Music Monday: Soundtrack for Afrofuturism and Archaeology

I’m giving a talk at Franklin & Marshall College this week and for the first time in my experience, I’m integrating music into my talk which is titled Sun Ra: Afrofuturism and Archaeology.

It goes without saying that my talk will feature Sun Ra’s 1969 album Atlantis. You can read a bit about this album in the book Sun Ra Sundays which the Digital Press published three years ago.

I’m also going to play “Rocket Number 9” from Interstellar Low Ways (1967) which features tracks recorded in 1960 in Chicago. 

And finishing my talk with “It’s After the End of the World” from the motion picture soundtrack Space is the Place. If you haven’t seen Space is the Place, you can watch it here.

My talk will also feature this video of Sun Ra and the Arkestra in Egypt in 1971:

If you’re interested in the recordings with the Arkestra in Egypt, they were all released in a massive anthology from Strut records in 2020, but like most of the Sun Ra discography, one can find most of these tracks on other releases:

For example, some of them appeared on his 1973 album Horizon. You can read about this album and the rest of the recordings released in 2020 in Sun Ra Sundays here.