SUN RA, bandleader, musician, poet, visionary May 22, 1914

Sun Ra, also Le Sony’r Ra, was born Herman Poole Blount, was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. According to sources, he was named after the popular vaudeville stage magician Black Herman, and was nicknamed “Sonny” when he was a child, He was a skilled piano player at an early age and was composing and sight reading by the age of 12. By his mid-teens, he was performing semi-professionally, alone and with various bands.

A loner and avid reader, he was known to take advantage of the Black Masonic Lodge –one of the few places where Black folks had unlimited access to books. He was strongly impacted by Freemasonry and other esoteric concepts.

He toured nationally with several bands, and was awarded a scholarship at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University as a music education major, but dropped out a year after having a “vision” — when in 1936 or 1937, in the midst of deep religious concentration, a bright light appeared around him:

My whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up… I wasn’t in human form… I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn… they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools… the world was going into complete chaos… I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That’s what they told me. – Zwed, John F. (1997). Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. New York: Pantheon. pp. 21–22.

Sun Ra is considered to be the ‘father’ of Afrofuturism due to his music, writings, poetry, and theatrics. By the 60s Ra was weaving extraterrestrial themes and costumes into his performances. He is often depicted in space suits, headdresses, and ancient Egyptian clothing.

A musical genius and innovator, his contributions to music include being one of the first band leaders to incorporate two double basses and the electric bass, as well as employing synthesizers, using multiple percussionists, and adding freeform singers and dancers to his act.

Extremely prolific, Sun Ra recorded over one hundred full-length albums, including over 1,000 songs. Two films are worth viewing for a more complete perspective on Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise, and Space is the Place.