Sun Ra: Do The Impossible

Poet, philosopher, Egyptologist, bandleader. Jazz visionary Sun Ra was all of these – and more. With his ever-evolving band, the Sun Ra Arkestra, he produced more than 200 albums, stretching the boundaries of free-form jazz while weaving ancient Egypt, interstellar metaphors, and scientific musings into a singular musical and spiritual vision of Afrofuturism that continues to reverberate across generations. 

After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival and a long run of screenings at other festivals and events around the country, the film was shown as part of the long-running American Masters series on PBS.

Herman Poole Blount was born on May 22, 1914, in Birmingham, Alabama, and departed this earth on May 30, 1993, as Sun Ra.

Along the way he became a conscientious objector, legally changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra, forged a vision of a Black Space Age future, created a big band that toured the world and continues to this day, wrote over 1000 jazz compositions, issued more than 200 self-produced records, pioneered the use of electronic keyboards, and published volumes of broadsheets and poetry.

I believe it is genuinely a mischaracterization to speak of one Sun Ra, right? At any given time, there was a whole bunch more.
— Fred Moten