Sun Ra’s Chicago
Afrofuturism and the City
328 pages
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25 halftones
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6 x 9
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© 2020
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
Urban Routes, Utopian Pathways
Part I: Birmingham
1 Downtown Sounds
2 Industrial School to Territory Band
3 Leadership Dreams
Part II: Chicago
4 South Side Music Scene
5 “Sound So Loud It Will Wake Up the Dead”
6 Utopian Chicago
7 African Space
8 Wonder Inn, 1960
Lineages/Legacies
Part I: Birmingham
1 Downtown Sounds
2 Industrial School to Territory Band
3 Leadership Dreams
Part II: Chicago
4 South Side Music Scene
5 “Sound So Loud It Will Wake Up the Dead”
6 Utopian Chicago
7 African Space
8 Wonder Inn, 1960
Lineages/Legacies
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Notes
Index
Review Quotes
Chicago Reader
"One of the ten best Chicago books of 2020. Plenty of books have been written about Afrofuturist pioneer Sun Ra and his Arkestra, but Sites is the first to make Chicago his co-protagonist. . . . Sites provides crucial context on how Chicago's Afrocentrist philosophy, religion, and jazz scenes helped turn Blount into Sun Ra.”
The Wire
“An important contribution. . . Sites draws on an impressive number of disciplines to ground Ra’s spacebound theatrics in material history. . . . He cites work from urban studies, African American studies, theology, and literary theory. . . It’s difficult to imagine anyone other than Sites writing a work that demands mastery of these specific disciplines.”
DustyGroove.com
“One of the most unique books to ever look at the music of Sun Ra. . . Digs very deep into Ra's early years – time that isn't covered in as much details as in other projects – and the book paints a picture of the city that's as vivid as the jazz legend himself. . . Sites comes at the project from a different perspective than most music writers – which makes for a very fresh volume that may well open up whole new territory in the exploration of jazz and community.”
Library Journal
"Not the launching point for an introduction to the life of Sun Ra, but rather a deeper dive into the city life and utopian vision informing his work and philosophy, emphasizing that (Urban) Space Is the Place."
Erik S. Gellman, author of Troublemakers: Chicago Freedom Struggles through the Lens of Art Shay
“Sun Ra’s Chicago is a masterful account of the musician’s formative years. Sites deftly applies a wider lens to his biography, analyzing the urban spaces and networks that shaped Sonny Blount’s transformation from an itinerant musician into the otherworldly philosophical leader of the Arkestra. This book is essential reading not only for Sun Ra listeners but for readers interested in the crosscurrents of Black intellectual thought and the utopian possibilities, past and present, of America’s cities.”
Larry Bennett, author of The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism
"Like its subject, Sun Ra’s Chicago is a category buster—social history, musicology, urban studies, hermeneutics, cultural reclamation—and as such, a revelation. Sites tells a story of countercultural ferment in 1950s south side Chicago that is detailed and provocative. Sun Ra, Alton Abraham, and the members and friends of the Arkestra were truly a 'creative class' long before that term, as we know it, was coined."
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History: Urban History
Music: General Music
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