William Sites - Afrofuturism and the City

Edited by Lilia Fernndez, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Becky M. Nicolaides, and Amanda I. Seligman

James R. Grossman, Editor Emeritus

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WILLIAM SITES

The University of Chicago Press

CHICAGO & LONDON

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2020 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73207-7 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73210-7 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73224-4 (e-book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226732244.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sites, William, author.

Title: Sun Ras Chicago : Afrofuturism and the city / William Sites.

Other titles: Historical studies of urban America.

Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2020. | Series: Historical studies of urban America | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020007541 | ISBN 9780226732077 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226732107 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226732244 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sun Ra. | African American musiciansBiography. | Afrofuturism. | JazzIllinoisChicagoHistory and criticism. | South Side (Chicago, Ill.)History20th century.

Classification: LCC ML410.S978 S58 2020 | DDC 781.65092dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007541

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Sun Ra and his colleagues in 1950s Chicago employed a great many terms to describe people who trace their ancestry to Africa: black, Black, BLACK, Black-Brown; Negroes, negroes, Negroes, so-called Negroes; Ethiopians, Ethiops, THE ETHIOPIAN RACES; and more. This proliferation of terms was intended to challenge conventional dismissals of the worlds most-hated peoplea collective who, if it could wake up to its true nobility, might free itself and even the world. Playing with group names, and with capitalization and other typographic markers, became for Sun Ra an important way of multiplying the imagined capacities of his people.

Contemporary editorial preferences increasingly support capitalizing Black when referring to a persons race or ethnicity. I welcome the discussions that have led to this shift and, were the book not already in press, would have adopted that practice. Beyond uppercasing or lowercasing the term, however, what remains significant is recognizing that racial and ethnic categories are social constructions with real meaning, and that exploring the collective history and identity of people of African descent is an ongoing project of enormous consequence. In the chapters that follow I have tried to respect Sun Ras own complex approach to language, including capitalization, which sought to subvert the racial terms of his era in order to give greater scope to creative conceptions of Black identity.

Over the second half of the 1950s an African American musician formerly known as Sonny Blount made a local name for himself on Chicagos South Side as the leader of a jazz ensemble called the Arkestra. Appearing in clubs such as Budland, Queens Mansion, and the Wonder Inn, the bandleader and his group, decked out in exotic hats and homemade space costumes, performed a mix of jazz standards and experimental music with African-sounding percussion and ensemble chants about traveling to other planets. Although few cultural commentators took notice at the time, the emergence of Sun Ra and the Arkestra in late-1950s Chicago is seen today as a foundational moment for Afrofuturisman influential mode of utopian expression that draws on mythical African pasts in order to envision new black-centered worlds of the future. How did Sun Ras own music and cosmology emerge? And why did they flourish in Chicago? This book addresses these questions.

Sun Ra sold relatively few records over the course of his career. Casual observers often dismissed him as a cult curiosity. A contradictory figure, he was both patient and stubborn, possessing a lively sense of humor yet firmly convinced of his own otherworldly powers. He could be possessive and dictatorial with his musicians. But he was also capable of great loyalty and generous, if idiosyncratic, support. A soft-spoken conversationalist, he challenged conventional wisdom even on seemingly settled issues: gravity, the crucifixion, the need for sleep, the certainty of death. He was an explorer of alternate realities in an era of substance experimentation, yet he counseled strongly against the use of drugsalong with alcohol, tobacco, sex, meat, and certain colors of the spectrum. An inveterate contrarian, he was never shy about contradicting anyone, including other contrarians. One of his favorite song titles was It Aint Necessarily So, but he was also fond of noting, It aint necessarily so that it aint necessarily so.