Chocolate Spectral Resonances: Calling Mr. Sun Ra, Calling Mr. Alton Sterling

Abstract

In this discussion I utilize pianist, composer, band leader, and sound scientist Sun Ra, and his ensemble the Arkestra to address sonic ethics in two ways: first to re-examine the treatment of Alton Sterling, a Black man lynched by the Baton Rouge, LA, in 2016 and, second, to consider broader possibilities of how Afro-surrealist ethics, situated as sonic pedagogies, provide possibilities, simultaneously in formal and informal educational spaces/places, to disrupt ideological constructs situating Black life as equated to death