Sun Ra
Encyclopedia
Sun Ra was a prolific jazz
composer
, bandleader
, piano
and synthesizer
player, poet
and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham
, Alabama
. He is a 1979 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
.
"Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial," critic Scott Yanow said, because of Sun Ra's eclectic music and unorthodox lifestyle. Claiming that he was of the "Angel Race" and not from Earth, but from Saturn
, Sun Ra developed a complex persona using "cosmic" philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afrofuturism
. He preached awareness and peace above all. He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra
being the Egyptian God of the Sun), and used several other names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee. Sun Ra denied any connection with his birth name, saying "That's an imaginary person, never existed … Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym."
From the mid-1950s to his death, Sun Ra led "The Arkestra" (a deliberate re-spelling of "orchestra
"), an ensemble with an ever-changing lineup and name. It was by turns called "The Solar Myth Arkestra", "His Cosmo Discipline Arkestra", the "Blue Universe Arkestra", "The Jet Set Omniverse Arkestra", as well as many other permutations. Sun Ra asserted that the ever-changing name of his ensemble reflected the ever-changing nature of his music. His mainstream success was limited, but Sun Ra was a prolific recording artist and frequent live performer. His music ranged from keyboard solos to big band
s of over 30 musicians and touched on virtually the entire history of jazz, from ragtime
to swing music, from bebop
to free jazz
. He was also a pioneer of electronic music
and space music
. He also used free improvisation
and was one of the first musicians, of any genre, to make extensive use of electronic keyboard
s.
stage magician Black Herman
, who had deeply impressed his mother, Sun Ra would speculate, only half in jest, that he was distantly related to Elijah Poole, later famous as Elijah Muhammed, leader of the Nation of Islam
. He was nickname
d "Sonny" from his childhood, had an older sister and half-brother, and was doted upon by his mother and grandmother.
Herman Blount was a skilled pianist as a child. By 11 or 12 years old he was writing original songs, and was able to sight read
sheet music
. Birmingham was an important stop for touring musicians, and he saw famous musicians like Fletcher Henderson
, Duke Ellington
, Fats Waller
, along with less-famous performers who were often just as talented as their better-known peers, with Sun Ra once stating "the world let down a lot of good musicians". In his teenage years, Blount demonstrated prodigious musical talent: many times, according to acquaintances, he would see big band
performances and produce full transcriptions of the bands' songs from memory. By his mid-teens Blount was performing semi-professionally as a solo pianist, or as a member of various ad hoc jazz and R&B groups. He attended Birmingham's Industrial High School (now known as Parker High School
) where he studied under famed music teacher John T. "Fess" Whatley, a demanding disciplinarian who was widely respected and whose classes produced many professional musicians.
At ten years old Blount joined the Knights of Pythias
, and remained a member until he graduated from high school. His family was deeply religious but was not formally associated with any Christian church or sect. Blount had few or no close friends in high school
but was remembered as kind-natured and quiet, an honor roll
student, and a voracious reader. The Black Masonic Lodge
was one of the few places in Birmingham where African-Americans had essentially unlimited access to books, and the Lodge's many books on Freemasonry
and other esoteric concepts made a large impression on him.
Also by his teens, Blount suffered from cryptorchidism
, a chronic testicular
hernia
that left him with a nearly constant discomfort that sometimes flared into severe pain. Szwed suggests that the condition left Blount with a sense of shame and increased his sense of isolation.
In 1934 Blount was offered his first full-time musical job when Industrial High School Biology teacher Ethel Harper organized a band and decided to pursue a career as a singer. Blount joined a musicians' trade union
and Harper's group toured through the US southeast and Midwest. Harper left the group mid-tour to move to New York (she later was a member of the modestly successful singing group the Ginger Snaps
), and Blount took over leadership of the group, renaming it the Sonny Blount Orchestra. They continued touring for several months before dissolving the unprofitable group. Though the first edition of the Sonny Blount Orchestra was not financially successful, they earned positive notice from fans and other musicians, and Blount afterwards found steady employment in Birmingham.
The clubs of Birmingham often featured exotic trappings such as vivid lighting and murals with tropical or oasis scenes that were believed to have influenced Sun Ra's later stage shows. The big bands also imparted a sense of pride and togetherness to black musicians: musicians were highly regarded in the black community, and were expected to be disciplined and presentable, and in the segregated south, black musicians arguably had the most acceptance in white society, often performing for white high society audiences (though they were typically forbidden from associating with the audiences).
In 1936 Whatley's intercession led to Blount being awarded a scholarship at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University
. He was a music education
major, studying composition, orchestration
, and music theory
, but after a year, he dropped out.
Sun Ra said that this experience occurred in 1936 or 1937, but according to Swzed, even his closest associates cannot date the story any earlier than 1952 (Sun Ra also stated that it occurred when he was living in Chicago, a town he did not regularly inhabit until the late 1940s). With no substantial variations, Sun Ra discussed the vision to the end of his life. The trip to Saturn allegedly happened a full decade before flying saucer
s entered public consciousness with the 1947 encounter of Kenneth Arnold
; about 15 years before the contactees and their stories of benevolent Space Brothers were publicized by the likes of George Adamski
; and almost 20 years before sinister UFO abductions were a public concept with the 1961 case of Barney and Betty Hill. Szwed states that "even if this story is revisionist autobiography
… Sonny was pulling together several strains of his life. He was both prophesizing his future and explaining his past with a single act of personal mythology."
Blount became a regular at Birmingham's Forbes Piano Company, a white-owned company which—astoundingly for a business in the Deep South
—simply ignored the strict Jim Crow laws
of the racially segregated era. Blount visited the Forbes building almost daily to play music, swap ideas with staff and customers, or copy sheet music into his notebooks. He formed a new band, and, like his old teacher Whatley, insisted on rigorous daily rehearsals. The new Sonny Blount Orchestra earned a reputation as an impressive, disciplined band that could play in a wide variety of styles with equal skill.
into the Military of the United States
. He quickly declared himself a conscientious objector
, citing religious objections to war and killing, his financial support of his great-aunt Ida, and his chronic hernia. His case was rejected by the local draft board, and in his appeal to the national draft board, Blount wrote that the lack of black men on the draft appeal board "smacks of Hitlerism
". His family was deeply embarrassed by Sonny's refusal to join the military, and he was effectively ostracized by many of his relatives. Blount was eventually approved for alternate service at Civilian Public Service
camp in Pennsylvania
. However, Blount didn't appear at the camp as scheduled on December 8, 1942, and shortly thereafter, he was arrested in Alabama.
In court, Blount declared that even alternate service was unacceptable to him, and he debated the judge on points of law and Biblical interpretation. Though sympathetic to Blount, the judge also declared that he was clearly in violation of the law, and was risking forcible induction into the U.S. Military. Blount declared that if he were inducted, he would use his military weapons and training to kill the first high-ranking military officer he could. The judge sentenced Blount to jail (pending draft board and CPS rulings), and then declared "I've never seen a nigger like you before;" Blount replied, "No, and you never will again."
In January 1943 a desperate Blount wrote to the United States Marshals Service
from the Walker County, Alabama
jail in Jasper
. He said he was facing a nervous breakdown
from the stress of imprisonment, that he was suicidal
, and that he was in constant fear of sexual assault
. His conscientious objector status was eventually reaffirmed in February 1943 and Blount was escorted to Pennsylvania
where he conducted forestry work in the day and was allowed to play piano at night. Psychiatrists there described him as "a psychopathic personality [and] sexually perverted" but also as "a well-educated colored intellectual
".
In March 1943 Blount was classified as 4-F because of his hernia. He returned to Birmingham embittered and angered by his experiences. He formed a new band and quickly was playing professionally. After his beloved great-aunt Ida died in 1945, Blount felt no reason to stay in Birmingham. He dissolved the band, and moved to Chicago, part of the wave of southern African Americans who moved north
during and after World War II
.
, with whom he made his recording debut on two 1946 singles, "Dig This Boogie/Lightning Struck the Poorhouse" and "My Baby's Barrelhouse"/"Drinking By Myself;" "Dig This Boogie" was also Blount's first recorded piano solo. He performed with the locally successful Lil Green
band and played bump-and-grind music for months in Calumet City strip club
s.
In August 1946, Blount earned a lengthy engagement at the Club DeLisa
under bandleader and composer Fletcher Henderson
. Blount had long admired Henderson, but Henderson's fortunes were fading (his band was now made of up middling musicians rather than the stars of earlier years) in large part because of his instability. Henderson hired Blount as pianist and arranger, replacing Marl Young. Ra's arrangements initially showed a degree of bebop
influence, but the band members resisted the new music, despite Henderson's encouragement.
In 1948 Blount performed briefly in a trio with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins
and violinist Stuff Smith
, both preeminent swing-era musicians. There are no known recordings of this trio, but a home recording of a Blount-Smith duet from 1953 appears on Sound Sun Pleasure, and one of Sun Ra's final recordings was a rare sideman appearance on violinist Billy Bang
's Tribute to Stuff Smith.
In addition to professional advancement, Chicago also changed Blount's personal outlook. The city was a center of African American political activism and fringe movements, with Black Muslims
, Black Hebrews
, and others proselytizing, debating, and printing leaflets or books. Blount absorbed it all and was fascinated with the city's many ancient Egyptian-styled buildings and monuments. He read books like George G.M. James's Stolen Legacy (which argued that classical Greek philosophy
actually had its roots in ancient Egypt), which convinced Blount that the accomplishments and history of Africans had been systematically suppressed and denied by European cultures.
By 1952 Blount was leading the Space Trio with drummer Tommy "Bugs" Hunter and saxophonist Pat Patrick, two of the most accomplished musicians he had known. They performed regularly and Sun Ra began writing more advanced songs.
On October 20, 1952 Blount legally changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra. Sun Ra claimed to have always been uncomfortable with his birth name of Blount, seeing it as a slave name
of a family that he was not really a member of. One observer has argued that this change was similar to the way "Malcolm X
and Muhammad Ali
… [dropped] their slave names in the process of attaining a new self-awareness and self-esteem".
Patrick left the group to move to Florida with his new wife; not long after, Patrick's friend John Gilmore
(tenor sax) joined the group, and Marshall Allen
(alto sax) soon joined the fold. Patrick was in and out of the group until the end of his life, but Allen and Gilmore—who would both earn critical praise for their talents—were the two most devoted members of the Arkestra. Saxophonist James Spaulding and trombonist Julian Priester
also recorded with Sun Ra in Chicago, and both went on to notable careers of their own. The Chicago tenorist Von Freeman
also did a short stint with the band of the early 1950s.
In Chicago, Blount met Alton Abraham
, a precociously intelligent teenager and something of a kindred spirit who became the Arkestra's biggest booster and one of Sun Ra's closest friends. The men both felt like outsiders and shared an interest in fringe esoterica. Abraham's strengths balanced Ra's shortcomings: though he was a disciplined bandleader, Sun Ra was somewhat introverted and lacked business sense (a trait that would haunt his entire career); Abraham was outgoing, well-connected, and practical. Though still a teenager, Abraham eventually became Sun Ra's de facto business manager: he booked performances, suggested musicians for the Arkestra, and introduced several popular songs into the group's repertoire. Ra, Abraham and others formed a sort of book club to trade ideas and discuss the offbeat topics that so intrigued them. This group printed a number of pamphlets and broadsides explaining their conclusions and ideas; some of these were collected by critic John Corbett
and Anthony Elms as The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets (2006).
Sun Ra and Abraham also formed an independent record label
in the mid-1950s; it was generally known as El Saturn Records
, though (as with the Arkestra) there were several variants of the name. Initially focused on 45 rpm singles by Sun Ra and artists related to him, Saturn Records did issue two full-length albums during the 1950s: Super-Sonic Jazz
(1957) and Jazz In Silhouette
(1959). Producer Tom Wilson was actually the first to release a Sun Ra album, through his independent label Transition Records in 1957, entitled Jazz by Sun Ra
. During this era, Sun Ran recorded the first of dozens of singles as a band-for-hire backing a range of doo wop and R&B singers; several dozen of these were were reissued in a two-CD set, The Singles, by Evidence Records.
It was during the late 1950s that Sun Ra and his band began wearing the outlandish, Egypt
ian-styled or science fiction
-themed costumes and headdresses for which they would become known. These costumes had multiple purposes: they evidenced Sun Ra's abiding fascination with ancient Egypt and the space age
; they provided a sort of distinctive, memorable uniform
for the Arkestra; they were a way to take on a new identity, at least while onstage; and they provided comic relief
(Sun Ra thought avant garde musicians typically took themselves far too seriously).
through the end of September before settling in New York City
. They initially had trouble finding performance venues and began living communally
because of New York's higher cost of living. This frustration helped to fuel the drastic changes in the Arkestra's sound as Sun Ra's music underwent a free jazz
-influenced experimental period.
In March 1966 the Arkestra scored a regular Monday night gig at Slug's Saloon. This proved to be a breakthrough to new audiences and recognition. Sun Ra's popularity reached an early peak during this period, as the beat generation
and early followers of psychedelia embraced him. Regularly for the next year and a half (and intermittently for another half-decade afterwards), Sun Ra and company performed at Slug's for audiences that eventually came to include music critics and notable jazz musicians. Opinions of Sun Ra's music were divided (and heckler
s were not uncommon), but high praise came from two of the architects of bebop
: trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie
offered encouragement, once stating, "Keep it up, Sonny, they tried to do the same shit to me", while pianist Thelonious Monk
chided someone who said Sun Ra was "too far out" by responding, "Yeah, but it swings."
section of Philadelphia, where his Morton Street house remained the Arkestra's base of operations until Sun Ra's death. Apart from occasional complaints about the noise of rehearsals, they were soon regarded as good neighbors because of their friendliness, drug-free living, and rapport with youngsters. Saxophonist Danny Thompson owned and operated the Pharaoh's Den, a convenience store in the neighborhood. When lightning struck a tree on their street, Sun Ra took it as a good omen
and multireedist James Jacson fashioned the Cosmic Infinity Drum from the scorched tree trunk. They still commuted via railroad to New York for the Monday night gig at Slug's and for other engagements.
In late 1968 Sun Ra and the Arkestra undertook their first tour of the US West Coast. Reactions were mixed; even hippie
s accustomed to long-form psychedelia like the Grateful Dead
were often bewildered by the Arkestra, which included 20–30 musicians, dancers, singers, fire-eaters, and elaborate lighting. John Burks of Rolling Stone wrote a positive review of a San Jose State College concert that led to Sun Ra being featured on the April 19, 1969 cover of the magazine and introducing Sun Ra's inscrutable gaze to millions. This first West Coast tour also led to vibraphonist Damon Choice, then an art student at San Jose, joining the Arkestra.
Starting with concerts in France
, Germany
, and the United Kingdom
in 1970, the Arkestra began to find opportunities for working outside the US, playing to audiences who had hitherto known his music only through records. Sun Ra continued playing in Europe to nearly the end of his life. Given Sun Ra's unorthodox financial management, saxophonist Danny Thompson became a de facto tour and business manager during this era, specializing in what he called "no bullshit C.O.D.
", preferring to take cash before performing or delivering records.
In early 1971 Sun Ra was artist-in-residence at University of California, Berkeley
, teaching a course called "The Black Man In the Cosmos". Rather few students enrolled but the classes were often full of curious persons from the surrounding community. One half-hour of each class was devoted to a lecture (complete with handouts and homework assignments), the other half-hour to an Arkestra performance or Sun Ra keyboard solo. Reading lists included the works of Madame Blavatsky
and Henry Dumas
, the Book of the Dead
, Alexander Hislop
's The Two Babylons
, The Book of Oahspe
and assorted volumes concerning Egyptian hieroglyphs, African American
folklore
, and other topics.
In 1971 Sun Ra fulfilled a long-standing desire by performing with the Arkestra at ancient Egyptian pyramids
.
In 1972 San Francisco public TV station KQED producer John Coney, producer Jim Newman
, and screen writer Joshua Smith worked with Sun Ra to produce an 85-minute feature film, entitled Space Is the Place
, with Sun Ra's Arkestra and an ensemble of actors assembled by the production team. It was filmed in Oakland and San Francisco. On May 20, 1978 Sun Ra and the Arkestra appeared on Saturday Night Live
.
In the mid-1970s, the Arkestra would sometimes play free Saturday afternoon concerts in a Germantown park near their Philadelphia home. Sometimes at their mid 1970s shows in Philadelphia nightclubs, someone would stand at the back of the room, selling stacks of unmarked LPs in plain white sleeves, pressed from recordings of the band's live performances (including one Halloween show where the salesman was dressed as a golden alien, and the LPs included a cover arrangement of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow").
Back in New York City, in the fall of 1979, Sun Ra and the Arkestra were essentially the 'house band' at the notorious Squat Theater on 23rd St.-the performance home of the avant garde Hungarian theater troupe. Their young mastermind manager, Janos, transformed the theater into a riveting nightclub while the core of the troupe was away that season performing in Europe. Debbie Harry, 'The Velvet Underground's' John Cale and Nico (from Andy Warhol's factory days), John Lurie and 'The Lounge Lizards' and other pop and avant garde musicians were regulars.
Sun Ra was a disciplined person who avoided drinking anything other than club soda at the gigs, but did not impose his strict code on his musicians, the majority of whom regarded his claim that he was a 'messenger' from Saturn with wry skepticism. Nevertheless it was clear they deeply respected his genius, discipline and authority.
Soft spoken and charismatic, Sun Ra turned Squat Theater into a syncopated universe of big band 'space' jazz backed by a floor show of writhing, sexy, Jupiterettes—him directing and playing three synthesizers at the same time. In those days 'Space Is The Place' was the space at Squat.
The Arkestra continued their touring and recording through the 1980s and into the 1990s, and Sun Ra became a fixture in Philadelphia, appearing semi-regularly on WXPN
radio, giving lectures to community groups, or haunting the city's libraries.
Even after a stroke
in 1990, Sun Ra kept composing, performing, and leading the Arkestra. Late in his career, Sun Ra opened a few concerts for New York–based rock group Sonic Youth
. Eventually, Sun Ra grew too ill to perform and tour, and he entrusted Gilmore with leading the Arkestra. (Gilmore himself was frail from emphysema, and when he died, Allen would take over leadership of the Arkestra.) Sun Ra went back to Birmingham and reconnected with his sister whom he had rarely seen for nearly 40 years. He contracted pneumonia
, died in Birmingham on May 30, 1993, and was buried at the Elmwood Cemetery
. According to the hospital, he had also been affected by circulatory system
problems and numerous strokes shortly before his death. The small footstone read only "Sonny Blount (aka [sic] Le Son'y [sic] Ra)".
, who celebrated his 80th birthday on stage during Arkestra performances at the Vox Populi gallery in Philadelphia and the Vision Festival
in New York City. In the summer of 2004 the Arkestra became the first American jazz band to perform in Tuva
, playing five sets at the Ustuu-Huree Festival. As of May 2008, the Arkestra continues to tour and perform, with captain Marshall Allen celebrating his 84th birthday on stage at New York City's Sullivan Hall. In September 2008 they played for 7 days in a row at the ZXZW festival, every day emphasizing different aspects of the musical legacy of Sun Ra. The Arkestra celebrated Allen's 85th birthday on May 24, 2009 to a packed house at Johnny Brenda's in Philadelphia's Fishtown neighborhood. A month later, they performed at Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art in conjunction with an exhibition that explored the intersection of the Arkestra's performative legacy and the practice of contemporary art. More recently they ventured to Australia for the first time for the 2011 Melbourne International Jazz Festival, still under the control of the sprightly 87-year-old Marshall Allen, playing to very enthusiastic sold-out crowds.
with the Arkestra at the invitation of drummer Salah Ragab
. He would travel to Egypt in again 1983 and 1984, when he would record with Ragab once more. Recordings made in Egypt have been released on Live in Egypt, Nidhamu, Sun Ra Meets Salah Ragab, Egypt Strut and Horizon.Allmusic Live in Egypt reviewAllmusic Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt reviewAllmusic Horizon review
and blues
, a sometimes refined touch reminiscent of Count Basie
or Ahmad Jamal
, and angular phrases in the style of Thelonious Monk
or brutal, percussive attacks like Cecil Taylor
. Often overlooked is the range of influences from classical music
—Sun Ra cited Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Schoenberg
and Shostakovich as his favorite composers for the piano.
As a synthesizer and electric keyboard player, Sun Ra ranks among one of the earliest and most radical pioneers. By the mid-1950s, he used a variety of electric keyboards, and almost immediately, he exploited their potential perhaps more than anyone, sometimes modifying them himself to produce sounds rarely if ever heard before. His live albums from the late 1960s and early 1970s feature some of the noisiest, most bizarre keyboard work ever recorded. Sun Ra's music can be roughly divided into three phases, but his records and performances were full of surprises.
swing into the outer-space-themed "cosmic jazz" for which he was best known. Music critics and jazz historians say some of his best work was recorded during this period and it is also some of his most accessible music. Sun Ra's music in this era was often tightly arranged and sometimes reminiscent of Duke Ellington
's, Count Basie's, or other important swing music ensembles. However, there was a strong influence from post-swing styles like bebop
, hard bop
, and modal jazz
, and touches of the exotic and hints of the experimentalism that would dominate his later music. Notable Sun Ra albums from the 1950s include Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth, Interstellar Low Ways, Super-Sonic Jazz, We Travel the Spaceways, The Nubians of Plutonia and Jazz In Silhouette.
Ronnie Boykins
, Sun Ra's bassist
, has been described as "the pivot around which much of Sun Ra's music revolved for eight years". This is especially pronounced on the key recordings from 1965 (The Magic City, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One, and The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two) where the intertwining lines of Boykins' bass and Ra's electronic keyboards provide cohesion.
—in fact, it is often difficult to tell where the compositions end and the improvisations begin.
In this era Sun Ra began conducting using hand and body gestures. This system would inspire cornetist Butch Morris
, who would later develop his own more highly refined way to conduct improvisers.
Though often associated with avant-garde jazz, Sun Ra did not believe his work could be classified as "free music": "I have to make sure that every note, every nuance, is correct. … If you want to call it that, spell it p-h-r-e, because ph is a definite article and re is the name of the sun. So I play phre music—music of the sun."
Seeking to broaden his compositional possibilities, Sun Ra insisted all band members double on various percussion instrument
s—predating world music
by drawing on various ethnic musical forms—and most saxophonists became multireedist
s, adding instruments such as flute
s, oboe
s, or clarinet
s to their arsenals. In this era, Sun Ra was among the first of any musicians to make extensive and pioneering use of synthesizer
s and other various electronic keyboards; he was given a prototype Minimoog
by its inventor, Robert Moog
.
Notable titles from this period include The Magic City, Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, When Sun Comes Out, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One
, Atlantis
, Secrets of the Sun and Other Planes of There.
and Jelly Roll Morton
.
In the 1970s Sun Ra took a liking to the films of Walt Disney
. He incorporated smatterings of Disney musical numbers into many of his performances from then on. In the late 1980s the Arkestra performed a concert at Walt Disney World. The Arkestra's version of "Pink Elephants on Parade
" is available on Stay Awake, a tribute album of Disney tunes played by various artists and produced by Hal Willner
. A number of Sun Ra's 1970s concerts are available on CD, but none have received a wide release in comparison to his earlier music. The album Atlantis can be considered the landmark that led into his 1970s era. In 1978-1980 performances, Sun Ra added a large electronic creation, the Outerspace Visual Communicator, which produced images rather than sounds; this was performed at a keyboard by its inventor, Bill Sebastian. During concerts, the OVC usually was positioned at center stage behind the Arkestra while Sebastian sat on stage with the musicians.
Sun Ra was personally responsible for the vast majority of the constant changes in the Arkestra's lineup. According to contrabassist Jiunie Booth
, himself a member of the Arkestra, Sun Ra would not confront any musician whose performance he was unsatisfied with. Instead, Sun Ra would simply gather the entire Arkestra minus the offending musician, and skip town, leaving the fired musician stranded. After repeated instances of US jazz musicians becoming stranded in foreign countries, Sun Ra's unique method of dismissal became a diplomatic liability for the United States. The U.S. State Department was compelled to tell Sun Ra to bring any fired musicians stateside rather than leaving them stranded.
The following is a partial list of musical collaborators and the eras in which they played with Sun Ra and/or the Arkestra:
was often described as a philosophy
, but he rejected this term, describing his own manner as an "equation
"—he claimed that while philosophy was based on theories and abstract reasoning, his method was based on logic and pragmatism. Many of the Arkestra cite Sun Ra's teachings as pivotal and for inspiring such long-term devotion to the music that they knew would never make them much money. His equation was rarely (if ever) explained as a whole; instead, it was related in bits and pieces over many years, leading some to think his world view was naïve or composed of nonsensical new-age platitudes. However, Martinelli argues that, when considered as a whole, one can discern a unified world view
that draws upon many sources, but is also unique to Sun Ra, writing:
He drew on sources as diverse as the Kabbalah
, Rosicrucian
ism, channeling
, numerology
, Freemasonry
, and black nationalism
. Sun Ra's system had distinct Gnostic leanings arguing that the god of most monotheistic religions was not the creator god, not the ultimate god, but a lesser, evil being. Sun Ra was wary of the Bible, knowing that it had been used to justify slavery
. He would often re-arrange and re-word Biblical passages (along with re-working many other words, names or phrases) in an attempt to uncover "hidden" meanings. The most obvious evidence of this system was Ra's practice of renaming many of the musicians who played with him.
Bassoonist/multireedist James Jacson had studied Zen Buddhism before joining Sun Ra and identified strong similarities between Zen teachings and practices (particularly Zen koans) and Ra's use of non sequiturs and seemingly absurd replies to questions. Drummer Art Jenkins admitted that Sun Ra's "nonsense" sometimes troubled his thoughts for days until inspiring a sort of paradigm shift
, or profound change in outlook. Drummer Andrew Cyrille
said Sun Ra's comments were "very interesting stuff … whether you believed it or not. And a lot of times it was humorous, and a lot of times it was ridiculous, and a lot of times it was right on the money."
Some of Sun Ra's songs with words featured lyrics that although simple, were inspirational and philosophical. The most famous example was "Space is the Place!". Another example was the song that went, "You made a mistake. You did something wrong. Make another mistake, and do something right!". Sometimes (typically at the end of a set) the entire Arkestra would snake out through the audience, playing and chanting something like this. Sun Ra even came up once, behind a frightened young audience member, grabbed him in a bear hug, and whispered this in his ear, while the whole band chanted and played along, in a circle around his table, with the rest of the audience watching on in amusement. (1978, in a performance in a small short-lived nightclub on City Line Avenue in Philadelphia)
, to employ the electric bass
, to play electronic keyboard
s, to use extensive percussion
and polyrhythm
s, to explore modal
music and to pioneer solo and group freeform improvisations
. In addition, he made his mark in the wider cultural context: he proclaimed the Africa
n origins of jazz
, reaffirmed pride in black history and reasserted the spiritual
and mystical dimensions of music (all important factors in the black cultural/political renaissance of the 60s)."
George Clinton
of P-funk
fame drew inspiration from Sun Ra; see P-Funk mythology
. He once declared in an interview, "Yeah, Sun Ra's out to lunch... same place I eat at!"
Detroit's MC5
played a handful of shows with Sun Ra (including surviving MC5 members Michael Davis
, Wayne Kramer
and Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson , under the DKT / MC5 name ), and were influenced by his works monumentally . One of their songs from their premiere album Kick Out the Jams
featured a track called "Starship" , which was based upon a poem by Ra .
He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
in 1979. His interment was located in Elmwood Cemetery
.
's A Joyful Noise (1980), which interspersed performances and rehearsals with Sun Ra's commentary on various subjects ranging from today's youth to his own place in the cosmos. There is also a feature film entitled Space Is the Place
from 1974 which stars Sun Ra and his band who play themselves. The soundtrack, also by Sun Ra, is available on CD.
In 1995 his influnce was a significant factor in the foundation of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts
.
More recently (2005) Don Letts
' Sun Ra—Brother from Another Planet reuses some of Mugge's material and includes some additional interviews.
In 2009, Points On A Space Age, a documentary by Ephrahaim Asili was released. "It's a 60-minute doc along the lines of the talking-head-intercut-with performance clips style. It works because of the interesting and passionate nature of the images of the band as well as of the audio, as the band attempts to articulate what Ra meant to them, and why they are keeping the flame alive. He “left the earth” for his next mission in 1993.
The remnants of the band include Marshall Allen, Ra’s greatest discliple as well as current bandleader and keeper of the flame. Now 86, Allen also serves as recruiter for new members, and potential converts of Sun Ra’s philosophy, once based on space travel and music as a tool for evolution into a new consciousness and tuning into holy vibrations."
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, bandleader
Bandleader
A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....
, piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
player, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
, Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
. He is a 1979 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame was founded in 1978, and opened a museum on September 18, 1993, with a mission "to foster, encourage, educate, and cultivate a general appreciation of the medium of jazz music as a legitimate, original and distinctive art form indigenous to America...
.
"Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial," critic Scott Yanow said, because of Sun Ra's eclectic music and unorthodox lifestyle. Claiming that he was of the "Angel Race" and not from Earth, but from Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...
, Sun Ra developed a complex persona using "cosmic" philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afrofuturism
Afrofuturism
Afrofuturism is an emergent literary and cultural aesthetic that combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in order to critique not only the present-day dilemmas of people of color, but also to revise,...
. He preached awareness and peace above all. He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra
Ra
Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun...
being the Egyptian God of the Sun), and used several other names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee. Sun Ra denied any connection with his birth name, saying "That's an imaginary person, never existed … Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym."
From the mid-1950s to his death, Sun Ra led "The Arkestra" (a deliberate re-spelling of "orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
"), an ensemble with an ever-changing lineup and name. It was by turns called "The Solar Myth Arkestra", "His Cosmo Discipline Arkestra", the "Blue Universe Arkestra", "The Jet Set Omniverse Arkestra", as well as many other permutations. Sun Ra asserted that the ever-changing name of his ensemble reflected the ever-changing nature of his music. His mainstream success was limited, but Sun Ra was a prolific recording artist and frequent live performer. His music ranged from keyboard solos to big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
s of over 30 musicians and touched on virtually the entire history of jazz, from ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
to swing music, from bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
to free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
. He was also a pioneer of electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and space music
Space music
Space music, also called spacemusic, is an umbrella term, synonymous with a segment of New Age Music and Ambient Music, used to describe music that evokes a feeling of contemplative spaciousness. Space music can be found within a wide range of genres. It is particularly associated with ambient, New...
. He also used free improvisation
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
and was one of the first musicians, of any genre, to make extensive use of electronic keyboard
Electronic keyboard
An electronic keyboard is an electronic or digital keyboard instrument.The major components of a typical modern electronic keyboard are:...
s.
Early life
For decades, very little was known about Sun Ra's early life, much of it being obscured by Sun Ra himself. He routinely gave evasive, contradictory or seemingly nonsensical answers to personal questions and even denied his birth name. His birthday for years remained unknown, his birth year being claimed as years ranging from 1910 to 1918. Only a few years before his death, the date of Sun Ra's birth remained a mystery. Jim Macnie's notes for Blue Delight (1989) could only state that Sun Ra was believed to be about 75 years old. However, Ra's biographer John F. Szwed was able to uncover a wealth of information about Ra's early life, including confirming a May 22, 1914 birth date. Named after the popular vaudevilleVaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
stage magician Black Herman
Black Herman
Benjamin Rucker was an American stage magician, better known by his stage name Black Herman. Born in Amherst, Virginia, he was the most prominent African American magician of his time....
, who had deeply impressed his mother, Sun Ra would speculate, only half in jest, that he was distantly related to Elijah Poole, later famous as Elijah Muhammed, leader of the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
. He was nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
d "Sonny" from his childhood, had an older sister and half-brother, and was doted upon by his mother and grandmother.
Herman Blount was a skilled pianist as a child. By 11 or 12 years old he was writing original songs, and was able to sight read
Sight reading
Sight-reading is the reading and performing of a piece of written music, specifically when the performer has not seen it before. Sight-singing is often used to describe a singer who is sight-reading.-Sight-reading:...
sheet music
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
. Birmingham was an important stop for touring musicians, and he saw famous musicians like Fletcher Henderson
Fletcher Henderson
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast...
, Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
, Fats Waller
Fats Waller
Fats Waller , born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer...
, along with less-famous performers who were often just as talented as their better-known peers, with Sun Ra once stating "the world let down a lot of good musicians". In his teenage years, Blount demonstrated prodigious musical talent: many times, according to acquaintances, he would see big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
performances and produce full transcriptions of the bands' songs from memory. By his mid-teens Blount was performing semi-professionally as a solo pianist, or as a member of various ad hoc jazz and R&B groups. He attended Birmingham's Industrial High School (now known as Parker High School
A. H. Parker High School
A.H. Parker High School is a public high school located in Birmingham, Alabama. The school educates over 1,000 students in grades 9 to 12 in the Birmingham City Schools district.As of 2010 the principal is Cedric Tatum.- History :A.H...
) where he studied under famed music teacher John T. "Fess" Whatley, a demanding disciplinarian who was widely respected and whose classes produced many professional musicians.
At ten years old Blount joined the Knights of Pythias
Knights of Pythias
The Knights of Pythias is a fraternal organization and secret society founded at Washington, DC, on 19 February 1864.The Knights of Pythias was the first fraternal organization to receive a charter under an act of the United States Congress. It was founded by Justus H. Rathbone, who had been...
, and remained a member until he graduated from high school. His family was deeply religious but was not formally associated with any Christian church or sect. Blount had few or no close friends in high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
but was remembered as kind-natured and quiet, an honor roll
Honors student
An honors student is a person recognized for achieving high grades or high marks in their course work.Honors students may refer to# Students recognized for their academic achievement on lists published periodically throughout the school year, known as honor rolls, varying from school to school, and...
student, and a voracious reader. The Black Masonic Lodge
Masonic Lodge
This article is about the Masonic term for a membership group. For buildings named Masonic Lodge, see Masonic Lodge A Masonic Lodge, often termed a Private Lodge or Constituent Lodge, is the basic organisation of Freemasonry...
was one of the few places in Birmingham where African-Americans had essentially unlimited access to books, and the Lodge's many books on Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
and other esoteric concepts made a large impression on him.
Also by his teens, Blount suffered from cryptorchidism
Cryptorchidism
Cryptorchidism is the absence of one or both testes from the scrotum. It is the most common birth defect regarding male genitalia. In unique cases, cryptorchidism can develop later in life, often as late as young adulthood. About 3% of full-term and 30% of premature infant boys are born with at...
, a chronic testicular
Testicle
The testicle is the male gonad in animals. Like the ovaries to which they are homologous, testes are components of both the reproductive system and the endocrine system...
hernia
Hernia
A hernia is the protrusion of an organ or the fascia of an organ through the wall of the cavity that normally contains it. A hiatal hernia occurs when the stomach protrudes into the mediastinum through the esophageal opening in the diaphragm....
that left him with a nearly constant discomfort that sometimes flared into severe pain. Szwed suggests that the condition left Blount with a sense of shame and increased his sense of isolation.
Early professional career and college
In 1934 Blount was offered his first full-time musical job when Industrial High School Biology teacher Ethel Harper organized a band and decided to pursue a career as a singer. Blount joined a musicians' trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
and Harper's group toured through the US southeast and Midwest. Harper left the group mid-tour to move to New York (she later was a member of the modestly successful singing group the Ginger Snaps
Ginger Snaps
Ginger Snaps is a 2000 Canadian werewolf film directed by John Fawcett. The film focuses on two teenage sisters, Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald , who have a fascination with death. The title is a pun on the cookie Gingersnap. "Snap" also relates to losing one's self-control, or a quick, aggressive...
), and Blount took over leadership of the group, renaming it the Sonny Blount Orchestra. They continued touring for several months before dissolving the unprofitable group. Though the first edition of the Sonny Blount Orchestra was not financially successful, they earned positive notice from fans and other musicians, and Blount afterwards found steady employment in Birmingham.
The clubs of Birmingham often featured exotic trappings such as vivid lighting and murals with tropical or oasis scenes that were believed to have influenced Sun Ra's later stage shows. The big bands also imparted a sense of pride and togetherness to black musicians: musicians were highly regarded in the black community, and were expected to be disciplined and presentable, and in the segregated south, black musicians arguably had the most acceptance in white society, often performing for white high society audiences (though they were typically forbidden from associating with the audiences).
In 1936 Whatley's intercession led to Blount being awarded a scholarship at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, also known as Alabama A&M University or AAMU, is a public, historically black university, Land-grant university located in Normal, Madison County, Alabama....
. He was a music education
Music education
Music education is a field of study associated with the teaching and learning of music. It touches on all domains of learning, including the psychomotor domain , the cognitive domain , and, in particular and significant ways,the affective domain, including music appreciation and sensitivity...
major, studying composition, orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
, and music theory
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
, but after a year, he dropped out.
"Trip to Saturn"
Finances and his increasing sense of isolation are believed to have been a factor in Sun Ra's leaving college, but perhaps more importantly, he claimed a visionary experience as a college student, a strange event that was to have a major long-term influence on the young pianist. In 1936 or 1937, in the midst of deep religious concentration, Sun Ra claimed that a bright light appeared around him, and, as he later stated,… my whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up … I wasn't in human form … I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn … they teleportedApportAccording to parapsychologists and ghost hunters, an apport is the paranormal transference of an article from one place to another, or an appearance of an article from an unknown source that is often associated with poltergeist activity or spiritualistic séances. The Skeptic's Dictionary states...
me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools … the world was going into complete chaos … I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That's what they told me.
Sun Ra said that this experience occurred in 1936 or 1937, but according to Swzed, even his closest associates cannot date the story any earlier than 1952 (Sun Ra also stated that it occurred when he was living in Chicago, a town he did not regularly inhabit until the late 1940s). With no substantial variations, Sun Ra discussed the vision to the end of his life. The trip to Saturn allegedly happened a full decade before flying saucer
Flying saucer
A flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...
s entered public consciousness with the 1947 encounter of Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth A. Arnold was an American aviator and businessman. He is best-known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington...
; about 15 years before the contactees and their stories of benevolent Space Brothers were publicized by the likes of George Adamski
George Adamski
George Adamski was a Polish-born American citizen who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he claimed to have photographed ships from other planets, met with friendly Nordic alien "Space Brothers", and to have taken flights with them...
; and almost 20 years before sinister UFO abductions were a public concept with the 1961 case of Barney and Betty Hill. Szwed states that "even if this story is revisionist autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
… Sonny was pulling together several strains of his life. He was both prophesizing his future and explaining his past with a single act of personal mythology."
New devotion to music (late 1930s)
Even putting Blount's strange vision aside, after leaving college, he became known as perhaps the most singularly devoted musician in Birmingham. He rarely slept, citing Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, and Napoleon as fellow highly productive cat-nappers. He transformed the first floor of his family's home into a conservatory-workshop where he wrote songs, transcribed recordings, rehearsed with the many musicians who were nearly constantly drifting in and out, and discussed Biblical and esoteric concepts with whomever was interested.Blount became a regular at Birmingham's Forbes Piano Company, a white-owned company which—astoundingly for a business in the Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
—simply ignored the strict Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
of the racially segregated era. Blount visited the Forbes building almost daily to play music, swap ideas with staff and customers, or copy sheet music into his notebooks. He formed a new band, and, like his old teacher Whatley, insisted on rigorous daily rehearsals. The new Sonny Blount Orchestra earned a reputation as an impressive, disciplined band that could play in a wide variety of styles with equal skill.
Draft and wartime experiences
In October 1942 Blount received a selective service notification that he had been draftedConscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
into the Military of the United States
Military of the United States
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
. He quickly declared himself a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
, citing religious objections to war and killing, his financial support of his great-aunt Ida, and his chronic hernia. His case was rejected by the local draft board, and in his appeal to the national draft board, Blount wrote that the lack of black men on the draft appeal board "smacks of Hitlerism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
". His family was deeply embarrassed by Sonny's refusal to join the military, and he was effectively ostracized by many of his relatives. Blount was eventually approved for alternate service at Civilian Public Service
Civilian Public Service
The Civilian Public Service provided conscientious objectors in the United States an alternative to military service during World War II...
camp in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. However, Blount didn't appear at the camp as scheduled on December 8, 1942, and shortly thereafter, he was arrested in Alabama.
In court, Blount declared that even alternate service was unacceptable to him, and he debated the judge on points of law and Biblical interpretation. Though sympathetic to Blount, the judge also declared that he was clearly in violation of the law, and was risking forcible induction into the U.S. Military. Blount declared that if he were inducted, he would use his military weapons and training to kill the first high-ranking military officer he could. The judge sentenced Blount to jail (pending draft board and CPS rulings), and then declared "I've never seen a nigger like you before;" Blount replied, "No, and you never will again."
In January 1943 a desperate Blount wrote to the United States Marshals Service
United States Marshals Service
The United States Marshals Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice . The office of U.S. Marshal is the oldest federal law enforcement office in the United States; it was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789...
from the Walker County, Alabama
Walker County, Alabama
Walker County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama.Its name is in honor of John Williams Walker, a member of the United States Senate. As of 2010 the population was 67,023...
jail in Jasper
Jasper, Alabama
Jasper is a city in Walker County, Alabama, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 14,659. As of 2011 the population had was 13,857. The city is the county seat of Walker County, and once ranked among the world's leading producers of coal....
. He said he was facing a nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
from the stress of imprisonment, that he was suicidal
Suicide crisis
A suicide crisis, suicidal crisis, or potential suicide, is a situation in which a person is attempting to kill him or herself or is seriously contemplating or planning to do so...
, and that he was in constant fear of sexual assault
Sexual assault
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....
. His conscientious objector status was eventually reaffirmed in February 1943 and Blount was escorted to Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
where he conducted forestry work in the day and was allowed to play piano at night. Psychiatrists there described him as "a psychopathic personality [and] sexually perverted" but also as "a well-educated colored intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
".
In March 1943 Blount was classified as 4-F because of his hernia. He returned to Birmingham embittered and angered by his experiences. He formed a new band and quickly was playing professionally. After his beloved great-aunt Ida died in 1945, Blount felt no reason to stay in Birmingham. He dissolved the band, and moved to Chicago, part of the wave of southern African Americans who moved north
Second Great Migration (African American)
The Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the North, Midwest and West. It took place from 1941, through World War II, and lasted until 1970. It was much larger and of a different character than the first Great Migration...
during and after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Chicago years (1945–1961)
In Chicago Blount quickly found work, notably with blues singer Wynonie HarrisWynonie Harris
Wynonie Harris , born in Omaha, Nebraska, was an American blues shouter and rhythm and blues singer of upbeat songs, featuring humorous, often ribald lyrics. With fifteen Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952, Harris is generally considered one of rock and roll's forerunners, influencing Elvis Presley...
, with whom he made his recording debut on two 1946 singles, "Dig This Boogie/Lightning Struck the Poorhouse" and "My Baby's Barrelhouse"/"Drinking By Myself;" "Dig This Boogie" was also Blount's first recorded piano solo. He performed with the locally successful Lil Green
Lil Green
Lil Green was an American blues singer and songwriter.-Life and career:Originally named Lillian Green, she was born in Mississippi; after the early deaths of her parents, she went to Chicago, Illinois, where she began performing in her teens and where she would make all of her recordings.Green was...
band and played bump-and-grind music for months in Calumet City strip club
Strip club
A strip club is an adult entertainment venue in which striptease or other erotic or exotic dance is regularly performed. Strip clubs typically adopt a nightclub or bar style, but can also adopt a theatre or cabaret-style....
s.
In August 1946, Blount earned a lengthy engagement at the Club DeLisa
Club DeLisa
The Club DeLisa, also written Delisa or De Lisa, at State Street and Garfield Avenue, on the South Side, was an important nightclub and music venue in Chicago....
under bandleader and composer Fletcher Henderson
Fletcher Henderson
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast...
. Blount had long admired Henderson, but Henderson's fortunes were fading (his band was now made of up middling musicians rather than the stars of earlier years) in large part because of his instability. Henderson hired Blount as pianist and arranger, replacing Marl Young. Ra's arrangements initially showed a degree of bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
influence, but the band members resisted the new music, despite Henderson's encouragement.
In 1948 Blount performed briefly in a trio with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...
and violinist Stuff Smith
Stuff Smith
Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith , better known as Stuff Smith, was a jazz violinist. He is known well for the song "If You're a Viper".-Biography:...
, both preeminent swing-era musicians. There are no known recordings of this trio, but a home recording of a Blount-Smith duet from 1953 appears on Sound Sun Pleasure, and one of Sun Ra's final recordings was a rare sideman appearance on violinist Billy Bang
Billy Bang
Billy Bang was an American free jazz violinist and composer.-Biography:...
's Tribute to Stuff Smith.
In addition to professional advancement, Chicago also changed Blount's personal outlook. The city was a center of African American political activism and fringe movements, with Black Muslims
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
, Black Hebrews
Black Hebrew Israelites
Black Hebrew Israelites are groups of people mostly of Black African ancestry situated mainly in the United States who believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Black Hebrews adhere in varying degrees to the religious beliefs and practices of mainstream Judaism...
, and others proselytizing, debating, and printing leaflets or books. Blount absorbed it all and was fascinated with the city's many ancient Egyptian-styled buildings and monuments. He read books like George G.M. James's Stolen Legacy (which argued that classical Greek philosophy
Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...
actually had its roots in ancient Egypt), which convinced Blount that the accomplishments and history of Africans had been systematically suppressed and denied by European cultures.
By 1952 Blount was leading the Space Trio with drummer Tommy "Bugs" Hunter and saxophonist Pat Patrick, two of the most accomplished musicians he had known. They performed regularly and Sun Ra began writing more advanced songs.
On October 20, 1952 Blount legally changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra. Sun Ra claimed to have always been uncomfortable with his birth name of Blount, seeing it as a slave name
Slave name
A slave name is a name given to a person who is or has been enslaved or a name inherited from enslaved ancestors. Modern use of the term applies mostly to African-Americans and West Indians who are descended from slaves, and are thereby capable of having a "slave name".-Ancient Rome:In Rome, slaves...
of a family that he was not really a member of. One observer has argued that this change was similar to the way "Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
and Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...
… [dropped] their slave names in the process of attaining a new self-awareness and self-esteem".
Patrick left the group to move to Florida with his new wife; not long after, Patrick's friend John Gilmore
John Gilmore (musician)
John Gilmore was an American jazz tenor saxophone player best-known for his long tenure as a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra...
(tenor sax) joined the group, and Marshall Allen
Marshall Allen
Marshall Belford Allen is an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz alto saxophone player. He also performs on flute, oboe, piccolo, and EVI ....
(alto sax) soon joined the fold. Patrick was in and out of the group until the end of his life, but Allen and Gilmore—who would both earn critical praise for their talents—were the two most devoted members of the Arkestra. Saxophonist James Spaulding and trombonist Julian Priester
Julian Priester
Julian Priester is an American jazz trombonist and composer.He has played with many artists including Sun Ra, Max Roach, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock.-Biography:...
also recorded with Sun Ra in Chicago, and both went on to notable careers of their own. The Chicago tenorist Von Freeman
Von Freeman
Earle Lavon Freeman Sr. is an American hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist. He is the father of jazz saxophonist Chico Freeman.-Biography:...
also did a short stint with the band of the early 1950s.
In Chicago, Blount met Alton Abraham
Alton Abraham
Alton Abraham was an African American social entrepreneur who acted as business manager for Sun Ra.Alton born in Chicago and served in the U.S Military in Okinawa from 1945-1947 When he returned to Chicago, he studied at the DuSable High School and Wilson Junior College gaining qualifications as...
, a precociously intelligent teenager and something of a kindred spirit who became the Arkestra's biggest booster and one of Sun Ra's closest friends. The men both felt like outsiders and shared an interest in fringe esoterica. Abraham's strengths balanced Ra's shortcomings: though he was a disciplined bandleader, Sun Ra was somewhat introverted and lacked business sense (a trait that would haunt his entire career); Abraham was outgoing, well-connected, and practical. Though still a teenager, Abraham eventually became Sun Ra's de facto business manager: he booked performances, suggested musicians for the Arkestra, and introduced several popular songs into the group's repertoire. Ra, Abraham and others formed a sort of book club to trade ideas and discuss the offbeat topics that so intrigued them. This group printed a number of pamphlets and broadsides explaining their conclusions and ideas; some of these were collected by critic John Corbett
John Corbett (writer)
John Corbett is a writer, musician, radio host, teacher, record producer, concert promoter, and gallery owner based in Chicago. He is best known among musicians and music fans as a champion of free jazz and free improvisation. In recent years he has become known in the visual art world as well...
and Anthony Elms as The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets (2006).
Sun Ra and Abraham also formed an independent record label
Independent record label
An independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels. A great number of bands and musical acts begin on independent labels.-Overview:...
in the mid-1950s; it was generally known as El Saturn Records
El Saturn Records
El Saturn Records is the name of an American record label. The label was one of the most active artist-owned record labels created in 1957 by Alton Abraham. Notable albums produced by the label include works by Sun Ra....
, though (as with the Arkestra) there were several variants of the name. Initially focused on 45 rpm singles by Sun Ra and artists related to him, Saturn Records did issue two full-length albums during the 1950s: Super-Sonic Jazz
Super-Sonic Jazz
Super-Sonic Jazz is an album by Sun Ra, recorded in 1956 at RCA Studios, Chicago. Super-Sonic Jazz was the first album to be released on Saturn records, the label run by Sun Ra and Alton Abraham, and was one of only three albums by Sun Ra to have been available in the 1950s...
(1957) and Jazz In Silhouette
Jazz in Silhouette
Jazz in Silhouette is a jazz album by Sun Ra and His Arkestra. Recorded on March 6, 1959 and released May of the same year. The album was recorded in Chicago during a session that also included the whole of Sound Sun Pleasure!! and Interstellar Low Ways from the album of the same name...
(1959). Producer Tom Wilson was actually the first to release a Sun Ra album, through his independent label Transition Records in 1957, entitled Jazz by Sun Ra
Jazz by Sun Ra
Jazz By Sun Ra is the debut album to be released by Sun Ra. The record label for the first pressing says "07-12-56", presumably when it was recorded. The LP originally appeared on Tom Wilson's short-lived Transition Records...
. During this era, Sun Ran recorded the first of dozens of singles as a band-for-hire backing a range of doo wop and R&B singers; several dozen of these were were reissued in a two-CD set, The Singles, by Evidence Records.
It was during the late 1950s that Sun Ra and his band began wearing the outlandish, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian-styled or science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
-themed costumes and headdresses for which they would become known. These costumes had multiple purposes: they evidenced Sun Ra's abiding fascination with ancient Egypt and the space age
Space Age
The Space Age is a time period encompassing the activities related to the Space Race, space exploration, space technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these events. The Space Age is generally considered to have begun with Sputnik...
; they provided a sort of distinctive, memorable uniform
Uniform
A uniform is a set of standard clothing worn by members of an organization while participating in that organization's activity. Modern uniforms are worn by armed forces and paramilitary organizations such as police, emergency services, security guards, in some workplaces and schools and by inmates...
for the Arkestra; they were a way to take on a new identity, at least while onstage; and they provided comic relief
Comic relief
Comic relief is the inclusion of a humorous character, scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension.-Definition:...
(Sun Ra thought avant garde musicians typically took themselves far too seriously).
New York years (1961–1968)
Sun Ra and some of his core musicians (Allen, Gilmore, and Boykins) left Chicago in July 1961, staying in MontrealMontreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
through the end of September before settling in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. They initially had trouble finding performance venues and began living communally
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
because of New York's higher cost of living. This frustration helped to fuel the drastic changes in the Arkestra's sound as Sun Ra's music underwent a free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
-influenced experimental period.
In March 1966 the Arkestra scored a regular Monday night gig at Slug's Saloon. This proved to be a breakthrough to new audiences and recognition. Sun Ra's popularity reached an early peak during this period, as the beat generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
and early followers of psychedelia embraced him. Regularly for the next year and a half (and intermittently for another half-decade afterwards), Sun Ra and company performed at Slug's for audiences that eventually came to include music critics and notable jazz musicians. Opinions of Sun Ra's music were divided (and heckler
Heckler
A heckler is a person who harass and try to disconcert others with questions, challenges, or gibes.Hecklers are often known to shout disparaging comments at a performance or event, or interrupts set-piece speeches, for example at a political meeting, with intent to disturb its performers or...
s were not uncommon), but high praise came from two of the architects of bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
: trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...
offered encouragement, once stating, "Keep it up, Sonny, they tried to do the same shit to me", while pianist Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
chided someone who said Sun Ra was "too far out" by responding, "Yeah, but it swings."
Philadelphia years (1968–1990s)
In 1968, when the New York building they were renting was put up for sale, Sun Ra and the Arkestra relocated to the GermantownGermantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Germantown is a neighborhood in the northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, about 7–8 miles northwest from the center of the city...
section of Philadelphia, where his Morton Street house remained the Arkestra's base of operations until Sun Ra's death. Apart from occasional complaints about the noise of rehearsals, they were soon regarded as good neighbors because of their friendliness, drug-free living, and rapport with youngsters. Saxophonist Danny Thompson owned and operated the Pharaoh's Den, a convenience store in the neighborhood. When lightning struck a tree on their street, Sun Ra took it as a good omen
Omen
An omen is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change...
and multireedist James Jacson fashioned the Cosmic Infinity Drum from the scorched tree trunk. They still commuted via railroad to New York for the Monday night gig at Slug's and for other engagements.
In late 1968 Sun Ra and the Arkestra undertook their first tour of the US West Coast. Reactions were mixed; even hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
s accustomed to long-form psychedelia like the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
were often bewildered by the Arkestra, which included 20–30 musicians, dancers, singers, fire-eaters, and elaborate lighting. John Burks of Rolling Stone wrote a positive review of a San Jose State College concert that led to Sun Ra being featured on the April 19, 1969 cover of the magazine and introducing Sun Ra's inscrutable gaze to millions. This first West Coast tour also led to vibraphonist Damon Choice, then an art student at San Jose, joining the Arkestra.
Starting with concerts in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in 1970, the Arkestra began to find opportunities for working outside the US, playing to audiences who had hitherto known his music only through records. Sun Ra continued playing in Europe to nearly the end of his life. Given Sun Ra's unorthodox financial management, saxophonist Danny Thompson became a de facto tour and business manager during this era, specializing in what he called "no bullshit C.O.D.
Cash on delivery
Collect on delivery is a financial transaction where the payment of products and/or services received is done at the time of actual delivery rather than paid-for in advance...
", preferring to take cash before performing or delivering records.
In early 1971 Sun Ra was artist-in-residence at University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, teaching a course called "The Black Man In the Cosmos". Rather few students enrolled but the classes were often full of curious persons from the surrounding community. One half-hour of each class was devoted to a lecture (complete with handouts and homework assignments), the other half-hour to an Arkestra performance or Sun Ra keyboard solo. Reading lists included the works of Madame Blavatsky
Madame Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , was a theosophist, writer and traveler. Between 1848 and 1875 Blavatsky had gone around the world three times. In 1875, Blavatsky together with Colonel H. S. Olcott established the Theosophical Society...
and Henry Dumas
Henry Dumas
Henry Dumas was an African American writer and poet.Dumas was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas in 1934 and he lived there until the age of ten, when he moved to New York City; however, he always kept with him the religious and folk traditions of his hometown. In Harlem, he attended public school and...
, the Book of the Dead
Book of the Dead
The Book of the Dead is the modern name of an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BC. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw is translated as "Book of Coming Forth by Day". Another translation would be "Book of...
, Alexander Hislop
Alexander Hislop
Alexander Hislop was a Free Church of Scotland minister infamous for his outspoken criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the son of Stephen Hislop , a mason by occupation and an elder of the Relief Church...
's The Two Babylons
The Two Babylons
The Two Babylons is an anti-Catholic religious pamphlet produced initially by the Scottish theologian and Presbyterian Alexander Hislop in 1853. It was later expanded in 1858 and finally published as a book in 1919...
, The Book of Oahspe
Oahspe
Oahspe: A New Bible is a book published in 1882, purporting to contain "new revelations" from "...the Embassadors of the angel hosts of heaven prepared and revealed unto man in the name of Jehovih..." It was written by an American dentist, John Ballou Newbrough , who reported it to have been...
and assorted volumes concerning Egyptian hieroglyphs, African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, and other topics.
In 1971 Sun Ra fulfilled a long-standing desire by performing with the Arkestra at ancient Egyptian pyramids
Egyptian pyramids
The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt.There are 138 pyramids discovered in Egypt as of 2008. Most were built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found...
.
In 1972 San Francisco public TV station KQED producer John Coney, producer Jim Newman
Jim Newman (Dilexi Gallery, Other Minds)
Jim Newman is a film and television producer, contemporary art curator, gallerist and musician.-Musical career and festival management:...
, and screen writer Joshua Smith worked with Sun Ra to produce an 85-minute feature film, entitled Space Is the Place
Space Is the Place
Space Is the Place is an 82-minute film made in 1972 and released in 1974.It was produced by Jim Newman, directed by John Coney, written by Sun Ra, Joshua Smith and features Sun Ra and his Arkestra...
, with Sun Ra's Arkestra and an ensemble of actors assembled by the production team. It was filmed in Oakland and San Francisco. On May 20, 1978 Sun Ra and the Arkestra appeared on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
.
In the mid-1970s, the Arkestra would sometimes play free Saturday afternoon concerts in a Germantown park near their Philadelphia home. Sometimes at their mid 1970s shows in Philadelphia nightclubs, someone would stand at the back of the room, selling stacks of unmarked LPs in plain white sleeves, pressed from recordings of the band's live performances (including one Halloween show where the salesman was dressed as a golden alien, and the LPs included a cover arrangement of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow").
Back in New York City, in the fall of 1979, Sun Ra and the Arkestra were essentially the 'house band' at the notorious Squat Theater on 23rd St.-the performance home of the avant garde Hungarian theater troupe. Their young mastermind manager, Janos, transformed the theater into a riveting nightclub while the core of the troupe was away that season performing in Europe. Debbie Harry, 'The Velvet Underground's' John Cale and Nico (from Andy Warhol's factory days), John Lurie and 'The Lounge Lizards' and other pop and avant garde musicians were regulars.
Sun Ra was a disciplined person who avoided drinking anything other than club soda at the gigs, but did not impose his strict code on his musicians, the majority of whom regarded his claim that he was a 'messenger' from Saturn with wry skepticism. Nevertheless it was clear they deeply respected his genius, discipline and authority.
Soft spoken and charismatic, Sun Ra turned Squat Theater into a syncopated universe of big band 'space' jazz backed by a floor show of writhing, sexy, Jupiterettes—him directing and playing three synthesizers at the same time. In those days 'Space Is The Place' was the space at Squat.
The Arkestra continued their touring and recording through the 1980s and into the 1990s, and Sun Ra became a fixture in Philadelphia, appearing semi-regularly on WXPN
WXPN
WXPN is a non-commercial, public radio station operated by the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia that broadcasts a music radio format called adult album alternative , along with many other format shows supported all with an indie slant...
radio, giving lectures to community groups, or haunting the city's libraries.
Even after a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
in 1990, Sun Ra kept composing, performing, and leading the Arkestra. Late in his career, Sun Ra opened a few concerts for New York–based rock group Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...
. Eventually, Sun Ra grew too ill to perform and tour, and he entrusted Gilmore with leading the Arkestra. (Gilmore himself was frail from emphysema, and when he died, Allen would take over leadership of the Arkestra.) Sun Ra went back to Birmingham and reconnected with his sister whom he had rarely seen for nearly 40 years. He contracted pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
, died in Birmingham on May 30, 1993, and was buried at the Elmwood Cemetery
Elmwood Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama)
Elmwood Cemetery is a cemetery established in 1900 in Birmingham, Alabama northwest of Homewood by a group of fraternal organizations. It was renamed in 1906 and gradually eclipsed Oak Hill Cemetery as the most prominent burial place in the city...
. According to the hospital, he had also been affected by circulatory system
Circulatory system
The circulatory system is an organ system that passes nutrients , gases, hormones, blood cells, etc...
problems and numerous strokes shortly before his death. The small footstone read only "Sonny Blount (aka [sic] Le Son'y [sic] Ra)".
The Arkestra continues
Following Sun Ra's death, the Arkestra was led by tenor saxophonist John Gilmore. Following Gilmore's death, the group has performed under the direction of alto saxophonist Marshall AllenMarshall Allen
Marshall Belford Allen is an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz alto saxophone player. He also performs on flute, oboe, piccolo, and EVI ....
, who celebrated his 80th birthday on stage during Arkestra performances at the Vox Populi gallery in Philadelphia and the Vision Festival
Vision Festival
The Vision Festival is the world's premier festival of experimental music , art, film and dance. Inspired by the 1984 and '88 Sound Unity Festivals. It was a direct out growth of the Improvisors Collective 1994 and '95. In 1996, Dancer-choreographer Patricia Nicholson Parker, initiated the First...
in New York City. In the summer of 2004 the Arkestra became the first American jazz band to perform in Tuva
Tuva
The Tyva Republic , or Tuva , is a federal subject of Russia . It lies in the geographical center of Asia, in southern Siberia. The republic borders with the Altai Republic, the Republic of Khakassia, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Irkutsk Oblast, and the Republic of Buryatia in Russia and with Mongolia to the...
, playing five sets at the Ustuu-Huree Festival. As of May 2008, the Arkestra continues to tour and perform, with captain Marshall Allen celebrating his 84th birthday on stage at New York City's Sullivan Hall. In September 2008 they played for 7 days in a row at the ZXZW festival, every day emphasizing different aspects of the musical legacy of Sun Ra. The Arkestra celebrated Allen's 85th birthday on May 24, 2009 to a packed house at Johnny Brenda's in Philadelphia's Fishtown neighborhood. A month later, they performed at Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art in conjunction with an exhibition that explored the intersection of the Arkestra's performative legacy and the practice of contemporary art. More recently they ventured to Australia for the first time for the 2011 Melbourne International Jazz Festival, still under the control of the sprightly 87-year-old Marshall Allen, playing to very enthusiastic sold-out crowds.
Travels to Egypt
In 1971, Sun Ra traveled throughout EgyptEgypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
with the Arkestra at the invitation of drummer Salah Ragab
Salah Ragab
Salah Ragab was an Egyptian drummer and musician credited with founding Egyptian jazz.-Early life:A Major in the Egyptian Army through the 1960s, he first attempted to form a jazz band in 1964, with American saxophonist Mac X. Spears...
. He would travel to Egypt in again 1983 and 1984, when he would record with Ragab once more. Recordings made in Egypt have been released on Live in Egypt, Nidhamu, Sun Ra Meets Salah Ragab, Egypt Strut and Horizon.Allmusic Live in Egypt reviewAllmusic Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt reviewAllmusic Horizon review
Music
Sun Ra's piano technique touched on many styles: his youthful fascination with boogie woogie, stride pianoStride piano
Harlem Stride Piano, Stride Piano, or just Stride, is a jazz piano style that was developed in the large cities of the East Coast, mainly in the New York, during 1920s and 1930s. The left hand may play a four-beat pulse with a single bass note, octave, seventh or tenth interval on the first and...
and blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, a sometimes refined touch reminiscent of Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
or Ahmad Jamal
Ahmad Jamal
Ahmad Jamal is an innovative and influential American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. According to Stanley Crouch, Jamal is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Charlie Parker...
, and angular phrases in the style of Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
or brutal, percussive attacks like Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...
. Often overlooked is the range of influences from classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
—Sun Ra cited Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Schoenberg
Schoenberg
Schoenberg is the surname of several persons:* Arnold Schoenberg , Austrian-American composer* Claude-Michel Schoenberg , French record producer, actor, singer, popular songwriter, and musical theatre composer...
and Shostakovich as his favorite composers for the piano.
As a synthesizer and electric keyboard player, Sun Ra ranks among one of the earliest and most radical pioneers. By the mid-1950s, he used a variety of electric keyboards, and almost immediately, he exploited their potential perhaps more than anyone, sometimes modifying them himself to produce sounds rarely if ever heard before. His live albums from the late 1960s and early 1970s feature some of the noisiest, most bizarre keyboard work ever recorded. Sun Ra's music can be roughly divided into three phases, but his records and performances were full of surprises.
Chicago phase
The first period occurred in the 1950s when Sun Ra's music evolved from big bandBig band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
swing into the outer-space-themed "cosmic jazz" for which he was best known. Music critics and jazz historians say some of his best work was recorded during this period and it is also some of his most accessible music. Sun Ra's music in this era was often tightly arranged and sometimes reminiscent of Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
's, Count Basie's, or other important swing music ensembles. However, there was a strong influence from post-swing styles like bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
, hard bop
Hard bop
Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano...
, and modal jazz
Modal jazz
Modal jazz is jazz that uses musical modes rather than chord progressions as a harmonic framework. Originating in the late 1950s and 1960s, modal jazz is characterized by Miles Davis's "Milestones" Kind of Blue and John Coltrane's classic quartet from 1960–64. Other important performers include...
, and touches of the exotic and hints of the experimentalism that would dominate his later music. Notable Sun Ra albums from the 1950s include Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth, Interstellar Low Ways, Super-Sonic Jazz, We Travel the Spaceways, The Nubians of Plutonia and Jazz In Silhouette.
Ronnie Boykins
Ronnie Boykins
Ronnie Boykins was a jazz bassist and is best known for his work with pianist/bandleader Sun Ra, although he had played with such disparate musicians as Muddy Waters, Johnny Griffin, and Jimmy Witherspoon prior to joining Sun Ra's Arkestra.-Biography:He joined the Arkestra during the Chicago...
, Sun Ra's bassist
Bassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
, has been described as "the pivot around which much of Sun Ra's music revolved for eight years". This is especially pronounced on the key recordings from 1965 (The Magic City, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One, and The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two) where the intertwining lines of Boykins' bass and Ra's electronic keyboards provide cohesion.
New York phase
After the move to New York, Sun Ra and company plunged headlong into the experimentalism that they had only hinted at in Chicago. The music was often extremely loud and the Arkestra grew to include multiple drummers and percussionists. Recordings of this era began to utilize new technological possibilities such as extensive use of tape delay systems to assemble spatial sound pieces which are far removed from earlier compositions such as "Saturn". Recordings and live performances often featured passages for unusual instrumental combinations and passages of collective playing which point towards free improvisationFree improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
—in fact, it is often difficult to tell where the compositions end and the improvisations begin.
In this era Sun Ra began conducting using hand and body gestures. This system would inspire cornetist Butch Morris
Butch Morris
Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris is an American jazz cornetist, composer and conductor.-Biography:Before his musical career, Morris served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War....
, who would later develop his own more highly refined way to conduct improvisers.
Though often associated with avant-garde jazz, Sun Ra did not believe his work could be classified as "free music": "I have to make sure that every note, every nuance, is correct. … If you want to call it that, spell it p-h-r-e, because ph is a definite article and re is the name of the sun. So I play phre music—music of the sun."
Seeking to broaden his compositional possibilities, Sun Ra insisted all band members double on various percussion instrument
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
s—predating world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
by drawing on various ethnic musical forms—and most saxophonists became multireedist
Multireedist
Multireedist is a term sometimes used to describe a musician who is a capable performer on more than one reed instrument. Many reed instruments are similar enough that if a musician plays one, they are expected to be able to play the other. Examples of this are the oboe and English horn or the...
s, adding instruments such as flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
s, oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
s, or clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
s to their arsenals. In this era, Sun Ra was among the first of any musicians to make extensive and pioneering use of synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
s and other various electronic keyboards; he was given a prototype Minimoog
Minimoog
The Minimoog is a monophonic analog synthesizer, invented by Bill Hemsath and Robert Moog. It was released in 1970 by R.A. Moog Inc. , and production was stopped in 1981. It was re-designed by Robert Moog in 2002 and released as Minimoog Voyager.The Minimoog was designed in response to the use of...
by its inventor, Robert Moog
Robert Moog
Robert Arthur Moog , commonly called Bob Moog was an American pioneer of electronic music, best known as the inventor of the Moog synthesizer.-Life:...
.
Notable titles from this period include The Magic City, Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, When Sun Comes Out, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One is a 1965 album by the jazz musician Sun Ra. The back cover describes it as an "album of compositions and arrangements by Sun Ra played by Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra"....
, Atlantis
Atlantis (Sun Ra album)
Atlantis is an album by Jazz musician Sun Ra and his Astro-Infinity Arkestra released in 1969.The album heavily features the "Solar Sound Instrument" - a Hohner Clavinet. One of the 4 compositions which originally featured on Side 1 of the original release was substituted by a different piece for...
, Secrets of the Sun and Other Planes of There.
Philadelphia phase
During their third period, beginning in the 1970s and onward, Sun Ra and the Arkestra settled down into a relatively conventional sound, often incorporating swing standards, though their records and concerts were still highly eclectic and energetic, and typically included at least one lengthy, semi-improvised percussion jam. Sun Ra was explicitly asserting a continuity with the ignored jazz tradition: "They tried to fool you, now I got to school you, about jazz, all about jazz" he rapped, framing the inclusion of pieces by Fletcher HendersonFletcher Henderson
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast...
and Jelly Roll Morton
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....
.
In the 1970s Sun Ra took a liking to the films of Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
. He incorporated smatterings of Disney musical numbers into many of his performances from then on. In the late 1980s the Arkestra performed a concert at Walt Disney World. The Arkestra's version of "Pink Elephants on Parade
Pink Elephants on Parade
Pink Elephants on Parade is the name of a segment, and the song played therein, from the Disney animated feature film Dumbo in which Dumbo and Timothy Q...
" is available on Stay Awake, a tribute album of Disney tunes played by various artists and produced by Hal Willner
Hal Willner
Hal Willner is an American music producer working in recording, films, TV and live events. He is best known for assembling tribute albums and events featuring a wide variety of artists and musical styles...
. A number of Sun Ra's 1970s concerts are available on CD, but none have received a wide release in comparison to his earlier music. The album Atlantis can be considered the landmark that led into his 1970s era. In 1978-1980 performances, Sun Ra added a large electronic creation, the Outerspace Visual Communicator, which produced images rather than sounds; this was performed at a keyboard by its inventor, Bill Sebastian. During concerts, the OVC usually was positioned at center stage behind the Arkestra while Sebastian sat on stage with the musicians.
Musicians
Certainly dozens of musicians—perhaps hundreds—passed through Sun Ra's bands over the years. Some stayed with him for decades, while others made only a few recordings or performances.Sun Ra was personally responsible for the vast majority of the constant changes in the Arkestra's lineup. According to contrabassist Jiunie Booth
Jiunie Booth
Arthur Edward Booth , known as Jiunie, Junie, Junius, Joony, Juini, etc., is an American jazz double-bassist.Booth began playing piano at about age eight, and switched to bass at 12...
, himself a member of the Arkestra, Sun Ra would not confront any musician whose performance he was unsatisfied with. Instead, Sun Ra would simply gather the entire Arkestra minus the offending musician, and skip town, leaving the fired musician stranded. After repeated instances of US jazz musicians becoming stranded in foreign countries, Sun Ra's unique method of dismissal became a diplomatic liability for the United States. The U.S. State Department was compelled to tell Sun Ra to bring any fired musicians stateside rather than leaving them stranded.
The following is a partial list of musical collaborators and the eras in which they played with Sun Ra and/or the Arkestra:
- Luqman AliLuqman AliLuqman Ali was an American jazz drummer and multi-instrumentalist primarily known for his work with the Sun Ra Arkestra.-References:...
, drums - Marshall AllenMarshall AllenMarshall Belford Allen is an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz alto saxophone player. He also performs on flute, oboe, piccolo, and EVI ....
, alto saxophoneAlto saxophoneThe alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in 1841. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions...
, fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, oboeOboeThe oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
(1957–present) - Ronnie BoykinsRonnie BoykinsRonnie Boykins was a jazz bassist and is best known for his work with pianist/bandleader Sun Ra, although he had played with such disparate musicians as Muddy Waters, Johnny Griffin, and Jimmy Witherspoon prior to joining Sun Ra's Arkestra.-Biography:He joined the Arkestra during the Chicago...
, double bass (1957–1974) - Arthur "Jiunie" BoothJiunie BoothArthur Edward Booth , known as Jiunie, Junie, Junius, Joony, Juini, etc., is an American jazz double-bassist.Booth began playing piano at about age eight, and switched to bass at 12...
, double bassDouble bassThe double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2... - Darryl Brown, drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
(1970–1972) - Owen "Fiidla" Brown, violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
, danceDanceDance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
, vocals (1987–1990s and later appearances) - Tony BunnTony BunnRobert Anthony Bunn, also known as Tony Bunn, is an American bassist, composer, producer, and writer.His instruments are bass guitar, upright bass, voice, and mind. His styles are jazz, funk, blues, and rock.-Biography :...
, electric bassBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
(1976) - Francisco Mora Catlett (musician), drums (1973–1980)
- Don CherryDon Cherry (jazz)Donald Eugene Cherry was an innovative African-American jazz cornetist whose career began with a long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. He went on to live in many parts of the world and work with a wide variety of musicians.-Biography:Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and...
, pocket trumpetPocket trumpetthumb|250px|Pocket trumpet in B-flat, with a 5-inch standard size bell and medium-large boreThe pocket trumpet is a compact size B trumpet, with the same playing range as the regular trumpet. The tubing is wound more tightly than that of a standard trumpet in order to reduce its size while...
(1983–1990) - Damon Choice, vibraphoneVibraphoneThe vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....
(late 1960s–1990s) - Phil CohranPhil CohranKelan Phil Cohran is a jazz musician. He is known most for his trumpet contributions in the Sun Ra Arkestra in Chicago during 1959-1961 and for his involvement in the foundation of the AACM.-Biography:...
, trumpetTrumpetThe trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
(1959–1961) - Danny Davis, alto saxophoneAlto saxophoneThe alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in 1841. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions...
, fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
(1962–1977, 1985) - Joey DeStefano, alto saxophoneAlto saxophoneThe alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in 1841. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions...
(1968–1969) - Arthur DoyleArthur DoyleArthur Doyle is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, zanzithophonist and vocalist. He currently resides in Birmingham, Alabama.-Arthur Doyle:-Arthur Doyle Electro-Acoustic Ensemble:-Recordings as co-leader:...
, saxophone - Bruce Edwards archtop guitar (1983–1993,)
- Eddie GaleEddie GaleEddie Gale is an American trumpeter known for his work in free jazz, especially with the Sun Ra Arkestra.-Biography:Early in life, he studied trumpet with Kenny Dorham...
, trumpet (1960s) - John GilmoreJohn Gilmore (musician)John Gilmore was an American jazz tenor saxophone player best-known for his long tenure as a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra...
, tenor saxophoneTenor saxophoneThe tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
, bass clarinetBass clarinetThe bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
(1954–1964, 1965–1995) - Tommy "Bugs" Hunter, drums, sound engineer
- James Jacson, bassoonBassoonThe bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
, oboeOboeThe oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
, fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, Ancient Egyptian infinity drum - Clifford JarvisClifford JarvisClifford Jarvis was an American hard bop and free jazz drummer.After studying at Berklee in the 1950s he established himself in jazz between 1959 and 1966 by recording with Chet Baker, Randy Weston, Yusef Lateef, Freddie Hubbard, Barry Harris, Jackie McLean, and Elmo Hope, and playing with Grant...
, drums, (1961–76, 1983) - Donald Jones, drums (1973–1974)
- Wayne KramerWayne Kramer (guitarist)Wayne Kramer is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer and film and television scorer....
, guitar (2006) - Eloe Omoe, bass clarinetBass clarinetThe bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
- John OreJohn OreJohn Ore is an American jazz bassist.Ore attended the New School of Music in Philadelphia from 1943-46, studying cello, and followed this with studies on bass at Juilliard....
, double bass - Taylor Richardson, guitar (1979–1983)
- Pat Patrick, baritone saxophoneBaritone saxophoneThe baritone saxophone, often called "bari sax" , is one of the largest and lowest pitched members of the saxophone family. It was invented by Adolphe Sax. The baritone is distinguished from smaller sizes of saxophone by the extra loop near its mouthpiece...
, alto saxophoneAlto saxophoneThe alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in 1841. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions...
, clarinetClarinetThe clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
, fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
(1950–1959, 1961–1977, 1985–1988) - Julian PriesterJulian PriesterJulian Priester is an American jazz trombonist and composer.He has played with many artists including Sun Ra, Max Roach, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock.-Biography:...
, tromboneTromboneThe trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
(1955–1956, 1980s–1990s) - Rollo Radford, bassBass (instrument)Bass describes musical instruments that produce tones in the low-pitched range. They belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles...
- Buster Smith, drums
- Marvin Bugalu Smith, drums
- Michael Ray, trumpet (1978–present)
- Pharoah SandersPharoah SandersPharoah Sanders is a Grammy Award–winning American jazz saxophonist.Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world." Emerging from John Coltrane's groups of the mid-60s Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on...
, saxophone (1964–1965) - Bill Sebastian, outerspace visual communicator (1978–1980)
- Talvin SinghTalvin SinghTalvin Singh Matharoo , is a producer and composer and tabla player, known for creating an innovative fusion of Indian classical music and drum and bass...
, tablas - Alan SilvaAlan SilvaAlan Silva is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player.-Biography:...
, double bass, cello, violin (early 1970s) - June TysonJune TysonJune Tyson was a jazz singer.She performed with keyboardist and bandleader Sun Ra regularly, from at least the early 1970s to her death. Tyson was diagnosed with cancer and grew increasingly ill...
, singer, violin
Philosophy
Sun Ra's world viewWorld view
A comprehensive world view is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point-of-view, including natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and...
was often described as a philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, but he rejected this term, describing his own manner as an "equation
Equation
An equation is a mathematical statement that asserts the equality of two expressions. In modern notation, this is written by placing the expressions on either side of an equals sign , for examplex + 3 = 5\,asserts that x+3 is equal to 5...
"—he claimed that while philosophy was based on theories and abstract reasoning, his method was based on logic and pragmatism. Many of the Arkestra cite Sun Ra's teachings as pivotal and for inspiring such long-term devotion to the music that they knew would never make them much money. His equation was rarely (if ever) explained as a whole; instead, it was related in bits and pieces over many years, leading some to think his world view was naïve or composed of nonsensical new-age platitudes. However, Martinelli argues that, when considered as a whole, one can discern a unified world view
World view
A comprehensive world view is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point-of-view, including natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and...
that draws upon many sources, but is also unique to Sun Ra, writing:
Sun Ra presents a unified conception, incorporating music, myth, and performance into his multi-leveled equations. Every aspect of the Sun Ra experience, from business practices like Saturn Records to published collections of poetry to his 35-year career in music, is a manifestation of his equations. Sun Ra seeks to elevate humanity beyond their current earthbound state, tied to outmoded conceptions of life and death when the potential future of immortality awaits them. As HallManly Palmer HallManly Palmer Hall was a Canadian-born author and mystic. He is perhaps most famous for his 1928 work The Secret Teachings of All Ages.-Early years:...
has put it, 'In this era of 'practical' things men ridicule even the existence of God. They scoff at goodness while they ponder with befuddled minds the phantasmagoria of materiality. They have forgotten the path which leads beyond the stars.'
He drew on sources as diverse as the Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
, Rosicrucian
Rosicrucian
Rosicrucianism is a philosophical secret society, said to have been founded in late medieval Germany by Christian Rosenkreuz. It holds a doctrine or theology "built on esoteric truths of the ancient past", which, "concealed from the average man, provide insight into nature, the physical universe...
ism, channeling
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
, numerology
Numerology
Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...
, Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
, and black nationalism
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
. Sun Ra's system had distinct Gnostic leanings arguing that the god of most monotheistic religions was not the creator god, not the ultimate god, but a lesser, evil being. Sun Ra was wary of the Bible, knowing that it had been used to justify slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. He would often re-arrange and re-word Biblical passages (along with re-working many other words, names or phrases) in an attempt to uncover "hidden" meanings. The most obvious evidence of this system was Ra's practice of renaming many of the musicians who played with him.
Bassoonist/multireedist James Jacson had studied Zen Buddhism before joining Sun Ra and identified strong similarities between Zen teachings and practices (particularly Zen koans) and Ra's use of non sequiturs and seemingly absurd replies to questions. Drummer Art Jenkins admitted that Sun Ra's "nonsense" sometimes troubled his thoughts for days until inspiring a sort of paradigm shift
Paradigm shift
A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
, or profound change in outlook. Drummer Andrew Cyrille
Andrew Cyrille
Andrew Charles Cyrille is an avant-garde jazz drummer.Cyrille was born in Brooklyn, New York into a family with a mother from Haiti. He began studying science at St...
said Sun Ra's comments were "very interesting stuff … whether you believed it or not. And a lot of times it was humorous, and a lot of times it was ridiculous, and a lot of times it was right on the money."
Some of Sun Ra's songs with words featured lyrics that although simple, were inspirational and philosophical. The most famous example was "Space is the Place!". Another example was the song that went, "You made a mistake. You did something wrong. Make another mistake, and do something right!". Sometimes (typically at the end of a set) the entire Arkestra would snake out through the audience, playing and chanting something like this. Sun Ra even came up once, behind a frightened young audience member, grabbed him in a bear hug, and whispered this in his ear, while the whole band chanted and played along, in a circle around his table, with the rest of the audience watching on in amusement. (1978, in a performance in a small short-lived nightclub on City Line Avenue in Philadelphia)
Sun Ra and black culture
According to Szwed Sun Ra's view of his relationship to black people and black cultures "changed drastically" over time. Initially, Sun Ra identified closely with broader struggles for black power, black political influence, and black identity, and saw his own music as a key element in educating and liberating blacks. But by the heyday of black power radicalism in the 1960s, Sun Ra was expressing disillusionment with these aims, and he denied feeling closely connected to any race. In 1970 he said:I couldn't approach black people with the truth because they like lies. They live lies … At one time I felt that white people were to blame for everything, but then I found out that they were just puppets and pawns of some greater force, which has been using them … Some force is having a good time [manipulating black and white people] and looking, enjoying itself up in a reserved seat, wondering, "I wonder when they're going to wake up."
Influence and legacy
Many of Sun Ra's innovations remain important and groundbreaking: "Ra was one of the first jazz leaders to use two bassesDouble bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
, to employ the electric bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, to play electronic keyboard
Electronic keyboard
An electronic keyboard is an electronic or digital keyboard instrument.The major components of a typical modern electronic keyboard are:...
s, to use extensive percussion
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
and polyrhythm
Polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.Polyrhythm in general is a nonspecific term for the simultaneous occurrence of two or more conflicting rhythms, of which cross-rhythm is a specific and definable subset.—Novotney Polyrhythms can be distinguished from...
s, to explore modal
Musical mode
In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...
music and to pioneer solo and group freeform improvisations
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
. In addition, he made his mark in the wider cultural context: he proclaimed the Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n origins of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, reaffirmed pride in black history and reasserted the spiritual
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
and mystical dimensions of music (all important factors in the black cultural/political renaissance of the 60s)."
George Clinton
George Clinton (funk musician)
George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...
of P-funk
P-Funk
P-Funk is a shorthand term for the repertoire and performers associated with George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic collective and the distinctive style of funk music they performed...
fame drew inspiration from Sun Ra; see P-Funk mythology
P-Funk mythology
The P-Funk mythology is a group of recurring fictional characters, themes and ideas related in a series of concept albums and live shows, primarily from George Clinton and his founded bands Parliament and Funkadelic....
. He once declared in an interview, "Yeah, Sun Ra's out to lunch... same place I eat at!"
Detroit's MC5
MC5
The MC5 is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan and originally active from 1964 to 1972. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson...
played a handful of shows with Sun Ra (including surviving MC5 members Michael Davis
Michael Davis (bassist)
Michael Davis is a bass guitarist, singer, songwriter and music producer.- MC5 :He replaced original MC5 bassist Pat Burrows when singer Rob Tyner and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided that they liked Davis' style and wanted him in the band.MC5 comprises:*Michael Davis, bass,*Wayne Kramer,...
, Wayne Kramer
Wayne Kramer (guitarist)
Wayne Kramer is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer and film and television scorer....
and Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson , under the DKT / MC5 name ), and were influenced by his works monumentally . One of their songs from their premiere album Kick Out the Jams
Kick Out the Jams
Kick Out the Jams is the first album by Detroit protopunkers MC5, released in 1969. It was recorded live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom over two nights, Devil's Night and Halloween, 1968. In 2003, the album was ranked number 294 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time...
featured a track called "Starship" , which was based upon a poem by Ra .
He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame was founded in 1978, and opened a museum on September 18, 1993, with a mission "to foster, encourage, educate, and cultivate a general appreciation of the medium of jazz music as a legitimate, original and distinctive art form indigenous to America...
in 1979. His interment was located in Elmwood Cemetery
Elmwood Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama)
Elmwood Cemetery is a cemetery established in 1900 in Birmingham, Alabama northwest of Homewood by a group of fraternal organizations. It was renamed in 1906 and gradually eclipsed Oak Hill Cemetery as the most prominent burial place in the city...
.
Filmography
Sun Ra and his Arkestra were the subject of a few documentary films, notably Robert MuggeRobert Mugge
Robert Mugge is an American documentary film maker. He specializes in films about music and musicians.Mugge was born in Chicago and grew up primarily in the Washington, D.C. area. He received a B.A...
's A Joyful Noise (1980), which interspersed performances and rehearsals with Sun Ra's commentary on various subjects ranging from today's youth to his own place in the cosmos. There is also a feature film entitled Space Is the Place
Space Is the Place
Space Is the Place is an 82-minute film made in 1972 and released in 1974.It was produced by Jim Newman, directed by John Coney, written by Sun Ra, Joshua Smith and features Sun Ra and his Arkestra...
from 1974 which stars Sun Ra and his band who play themselves. The soundtrack, also by Sun Ra, is available on CD.
In 1995 his influnce was a significant factor in the foundation of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts
Association of Autonomous Astronauts
The Association of Autonomous Astronauts is a worldwide network of community based groups dedicated to building their own spaceships. The AAA was founded 23 April 1995. Although many of their activities were reported as serious participation in conferences or protests against the militarization of...
.
More recently (2005) Don Letts
Don Letts
Don Letts is a British film director and musician. He is credited as the man who through his DJing at clubs like The Roxy brought together punk and reggae music.-Biography:...
' Sun Ra—Brother from Another Planet reuses some of Mugge's material and includes some additional interviews.
In 2009, Points On A Space Age, a documentary by Ephrahaim Asili was released. "It's a 60-minute doc along the lines of the talking-head-intercut-with performance clips style. It works because of the interesting and passionate nature of the images of the band as well as of the audio, as the band attempts to articulate what Ra meant to them, and why they are keeping the flame alive. He “left the earth” for his next mission in 1993.
The remnants of the band include Marshall Allen, Ra’s greatest discliple as well as current bandleader and keeper of the flame. Now 86, Allen also serves as recruiter for new members, and potential converts of Sun Ra’s philosophy, once based on space travel and music as a tool for evolution into a new consciousness and tuning into holy vibrations."