ARCE Chicago: A Solar-Ship Voyage: The Ancient Egyptian Religion as Inspiration in the Life and Music of Sun Ra and birth of Afrofuturism

Presenting himself as an alien coming from Saturn, Sun Ra has been considered a pioneer of Afrofuturism whose music and live performances with his Arkestra are nowadays a classic in African American jazz music, theater, and poetry. Egypt has been a central source of inspiration for this polyhedric artist; this paper will analyze in particular how Sun Ra used and re-interpreted elements of the ancient Egyptian religious culture and its deities in his work and how much contents relate to the development of the Afrofuturistic philosophy within the American climate of political unrest during which he lived and performed.

Rita Lucarelli studied at the University of Naples “L’Orientale,” Italy, where she received her MA degree in Classical Languages and Egyptology. She holds her Ph.D. from Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her Ph.D. thesis was published as the Book of the Dead of Gatseshen: Ancient Egyptian Funerary Religion in the 10th Century BC.