In a cosmic convergence of history and homage, The Sun Ra Arkestra, will return to The Nick—Birmingham, Alabama’s long-standing rock and roll dive bar—on Friday, May 23, 2025, as part of the Sun Ra Day Festival. The performance marks a deeply symbolic return for the Arkestra, nearly four decades after Sun Ra himself—born Herman Poole Blount—graced the same stage in 1988 in one of the most unforgettable performances Birmingham has ever witnessed.
This event is more than a concert. It is a sonic pilgrimage. A homecoming to the Magic City, where Sun Ra’s radical reimagining of sound, space, and Black identity originated.
Sun Ra’s Origins in Birmingham
Sun Ra may have claimed Saturn as his celestial birthplace, but his earthly origins are rooted in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was born in 1914. Growing up in Birmingham’s segregated Black neighborhoods, he developed as a bandleader and musical prodigy under the tutelage of famed educator John T. “Fess” Whatley, whose jazz instruction also shaped the careers of fellow Birmingham Jazz greats like Erskine Hawkins. The author Burgin Mathews recounts the untold histories of many Afro American Jazz artists like this from Birmingham in his book, The Magic City.
After high school, Sun Ra began his professional career in Birmingham with organizations like the Society Troubadours and with Paul Bascomb. Sun Ra later enrolled at Alabama A&M University a historically black college, where he deepened his knowledge of Negro Spirituals, theology, classical music, and Egyptology. It was here he began to fuse the intellectual with the mystical—a fusion that would later manifest in his visionary work as a composer, bandleader, poet, philosopher and underground activist. He toured the world but he rarely returned home to Birmingham to revisit his roots in the segregated south. He is known as a pioneer in the use of electronic instruments, and was among the first to incorporate films, unique lighting effects, vivid costuming and dance into his avant-jazz performances. Though Sun Ra left Birmingham behind, its influence never truly left him. His landmark jazz composition “The Magic City” is a 20+ minute sprawling, experimental tribute to his hometown and a declaration of its personal and spiritual importance.
Courtesy Lee Shook
The Nick: A Portal Between Worlds
Birmingham’s The Nick, located at 2514 10th Ave S under a shadowy overpass in Southside near University of Alabama Birmingham, is known more for its beer-stained stage and punk-rock edge than for avant-garde jazz. But on August 23, 1988, at the height of Reagan era racial polarization in Alabama, the venue became a time-space portal, hosting Sun Ra and His Intergalactic Arkestra (billed that night as “The Cosmo Jet Set Love Adventure”) in a surreal and now-legendary performance that unified the two seemingly opposite worlds of black avant-jazz culture and underground rock in a way only the musical and spiritual alchemist Sun Ra could. He didn’t just play music—he activated spiritual transformation.
As Burgin Mathews recounts in his seminal book, The Magic City, “...home can be a complicated thing.” Jazz iconoclast Sun Ra came back to Birmingham in 1988. He had booked a show at the Nick, a grimy rock and roll dive tucked into the shadow of a highway overpass…” the crowd that night was eclectic—a mix of curious onlookers, Birmingham bohemians, poets, and underground artists, and college students. Very few, if any were black… this is the dichotomy that Sun Ra was constantly challenged with, how to embrace a place where your own people don’t know you, accept or embrace you… Sun Ra was a surreal evangelist, who hid his uplifting, sometimes subversive, messages of unity, of born of conflicts with racism in coded language. Sun Ra swept across the stage in rainbow sleeves, red goatee glowing, and cosmic robes flowing, chanting a reimagined gospel anthem:
“This world is not my home… My home is someplace else… in outer space!”
Though Sun Ra and Erskine Hawkins came from the same city and era, their musical trajectories couldn’t have been more different. One artist chose to play by the rules, one choose to break all the rules. But both legends were born in 1914, educated in Birmingham’s Black bandrooms, and ultimately laid to rest in the same red Alabama earth of Elmwood Cemetery. In a twist of cosmic irony, both found ways to mark Birmingham as a lasting point of origin and return.
The 2025 Return: A Historic Celebration
Now, in 2025, The Nick will once again become a stage for Sun Ra’s music as the Arkestra returns to celebrate what would have been his 111th birthday.
The performance is part of the Sun Ra Day Festival running May 21–24, 2025, featuring events across the city: a screening of Space Is the Place at Sidewalk Cinema, a ceremonial performance at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame on May 22—Sun Ra Day—and the farewell party at East Village Arts on May 24.
Why It Matters
For years, Birmingham hesitated to claim Sun Ra as its own—perhaps because he refused to play by the rules of race, place, gender, and sound. But this festival, and the return to The Nick, is a powerful reclamation. A reminder that Sun Ra’s spirit was born of Alabama’s red soil, its spirituals, its jazz bands, and its infinite cosmos of Black imagination.
The Nick and its Rock an Roll Legacy in Alabama
Since 1980, The Nick has earned its reputation as Birmingham’s most iconic rock dive, playing host to a staggering array of influential acts that helped shape the sound of modern music. Once described as “Birmingham’s Dirty Little Secret,” by Bono of U2, the venue has welcomed early performances by legends like The Ramones, Black Flag, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Kings of Leon, The Strokes, and Widespread Panic—long before they became international names. It also served as a key tour stop for alternative and indie pioneers such as Drive-By Truckers, My Morning Jacket, 7 Seconds, Yo La Tengo, and **Sonic Youth**. The Nick’s dimly lit stage, sticky floors, and unpretentious vibe have made it a rite of passage for both emerging bands and established musicians, creating an environment where musical experimentation thrives. For over four decades, it’s remained a vital breeding ground for Southern rock, punk, metal, and garage music, cementing its place as a cornerstone of Birmingham’s rebellious and genre-defying music culture.
The Music Origins Project is proud to support this effort to reinsert Sun Ra into Birmingham’s cultural narrative. For those tracing the origins of Afrofuturism, Jazz innovation, Rock and experimental Black music—this venue, and this city are sacred ground.
🎟️ Event Info:
Sun Ra Arkestra Live at The Nick
🗓️ Friday, May 23, 2025
🎟️ Tickets: TheNickRocks.com
Signed Album Auction for Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra
Signed Album Auction for Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra📅 Silent Auction Opens: May 21 | Ends: May 24, 2025
📩 Bids accepted via COMMENTS on the Red Hot Organization’s Instagram (@RedHotOrg)
🔗 Auction details available in their Instagram Highlights – LEARN MORE
📚 Related Articles from Music Origins Project:
🔗 References:
- The Magic City: How the Jazz Scene Thrived in Birmingham – By Mathews, Burgin
- The Nick – Official Website
- Sun Ra Biography – Encyclopedia of Alabama
- Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
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