Ebook546 pages7 hours
Sun Ra's Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
About this ebook
“Sites provides crucial context on how Chicago’s Afrocentrist philosophy, religion, and jazz scenes helped turn Blount into Sun Ra.” —Chicago Reader
Sun Ra (1914–93) was one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his Arkestra appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, the keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology that claimed the planet Saturn as his true home. In Sun Ra’s Chicago, William Sites brings this visionary musician back to earth—specifically to the city’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 he lived and relaunched his career. The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the possibilities of urban life in new ways.
“Four stars . . . Sites makes the engaging argument that the idiosyncratic jazz legend’s penchant for interplanetary journeys and African American utopia was in fact inspired by urban life right on Earth.” —Spectrum Culture
Sun Ra (1914–93) was one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his Arkestra appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, the keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology that claimed the planet Saturn as his true home. In Sun Ra’s Chicago, William Sites brings this visionary musician back to earth—specifically to the city’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 he lived and relaunched his career. The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the possibilities of urban life in new ways.
“Four stars . . . Sites makes the engaging argument that the idiosyncratic jazz legend’s penchant for interplanetary journeys and African American utopia was in fact inspired by urban life right on Earth.” —Spectrum Culture
Related to Sun Ra's Chicago
Related ebooks
Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Black Cultural Front: Black Writers and Artists of the Depression Generation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An OutKast Reader: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Postmodern South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rebel Café: Sex, Race, and Politics in Cold War America's Nightclub Underground Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArt Rebels: Race, Class, and Gender in the Art of Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsParty Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDanceHall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDamaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Music Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crossing Bar Lines: The Politics and Practices of Black Musical Space Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehold the Land: The Black Arts Movement in the South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStart a Riot!: Civil Unrest in Black Arts Movement Drama, Fiction, and Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnd It Don't Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Critical Beatdown Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Origins of Cool in Postwar America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Vinyl Ain't Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heroism and the Black Intellectual: Ralph Ellison, Politics, and Afro-American Intellectual Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDepression Folk: Grassroots Music and Left-Wing Politics in 1930s America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRace Rebels: Culture, Politics, And The Black Working Class Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Home Spaces, Street Styles: Contesting Power and Identity in a South African City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHighlife Giants: West African Dance Band Pioneers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMusic/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cool Gent: The Nine Lives of Radio Legend Herb Kent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHip Hop at Europe's Edge: Music, Agency, and Social Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTime and memory in reggae music: The politics of hope Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Ethnic Studies For You
All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life Sentence: The Brief and Tragic Career of Baltimore’s Deadliest Gang Leader Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Rednecks & White Liberals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Like Me: The Definitive Griffin Estate Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Self-Care for Black Women: 150 Ways to Radically Accept & Prioritize Your Mind, Body, & Soul Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wretched of the Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Second Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heavy: An American Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Conspiracy to Destroy Black Women Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Blood of Emmett Till Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories of Rootworkers & Hoodoo in the Mid-South Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Sun Ra's Chicago
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Sun Ra's Chicago - William Sites
Md book_preview_excerpt.html }˒WݯBFe&$HƱD
Zkw3ff"#Bf
iv2fFm D~}DVMӢ٨̈~owU?g?.L~ủU=XuS{߷(n⇺t/G</WūWW~X7V~n㧯߽xzQ*={Z\<}{.?}|>{1+Vncx^}};ro+ߏǢnzqg>k_>?vq5ny~M]]Sk]Y?_0ʲѭetxwu_ʟa?u}Sݦx>5G_n?a|=}-ȟo6?bgU&r+c4d=^w3~c 2mݵNFF5{wUpеikeG_<,Fﶽ
뺦x"(~_wg?2]Z)O]Y}Pvn~컃LDŮ;YN|Mַ5}/,C mv&7gu1mk?8? C]ri~pX.+M]>,kޑ%&'k|!/r.Y4Ciq2$dC1/C0
7
{_`3^~\vÙw}z8dt뢢Gm'0\^v+*A?e(#>}\r|]=zSv#9ӕˤRDc7p`elt:ίާPq5|+j";ephf¡\߾3nl.^ӻm$4])Lky3Q |ݭ;ٷ 9)F
{=,~n:m"m5sNa_,swCwUe:y9];־HJ5y:\\.Qb}^FfrDCa&AaUy_znE/dw'q/\ˮ/
_
+ۙx9#:LV
0:)w[aH+X6&vS4f]^>cX8L^1"%in,Kyn*~Q}E@="$;}4_6GS^KK17{ȇlf2X e>*qpsQ<dE||~EFnPX3r2N%w? "_ 8
k_ɋ%N0K[vݙ$r72j?tS<1`X_=y}X~^o?{w݁_$Ћ`WtJZf4!R~VNKqsЉ
*O*ث1
HΦeF*/{'x/4WjUfWfsJMAt%.*b\-%?
fZd\[ ]{~xjz{_*,}Qܻ_wwWpoGw?X|{_.|~⓲po| w>y~_BG>SϪ^uwVR3yysu]ߝȉqtNvYKb{3y!-(^^ʮ{ZH>5܈| ZEбY^'zllTպSnS75 FZ4ߔMH٪'AqCmLZNl;o3mWx~/CE6w$9ǻwh]yyDDfu1w_<&E{C+x;>q;s|\6j|<࿆B}IE]ⓤ fiЩ?5|8nr/ˡ_|㟊'O;_ߓU(p"N]_evSlvښlWWlc%_77{)۽ںTӫ^_._W^o=OW)u2ki`O"+qmx : Pvʚ8v(K+q|B7go}ygb'}]Y'Fv\7⣿}_SDAF/>CD