1969, the year of the Apollo moon landing, marked another change of scene for the Arkestra, moving from New York to Philadelphia. That year also marked a change of fortunes for Sun Ra, with his face staring out from the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.
During the 1970s Sun Ra's music developed in a kind of parallel dimension to that of other jazz musicians, bringing in electric guitars and veering towards funk but always with dissonance and chaos lurking around the fringes. In the final part of this series we explore Sun Ra's word 'equations', the elaborate cosmo dramas that the Arkestra performed around the world in the 70s, Sun Ra's space funk and his historic meeting with John Cage.
