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A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism
- Author: Youngquist, Paul
The title is well chosen. Sun Ra's legacy is as much the vision of another world, and another way of being, as it is a unique approach to music. . . . [His] relationship with pop culture is...
A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism
- Author: Youngquist, Paul
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The title is well chosen. Sun Ra's legacy is as much the vision of another world, and another way of being, as it is a unique approach to music. . . . [His] relationship with pop culture is...
About
Surveying the range of Sun Ra’s extraordinary creativity, this book explores how the father of Afrofuturism brought “space music” to a planet in need of transformation, supporting the aspirations of black people in an inhospitable white world.
Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the devoted band he called the “Arkestra.” Sun Ra took jazz from the inner city to outer space, infusing traditional swing with far-out harmonies, rhythms, and sounds. Described as the father of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra created “space music” as a means of building a better future for American blacks here on earth.
A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism offers a spirited introduction to the life and work of this legendary but underappreciated musician, composer, and poet. Paul Youngquist explores and assesses Sun Ra’s wide-ranging creative output-music, public preaching, graphic design, film and stage performance, and poetry-and connects his diverse undertakings to the culture and politics of his times, including the space race, the rise of technocracy, the civil rights movement, and even space-age bachelor-pad music. By thoroughly examining the astro-black mythology that Sun Ra espoused, Youngquist masterfully demonstrates that he offered both a holistic response to a planet desperately in need of new visions and vibrations and a new kind of political activism that used popular culture to advance social change. In a nation obsessed with space and confused about race, Sun Ra aimed not just at assimilation for the socially disfranchised but even more at a wholesale transformation of American society and a more creative, egalitarian world.
Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Prelude to Infinity
- Intro: Wonder Inn
- 1. Alien
- 2. Marienville
- 3. Bronzeville
- 4. Thmei
- 5. Egypt
- 6. Washington Park
- 7. Arkestra
- 8. Immeasurable Equation
- 9. El Saturn
- 10. Isotope Teleportation
- 11. Cry of Jazz
- 12. Sputnik
- 13. Rocketry
- 14. Tomorrowland
- 15. Interplanetary Exotica
- 16. Space Music
- 17. Myth Science
- 18. Black Man in the Cosmos
- 19. Space Is the Place
- 20. Tokens of Infinity
- 21. Continuation
- Outro: Extensions Out
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Discography
- Credits and Permissions
- Index
Awards and reviews
The title is well chosen. Sun Ra's legacy is as much the vision of another world, and another way of being, as it is a unique approach to music. . . . [His] relationship with pop culture is equally fascinating and the impact he made on a wide range of artists who achieved far greater mainstream commercial success . . . is significant to say the least. Youngquist's prose is vivid and concise, making a subject some might still find forbidding anything but. A welcome invitation to the spaceways
Youngquist has published an excellent critical take on Sun Ra's creation myth and its relation to broader currents of America's postwar social imaginary
