A nice designobserver piece on Sun Ra
If you were in Chicago in 1958, you might have happened into a jazz club on the South Side to find a band of musicians dressed in outer-space costumes, chanting “rocket number nine, take off for the planet Venus,” and setting loose battery-driven robots. On another day, on a stroll through Washington Park, kitty-corner from the Baptist preacher and across from the Nation of Islam representative, you could have come upon a street-corner lecturer in a flowing faux-leopard cape and black beret, detailing the etymology of the word “negro” and the coded meanings of the Bible. In both cases, the same mastermind was responsible: Sun Ra.