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Sun Ra

American jazz composer and bandleader (1914–1993)

This article is about the jazz musician, Sun Ra. For the hip hop artist also known as Sun R. A., see Sun Rise Above.

Musical artist

Le Sony'r Ra^[2] (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led The Arkestra, an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up.

Born and raised in Alabama, Blount became involved in the Chicago jazz scene during the late 1940s. He soon abandoned his birth name, taking the name Le Sony'r Ra, shortened to Sun Ra (after Ra, the Egyptian god of the Sun). Claiming to be an alien from Saturn on a mission to preach peace, he developed a mythical persona and an idiosyncratic credo that made him a pioneer of Afrofuturism.^[3] Throughout his life he denied ties to his prior identity saying, "Any name that I use other th

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One of the towering figures of 20th century's music, Alabama-born pianist and organist Herman "Sun Ra" Blount (1914) became the cosmic musician par excellence. Despite dressing in extraterrestrial costumes (but inspired by the pharaohs of ancient Egypt) and despite living inside a self-crafted sci-fi mythology (he always maintained that he was from Saturn, and no biographer conclusively proved his birth date) and despite littering his music with lyrics inspired to a self-penned spiritual philosophy (he never engaged in sexual relationships apparently because he considered himself an angel), Sun Ra created one of the most original styles of music thanks to a chronic disrespect for both established dogmas and trendy movements.
A pianist and arranger for Fletcher Henderson's band when he moved to Chicago in 1946, Sun Ra started his own big band in the old-fashioned swing style in 1952. (The one-sided LP Church Organ 1948 documents Sun Ra's first solo homemade recording).

The influence of Duke Ellington (that would remain throughout his career) and Thelonious Monk were the only

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Bio

Sun Ra was one of the most unusual musicians in the history of jazz, moving from Fletcher Henderson swing to free jazz with ease, sometimes in the same song. Portraying himself as a product of outer space, he "traveled the spaceways" with a colorful troupe of musicians, using a multitude of percussion and unusual instrumentation, from tree drum to celeste.

Sun Ra, who enjoyed cloaking his origins and development in mystery, is known to have studied piano early on with Lula Randolph in Washington, DC. His first noted professional job was during 1946-47 as pianist with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra at the Club DeLisa on the South Side of Chicago. In addition to playing piano in the band he also served as one of the staff arrangers. Finding his calling as an arranger, he put together a band to play his compositions. In the 1950s, he began issuing recordings of his unusual music on his Saturn label, becoming one of the first jazz musicians to record and sell his own albums.

Sun Ra's band became a central part of the early avant-garde jazz movement in Chicago, being one of th