Status Updates From Sun Ra's Chicago: Afrofutur...

Sun Ra and the Arkestra fully grew into this performative identity by exploring and combining two musical geographies—ancient Africa and outer space...

For the next half decade or so Sonny Blount scuffles for work in Chicago and at the strip clubs in Calumet City, unappreciated for his talents and dreaming of a better existence on Saturn.

He was an explorer of alternate realities in an era of substance experimentation, yet he counseled strongly against the use of drugs—along with alcohol, tobacco, sex, meat, and certain colors of the spectrum.