Sun Ra, an Alabama native and pioneering force in jazz music, will be honored in his home state with a new, multi-day festival. Organizer Lee Shook has raised more than $21,000 for the May festival ...

The outlandish persona Sun Ra created and maintained for himself over the years may sometimes distract from the adventurous intent of the music he made. Yet it is testament to his vigorous loyalty to ...

Historical document or musical revelation? Music from Tomorrow’s World, the latest release in Atavistic’s Unheard Music Series, again poses this seemingly eternal, yet pertinent, question. Should live ...

Questlove, Dawn Richard and a range of other musicians, writers and critics share their favorites from the experimental pianist, organist and bandleader’s wide-ranging catalog. By Marcus J. Moore ...

Without the jazz musician, poet, and bandleader Sun Ra, the music industry would look and sound somewhat different. Countless mainstream artists have been inspired by his boundlessness and his ability ...

Sun Ra, the trailblazing jazz musician, poet, and pioneer of the Afrofuturism movement, was also a utopian—both in outer space and here on earth. Known for a persona that mixed cosmic references, ...

February is Black History Month, and each week all month, World Cafe correspondent John Morrison is joining us to talk about a different trailblazer of Black music. These mavericks took musical risks ...

Patrons of South Side jazz clubs in the 1950s might have noticed something a bit different about pianist Sun Ra’s big band — slowly at first, then all at once. Their sounds became more far-out, the ...

Pianist, bandleader, arranger and Afro-Futurist Sun Ra was thought to be a decidedly non-mainstream figure in the jazz world as he directed his Arkestra throughout the last half of the 20th Century.

You think Willie Nelson is a marvel in the music world, still recording and performing at age 91? Say hello to Marshall Allen, longtime leader of the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra. Allen, 100, has been at ...

Few musicians have been as delightfully and fascinatingly weird as Sun Ra. He was born Herman Poole Blount, changed his name to honor the Egyptian god of the sun, believed he was an angelic being from ...