Simon

Sun Ra was an American jazz composer renowned for his experimental music and his leadership of the ensemble known as "The Arkestra." Even as a teenager, he demonstrated exceptional talent, attending big band performances and later producing full transcriptions of their songs entirely from memory. By his mid-teens, he was performing semi-professionally as a solo pianist and a member of various ad hoc jazz and R&B groups. Though he was involved in the Chicago jazz scene during the late 1940s, his path took a radical turn when he dropped out of college following what he described as a visionary experience. He claimed that a bright light appeared around him and transported him to Saturn. There, he was told to stop attending college because the world was descending into chaos, and that he would instead "speak" to humanity through music. Embracing this cosmic persona, he abandoned his birth name for "Sun Ra" (after the Egyptian god of the Sun) and claimed t...