has used the act of sampling as a framework for reconnecting to cultural Roots while honoring the dynamic creativity of the diaspora.

Sampling as Celebration: Merging Traditions and Creating Care

One recent example of creative sampling was a sample roasting session hosted at the Anti-Gentrification Coffee Club. The event combined the Ethiopian coffee ceremony—shared with us during the Cxffeeblack Barista Exchange Program—with a distinctly African American cultural tradition: roasting, a competitive game of insults, or “roasts,” also known as “playing the dozens.” This fusion was part of a going-away party for an emerging comedian and opened with a ceremonial acknowledgment of coffee’s Ethiopian Roots. Sydney Barnes, one of our interns turned emerging leaders, guided us through the ritual, which served as a foundation for the comedic roasting session. This blending of ceremonies allowed us to reimagine both coffee and comedy as cultural tools for connection and celebration.

The event held particular significance for us, as it came after a series of break-ins at our coffee shop. It became a moment of resilience and reaffirmation—an opportunity to double down on our commitment to honoring Roots and cultivating community amidst adversity. The parallels between this experience and the challenges faced by Ethiopian coffee farmers, who often endure lack of dignity and recognition for their labor, were striking. By connecting these struggles, we could begin to see our work in Memphis as part of a larger narrative of reclamation and self-determination.

The interconnectedness of sampling was further highlighted during the event by the creative process happening just across the street. A group was remixing old soul music into new beats—an act that mirrored our cultural fusion of coffee and comedy. This layered approach exemplifies how sampling can serve as a form of critical cultural care. It allows us to reimagine coffee outside of a Eurocentric gaze and instead see it as a central Root of nourishment for people of diverse origins seeking to reclaim a world of flourishing and self-defined freedom. Through sampling, we can rediscover coffee’s African Roots and reimagine its role in the present and future.

Sampling the Sacred: Coffee’s Origin and Rituals

During phase one of the Black Barista Exchange Program, we were able to meet with all the current leaders of the Gadaa System in collaboration with the Oromo Tourism Board. A traditional system of governance used by the Oromo people in Ethiopia, the Gadaa System is an Indigenous democratic institution “developed from knowledge gained by community experience over generations.”[6] The time we spent with the governing Abba Gadaas and Hadha Siqqees (elders and cultural leaders) was deeply transformative to our understanding of coffee’s role in facilitating flourishing in communities who consume it outside of a colonial narrative.

The Oromo people of Ethiopia tell the story of Waaq, the “big black God” who desired harmony between creation and humanity. When a person disobeyed Waaq’s directives, their death brought grief. Waaq’s tears fell to the earth and grew into the coffee tree—a sacred gift meant to promote peace. This origin story frames blackness as a source of life, creativity, and peace. It reminds us of coffee’s potential to connect us with one another and with the earth. From this sacred genesis arose rituals like the Buna-Qalaa ceremony,[7] a vibrant expression of joy and reconciliation. Performed at weddings and during conflict resolution, the ceremony begins with prayers for peace and culminates in the consumption of coffee as a symbol of unity. These ceremonies are rich with cultural meaning, reflecting the Oromo’s presupposition of peace and community.

In Western contexts, coffee has often been stripped of such meanings, reduced to utility and profit. By sampling the values embedded in Oromo rituals, we can restore coffee’s role as a medium for connection and harmony.

Sampling Beyond Commodities: Coffee as Connection

Colonial history alienated coffee from its Roots, severing it from the people and practices that nurtured it. Like other commodities, coffee was stripped of its cultural and spiritual significance, reduced to a tradable good defined solely by price. But sampling offers a way to reconnect.

Ethiopian coffee rituals transform coffee from a transactional object into a relational medium. The Buna-Qalaa, for example, fosters environmental memory, prayer, reconciliation, and communal joy. It creates spaces where coffee is not consumed for its utility but shared to build community. This relational approach critiques capitalist alienation and reminds us that coffee’s true value lies in its ability to connect.

Sampling these practices allows us to imagine coffee not as a product but as a cultural artifact. By rejecting the commodification of coffee, we can reframe it as a tool for fostering relationships and honoring its origins. While the sample roast event we hosted in Memphis may feel far removed from a Buna-Qalaa ceremony in Ethiopia, we see it as an example of how we can transport ideas of ritual, community, and connection across oceans and time, deriving meaning from coffee in the face of challenges.

Sampling as Resistance: Innovation at the Root

Sampling is not just an act of preservation—it is also a tool for continuing innovation. As we learned from Ethiopian Barista champions Tajur Tamirayehu and Beamlak Bekele during the first phase of the Black Barista Exchange Program last year, the Guraga people of Ethiopia have practiced anaerobic fermentation for over 500 years, perfecting methods rooted in their tastes and environment. Yet colonial exporters penalized them, labeling their processes as defective. Today, anaerobic fermentation is celebrated as a cutting-edge coffee innovation, with global buyers seeking the expertise of the same communities they once dismissed.

This story exemplifies how sampling the past can inform the future. When global coffee culture embraces origin practices as sources of inspiration, it challenges the extractive narratives that dominate the industry. Sampling allows us to honor the ingenuity of origin communities while reimagining coffee as a site of possibility.

**Collection 2.** Photos taken at a catering and outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis with the family of 8ball, Memphis hip-hop legends. The motel is part of the complex of the National Civil Rights Museum and is the site where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.
During this event we also met Meta Robinson (not pictured), the granddaughter of Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson was the first black American to play in Major League Baseball; today his family own a coffee farm in Tanzania. This combination of intersecting stories is an example of sampling coffee history into new soil and new futures.

Sampling Afrofuturism: Coffee in Black Cultural Spaces

Afrofuturism thrives in spaces where blackness is celebrated as a source of creativity and cultural capital. Hip-hop, Afro beats, streetwear, and critical academia exemplify such spaces, blending historical awareness with speculative innovation. Coffee, too, can be “sampled” into these movements, becoming a canvas for storytelling and artistry.

Just as hip-hop artists reimagine old sounds to create new ones, coffee can be recontextualized to reflect the ingenuity of origin communities. For example, by “sampling” Ethiopian fermentation methods or rituals, coffee can become a medium for innovation and cultural expression that honors the Root of innovation rather than gentrifying it. Sampling encourages us to listen, to become curious, and to hear the brilliance of the notes we’ve been trained to cover with the sugar and cream of Eurocentrism for far too long. What if we treated coffee producers as artists, inviting them to share their philosophies and designs, compensating them for their thoughts rather than simply their physical labor?[8] What kind of world would that be? What innovations are waiting at our palates’ doorstep simply because we have not dared to be brave enough to imagine a future where the Root of this industry has insight into how to best preserve and nourish its fruit?

This approach reframes coffee as a means of self-expression and community-building. Sampling within these cultural spaces aligns with Afrofuturism’s vision of blending history and innovation. It positions coffee as a bridge between the past and the future, grounded in the creativity and resilience of Root communities worldwide.

Sampling as Rehumanization: Coffee and the Diaspora

**Collection 3.** With the governing Abba Gadaas and Hadha Siqqees (Oromo elders and cultural leaders) at a Buna-Qalaa ceremony in Ethiopia. The event was hosted by the Oromo tourism board and Quluu coffee.

For African Americans and other descendants of the diaspora, coffee offers a unique opportunity for rehumanization. Stripped of identity and history by the transatlantic slave trade, many in the diaspora seek connection to their Roots. Coffee, with its African origin, becomes a symbolic and literal means of return. For other communities, coffee offers a unique opportunity to join in an almost 2000 year-old cypher,[9] to listen and bring out new notes from their own unique histories and terroirs, and to do so not as a means of covering up what was present when coffee was discovered, but rather to remix and to harmonize with its Indigenous stewards to create the diversity of palette, palate, and peace this seed was always meant to bring.

When we visited Ethiopia in 2021, we encountered the profound intersection of coffee, community, and identity. In the Guji Zone, hosts shared ancestral stories of coffee, blending history, spirituality, and ecology. For me, this experience was transformative. As a black man in America, witnessing coffee’s sacred role in Ethiopian culture felt like reclaiming something deeply personal.

It is my hope that for others, sampling coffee’s origins provides a way for global communities to reconnect with their heritage, and to imagine our shared future. If we let it, coffee can allow us all to reclaim our humanity by honoring the creativity and ingenuity embedded in coffee’s history.

Imagining Coffee’s Afrofuturist Future

For the everyday coffee connoisseur, I’m sure this can all be quite daunting. What does coffee look like in an Afrofuturist future? How in the world does this connect to my morning pour-over or perfectly dialed-in anaerobic Burundian double shot?

I feel you, and for me over the last six years there hasn’t been a simple answer. But a common thread has been to shift where I place my curiosity. To move it slightly beyond the cup, or the notes, or the processing, or the terroir, and towards the people. To ask, what does this cup mean to the people who created it? Not just economically, though that is undoubtedly important, but what does it mean ontologically, personally, spiritually?

And, if there is no answer at the moment, what could it mean? And why hasn’t it meant that yet? By making this kind of curiosity a part of my own and my hood’s coffee praxis, and by extending it throughout the all black coffee supply members and those participating in the Cxffeeblack Barista Exchange, coffee has begun to transcend the constraints of mere consumption within colonial systems. It is becoming a site of imaginative possibility—a tool for liberative healing, a bridge between disparate bloodlines, and a canvas for creating the future our seeds deserve.

**Collection 4.** Photos from events held during the second phase of our Black Barista Exchange, where we flew five black baristas and farmers to Memphis. The exchange included training with Lem Butler, the first and only black US barista champion.

Conclusion: Sampling Coffee for Peace

The Oromo blessing, “May your house lack no coffee, nor peace," encapsulates coffee’s essence as a source of nourishment, connection, and harmony. Sampling invites us to engage with coffee’s origins, to honor its stories, and to imagine new futures.

Through Afrofuturism, coffee can become a testament to black creativity and resilience. It can move beyond its commodified history to serve as a medium for connection, innovation, and liberation. Like a sampled song, coffee’s meaning is enriched when we acknowledge its Roots while transforming it into something new.

In this vision, coffee is not just a drink. It is a story, a relationship, and a call to action. The Root is black, and the fruit is diverse. Let us honor both, creating a coffee culture that celebrates its origins while embracing its infinite possibilities. ◊

BARTHOLOMEW JONES is a rapper, black coffee anthrolopologist, and the co-founder of Cxffeeblack. Based in Memphis, Tennessee, Cxffeeblack is a coffee company that is community oriented, multi-disciplinary, and education-based, and carries out its mission via the Anti-Gentrification Cxffee Club, the Black Barista Exchange Program, and the Specialist-in-Training program.

References

[1] Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Wesleyan University Press, 1996).

[2] David Graeber, “The Very Idea of Consumption: Desire, Phantasms, and the Aesthetics of Destruction in Western Society,” davidgraeber.org/wp-content/uploads/2002-The-very-idea-of-consumption.pdf.

[3] Alexa Romano, “From Passive to Active: Expanding Our Understanding of Specialty Coffee Consumers,” 25, Issue 21, sca.coffee/sca-news/25/issue-21/from-passive-to-active-expanding-our-understanding-of-specialty-coffee-consumerism.

[4] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin, 1972).

[5] Christopher Emdin, “Pursuing the Pedagogical Potential of the Pillars of Hip-Hop Through Sciencemindedness,” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 4, no. 3 (2013).

[6] UNESCO, “Gada System, an Indigenous Democratic Socio-Political System of the Oromo,” accessed January 6, 2025, ich.unesco.org/en/RL/gada-system-an-indigenous-democratic-socio-political-system-of-the-oromo-01164.

[7] Ayehu Bacha, Lenin Kuto, Dereje Fufa, and Kamil Mohammed, “Buna-Qalaa Ritual of the Boorana Oromo,” UniBulletin 7, no. 1 (January 2018): 26–39, doi.org/10.22521/unibulletin.2018.71.3.

[8] Bartholomew Jones, “Could You Change the World by Drinking Your Coffee Black?” TEDx Memphis (2024), youtube.com/watch?v=voUtgvJgMOo.

[9] Chris Emdin describes a cypher as a “celebration of sorts,” where “participants in hip-hop gather in a circle, and have some type of communal exchange with each other.” The cypher encourages deep engagement and can result in a “surreal experience where all who are involved seem to temporarily escape reality as they commune under hip-hop.” Emdin, 2013, p. 89.

We hope you are as excited as we are about the release of 25, Issue 23. This issue of 25 is made possible with the contributions of specialty coffee businesses who support the activities of the Specialty Coffee Association through its underwriting and sponsorship programs. Learn more about our underwriters here.

Sampling the Root: Afrofuturism, Hip-Hop Pedagogy, and Coffee’s Infinite Possibilities | 25, Issue 23