Afrofuturism | Sun Ra Arkestra

At Sun Ra's side from the mid-1950s until his death, the Arkestra was a prolific musical collective whose creativity never seemed to run dry. The dozens of variations on its name and the hundreds of recordings the ensemble made while its leader was alive reveal the fluid, restless nature of the Sun Ra Arkestra as it set out to explore the full length and breadth of jazz through polyrhythm and improvisation. The Arkestra was the first jazz orchestra to use electronic keyboards, an electric bass and two double basses.

Together with the Arkestra, Sun Ra contributed to the Afro-American cultural and political awakening of the 1960s, stressing the African roots of jazz, inspiring pride in black history, and declaring the spiritual and mystic dimensions of his music. He did all this having renounced his birth identity and adopted a mythic, ironic persona who had travelled to Earth from Saturn, which simultaneously places him among the forerunners of Afrofuturism.

Continuing to tour and perform after Sun Ra's death in 1993, the Arkestra remain true to their founder's instruction to seek out new dimensions and sounds and to never repeat what it had played in the past. Led by its longest-standing band member, the saxophonist Marshall Allen, the Sun Ra Arkestra continues to find itself anew through new performances of numbers by Sun Ra and original material by Allen.

Erik Steinskog " We Travel the Spaceways": Sun Ra and Afrofuturism
In this talk Erik Steinskog will use the thought of space-travel as an entry-point into a discussion of Sun Ra’s understanding of music and vibrations – a music, that is in an important sense, beyond time and space, thus pointing towards other worlds, in the future or on distant planets. Sun Ra is often described as one of the originators of Afrofuturism. Given his oeuvre that is easily explained, even if one could simultaneously argue that this oeuvre is much too broad to be caught in any category.