Library Person
Sun Ra
American jazz composer and bandleader, an early adopter of electronic keyboards and synthesizers and a pioneer of Afrofuturism.
Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, 1914, Birmingham, Alabama; died 1993) led his Arkestra from the early 1950s in Chicago, building an idiosyncratic cosmic philosophy and mythology — claiming origin from Saturn — that made him a foundational figure of Afrofuturism decades before the term existed. He founded El Saturn Records with Alton Abraham in 1957 to self-release his own prolific catalog, eventually running to more than 1,000 recorded compositions. His Arkestra was among the first jazz bands to take up electronic keyboards, working electric piano, clavioline, and celeste into performances as early as 1956. Robert Moog loaned Sun Ra a prototype Minimoog (Model B) months before the instrument’s commercial release in March 1970; Ra used it extensively through the early 1970s, later acquiring a second unit and sometimes playing both together for duophonic effect. My Brother the Wind, Vol. 2 (1970) is widely cited as among the first commercial recordings to feature a Minimoog.