Today, I found an absolutely cool way to wrap up my Spring 2024 Afrofuturism class. My students and I had a musical jam receiving inspiration from the late Birmingham musician Sun Ra & his Arkestra. We did so on the balcony of the University of Alabama’s Gorgas House Museum. Built in 1829, this is the University’s oldest campus dwelling.
Sun Ra was born in 1914 as Sonny Blount. Amazingly, these students are UA’s Blount program. He is known as the Father of Afrofuturism, a term that came into being in 1993 to capture the trauma and joy of people of African descent in creative ways including music. Some of that trauma was seen at Gorgas House when some rowdy antebellum students harmed an enslaved person owned by the University’s president.
My class also learned about the antebellum period via imagined works. We began the semester by reading Kindred, a novel by Octavia Butler, the late West Coast writer with Louisiana roots. She is known as the Mother of Afrofuturism. They book opens in 1976 and involves an African American writer who must time travel in order to save her white ancestor if she is to ever be born in the twentieth century.
After some warming up with the mostly secondhand instruments today, I played an instrumental version of Shaft’s Theme. We accompanied that recording. The students earlier saw video of the late Memphis native Isaac Hayes singing it on Wattstax, a documentary about a 1972 “Black Woodstock” concert in Los Angeles and video of him playing the same song at the Academy Awards where he won an Oscar.
An aside, Sun Ra named his band Arkestra while in Chicago. He said most southerners don’t say “orchestra.” We say “Arkestra.”
I’m a real corn ball when it comes to students who teach me as much I try to teach them. I appreciated seeing how one student was quite familiar with the Kalimba, a South African piano with which Sun Ra was familiar. But as they earlier learned, Earth, Wind and Fire, a very Afrofuturistic band, made it famous in the seventies on their recordings. I recorded my students playing my thumb piano. She was unintentionally accompanied by Denny Chimes, our campus bell tower. Other fun facts: another one of the students has a grandma who went to Parker High, Sun Ra’s alma mater. This Birmingham school is known for producing interwar and postwar musicians. Last summer, I was fortunate to meet some of Sun Ra’s relatives and the European filmmakers documenting his Birmingham years. I also saw clips from their in-progress film during that city’s Sidewalk Film Festival.
Another one of my students knew how to play and repair Gorgas House’s Phonograph cylinder, a precursor to the record player. Here is a video of us recasting an instrumental of Shaft’s Theme with our recast Arkestra! Shout out to one of the students who thoughtfully recorded us.
The great Sonya Harwood-Johnson, new director of Gorgas House, gave us an impromptu and generous overview of Gorgas House before we just chilled, something we all need as they prepare to turn in their final work!
Rest in peace, Sonny Blount! UA’s Blount students learned a little about you this school year.
catalogue, too 
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