Celebrating Sun Ra: The cosmic visionary who transformed jazz music

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 are mavericks took musical risks and pushed boundaries, and this hour we’re kicking the series off talking about the music and influence of composer, poet, bandleader and musician Sun Ra.

“He’s someone who took music in some really experimental, way out-there concepts,” Morrison says. “He was also someone who was rooted, very much rooted, in the history of Black music and culture.”

We’re riding a rocket ship straight into the universe of Sun Ra. Enjoy!

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.