(NewsNation) — Jazz visionary Sun Ra’s career spanned four decades, with his music along with spiritual beliefs including esoterism, Egyptian theology, Afrofuturism and extraterrestrial experiences, has left an influence on music and culture.
Born in 1914 in Alabama as Herman Blount, Sun Ra studied piano as a child and by his preteen years was already composing his own music. By high school, he was playing semi-professionally and in 1936, he was accepted into the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University to study music education.
Sun Ra dropped out of university after a year though, citing an experience that would come to inform both is spiritual beliefs and his music.
In college, Sun Ra claimed to have experienced a vision where he experienced a bright light around him before rising up out of his body, not in human form, and traveling to Saturn. There he said he encountered alien beings, who he described as having antennae over their ears, who told him the world was full of chaos and he needed to quit college and speak to the world through music.
While UFOs would become a phenomenon in the U.S., Sun Ra’s vision happened before the 1947 Roswell incident and the 1961 Betty and Barney Hill incident, both of which catapulted the idea of flying saucers and alien abductions into the popular consciousness.
When Sun Ra was drafted in 1942, he claimed conscientious objector status but was arrested after failing to appear for an alternative service. Prison psychologists deemed him neurotic and sexually perverse (he was widely known to be gay, despite never confirming his sexuality).
After WWII ended, Sun Ra moved to Chicago where he became involved in the jazz scene and was exposed to movements that would inform his own philosophy, including Black Muslims and Black Hebrews as well as ancient Egyptian religion and philosophy.
In 1952, he changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra, goIing by Sun Ra, a reference to the Egyptian sun god Ra, considered the father of all humanity.
Sun Ra’s philosophy encompassed Black identity movements as well as the esoteric spirituality that gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, which included elements from sources as diverse as the Kabbalah, ancient Egyptian mysticism, numerology, channeling and Buddhism.
Those beliefs would also influence his performances and music, with Sun Ra performing in colorful robes, turbans and space goggles. He led a band called The Arkestra, which included dozens of musicians over the years. Sun Ra traveled from Chicago to New York, Philadelphia and California during his life and recorded nearly 200 albums with the group.
His music and philosophy contributed to the formation of the Afrofuturism movement, which has influenced artists like Octavia Butler and Janelle Monae and can be seen in major films like Black Panther.
He continued performing even after he suffered a stroke in 1990, eventually returning to Alabama to be with his family in 1992. He died in 1993 at the age of 79.
