Sun Ra: ‘I’m Everything and Nothing’

Sun Ra is part of the pride of Alabama. A lot of the esoteric and mystical aspects of his music come from the time he spent growing up and studying at the local masonic library in Birmingam. At the time, masonic libraries were one of the only places where black folks had full access to literature.

In fact, some of the most famous jazz musicians were masons. I reject the author's notion that he was a god. The writer seems devoutly obsessed, almost worshipful to his cult of personality.

However, I can agree that he was undoubtedly a legendary musician with an informed talent for creating myth and interpreting mystical concepts into his music. His music is challenging and experimentally mind-expanding. He lies buried next to Bear Bryant in a cemetery that holds a dear friend of mine, so the name always catches the eye.

For any Sun Ra fans in the crowd, please check out Phil Cohran. He was best known for playing trumpet in the Sun Ra Arkestra in Chicago from 1959 to 1961, but he has some really amazing solo material. His catalog is somewhat limited, but it's uniformly excellent. Two of his records, "on the beach", and "the spanish suite" are streamable in their entirety on youtube. For a quick introduction, check out his single, "frankiphone blues" (also on youtube).

The documentary mentioned in the article is delightful. It captures a feel for the strange, magical culture ("reality distortion field") he wove around himself and the group of artists with him.

Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0270677/

This "afro-cosmic" vision was carried on, and taken further by George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament-Funkadelic

I think there's a spectrum between admiring and fetishising and this article moves too close to the latter for my taste. Even the quote in the article's title had to clean up the author's quote from Space is The Place which --maybe I'm misremembering-- featured a Sun Ra who enunciated every word.

Sun Ra is absolutely worth looking into. Easily one of the most innovative American musicians of the last 100 years.

Last year I went to the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art because they had an exhibit regarding space architecture (both real and from film).

Among the space suits and models were film clips denoting different creativity and functionality in space -- buildings, clothing, interiors, exteriors, vehicles, &c.

One of the film clips was from Sun Ra's 'Space Is The Place'. When I got home I found it on Youtube to watch more. It's a trip.

What a marvelous Nabokov quote! The epigraph is a lens for the article--a book review of photographs of Sun Ra, but actually about Sun Ra's extra-terrestrial vision of himself and Black America--and serves as a good introduction of Sun Ra to the uninitiated. The writer tries to describe the sublime which cannot be explained, only understood, but does a good job nonetheless.

I saw the Arkestra in the late 70s at a venue on Broadway in San Francisco. I was amazed at the number of musicians. How could he pay this many people to play this small venue and cheap tickets? Amazing show. I think they played until 1 AM. Followed by the Dead Kennedies, who we weren’t interested in seeing.

About 6 years later I saw a much smaller Archestra in Camp Hill, PA. Small crowd. About half of them walked out.

Well-written bio and insights into Ra and his impact.

Here's a hand-made and annotated, and equally well-constructed Ra discography (links only 2 years old)

https://www.metafilter.com/174248/A-plethora-of-Sun-Ras-four...

I live in the same neighborhood as Arkestra member Eddie Gale (who just recently passed away). Gale was a local treasure and an incredibly talented fellow, who definitely came from the Sun-Ra orbit.

I feel like the Outer Space Employment Agency could give people a hand up in these times

I saw the Arkestra play live in Berlin once and it was an incredible experience. Loved this article and the photos; keen to see more of Ming Smith's work.