Sun Ra's Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City

Sun Ra (1914-93) was one of the most remarkably prolific and consistently eccentric figures in music history. Celebrated for his extravagant performances, where his Arkestra appeared in neo-Egyptian attire, the keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology, famously claiming the planet Saturn as his true home.

In Sun Ra's Chicago, William Sites brings this visionary musician back down to earth – specifically to the city's South Side, where he lived and launched his extraordinary career from 1946 to 1961. The post-war South Side was a vibrant hub of unorthodox religious and cultural activism, a place where Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold "dream-book bibles", and Elijah Muhammad was establishing the Nation of Islam. It was also a dynamic musical crossroads where styles circulated and merged in bustling clubs and community dancehalls.

Sun Ra drew inspiration from a vast array of locally available intellectual and musical sources – from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, rhythm and blues, Latin dance music, and the latest pop exotica – to construct a unique philosophy and performance style that envisioned a new identity and future for African Americans.

Sun Ra's Chicago argues compellingly that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep and utopian engagement with the city itself. By excavating post-war Black experience from within Sun Ra's South Side milieu, Sites suggests we can gain fresh perspectives on the possibilities inherent in urban life.