Music for Mondays: Sun Ra Arkestra and AfroDiasporic Futurism

Sun Ra Arkestra brings to you sounds of Afrofuturism.

Founding bandleader Sun Ra claimed to belong to the “Angel Race” and to be from Saturn, creating cosmic philosophies by and for the African Diaspora. He famously appeared in John Coney’s film Space is the Place (1974). Moving from Chicago to New York then Philadelphia, Sun Ra Arkestra’s music drew inspiration from all threads of jazz from ragtime to bebop to free jazz. 

“The music of Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, of Underground Resistance and George Russell, of Tricky and Martina, comes from the Outer Side. It alienates itself from the human; it arrives from the future. Alien Music is a synthetic recombinator an applied art technology for amplifying the rates of becoming alien. Optimize the ratios of excentricity. Synthesize yourself.” (Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures In Sonic Fiction. Quartet Books, 1998)