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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 8h

Today is the shadow of tomorrow Today is the present future of yesterday Yesterday is the shadow of today. The darkness of the past is yesterday, And the light of the past is yesterday. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Sometimes in my amazing ignorance Others see me only as they care to see I am to them as they think According to standards I should not be And that is the difference between I and them Because I see them as they are to is And not the seeming ignorance of the was (Sun Ra)

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theblackdynamite.bsky.social @theblackdynamite.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Space-age prophet Sun Ra lands in Oakland to save the Black race through music and interstellar relocation. This 1974 cult classic defines early Afrofuturist cinema. 📽️: Sun Ra’s Outer Space Employment Agency #spaceistheplace #sunra #afrofuturist

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The trouble with the people on this planet is they refuse to think they refuse to believe anything except what they know (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Remembering Danny Ray Thompson - Sun Ra Arkestra - 1st Oct 1947 - 12th March 2020 - He travels the spaceways from planet to planet.

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Knowledge is laughable when attributed to a human being. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It's After the End of the World! Don't you know that yet? (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

John Gilmore and Sun Ra outside Ra House Morton street Philadelphia - June 1979 - Photo Val Wilmer

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

John Gilmore Sun Ra Arkestra Legend - Arrival day September 28, 1931 – August 20, 1995) He Travels the Space Ways.

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Mike Fragassi @refrag.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Achievement unlocked: seeing the Sun Ra Arkestra play outdoors at a street fair

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Clayton “Death” @itsclaybaby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Good to see Sun Ra Arkestra for free at a street fair just down the way from me

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I'm ready and able, but I'm not willing. I won't preach to the people of earth. let them come to me. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Marshall Allen performs today Sunday, Sept 27 2026 from 3:00PM to 4:00PM at the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown at 35 W Chelten Ave, Philadelphia, PA

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Sun Ra Arkestra - Armitage County Fair Chicago, IL - Sun Sept 27th 2026

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Idu House @iduhouse.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

🚀 Artist of the Day: Sun Ra The cosmic jazz pioneer who declared himself from Saturn, Sun Ra reimagined what sound, and existence, could be. Through his music, he built worlds of freedom, blending ancient Egypt, space, and Black futurism into one infinite vision. 🗃️ #CreatorsAtWork #BlackSky #Art

Color film still of Sun Ra from Space Is the Place, shot in the Bay Area in 1972 and released in 1974. He stands outdoors in full cosmic regalia in front of a white car, with a dry hillside, road, trees, and an intensely blue sky behind him. His black-and-gold striped pharaonic headdress rises into a huge gold orb framed by two tall antenna-like prongs. A broad jeweled collar rests over a striped blue, red, black, and white tunic, while an enormous yellow-orange cape catches the wind and spreads across the frame like solar flame. His shoes echo the same saturated palette. The image captures the central visual idea of Sun Ra’s world: ancient Egypt, outer space, Black self-invention, and theater fused into one living language. Born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham in 1914, he remade himself as Le Sony’r Ra and insisted he came from Saturn. That claim was not simply a joke or stage gimmick. It became part of a larger philosophy in which myth offered Black people a way to imagine existence beyond the racial limits imposed by America.
Space Is the Place turned that philosophy into cinema. Directed by John Coney and co-written by Sun Ra and Joshua Smith, the film follows Ra returning to Earth and proposing another planet as a home for Black people, with music itself serving as a vehicle of liberation. In one of the film’s most famous exchanges, he tells young people that he comes to them as “the myth,” because a society that denies Black people full reality has already pushed them outside its definitions. The clothing matters just as much as the dialogue. Sun Ra rejected the boundary between costume and everyday dress, and the Arkestra’s handmade metallic robes, Egyptian forms, sequins, and space-age headpieces transformed performance into what he called cosmo-drama. Here, standing beside an ordinary car on an earthly road, he looks deliberately impossible. That tension is the point: the future is being staged in the present. The roadside becomes a launchpad for freedom.

Portrait of Sun Ra from the Space Is the Place era, standing against a deep, electric-blue background in a monumental red-and-gold robe. His body is almost completely enclosed by the garment, which falls to the floor in broad panels of crimson, bright gold and bronze. A black-and-gold striped pharaonic headpiece frames his face. Above it rises the same extraordinary emblem seen throughout this period: a large metallic orb held between two long upright prongs, glowing under the lights like an artificial sun. Sun Ra looks slightly upward, making the portrait feel less like a conventional musician photo than an icon from a civilization that does not yet exist. That effect was deliberate. By the early 1970s, Sun Ra had spent decades constructing a universe in which music, clothing, poetry, philosophy, theater, technology, and ancient Egyptian imagery belonged to the same project. He called his stage spectacles “cosmo-drama,” and he treated clothing as part of the sound itself, once declaring, “Costumes are music.”
The Arkestra’s garments were often handmade from metallic or found fabrics, assembled with the same experimental spirit as the music. This visual language reached one of its clearest forms around Space Is the Place. Sun Ra and the Arkestra recorded the album in Chicago in October 1972; Blue Thumb released it in 1973. The film, made in 1972 and released in 1974, translated his mythology into an Afrofuturist science-fiction story about Black liberation, interplanetary migration, and music as a technology powerful enough to change reality. Decades before the word “Afrofuturism” was coined, Sun Ra was already practicing it as daily life. The orb, pharaoh stripes, and cosmic robe were not an escape from Black history. They connected ancient African symbolism to a future in which Black existence could exceed the categories imposed on it. In this portrait, Sun Ra does not dress like he came from another world. He stands as evidence that another world can be invented.

Color performance photograph of Sun Ra and his Arkestra at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan on September 23, 1978 photographed by Leni Sinclair. Sun Ra stands near the front of the stage in a shimmering bronze-black robe, a beaded or metallic head covering framing his face. His right hand is raised as if cueing, blessing, conducting, or reaching into the air. Behind him, members of the Arkestra hold brass instruments, behind a steel sculpture of curved rods that arc overhead like trajectories, antennae, or orbital paths. Warm amber stage light turns the sculpture and Sun Ra’s robe into streaks of copper and fire against a dark background. The photograph captures the Arkestra at a moment when a Sun Ra concert had long since become far more than a conventional jazz set. Music, costume, movement, poetry, chanting, props, lighting, and spectacle were fused into what Ra called cosmo-drama, a ritual designed not simply to entertain an audience but to alter its sense of what was possible.
This performance took place during the 1978 Ann Arbor Jazz Festival at Hill Auditorium, a festival dedicated that year to Duke Ellington. That context matters. Sun Ra revered the big-band tradition, especially Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, while pushing it through free improvisation, electronics, unusual instruments, theatrical staging, and what sounded to many listeners like music from another century. His work was not a rejection of jazz history so much as an argument that its history already contained the future. The steel sculpture surrounding him makes that idea visible. Traditional brass players remain in the frame, but their stage has become a cosmic environment of curves, metal, shadow, and motion. Sun Ra’s raised hand sits at the center, directing both orchestra and image. By 1978 he had spent decades asking audiences to imagine Black life beyond earthly restrictions. Here the concert hall becomes his spacecraft, the Arkestra its crew, and performance itself the engine.

Square cover image for a 2024 reissue of Sun Ra and His Arkestra’s Jazz in Silhouette. A close portrait of Sun Ra fills the frame against a hot pink-red background bordered in yellow. His face is black-and-white, while oversized rounded sunglasses glow yellow-orange over his eyes. He wears a zebra-striped cap, a patterned collar, a purple metallic-looking top, and a large sun-shaped pendant at his chest. At upper left, bold yellow lettering reads “SUN RA,” with smaller text naming his Arkestra and the album title JAZZ IN SILHOUETTE beneath it. The psychedelic color treatment reflects the cosmic Sun Ra most listeners now recognize, but this is not the album’s original 1959 cover. It belongs to a modern 20th Century Masterworks reissue, released on blue vinyl in 2024. That distinction opens the deeper story of the record. Jazz in Silhouette was recorded in Chicago on March 6, 1959 and issued that May on Saturn, the independent label Sun Ra built with Alton Abraham to release music the established record business was unlikely to support.
The earliest-known sleeve was hand-screened and credited to H. P. Corbissero, a name researchers have suggested may have been Sun Ra himself. Musically, the album stands at a threshold. The Arkestra still swings with the precision of the big-band and bebop traditions Ra knew deeply, but compositions such as “Enlightenment,” “Saturn,” and the expansive “Ancient Aiethopia” already point toward stranger harmonic, rhythmic, and philosophical territory. Sun Ra was not abandoning jazz’s past. He was treating it as raw material for another future. Saturn itself was part of the experiment: records appeared in small runs, were sold at performances, re-pressed, relabeled, and sometimes given new handmade art. This modern cover therefore creates a kind of time fold. The cosmic icon looks back at one of the records where his musical universe was still taking shape, reminding us that the spaceship was being built long before most people noticed it.

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Sun Ra Arkestra - TMA Block Party 2026 - Toledo Museum of Art Campus Toledo Ohio - Sat Sept 26 2026 3PM

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jeff @jazyjef.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Marshall Allen (Sun Ra Arkestra), Accord, NY, 9.25.22 📸 Jeff Caltabiano

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Sun Ra Arkestra - Constellation Chicago, IL, US - FRI 25 SEP 2026

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Malt Lick Nursery @maltlicknursery.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Sun Ra with his Arkestra live at The Octagon Centre, Sheffield University, 15th October 1983. Photo by Roger Quail

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Sun Ra Arkestra performs the music of John Coltrane - Mandell theatre Philadelphia, PA - Wed Sept 23 2026 8PM / Coltrane 100

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This music is of the realm of the alter-destiny. In order to develop it, I had to separate myself from the world. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Subtle Living Equations Clear only to those Who wish to be attuned To the vibrations of the Outer Cosmic Worlds. Subtle living equations of the outer-realms Dear only to those Who fervently wish the greater life.. (Sun Ra)

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Observations of Deviance @obsofdeviance.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Marshall Allen - full concert, record release show for 'new dawn', world cafe live, philly 4-9-25 youtu.be/FeMstW28ttk?...

youtu.be

Marshall Allen - full concert, record release show for 'new dawn', world cafe live, philly 4-9-25

YouTube video by MatthewwsVideoos

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

You want a better world, put the blueprint down, I'll make it for you.. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I'm from somewhere else, definitely. If I was born, I definitely existed somewhere else before birth. (Sun Ra)

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Rob Chapman @scribblerrob.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Sun Ra Saturday. 18 photos from the London Venue gig (second night October 13th 1983 - note corrected date) going up here and on my Insta periodically through the day. Laydeez and Gentlemen. The best front and backline in the known universe.

Sun Ra Arkestra. Victoria Venue. October 1988

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My World is the Space ways A vast doorway to another dimension of Being.. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Sun Ra & His Solar-Myth Arkestra - The Solar-Myth Approach Vol. 1 & 2 / Recorded at the Sun Studios in New York City during 1970-1971.

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I'm in human form and nobody in human form has ever done the proper thing for solving the riddle that is humanity. Each one before failed - the prophets failed. Humanity is still on the treadmill. There's a possibility that I might do it. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I don't speak about the Universe cos that's the oneness of things, I'm talking about the Omniverse, the multiplicity of things, out in space, world after world after world. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If Music is in your Heart, you can’t do anything wrong. (Sun Ra)

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Hip Hop Heaven @ismailghedamsi.pixelfed.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

The cover of Sun Ra and His Astro Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra’s Discipline 27-II turns music into a cosmic encounter, with figures reaching across a fragmented world of planets, floating forms and a trumpet player seemingly projecting sound through space […] [Original post on pixelfed.social]

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Johnnie Johnstone @johnniejohnstone.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Sun Ra and John Cage, Coney Island 1986.

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

There’s something that can be said about a planet like this. But you can see things are getting worse and worse They say that the darkest hour is before the dawn and it must be before dawn for this planet because it’s bad everywhere you go. (Sun Ra)

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The Tonearm @thetonearm.com · 12/09/2026

“I asked Dave Hotep of the Arkestra if he could stop by the Sun Ra House with a mobile recorder. Marshall sat down, looked over at his girlfriend and played the beautiful solo that ultimately made its way onto the record.” Jan Lankisch Interview—How Marshall Allen’s ‘New Dawn’ Came Together:

psychedelicbabymag.com

Jan Lankisch Interview | How Marshall Allen’s ‘New Dawn’ Came Together - It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine

There were only two afternoons. Marshall Allen had turned 100 two days earlier, the musicians were gathered in a Philadelphia studio, and Jan Lankisch

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I’m actually painting pictures of infinity with my music. It has something else in it, something from another world. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I am not a human being anyway, so don’t treat me like them. (Sun Ra)

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Gregory Daurer aka Gregory Ego @gregoryego.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Closing night of the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 53 years ago featuring Sun Ra & his Arkestra @sunrauniverse.bsky.social. Ad from the underground newspaper Joint Issue, August 30, 1973. Get your tickets in E. Lansing at the Garden of Earthly Delights...

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Imagination is a magic carpet Upon which we may soar To distant lands and climes; And even go beyond the moon to any planet in the sky. If we are here, why can't we be there? (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I believe that someday Earth will be invaded by from outer space. It will be necessary that people trom space and Earthlings teach each other, or else it will be general destruction for us. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

You have to have chord against chord, melody against melody, and rhythm against rhythm. When you have that, you’re experiencing something else. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The curse on this planet is due to the music that musicians are playing, that they’re forced to play, by some who just think of money and don’t realize that music is a spiritual language, and it represents the people of Earth. (Sun Ra)

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Sun Ra and his Astro-Infinity Arkestra at New York's Carnegie Hall. April 12/13 1968

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SunRaUniverse @sunrauniverse.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

My world of dreams is different to your worlds of dreams Strange worlds whirl in my mind With a glow like sunset and the thrill of dawn. (Sun Ra)

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Jordan Hoffman @jhoffman.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Space Is The Place. Sun Ra Arkestra, Princeton, N.J., 9/3/26.

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