Happy Birthday Sun Ra (Herman Poole Blount May 22, 1914 - May 30, 1993)
Free-jazz &amp;amp; afrofuturism pioneer Sun Ra (the moniker &lsquo;Ra&rsquo; taken from the eponymous Egyptian sun god), declared himself a messianic saviour and whose aesthetic was the first example of a black musician overtly appropriating sci-fi iconography. For him, Sun Ra was an alien abductee &ndash; and, through the prism of the African diasporic experience, so was every black American in a literal sense. Meanwhile the Egyptians &ndash; an eon-ruling race of beautiful and technologically-advanced African aristocracy &ndash; represented supremacy and a recaptured empire.