February is Black History Month, and each week all month, World Cafe correspondent John Morrison is joining us to talk about a different trailblazer of Black music. These mavericks took musical risks ...

Without the jazz musician, poet, and bandleader Sun Ra, the music industry would look and sound somewhat different. Countless mainstream artists have been inspired by his boundlessness and his ability ...

Sun Ra and his Arkestra perform with a steel sculpture on September 23, 1978, at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (Leni Sinclair/Getty Images) The Sun Ra Arkestra comes to San Francisco this ...

Patrons of South Side jazz clubs in the 1950s might have noticed something a bit different about pianist Sun Ra’s big band — slowly at first, then all at once. Their sounds became more far-out, the ...

Questlove, Dawn Richard and a range of other musicians, writers and critics share their favorites from the experimental pianist, organist and bandleader’s wide-ranging catalog. By Marcus J. Moore ...

Sun Ra’s statement, musically and spoken, is that this is a primitive world. Its practices, beliefs, religions, are uneducated, unenlightened, savage, destructive, already in the past. That’s why Sun ...

1960 was one of many turning points in the career of Sun Ra. That year he moved from Chicago’s South Side to New York City. Behind, he left the idea that became the AACM, plus many inspired musicians ...

Ra Ra Riot's latest album was 2019's Superbloom, though they shared a live LP and a 10th anniversary edition of The Orchard the following year. Other than that, the indie-pop veterans have been quiet, ...