Black History Month:
Sun Ra and His Arkestra
Sun Ra, jazz pioneer, composer, mystic, self-proclaimed extraterrestrial, and inventor of Afrofuturism, is an avant-garde hero to many. (Caveat: There is no way to begin to cover Sun Ra’s influence on art, music and culture here.)
In the mid 50s, Sun Ra and His Arkestra created one of the country’s first Black-owned and artist-owned music labels, El Saturn. The labels’ motto was “Beta Music for Beta People for a Beta World”. El Saturn’s DIY ethic would set the tone for many independent music labels and musicians to come. Hundreds of records were self released often designed by Sun Ra himself and manufactured by local black businesses in Chicago's South Side. This self-reliance allowed the band to have complete freedom over the direction of their music and art.
In the 60s and 70s, the band continued to release albums on different labels with covers designed by Sun Ra, HP Corbissero (also Sun Ra), Claude Dangerfield, LeRoy Butler (last two slides), Laina Abernathy and others. These record covers would reflect the bands’ music range from bebop-inspired Jazz covers to esoteric Afrofuturist symbolism that reflected Sun Ra’s radical and transcendent philosophy.