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Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial. He did not make it easy for people to take him seriously, for he surrounded his adventurous music with costumes and mythology that both looked backward toward ancient Egypt and forward into science fiction. In addition, Ra documented his music in very erratic fashion on his Saturn label, generally not listing recording dates and giving inaccurate personnel information, so one could not really tell how advanced some of his innovations were. It has taken a lot of time to sort it all out (although Robert L. Campbell's Sun Ra discography has done a miraculous job). In addition, while there were times when Sun Ra's aggregation performed brilliantly, on other occasions they were badly out of tune and showcasing absurd vocals. Near the end of his life, Ra was featuring plate twirlers and fire eaters in his colorful show as a sort of Ed Sullivan for the 1980s.

But despite all of the trappings, Sun Ra was a major innovator. Born Herman Sonny Blount in Birmingham, AL (although he claimed he was from another planet), Ra led his own band for the first time in 1934. He freelanced at a variety of jobs in the Midwest, working as a pianist/arranger with Fletcher Henderson in 1946-1947. He appeared on some obscure records as early as 1948, but really got started around 1953. Leading a big band (which he called the Arkestra) in Chicago, Ra started off playing advanced bop, but early on was open to the influences of other cultures, experimenting with primitive electric keyboards, and playing free long before the avant-garde got established.

After moving to New York in 1961, Ra performed some of his most advanced work. In 1970, he relocated his group to Philadelphia, and in later years alternated free improvisations and mystical group chants with eccentric versions of swing tunes, sounding like a spaced-out Fletcher Henderson orchestra. Many of his most important sidemen were with him on and off for decades (most notably John Gilmore on tenor, altoist Marshall Allen, and baritonist Pat Patrick). Ra, who recorded for more than a dozen labels, has been well served by Evidence's extensive repackaging of many of his Saturn dates, which have at last been outfitted with correct dates and personnel details. In the late '90s, other labels began reissuing albums from Sun Ra's vast catalog, an effort that will surely continue for years to come. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide



Wikipedia.org


Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, legal name Le Sony'r Ra[1]; born May 22, 1914 in Birmingham, Alabama – May 30, 1993 in Birmingham, Alabama) was a jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy", musical compositions and performances.

He was known by several names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee,[2] and denied his connection with birth name, saying "That's an imaginary person, never existed … Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym."[3] He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the ancient Egyptian god of the sun). Claiming that he was of the "Angel Race" and not from Earth, but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona of "cosmic" philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afrofuturism as he preached "awareness" and peace above all.

He led "The Arkestra" (a deliberate re-spelling of "orchestra"), an ensemble with an ever-changing lineup and name (it was also called "The Solar Myth Arkestra", "His Cosmo Discipline Arkestra", the "Blue Universe Arkestra", "The Jet Set Omniverse Arkestra", and 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, Sun Ra's music ranged from keyboard solos to big bands of 30-odd musicians; his music 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, space music,[4] and free improvisation, and was one of the first musicians, regardless of genre, to make extensive use of electronic keyboards.

Early life For decades, very little was known about Sun Ra's early life; much of it was obscured by Sun Ra himself: he routinely gave evasive, contradictory or seemingly nonsensical answers to personal questions and even went so far as to deny his birth name. Even his birthday was unknown, with years ranging from 1910 to 1918 being claimed for his birth. 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 vaudeville 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 nicknamed "Sonny" from his childhood, had an older sister and half-brother, and was doted upon by his mother and grandmother.

Sun Ra was a skilled pianist as a child. By 11 or 12 years old he was writing original songs,[5] 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".[6] In his teenage years, Sun Ra 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 Sun Ra 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 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 Sun Ra 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. Ra 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, Sun Ra suffered from cryptorchidism,[7] a chronic testicular hernia that left him with a nearly constant discomfort that sometimes flared into severe pain. The condition also left him 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 English 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 Parker'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 and then attended some other musical college.

"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 teleported 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.[8]

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 saucers entered public consciousness, about 15 years before the contactees and their stories of benevolent Space Brothers were publicized, and almost 20 years before sinister UFO abductions were a public concept. Szwed states that "even if this story is revisionist autobiography … Sonny was pulling together several strains of his life. He was both prophesying his future and explaining his past with a single act of personal mythology.[9]

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-cum-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 whoever was interested.[10]

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 Parker, 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 drafted 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".[11] 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."[12]

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 due to 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".[13]

In March 1943 Blount was classified as 4-F due to 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.

Chicago years (1945–1961) In Chicago Blount quickly found work, notably with blues singer Wynonie Harris, 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 clubs.

Blount earned a lengthy engagement at Club DeLisa, where he met bandleader and composer Fletcher Henderson. Blount had long admired Henderson, but Henderson's fortunes were fading (his band comprised middling musicians rather than the stars of earlier years) due in large part to his instability. Henderson hired Blount as pianist and arranger. Ra's arrangements initially showed a degree of bebop influence, but the band members largely 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 1948 or 1949 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[14] 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".[15]

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.

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 (1956) and Jazz In Silhouette (1958). Producer Tom Wilson was actually the first to release a Sun Ra album, through his independent label Transition Records in 1956, entitled Sun Song.

It was during the late 1950s that Sun Ra and his band began wearing the outlandish, Egyptian-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).

New York years (1961–early 1970s) Sun Ra and most of the core Arkestra (at least Allen, Gilmore, Patrick and Boykins) left Chicago in 1961, staying in Montreal for a few months before settling in New York City. They initially had trouble finding performance venues and began living communally due to New York's higher cost of living. This frustration fueled the drastic changes in the Arkestra's sound as Sun Ra's music underwent a free jazz-influenced experimental period.

In March of 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 hecklers 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.",[16] while pianist Thelonious Monk chided someone who said Sun Ra was "too far out" by responding, "Yeah, but it swings."[17]

Philadelphia years (late 1960s–1990s) In the late 1960s when the New York building they were renting was put up for sale, Sun Ra and the Arkestra relocated to the Germantown 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 due to 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 hippies 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 cover of 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.",[18] 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 a 30-minute part-fiction, part-documentary film, entitled Space Is the Place, featuring Sun Ra's Arkestra and filmed in Golden Gate Park. On May 20, 1978 Sun Ra and the Arkestra appeared on Saturday Night Live.

In the mid-1970s the Arkestra would sometimes play for free, outdoors in a Germantown park near their Philadelphia home, on a Saturday afternoon. 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"). 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 due to emphysema, and when he died, Allen took 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.[2] The small footstone read only "Sonny Blount (aka [sic] Le Son'y [sic] Ra)"[19] shortly before his death.

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 Allen, 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.[20] 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.

Music Sun Ra's piano technique touched on many styles: his youthful fascination with boogie woogie, stride piano 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.[21]

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 band 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.

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 improvisation—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."[22]

Seeking to broaden his compositional possibilities, Sun Ra insisted all band members double on various percussion instruments—predating world music by drawing on various ethnic musical forms—and most saxophonists became multireedists, adding instruments such as flutes, oboes, or clarinets to their arsenals. In this era, Sun Ra was among the first of any musicians to make extensive and pioneering use of synthesizers 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.

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 Henderson 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.

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 Juini 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.[citation needed]

The following is a partial list of musical collaborators and the eras in which they played with Sun Ra and/or the Arkestra:

Marshall Allen, saxophone (1950s–present)
Ronnie Boykins, double bass (1950s–1973)
Arthur 'Juini' Booth, double bass
Darryl Brown, drums (1970–1972)
Owen "Fiidla" Brown, violin, dance, vocals (1987–1990s and later appearances)
Tony Bunn, electric bass (1976)
Francisco Mora Catlett (musician), drums (1973–1980)
Don Cherry, pocket trumpet (1983–1990)
Damon Choice, vibraphone (late 1960s–1990s)
Phil Cohran, trumpet (1959–1961)
Joey DeStefano, alto saxophone (1968–1969)
Eddie Gale, trumpet (1960s)
John Gilmore, saxophone (1950s–1990s)
Tommy "Bugs" Hunter, drums, sound engineer
James Jacson, bassoon
Donald Jones, drums (1973–1974)
Wayne Kramer, guitar (2006)
Eloe Omoe, bass clarinet
Pat Patrick, saxophone (1950s–1990s)
Julian Priester, trombone (1950s, 1980s–1990s)
Rollo Radford, bass
Michael Ray, trumpet (1978–present)
Pharoah Sanders, saxophone
Alan Silva, double bass, cello, violin (early 1970s)
June Tyson, singer, violin


Philosophy
Sun Ra's world view 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 comprised 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,

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 Hall 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.'[15]

He drew on sources as diverse as the Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, channeling, numerology, Freemasonry, and black nationalism. Sun Ra's system had distinct Gnostic leanings[24] 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.[25] 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.[26] 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."[27]

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[28] 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.[29]

Influence and legacy
Many of Sun Ra's innovations remain important and groundbreaking: "Ra was one of the first jazz leaders to use two basses, to employ the electric bass, to play electronic keyboards, to use extensive percussion and polyrhythms, 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 African 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!"[30]

He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1979.

Video
Sun Ra and his Arkestra were the subject of a few documentary films, notably Robert Mugge'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.

More recently Don Letts' Sun Ra—Brother from Another Planet reuses some of Mugge's material and includes some additional interviews.

Writing
Sun Ra wrote an enormous number of songs and material regarding his spiritual beliefs and music. A magazine titled Sun Ra Research was published irregularly for many years, providing extensive documentation of Sun Ra's perspectives on many issues. Sun Ra's collected poetry and prose is available as a book, published May 2005, entitled Sun Ra, The Immeasurable Equation. Another book of over 260 of Sun Ra's poems, Sun Ra: Collected Works Vol. 1: Immeasurable Equation was published by Phaelos Books in November 2005. The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets, was published in book form in 2005, by WhiteWalls.



MetroTimes.com


You know that static on the radio dial between stations, where there's a little bit of a country tune that sounds like it's being broadcast from 1962, and further in the distance a big band and a conservative crank, but it's mostly a raging storm of white noise? Well, the other night I heard this familiar voice, gentle, with a little lisp, chanting something like, "The astro nation of the worlds of outer space. We hereby declare ourselves to another order of being." And then, "If you're not a myth, whose reality are you?" And then the clincher: "Space is the place."

"Sonny?" I said, finding myself talking back to the little silvery box in the living room. "Sun Ra? You left the planet back in 1993."

And I think I heard: "In some far off place many light years in space, I'll wait for you. Where human feet have never trod, where human eyes have never seen. I'll build a world of abstract dreams and wait for you."

Could it really be Sun Ra? The guy who, at a time when the avant-garde seemed like an underground movement, declared himself "king of the sub-underground." The bandleader-pianist born Sonny Blount Jr. from the musical backwater of Birmingham, Ala., who, in Chicago in the 1950s, turned himself into Sun Ra and turned his band into a DIY space program. No, make that a space-time program. He didn't lead an orchestra — but an arkestra.

Memories flooded back, going back in the 1970s when I first saw the arkestra. The sets spanned massive percussion storms and synthesizer solos that blasted off the stage; the music evoked scenes from ancient Egypt to the moon, with some Fletcher Henderson- and Duke Ellington-style swing interludes. Some nights, Ra would lead the band members in a conga line, snaking through the audience. Resplendent in a silver lamé space suit and layered capes, he'd grab you by the shoulders, lean close and ask: "Will you give up your destiny?" Or did he say, "Give up your death for me"?

More of his voice crackled through the static: "People have a lot more of the unknown than the known in their minds. The unknown is great; it's like the darkness. Nobody made that. It just happens. Light and all that — someone made that; it's written that they did. But nobody made the darkness. My music is about dark tradition. Dark tradition means a lot more about than black tradition. There's a lot of division in what they call black. I'm not into division. I'm into coordination, discipline and tradition."

The voice went on. Something about being prophesized in the Book of Revelations and needing a band of 144,000. A rap about the millions of American gathering in stadiums, ostensibly to play football, but really to call out for him: "Ra, ra, ra, ra." And something about all the sad folks going to psychologists and psychiatrists in search of "the-ra-py."

"Those are puns," I said. "You're talking in puns."

I couldn't hear whether he acknowledged that or not. Something was garbled. Then he came through faintly: "Proper evaluations of words and letters in their phonetic and associated sense can bring the people of earth to the clear light of pure cosmic wisdom."

Then there was static for a long time, and I went to bed and got up wondering whether I'd dreamed the whole thing.

A couple days later, I called his old house in Philadelphia, where his longtime caterwauling saxophonist Marsall Allen still lives with a nucleus of the musicians who keep the flame of Sun Ra's music burning. Did Sun Ra ... seem to communicate with them?

"Oh, yeah," Allen said. "I don't worry about it or nothing. You know, you can communicate with those you've been with a long time, like family. He communicates with most everybody in the band. They all have stories of Sun Ra in their dreams and communications and stuff. I just carry on the program. He says not to worry. Keep on going."

For core arkestra members, the group was like a family, perhaps for few more so than for Allen. Born in Louisville, Ky., musically seasoned in Paris, he started playing with Ra in Chicago in the mid-1950s; back then Allen was in his early 30s and Ra was in his early 40s. And he stuck with Ra as he moved his base camp to New York and Philly — and toured everywhere from Mexico to Egypt (including a tumultuous Motor City gig — 40 years ago this month — on a John Sinclair-booked bill with the Ra-influenced MC5). With Ra having left the planet, Allen has taken the reins of the band.

He laughed when he was asked about spending all those years with one bandleader.

"Well, why not?" he said. "He's got a lot of stuff, a lot of music. More music than I've ever seen anybody have."

Allen continued: "He was always challenging musicians, and the music was a challenge in order to express it like he wanted. It was nothing but notes and things — but it was a way of expression and technique of how you wanted it played. Every day he had something different for us. Well, I said, 'Where else could I get such a teacher?' I've found my place where I could be part of something."

That something, though, is still a struggle. Allen has to hold together a core of Sun Ra-era veterans and, to bolster the ranks, indoctrinate a couple of players who only know Ra secondhand.

The impressive roster of veterans these days include trumpeter Michael Ray (also, amazingly, an ex-member of Kool and the Gang); saxophonists Danny Thompson, Charles Davis and Noel Scott; drummer Luqman Ali; and bassist Juni Booth. Some months go by without a single gig, which makes it hard to keep a 14-15 piece band engaged. When don't work enough, as Allen put it, "the music will get away from you."

And after recording well over 100 discs with Ra (mainly on his indie El Saturn label), the band has recorded only a couple to show what they can do in the post-Ra era, though Allen says more are on the way.

Even without many new discs from the group, the fascination with Ra's music has never dissipated. Notable admirers include George Clinton, Phish's Trey Anastasio, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, Yo La Tengo and James Carter (who sat in with the post-Ra band when they last came through town).

"The young people are eating it up," Allen said. Sun Ra, he continued, "was always writing something about the 21st century, the century of 21. And the 21st century is here, and the young folk are accepting."

And — who knows? — maybe some of them will wind up listening in on the radio static, like a sonic Rorschach too.


Interview with Sun Ra, (1988)
By Jennifer Rycenga, in San Francisco, Transcribed and edited by Dan Plonsey.



Sun Ra: I think of myself as a complete mystery. To myself.

Jennifer Rycenga: And you do what has to be --

Sun Ra: No I probably do what I'm controlled to do. Something --

J: -- Who's doing the controlling?

Sun Ra: -- made all this: some Impossibility without a name. That's what the world is controlled by: an Impossibility. It's controlled by someone they call "God" who never had a beginning and naturally had no end. And in a sense He doesn't exist, because of the standards of reality, because everybody knows something can't just happen -- but if there is a God, that's what happened; just happened to be, and without ever having not been -- they got to face that. So you go over into what you might call a myth. A myth to Himself. Has to be, 'cause something happened. And something happened where a being just happened to be and then He [was] all alone -- nobody else. Just Him. And in that case, he would cause something else to be. Out of nowhere. Named the "people." And then He's been trying to find out if there's anybody else -- in the vast universe. And then He would take these people and they'd help him look -- something else: another God, another being who just happened to be. It would have to be like that: it's beyond reality. But He'd be all alone; He'd make people, the people'd [inaudible], if they could reach a stage of doing the same thing He did: just happpen to be. And of course it's scattered all around. The Bible does say that man became a living soul. So that means he wasn't created: he just happened -- just happened to be. But they don't never read the book, 'cause they think the Bible is just fairy tales, myths, and all that. But it doesn't make any difference to this creator, He could take a myth and make a reality -- whatever they said. [inaudible] And they got the book that tells me that. They got somebody called Jesus said every jot and tittle of the book would happen. That means that people are living a predestined thing: they going by the book. And the book: got what seem to be a lot of contradictions in it. So then you got a contradictory planet. You got a contradictory people, because they going by the book. And that the book is verified and put in the right order -- see, it's like a jigsaw puzzle, if it was put in the right order, overnight people would change, to go by the book. But nobody's been able to put the book in order -- like a jigsaw puzzle. And then if you put the book -- if you take the jigsaw puzzle and put it together and it's backwards, you still won't see the picture. Now, that's what's happened: a lot people put something together, but they never turned it over and looked at the other side. And they got to look at the other side -- of the jigsaw puzzle. Some people did very good putting some things together, but they never turned it over; they didn't invert it. Now they have to face facts: according to the Bible, it said the disciples turned the world upside down. Now I did see that, but for some reason, I never heard anybody quote that passage. It does say it. They turned the world upside down. Now they turned the world upside down, they inverted values. Now they all were ignorant men; they didn't know what they were doing, but they were told that they were going to be made fishers of men. Took the fishermen, and only fishermen, seemingly -- they follow, they know nothing but they saw what he was doing, and then he told them all, "I will make you fishers of men." Now when you fish, you go out there, and use some bait, and use some nets, and you catch some fish. Catch a whole load of fish. And that's what happened with people. They're like the fish in the sea, you see. And the fish seem to be very free on the ocean, but then somebody comes along with a net, catches some fish, and the symbol for the net is "X." Because if you take ten and you turn it backwards it's net. So this "X" is used to catch people. And you got churches all over the world, over there, jumping over into the "X." They jump into the net that somebody's fishing. Now, the disciples, they didn't know, they didn't know what they were doing. And they were chosen for that purpose: not to know what they were doing. But to put something out there in the world that would serve as a net to catch some people. Put them all there -- just lump 'em all together in the net -- and that's what's happening. So you've got a lot of folks over in the net. But the net is Christ -- is "X," and "X" means a lot of things: it means "unknown."

J: Um-hm.

Sun Ra: "X" means "unknown," but "X" means Christ; you can prove it by the word "Christmas." I'm dealing with equations, you see. I went to school on this planet, and I ran off from Alabama, a discriminating state, supposedly the worst in America, after Reverend King went down there -- but there was some folks that sent him down there because the South is still an empire. It's not part of the United States really. And it never did give up, because they still got the Confederate flag. Now -- and they still got that flag up -- when a nation is defeated, they take their flag down. Confederate flag is still the flag of Alabama, so Alabama's the center and the capital of the Confederacy. And Reverend King, probably he didn't realize -- he went there to try to break it in Alabama, but the symbol for the flag in Alabama is "X." So you got the flag with the "X" on it, you got the stars on there, and the South is still a separate part from the United States. And they think differently. And this empire, the empire of the South, they had so much power, they were hurting the North financially, because they had people working free for them, and the North had to pay people, and so therefore they were running rings around the North, their businessmen. And that's what happened. That's when they had the war, because they wanted to break the power of the South, who had more like an aristocracy throughout their society.

J: Sure.

Sun Ra: Which you can see it in Gone with the Wind what they had. Mansions. They had money, money, money. And England, the rest of the world would deal with the South for their cotton. And they didn't really have an allegiance as far as this government is concerned, and so the war was fought not to free black people; it was fought to try to break the financial power of the South. And that's what happened: they broke it.

J: So. . .

Sun Ra: But it's still like that in the center.

J: Is your music one of the ways of turning that puzzle over?

Sun Ra: Yes. It's the answer to everything. Because this Being I'm dealing with sent me here -- to change it. And that's a total impossibility. The problem about it -- I sought to play the low profile, 'cause I'm not a minister, and I'm not a politician; I'm a scholar, and I found out a thing that scholars don't like to be out there in the public eyesight. They don't have to be, because they [inaudible] to search and find out some more things. And the next thing I know I was searching, looking for some answers. I found the answers, but I had to deal with the Bible, because they say it's in code. I'm making high marks in college -- all the way through, I made it; and I wanted to know why all these thousands of years did not one scholar, not one intellectual could break the code in the Bible. I couldn't understand: why you got a book and all these folks with brains, inventing [inaudible] and they can't break the code. So I decided to take my energies and break the code in the book; see what it really meant. And I did. But then I had to study [coughs] I had to study the literature of all nations, particularly Russia, France, England, to read that literature, that fiction, and their philosophy; I had to study everything by myself, without a teacher, because I was being led to do it. And therefore, I know about all the nations, what they represent, what their traditions [are], and I know which way they headed, I know their past, their present, and their future. So I'm like a bird that's sitting up there looking, gets a bird-eye view of all of humanity, and when I go to each country, I can feel everything about them. I got my eyes closed, and I know what's happening. In this country, when I go from state to state, I feel when I cross the border, because I'm very sensitive, and I can tell, when we going somewhere, from state to state, everything changes: we crossed the border. Now that's great sensitivity, you see, and every person I come to, I can feel what they are, I can feel what is going to happen to them, I can see everything. Just like what they call God sees, I can see with his eyes. Every person's just like a television set, and you can see any time He wants to see you. Just take a person over any time you want to talk to somebody, take a person over, and he talks. And they be talking to God, face-to-face, quite often, and don't know it. And they think the person is talking. But they haven't been able to distinguish between the person talking, and between something that's using them. And therefore, you could be talking to a little child, and a little child says something and you might think it's that little child. A total impossibility, [but the] proof of that is that one time in Chicago, a truck got stuck under a bridge, and they were scared to move because they'd tear the bridge down, and it was a sub-teenager there, he kept telling them, "I know how to solve the problem." They sent for the firemen, got the police, the engineers, they sent to colleges, all was there trying to figure out how to move that truck without harming the bridge. This little boy was still saying, "I know how to do it." They were saying, "Get away from me boy, let the men handle it." Nighttime came almost. They finally asked him, "What do you say?" He said, "Take the air out of the tires." Yeah. All the intellectuals. And that's the way the world is: all these folks with brains, and they got to admit, they can't solve the problem. It's just like that little boy -- I mean they need a little boy. My idea, you see, if I put something together -- they want a better world. Nobody's coming along with a blueprint to make a better world; with all their intelligence, they can't do it, and they got some remarkable brain people, philosophers, but they be talking against the world, but they never brought a blueprint. The Creator [inaudible] "You want a better world, put the blueprint down, I'll make it for you." You have to have the blueprint. But they never [do]. Some people say, "well, all the bad people; they going to hell; it will be a better world." But this Creator is not like that. He don't care nothing about righteousness, and that's where people make a mistake. A person that troubles to do the righteous thing; they in trouble. Because he doesn't understand that. He doesn't understand righteousness. He be trying them out to see what makes them righteous, and the next thing you know, they be dead because they can't prove that they righteous; because they'd be saying things, and this Creator, when He says something, well, that's it; He'll do it all right; but when people say things, when they're put on the test, they deviate.

J: You said music is a kind of talking to the Creator.

Sun Ra: Oh, it's the only way possible. Music is a faster vibration than talking, you see. It moves fast. And it has more power than the voice. It [aside to Buster] Buster, what are you going to do now?

Buster: I'm going; I gotta go get some juice and some medicine.

Sun Ra: Look under the bus? Look under the bus.

Buster: I'm going to look under. . .

Sun Ra: Okay.

Buster: Yeah, 'cause all the bags are underneath.

Sun Ra: Right, that's the first mistake.

Buster: There's an envelope in that bag.

Sun Ra: Okay. Yes.

Buster: Okay?

Sun Ra: So, now it comes down to tell the world, well, they don't really have no proof there's a God. That's what the problem is. First they have to have equational proof that there is a God, or something that could take that name. Not that it's God, if you go all the way back to ancient Egypt, the Sun priest is [who] would teach the Sun medicine in Egypt -- that's not being taught today, because they had civilization for five thousand years; America's just four hundred years old, and it's shakin' and quiverin' -- they had a civilization -- the oldest known civilization: ancient Egypt: five thousand years of precise, orderly government. So the world got to go back and see: what were they doing? What were they doing to have five thousand years of precise government, education; and the whole world, it revolves around Egypt, really, although they talk about it, but without Egypt, you wouldn't have no alphabets, you wouldn't have anything. You wouldn't have no religion either, because they were the ones talking about immortality. The rest of religions were not talking about people being again, they had that idea, that it could happen, and they set up pyramids and everything, they buried the dead with the idea that they would come back. And it's all symbolic -- everything is symbolic; nothing is real. Something placed it all here, waiting for people to wake up. Waiting for them to wake up and do something. But they haven't. They have to do it themselves; It's not going to help them. So It gives them atomic bomb; see what they going to do. It's like a person goes out and buys some toys for her children, and that's what the Creator [does]: He give them some toys. In Belgium, every time I go there -- it's the only country that's doing this -- women be there from all over the world; they don't get no publicity, and they be marching down the street, thousands of them, and they be singing, "Take the toys from the boys." Now, that doesn't get in America. I haven't seen any pictures of them doing that, and they do it quite often; maybe every month, and they be marching, all the women, from different countries together, shouting, "Take the toys from the boys." And they talking about them guns that the military got. So they never get any publicity, but I've seen it quite often. Now, so it comes down to these toys they got. Somebody making the toys obsolete, because you don't need guns to kill people anymore; a thimbleful of this new gas that they got could waste half of San Francisco, all of it. That's a lot of power. So then if America was attacked, a thimbleful of [inaudible] this new stuff they got, could decimate practically every city in America; they got no protection. None whatsoever. But they could get ready. They could do what Buckminster Fuller said and make them some domes. That would protect them. They could be up under these domes, these geodesic domes. But of course they're still making their square houses and things. They wouldn't listen to him, and he said, "America's a spaceship." I say so too. Now, they intelligent, but dumb at the same time. Now they come to the place where they got to prove: there is a God, or there isn't. And if there is no God; they have to be God, so you still got a God. You you got to have a head. You can't have a body without a head. And they do say Christ is the head of the church. But the head is nailed on the cross, right; nailed down. So now, that's an equation. They got to deal with equations, but they got to know now, people all over the planet got to know they got to know about a God. And they have to have some kind of proof. You got to have some proof there is a God. And I got the proof: everything bad happened on this planet is caused by God. So there's your proof: you got little children that's starving: that's the work of God. You got tornadoes and typhoons: that's the work of God. So he demonstrates He does exist through evil, not good. So with all these evils upon the planet, they got the book that said, got Christ saying, (who's supposedly the word of God, and the word of God is walking, and saying), "I work and my father works." And the word of God is saying, "The works of the world are evil." So Christ did some evil thing. As a lot of books of the bible said, "In the kingdom of Christ there shall be evil and fill up the days." I'm dealing with equations I'm a cosmo-scientist. "In the kingdom of Christ there shall be evil and fill the days." And this is the kingdom of Christ because Christ in numerology is number five, and in Washington D.C. it's all based around number five: the pentagon. So I'm dealing with equations that seemingly people don't know. I went to Washington, and I was walking by the Potomac, and then all at once this picture came into my mind, saying you know, in the United States, every state touches three or four states that surround it. Washington D.C. is called a district, and it only touches two states. And the capital of the United States was moved from Philadelphia, to New York, and to Washington D.C. The purpose was establishing a spiritual kingdom. So now [clears throat] so they took [clears throat] Virginia and Maryland; they took Washington D.C. and put it in the midst of Virginia and Maryland for a spiritual purpose they put the pentagon -- they still there -- and then Virginia means "land of the virgin." Like California means "land of the caliph." Louisiana: "land of Louis." Georgia: "land of George." So that "ia" on there means "land." So when they say Virginia, that's "virgin." Now when they say Maryland, that's the "land of Mary," so then Washington D.C. is in the midst of Virgin Mary. Now, they put it there, and then you got the pentagon, and penta is Christ's number, so you got Christ in the midst of Virgin Mary, still unborn. Well, enclosed in there. Now you got that; now who set that up? Man didn't; the whole thing is set up, and then they went and based it on liberty and the book is very dangerous, they based it on liberty, and men will look for liberty, but every time people talk about liberty, a lot of them die. All over the planet, you got different ones of people talking about liberty, and they getting killed, too. You've got it in Palestine, you've got it in Salvador, you've got everyehere where people are fighting for liberty, they die. Like in one country down in South America, the people -- all sorts of people -- they was talking about liberty and freedom, [they] put 'em in a stadium; shot 'em. In Mexico, before they had the Olympics there, some students were talking about freedom of government and everything, and the soldiers came, and took them: they disappeared. Mexico -- they came, and they came shooting. You go down there now, I played in a place where this happened, and you go there, and you can see the holes in the buildings, they died too. And Reverend Jim Jones, he took the people that looking for freedom down there and they died; they had the [inaudible] and every one of them died. And Moses come from Egypt and brought the people out of Egypt for freedom, into the wilderness, and forty years, in the wilderness, two generations: they died. And Moses died too, and was told, "You have not come into the promised land." He supposedly was from God, but he didn't make it. It's off in all the different books, and it's hard for a scholar to read all the books, but I've been directed to read books and to get the books that tell the truth. Now you got a book called, "Collision of the Worlds." And it sent -- they send their books to me, and this day, I said, "Well, why should I read that?" I thought it was fiction or something. I still don't know fully what the book is saying, but it stayed around the house for five years; I never read that book. But this force... one day I woke up, and that book was on my pillow. I said, "How'd this book get here?" Well, I reckoned I was supposed to read it, so I took the book, I was turning the pages, and saw a commentary: it had in fine letters, that Pharoah told Moses "Watch out going out into that desert, where you're going, because you're going to meet the bloody star, Ra. You're going to meet. If you go out there into that desert, you're going to meet the bloody star, Ra." Now, that -- and it didn't say any more -- well, you can get the book, -- uh -- so then there's a book called Rawlinson's Ancient History [presumably: Rawlinson, George, Ancient History. Phila: J.P. Lippencott, 1887. -- DP]. And this book says, the oldest name known for God is "Ra," and the Kushite equivalent of "El," which is another name for God, "El" means God, and then "Ra" is over there with something else. And that's what the Egyptians had: they were worshipping Ra, and they were a great kingdom they had everything, you see. And the Sun priestess, that temple was started in Heliopolis -- it's still there [but] somebody came along and destroyed [the temple]. Now in the rest of the religions -- like you got Stonehenge, [but] somebody tried to destroy completely any semblance of evidence of the temple of the Sun priest in Egypt. Now: why'd they do that? You go there, you don't even know anything been there; you don't see one stone. But you go down in Memphis, now they had down there you see a statue of Ramses there, and some ruins of the temple, but in Heliopolis, the place where all this came from, about Sun priests, and somebody tried to obliterate that off the face of the Earth. Now: All the schools on this planet have to close. All the chuches have to shut their doors. All the governments got to turn their thing over to this force which can lead the planet properly; they have to do it, or die. Now that's my message. They have to do, as told. And they have to list one person in human form to show that they have become capable of recognizing somebody in human form, as their leader, who has intelligence enough, and the authority, to get this planet out of trouble. Now if they can't do that, if they can't recognize one person in human form, the Creator's not going to recognize any of them. If they recognize one person in human form, without regards to color, or religion, as their leader to lead them, yes, and be obedient, yes, because they got a story saying that Adam and Eve -- the first man and woman, supposedly -- were not obedient. And all this is caused by two disobedient people. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not; they say it is, and this particular God, whatever you say, He uses like a musician that's got a composition improvises, He improvises on what you said; and He can take it and make it the truth. So then you got where the world's in trouble [phone rings] throughout because supposedly one woman and one man who disobeyed the voice of God, because it does say in the book that Adam and Eve heard the voice of God walking in the garden. Now have you ever seen a voice walking? They say they heard the voice walking. Now: the people got to deal with that, but they haven't dealt with that. [To telephone] Hello? Hello? Yes... [tells someone the band's schedule, arranges for them to call back later] Now what was I saying?

J: Tell me something about discipline, about how you see that.

Sun Ra: Well it's written. See, I have to go by the book. You have to have something to work by. I'm going by what they say is the word of God. Like I said, they heard the voice walking -- [the voice] of God. Now with all these scholars and everything, none of them has said, "How can you have just a voice, walking?" Now I've never seen a voice walk. But it said, they heard the voice walking in the garden. And the voice spoke to them. Now, they got to see that when they talking about this religion, that this who they call Jesus Christ, the voice spoke and said, "This is my son." It didn't say whose voice -- there you got the voice again; it's always about this voice. So now you go back to ancient Egypt. And you see that they were dealing with the voice, they were dealing with the mouth. They were dealing with the eye: the mouth as eye. Any hole is the eye, really, like Adam and Eve. And they took this symbol "Ra," which represented the mouth, it represented the eye, and people got to get back to that, and they got to see: what were the Sun priestesses teaching? One thing they was teaching: whatever you did, never desire to be like God. Because then God was a very primary, low turn of disaster. And that's what they taught. Not to ever want to be like God. And then they put it over into symbols like about that Lucifer wanted to be like God. And then things happened, really bad. And then Adam and Eve wanted to be like God, and things happened very bad. But you've got a whole world trying to be like God. Now it comes down to being that the book is true it's true, all right, and they got nothing but something bad enough humanity. Now, they have to be careful because they have to learn how to discriminate, but since you've got some people on this planet who are against discrimination, they're against the word, which means judgement. Now if you're against discrimination, that means you have no judgement; you cannot make any choices, because you in the status quo, and you stay there. Now the word "discrimination" has been made a very bad word. Now they have to not use that word in that way -- it's not right to take a word which means something nice for you, and make it be bad. Because if you take a word and make it bad, then this God, the Creator, He just say, "Oh, discrimination is bad, so I'll see that they don't discriminate." That means that they will not make choices at all; they have no judgement. Now, so we got to deal with that. And the word "liberty" is a very bad word. The word "liberty," the word "liberal." Like in this campaign, Bush is using the word "liberal" as something bad. So then Dukakis come and said, he is a liberal. Now, some folks is using that word "liberal" to defeat him. Now the question is, does Bush really know that, or is he being controlled? But the word "liberal" could make him lose the election. Some folks is using that. And then you say, "Well, what is a liberal?" So then you go to the Bible, and see what it says about liberal. It says a "liberal" is a churl. It's got it written. The liberal is a churl. So somebody used that on Dukakis, they said he is the worst possible thing that a man could be, 'cause a "churl" according to the dictionary is a "low, contemptable, scoundrel, rascal." Now, somebody -- Bush called him a "scoundrel and a rascal" maybe unknowingly, but as I said, Bush has made the word "liberal" a bad word, and he's going by the Bible. Now maybe he knows. Maybe he doesn't. But a lot of people use that book in a way to hurt people. Maybe they don't even know it. So I would say, some folks is controlling people with words. And the book does say, "Here a word, there a word, precept upon precept, line by line until they be taken and snared." Now, the book is saying that people can be snared by words. So they have to be careful about these words. Now, music is a language. Now, when I found all these things, [and] not speaking all languages, I wondered: how could I talk to the world, to tell them things? So I took everything I learned, and I put it into music, and that's what it is. And some times people will say they don't understand. But then, it's not about understanding; it's about can they feel what I'm talking about. To understand it -- well, it jumps over into a lot of different directions. So it doesn't do any good, 'cause you can interpret it any kind of way you want to. But if they feel something, and they pure at heart, then they will feel what I'm saying, and they won't be part of the Kingdom of Death, like they are now. You see, like the hippies said, "God is dead." And Nietzche said that too. He said, "Old man in the forest does not know that God is dead," so they ain't saying nothing new, you know; they studied Nietzche. But see, I studied all these things, and you see, they should say, "God is Death." Not that God is dead, but God is death. In other words, that's what He is. So when people go out and they want to be like God, they went over into his Kingdom -- of Death. Now I said that in Kansas City. Kansas City Star took my picture and put it up above the name of the newspaper and said, "Revolutionary, so to speak." They had two pages. Under one big picture of me they said something about infinity; that I'm dealing with infinity. And the first one they had, they said, "Sun Ra says that God is death." And didn't comment on it. And it's true: God is death. And it is written, well it happens, that when people have dreams or something, a vision of God, and they see him, they die. Coltrane saw God, and he died. And a friend connected with us, in Washington D.C., he told me one day, he saw God. He's dead. (I'm going by equations now, and I've heard other people say it: you see God, that's it.) And he told me about the vision he had; I said, well, they say that man cannot see God and live, so maybe you should prepare to die. Because he said he saw God: he was buck naked, God was sitting on his throne, gold robe, and gold things all around shining, and he walked toward God; God said, "Get back! Stand back!" And he asked me what that means, I said, "well, it could mean that He rejected you; it could mean that He was trying to protect you, not to approach Him, 'cause you'd die. But you're in trouble. The best thing is prepare to die." And in three months, he was dead. Now, I'm dealing with equations; I'm not dealing with what I think, because the big -- I call it omniverse [knocking at door: 2 long, 3 short; door squeaks open] -- it's impossible to know everything, but you can feel everything. Definitely. [phone rings, and someone answers ] You can feel the whole universe, and your feeling's quite vast. The mind can't do that. It just be one track. But the feelings can go on all tracks at the same time. Now when you're dealing with feeling, you can feel what is real for you. That's what I'm doing; I'm going by feeling. [To phone ] Hello? Yes... yeah... yes... well, I tell you, this is a vast organization, and it touches up against the real ruler of the planet. We have to see -- to talk to you to see things and talk to other people who are connected, because this isn't just where this is. This band was established like other bands, it was backed up by some people who were unselfish, and some people who felt that what I was trying to do in music was being hampered by commercial folks and other people who said it was too far out, and about twelve people got together, some musicians and others, one of them is a rabbi, he's a black hebrew, he's in Israel now -- and they put up the money, and they established us a record company, Saturn, so that I would be heard regardless of commercial folks. They did that. So then the foundation of it was for to get this music out there to people, and they put these records out, they put the money in it; they didn't ask for no money; it's the most unselfish organization ever been on this planet. They didn't ask for no money. They said this music should be heard by people. So because this... [unrecorded voice on phone] Well, we'll talk about it today, but you'll have to meet these people who are scattered in Israel, in Egypt, in Germany, in Japan, millions and millions of people are part of what I'm doing. Although in a sense they don't realize it, but they are. If they had a touch of what I'm talking about, they never would be happy. If a planet where you got destruction and death, something has touched them where they can see; this does not have to be. Now I never tried to reach them like sending newsletters, but they're asking me to. A lot of them are teenagers, sub-teenagers; and it's very vast, it's out beyond my control at this point. I'm just -- I'm a scholar, see; a scholar can be by themselves and have such a nice time, but in that case, it's not going to be like that, I have to be talking to people, but they will be changed, and everything they think is right, that will be nullified, and that's kind of hard: to come to a planet and nullify everything, but everything has to be nullified for them, or else they're going to die. Now, that is very vast, and I'm listening to the voice of a Creator which I've never seen, but He's been my guide, you know, to say what to say, what to do, and that makes it's a total mystery. It is a mystery to talk about A Mystery. And that's what the Creator is: A Mystery. Such a big mystery until you cannot find Him in history; you find in mythology. He... [unrecorded voice on phone] Uh-huh, mine is -- my arrival date is that too, and... [unrecorded voice on phone] Well, you called me up, I'm being interviewed right now, so you can call me later on... [unrecorded voice on phone] Yes. About three o'clock, two o'clock, something like that... [unrecorded voice on phone] Oh yes, I don't go nowhere. I have to be in place... [unrecorded voice on phone] All right, yeah, bye. [speaking to J.R. again] Yeah, it's a case where this Being is saying, "Okay, now, I taught you, if you want to do something, my people, you can do it. You got the thought there to do it. What are you going to do?" And that's where it is: "what are you going to do? Now, if you're dissatisfied with the world as it is, you have to find something better. Put the blueprint out there; I'll make it, according to what you do." And that's what this Creator's been waiting on: somebody come up with a blueprint for the nations of the world, where He can build, because He's a creator: He'll build. But the danger is, you have to become like God in a sense. A lot of people want to be like gods, but they haven't read all the different scriptures, and one of them says, the gods who do not create shall perish. So then a lot of people jumped over to the name of God, but they don't create nothing, and they die. So you have to do something [every day]. Every day, I create something, I have to create something -- but I'm so far ahead on the creation; I've been doing a whole lifetime, see. Sometimes I create seven things a day, or twenty things a day; some I write something, or else a song, or some poetry, or some more equations that are quite mysterious, but they're there; scientific [inaudible]. Now I was in Berkeley, right here in California, I felt that here, since it's supposed to be the city of sin, everything goes. But in the city of sin, they blocked me. It was perfect [inaudible] -- people say it was perfect, at that University of California, in Berkeley, I was supposed to be teaching there, and I had some of my cosmic things, and I had proof of it, and all the students was reading these books that I didn't write, and it was all done precisely, and then they said that I wasn't here; that I was in Egypt. And I wasn't in Egypt; I was right here. I got the papers to show that the students [inaudible]. I was right here, but then what I told them was, "You don't want me to tell your students what you might call philosophy. If you call yourself a university, you're supposed to expose your students to everything, pro and con, right and wrong. Otherwise they can go out into the world and they won't be prepared; something you might think is insignificant, might be the very thing they have to fight against, and you should prepare them. If you don't like what I'm saying, you should let them hear it so they can get their guard up and fight against it -- if they need to. But then if they can't hear what I'm saying, then they jump out there, and they'll be unprepared." I said, "now you don't have a right to call yourself to be a university, because a university covers everything, right and wrong." I said, "Nature teaches you things; Nature's got some snakes out there, it's got some poisons out there, it's got everything. And if I can't talk here in San Francisco, you going to have a problem in your schools," and so I just left. They didn't pay me, and...

J: When was this?

Sun Ra: Around 1970, or so.

Peter Hinds: '71.

Sun Ra: They didn't pay me in two, three months since I [inaudible]. They dropped me. But then I said, well, why'd they do that? They wanted me to tell about the music; the music has somehing to do with the cosmos; that was what I was doing; I was trying to get them prepared. [phone rings, someone answers: "Saturn Research' ] But then I said, now, why did they do that? Well, I tell the students I'm dealing with equations. Now I have to decide: why is the black race in America in the condition they're in? [speaking to phone] Hello? Okay. She's here. Okay. [back to J.R.] I wanted to find out why were... [side one of tape ends] Sun Ra: [inaudible] is shipped here, like there was no account whatsoever. And then I had to research on that. So I told the student, that the reason that Black people are in America Ethiopia financed that. Ethiopia instigated it. Ethiopia. I said, if I'm telling you the truth that Ethiopia instigated the enslavement, and dehumanization of Black people in America today, if I'm telling you the truth, the Emperor of Ethiopia is going into house arrest, and will die there. [inaudible]. He went into house arrest; he died there. And I said, now you got a president: Nixon. Now he's not going to make it in the White House; he'll still be in politics; he's coming out of the White House. According to my equations, his name is against him: his name is "Nix": that's negative. Now if you turn his name backwards, it's still negative: it's "No." Now you got "no" forward and backward, so he can't escape; he's coming out of that White House. Now: it happened. Now, about five years later, the university wanted my recorded lectures. Now, they want it, and I said no, well since you didn't recognize when I was there, the lectures belong to me, you can't have it. You still owe me, also, for three months. Well that's the way it is in San Francisco: they really need what I'm talking about. But since they rejected it, what can I do? The world needs to know what I'm saying, and these universities need to know what I'm saying, but I've risen up above universities, say well, they're no good. I had to report to the Creator, say the universities are not suitable, on this planet. They talk about universe, and then they putting something down. That's not proper. But I said so I'm just going to one day establish my omniversity. And in my omniversity, people can learn everything. And I'm going to do that. I'm going to establish my omniversity. Now you don't have an omniversity on the planet. "Universe" just means "one thing," they have to deal with the oneness of things, so I have my equations that say the oneness of things deal with the past. I can prove that by the statement of, "Once upon a time." It does not mean something's going to happen, it does not mean anything's happening now, it has nothing to do with the future, nothing to do with present; once means the past. Now, so I'm dealing with that, I'm dealing with equations, I'm dealing with the cross they got up there; they got "I,H,S,T" up there over there, and I'm dealing with that, what that means, and I'm dealing with further back. If they research, they'll find out they had "Y,H,S,T" up there, and they had "U,H,S,T," they have to go in the Catholic Church over there, in the archives, and look and see: "U,H,S,T" spells "shh-us." Backwards is "shut": S,H,U,T: that's the end of that. Now "YHST" is an ancient Egyptian word, and it has no vowels, but it can be pronounced, and the way you pronounce it is: "wise." Wise. I ask people, how do you pronounce "YHST," and they say "yest," and all that, and some kind of way their mind never comes to pronounce it like it is: "wise." Now, the Book says, "a tree to make one wise." And here you got a man hanging up on the cross: wise, on the tree, then you've got over there where you got the "UHST," the man has become like one of us: UHST: backwards, shut. Now over here, you've got this "IHST." That's "is." But you read it backwards, it's "shit." Now: so you got that shit hanging up there, in that church. Well, I got the whole thing! It's "bullshit!" The Creator -- this force -- has put it out there, for people, and then they have to read, they got to go back and read words. Now, "bull" is a note. To this day the Catholic Church put the "bull" up there. That means a notice. And they put the papal bull up there. Right there. England is called "John Bull." And a bull only means a notice. That's where the word "bulletin" comes from. And so the Creator put the notice up there; the bull up there. But then you got that "shit" backwards, so you got that "bullshit" up there, and all these people are following this bullshit that the Creator put up there. He put it up there to see if they intelligent enough to see what this is. I don't blame them for wanting me not to tell people that, because it's very bad. It is bad that that Catholic Church would someday be giving them wafers to put it on their tongue, and this wafer got shit on it. S,H,I,T 'cause, "IHS," boom, put that shit on their tongue. Now that's very crude, you know, to say that, but of course, I've seen them, and it got it on that wafer: "S,H,I,T." Because the thing in the East, even in Japan, they read this way: [gestures right to left]. The book: boom. This way. And in the West, this way: [gestures left to right]. So you got a case where they all should read this way or that way, and you got a case where in the East: this way. In the West, this way. So then you got a case where it means one thing to the East and another thing to the West, because they do two things: that way, that way. And if something is good for the East, in the West it's bad. It's bad. And here you've got this confusion, like that. And it's like "the East is East, and the West, never the twain shall meet." Well, they got to get together and read the same way, you see. They got to have what I call the Omniversal language. Omniversal language: is music. And it happens to be jazz. Well, in Greek they spell jazz something like ``tzaz'' or something, they call it different names, and this - I got the whole answer about things - is why you got AIDS and all like that - it's so simple, that they don't know. They can't grasp it. AIDS comes from the word ``said.'' You take the `s' and put it on the back. You can do that because ``first should be last.'' And you got AIDS. Well then I have to balance the equation. So then one day somebody who had been to Senegal said they don't call it ``AIDS,'' they call it ``SIDA.'' So there you are. My equations balance. They call it ``SIDA,'' and over here they call it ``AIDS.'' Same words, so I know what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to teach people nothing; they're here today and gone tomorrow anyway. So as far as I'm concerned, they don't exist. If you're here today and gone tomorrow, how can you do anything about that. I'll never see them again maybe - maybe yes, but if you go out there instructing people, they listen, they can save themselves; make it easier. I was standing out on the road looking, and a man came by; he was a shepherd, he had about 300 sheep following him. He didn't look back. Not one sheep strayed. Now here are these sheep, following someone who's not like them, but he's a leader: they follow. Now, how come people can't follow a leader? [inaudible] I was amazed that the sheep demonstrated how to follow a leader, even when the leader is not one of them. Now humanity has got to do that; these nations got to have somebody to represent all the nations. They're gonna be using the colored thing, they're gonna be using the religious thing, and they say, ``Well, we can't put him up there: he's another race; he's another religion.'' But see, this creator - all of them are his people, so he's waiting for them to say, ``We're going to put the most capable person on this planet over us to lead us.'' Now, have they reached that point? It's important for them to reach it, because if they can't recognize one of their own kind as their leader, then the whole thing is futility. And the Creator made a lot of folks who will assume dominance. And he's going to get rid of them, because they don't even respect one another. Now if they can respect somebody - I don't care how bad he is, or what he is - if they can pick one person [to] represent us, they can sign it: ``This [person] represents Planet Earth.'' Then this person can talk to the Creator and tell him: ``Well, the first thing we should do is abolish death. I want you to supervise things some way that people would not get sick. And I want you to open up the heavens so they can go to other planets, and I want them to be educated properly.'' And this person could speak in the name of the people of the Planet Earth. And that's the only way it's going to be, and that's why they always have in those space-pictures, when the space-beings land the first thing they said was, ``Take me to your leader.'' Now. It's all out there when you've said it: ``Take me to your leader'': you're only going to talk to one person.

Jennifer Rycenga: Is your band a blueprint, then, for how the world should be?

Sun Ra: Well, it's demonstrating that some people in the form of men can stick together, along with the marriages, and along with the Black Panthers. Along with the many things you put up there, it's still here. And they're not with me because I promised them anything, because I always said they're ``in the Ra jail.'' And my jail is the best jail in the world, and they learn things in my jail. And that's what I express: they're in jail, and they're not going anywhere, because they can't, because the creative God knows me, that if I had my way I'd just [inaudible] and go to Egypt, and be in the desert and hide out and do some of my research cycle. But I can't do that because he got these fellows with me, and I can't just desert them! They don't necessarily believe what I'm saying, because it's so fantastic. I got a picture of John - I'm out there talking to people, and he's standing in the wings terrified with what I'm saying! Because I'll be doing things according to what I'm told, and I have to do equational things, and establish things, and in Philadelphia where it all started, I said I want an audience [inaudible] but all the people there were white, [except for] about three black people in there - as usual - so I came out, off the stage where the band was playing, and I said I was tired of the situation on this planet, with black people still sleeping - dead, not helping me, and the condition they're in - they shouldn't want to be in. They shouldn't want to be like white people; white people are in trouble. And basically they're ignorant of spiritual things. [inaudible] And I would do something to change things, so I said I have to use the book. So I went out in the audience, and then there was a black person on [one] side, and I took him by the head [inaudible] and said, ``Now, it is written: those who I have called my people, I call not my people. The white race are my people now. And the black folk are still over there until they wake up.'' Now, they was up in the air; I had them held by their hair, and they were astounded and they were scared. But the white people didn't say nothing; they just looked up and they smiled. And so I did something then. I said, well, if the black people aren't going to wake up, I'm just going to take over the white race, so go ahead and [inaudible], I've got it now. I said, because, you know, they've got a lot of money - down in Texas I told them this: I'm going to do something wrong tonight. I'm trying to do right, but if I can't so something right, I can do something wrong. Whatever it is, it's wrong, but I'm going to do it in Texas. In Fort Worth. I got up and told the people, they said that God is love; I'm going to abolish that thing. It is no good, because people are more than love, so how come God's got to be limited to one attribute? I've got a song that's called, ``God is more than Love can ever be.'' So don't be talking about ``God is love.'' I said, ``but God does love you if you want to call it that, and he sent me to demonstrate it. Now God's not love. But I am a message of love for you, and I'm going to come out there in the audience and - God sent love in person - I'm coming out there in Texas, and I'm going to walk past you, and whatever you do, do not let Love walk by you without the touch and the feel of Love.'' So I went out there in the audience, and all the Texans had their hands out to touch me. In San Francisco, a teenager came up to me and said, ``Whatever you're making, I know it's not enough for your music,'' so he was offering to take a collection. I said, ``Yes, well, what you have to do though is tell them that they haven't paid their Sun taxes. They've had all this Sun all these years; they never paid no Sun taxes. Tell them I'm going to collect their Sun tax from them.'' And then I got me $500. Now I've just given you some examples of what I'm doing to open up something. The Creator wants to see something different. And that was different. So that's why I say that humanity's ready for something different. Now I've had a lot of trouble out of some musicians saying, ``Too far out, too far out.'' But I'll be saying, ``but the people always show up! How can you say it's too far out?'' There was one musician, I think his name was [inaudible], he said, ``People are not used to 5/4 time.'' But that is not true, because I've got a song called ``Space is the Place,'' and it's in 5/4 time. And we get a standing ovation. And it's in 5/4 time, 3/4 time, 4/4 time, 7/4 time, all the time. And the people hear it, and appreciate it, and they feel it. And a lot of musicians say, no they ain't ready. But the ones who ain't ready are the musicians. Now, that's what causes me a problem. Because they have to be re-taught. They like to think I'm just an ordinary person, and what I'm doing's of no worth, but if they start really investigating - which they haven't - if they delve back (and I've got witnesses), Coleman Hawkins - I played with him - I told the Baroness Nica that, and of course she didn't believe it. Coleman Hawkins came to New York, was playing at the Village Gate, and in the dressing room all at once she asked him, ``Do you know him?'' `cause she thought I was telling a lie. And Coleman Hawkins said, ``Of course I remember him. He's the only somebody who ever wrote something I couldn't play.'' And he said, ``Yes, fifteen years ago, in Chicago, you was playing something, and I asked you to write it out. You wrote it out. I got the chords, I got the melody, it's written right: I can't play it to this day! And it's the only music I've ever seen that I couldn't play.'' And he says, ``It's very simple, but I can't play it!'' He said that in front of everybody. So here you've got a case where I was playing with Fletcher Henderson, and Fletcher Henderson's fellows always said to me, ``You play those strange chords! Why don't you just play like a piano player?'' And I said, ``Well, Fletcher plays piano, he likes the way I play, and hired me, and you just play horn, so you should shut up! I think a piano player would know what I'm capable of, and he likes what I'm doing; he ain't saying nothing, so you should shut up!'' So then it was a big problem. I put in my notice. I said, ``I'm not going to put up with this, because I'm not what you would call a human being. I deal with precision, and if they keep on messing with me, they're going to get an explosion.'' I had to do something about it, it was irritating me. I said, I've got to do something to teach these humans don't mess with me. So the next night I got me a straight razor, and I put it right on the piano, by one of the trumpet players, and I said, ``Tonight, I'm going to cut somebody's head off if they say something about my playing, `cause I'm very evil tonight, and I'm not going to take nothing from no human being. Off goes somebody's head!'' So he didn't bother me no more. And then the next thing that happened, I just put my notice in. So I came back to see who Fletcher got to play piano. And he was down there directing. He had no piano player. And Fletcher said if I didn't play, they wouldn't have a piano. He said, ``Come back on the stage!'' So I went back on the stage, and Fletcher smiled, and I had my job back. There are always strategies. I used a strategy, and so they said, ``Well, why don't you bring some arrangements out?'' So I told Fletcher, well, they can't play it. So they said, ``We play songs and arrangements by Fletcher Henderson! We're professionals, we ain't amateurs, we can sight-read anything!'' Fletcher said, ``Rehearsal, tomorrow, 2 o'clock. Bring your arrangements.'' I brought two arrangements. One was called ``I should Care,'' a very simply ballad. The other was called ``Dear Southland'' [?] Very simple. I put the arrangements there, Fletcher looked at it; it was correct in every respect, three hours later, Fletcher said, ``They can't play it.'' Now, something happened. Something about my music - that had been played by teenagers, so it was correct. Something else happened in Chicago. I was writing for some dancers, they were supposed to be at the [inaudible] Theatre with Count Basie's Orchestra. So I had written the music according to the way they danced, so I took the music there. It had like waltzes in it, different things like that, a medley, and I took it to Count Basie's band, and two hours later they was trying to play that music, a simple waltz. They could not play it. Without the spiritual thing - I put the notes down, but they were not played unless their hearts were right. Now that's the way it is. Now, to tell that to people, I might seem to be out to build me ego up, but Count came, Count saw that they could not play it, Count told the dancers, ``You'll just have to dance by my music.'' And although they had the music written for their dances - it was tailor-made - they had to dance by Count Basie.

Rycenga: So when you include music of these masters in your show, how does that fit into your omni-vision?

Sun Ra: Well, I have to deal with sound. I have to get the sound of Fletcher Henderson. And not just the notes; they have to have the sound of Fletcher Henderson's band exactly the way he would direct it. Now, that's kind of difficult to do, to take the soul of a person and reiterate it, and to present to teenagers or to other Americans who bypassed him; they don't know too much about Fletcher Henderson, although he may have been a good one and a millionaire. So I have to have to say, well, I want them to hear Fletcher Henderson, and therefore, I have to create the same sound Fletcher's band had. And I've done it; when I went to San Francisco recently, a union man walked in. He said, ``You know, when I walked in that door, this band sounded exactly the way Fletcher Henderson sounded. It's amazing! How'd you do that?'' So I did achieve that, you see, it's not my ego talking. The same sound, and then a fellow in the band told me - Noel Scott - he said, ``I was really disturbed tonight, I was very upset.'' I said, ``What upset you?'' He said, ``Well, I got a lot of records by Fletcher Henderson, and on the piano, you sound exactly like he was sitting at the piano. And I know that's impossible, but it's upset me, because all I have to do is shut my eyes, and I can hear Fletcher Henderson and see him, but it was you at the piano.'' I said, ``Oh, really?'' He said, ``Yes!'' He was still upset! Now, here's somebody in the band that said he heard Fletcher Henderson. I said, ``Well, the spirit of different musicians is still around. So if you think enough of him, you can duplicate that.'' Not everyone can do that, but I can. I can duplicate anything, and I've had strange experiences that have happened to me that... Well, it's just different. Like for instance, in Chicago, the waitress brought Erroll Garner in there and said, ``Erroll Garner, this is Sun Ra. Sit right here on the front where you can learn how to play the piano.'' And Erroll Garner didn't say nothing. And I was embarrassed. And then [another night] a singer was going to sing a song I didn't know. She sang, I came in in the proper key, I played the song. When I got through, a piano player told me, ``That's the greatest rendition I ever heard of that song.'' But I wasn't going by what I knew, I just do things. And even now, I'm going to go by what I don't know. I'm dealing with a force that wants to help this planet. Don't want people to die, don't want them to be sick, he wants to open up the omniverse to them where they can be citizens of his government; I'm representing that. And the empire is greater than any empire you ever had. It's the whole omniverse. They would open that up to people, where they can go places - like they, travel broadens the mind. Now, I've been all over this planet, and seen all the people suffering. They've got some nice countries, and I'd be going on, ``this is so beautiful!'' Then I'd pass a cemetery. Then I'd say, ``There's an opportunity.'' In every country, they've got cemeteries. Every country. Now that messes me up when I see that. They've got a big omniverse out there; a totally impossible Being, and here you've got these cemeteries. We've got these people dying and being buried. And this Being said he refuses to have anything to do with a situation like that; people got to learn how to survive. They have to go to school, they might learn something about themselves. They got to understand the mystery of themselves now. I'm saying that the first thing you've got to do: don't call yourself a woman, don't call yourself a man. Because the book says, ``A man is filthy and abominable.'' The book says, ``Man is a [inaudible], wants to die.'' The book says, ``A man is like a beast that perishes.'' So it ain't no good to be a man. The book says a woman is the cause of all this trouble - named Eve. Now I'm dealing with equations, so I told a woman, I said, ``That really disturbs me that they said a woman disobeyed God and caused all these problems; I think the women of the world should get together, and get some cows, and burn, and ask the Creator to forgive Eve for what she did.'' I mean, it doesn't make any difference whether she did or not, I think that everyone in the world should get that off of them. And this woman, she said, ``I'm not going to do nothing like that! Eve did exactly what she wanted to do, and she didn't ask for forgiveness, and I'm not going to do nothing.'' So there you are. There you are.

Rycenga: Still being disobedient.

Sun Ra: I said, ``Dreadful what's happened to women; they have to suffer through menstruation.'' It's something wrong. Now, I think they should correct it. And then it came up that this creator threw down Hitler, and said, ``We should meet and declare Jesus of Nazareth innocent. One reason we're hated, as Jews, is that we're accused of condemning him, and we should get that off of us; the world hates us because of that.'' And then they decided, they said, ``Well, we didn't do it; the Romans did it. Italy should do it [apologize], the Romans should do it.'' But then Italy said, ``No, we did not do it. Pilate washed his hands of it. We're not guilty; you're the ones that did it.'' And so they refused to declare Jesus of Nazareth innocent. And they got a lot of problems there. They should do it. It wouldn't have occurred to a lot of Jews over there, who say, ``Well, yes, we should do that. So that in the eyes of the world, we will not be accused of killing an innocent man.'' But see, they didn't wake up. They should have done it, and the world could no longer accuse the Jews of being unjust. They don't understand cosmic things - but I do. But I'm not seen to be a leader of any kind of way - it doesn't interest me. You were here today, and gone tomorrow. But this Being said that I could change the world. And I can't get away from it. I've had too many experiences letting me know: ``Yes.'' Right here in San Francisco, on the highway we were going to the airport, June was in there, and somebody else was in there, and Danny was driving, and Danny was asleep. He was right behind another car, about that close; another car was right behind him, about that close; and June said, ``Danny!'' Now, he couldn't put on the brakes. He couldn't curve. We were going maybe 60, Danny likes to drive fast. In San Francisco, the car rose up like that in the next lane. Now. That's it. [Makes a smacking sound] Kept going. Now, behind things like that, I have to say, ``Something's happening!'' In San Francisco again. On one of them hills - I said, ``You know, I don't see how people on this planet existed! It's terrible here! They have to depend on something; they have to depend upon the Creator to survive. They must do that. It's very terrible here.'' Then we played in Santa Cruz, they saw it [indicating John and Peter Hinds], a man held my hand, he would not turn my hand loose, we were sitting there, and he looked in my eyes, shook his head, he shut his eyes, he held my hand - nobody could put him out, and he said, ``My girlfriend told me that you're the greatest person on the planet Earth, and the greatest musician; that's why I came out.'' And he said, ``You know, she told the truth.'' And they couldn't this man out of there, they tried, they said, ``The place is closed!'' He wouldn't turn my hand loose, he shut his eyes - he was feeling something. In Chicago, they had psychics. Four of them came up to see me. Three women, one man. One of the women shook and held my hand. Thirty minutes, she would not turn my hand loose, and she was talking about, ``Power! Power! Power! Energy! Energy!'' Would not turn my hand loose. And I didn't want to jerk my hand away. That happened to me in Chicago, there were psychics. Another psychic - I didn't know he was a psychic - he worked for the Police to solve problems, so he was there in the backstage, and I was sitting up on a box, so he sat up there with me, and he said, ``Wow!'' He jumped down, and he said, ``You go up to the North Star, you turn left, you go a million light-years, and you come to where you came from.'' And the name of the place he came from is Zaricon[?]. He went on and told about, I've been on this planet 14 years, and I was supposed to raise the consciousness of people of this planet so the spaceships could land, `cause they don't want to cause no panic, so he said, ``Your job is to raise the consciousness of the people on this planet, through music, so they can land.'' That happened to me. And we played in Boston, and I was telling some people the same thing I'm telling you now, about that Zaricon. The man there said, ``You know, I heard what you said. I'm worried about what's going to happen to this planet. I went to India, and I was asking the swamis, `What is the fate of humanity? What are we going to do?''', he said, ``and one of them told me, `Only one from Zaricon knows. He'll come. He'll straighten it out.''' He said, ``You just said about this psychic, said he was from Zaricon, and I know what the man meant.'' Now, behind all these things, something else has entered my so-called life, has said, ``You can help the planet.'' Now I'm saying, ``Why should I be like all these preachers and all?'' But this force said, ``I only recognize you. Nobody else.'' We went to Nigeria, and they had this big festival, poets and intellectuals and everything; there were 5000 people - beautiful auditorium. The poets and everyone wanted to appear in an auditorium, but the Nigerian government said, ``We don't respect nobody from America but Sun Ra. This auditorium, only governments appear; we're going to have two governments presented each night, Sun Ra's going to be in there with the Zanzibar government, and y'all can't be in it.'' So then they was very upset, but the Nigerian government said that only I would appear. So when these different governments would appear, the first thing they would do was bring out their flag. And here I was over there, in a sense being recognized as a government, and what flag was I going to use? So what I did is I brought my flag out there, and there was practically...

Hotel Maid: Hi Sir! [she has a loud, musical voice]

Sun Ra: ... a standing ovation.

Hotel Maid: Excuse me, can we take those dirty towels?

Sun Ra: Yeah. So when I came out...

Hotel Maid: Sorry! You are taking off today?

Sun Ra: No.

Hotel Maid: You're going to stay?

Sun Ra: We're checking out about 6 o'clock.

Hotel Maid: Ohhhhh!

Sun Ra: We're playing, and after we get through playing, we won't be back here. So now I came out with my flag, and the band wasn't...

Hotel Maid: Thanks!

Sun Ra: They weren't aware of what was happening. And I held my flag up. Standing ovation. Wasn't a United States flag, neither. It was not a Black Panther flag. It was the flag of Death. It was purple and black. I know what I'm doing. I had the flag of Death up there, because it do represent death on this planet, and so what they got all this [inaudible]. But that's another kind of death. You got two deaths; they say it's fear in the second death, fear him who is able to cast both soul and body into hell. Don't fear the first death. Now the second death is man. [phone rings]

John Hinds: [handing phone to Sun Ra] Denver Post!

Sun Ra: Hello? Yes, uh-huh, no; I'm being interviewed in a sense. [pause] In Denver? Well, okay.

Dan Plonsey: [whispering to Peter and John Hinds while Sun Ra listens to the telephone] Did you see the Arkestra the last two nights?

Peter Hinds: [whispering] Yeah, we were in Santa Cruz. That's where the man was who ``wouldn't let go.'' Then we were up in Davis on Saturday night.

Sun Ra: [talking to phone] Well, you know, I was busy studying my psychic things, trying to find out what makes this planet tick, and why is everything going wrong, and why people are headed toward nuclear annihilation. So I was busy trying to find out, where does God stand; why doesn't he do something? I had to find out: why? And that's what I was doing; I was researching, I realized I'd be a world figure, with people asking me things, and I wanted to be sure when I answered them that the equations were correct. And so it took some time for me to get these equations; I had to study all kinds of things about different nations, I had to understand their culture, their philosophy, their religion, their past, their condition; I had to learn all of that. So then I would know their weak points. Now I did that, and I wanted to play [inaudible] And that's what I had to do so they didn't and they write too much about me. And then, more and more, I'm [being asked personal questions]. I've been asked them now. Well, actually, I'm a psychic being, and you know, we don't concern ourselves with being born; we concern ourselves with being eternal; we deal with the spirit. Because the body is only reproduction of things - a copy - so it's not really an original. You say you came from your parents. Well, a low person will really say that they were born, but they were just reproduced - and that's a copy. But I'm dealing with the spirit - it's not a copy. No two spirits are alike. I'm dealing with that. So then, we don't, in a sense, exist, because we all live in somebody else's body. I don't know about being born. I just happened, you know, I happened to be, just like in Uncle Tom's Cabin. I think Topsy[?] had some good sense. Because you can't prove that you were born, unless you remember it. I'm only dealing with facts. I cannot prove, I cannot remember being born, so I don't know nothing about it. [pause] Well, I never been one; I was in the form of a child, but I've always been wise, and finally I graduated to be ``otherwise.'' [pause] Well, I've never had nobody tell me anything. Like most children, their parents will be telling them things, and leading them; I was completely free. I don't have anybody to tell me anything. I was completely free to do whatever I wanted to do. My parents didn't tell me nothing. I was just free, and innocent, and I had to learn. I'm still innocent, because I'm still ignorant. Because I'm ignorant, my mind absorbed all kinds of things, the whole cosmos, the omniverse, because I'm empty-headed. I got a lot of room - some people are so wide, ain't no room up there for nothing to get up there! [pause] Well actually, when I think about the potential of humanity, then I'm happy. But otherwise, I'm most miserable when I see how it really is. [pause] Well, that is true, I was playing Fletcher Henderson - he was directing, and I played, at the club de Lisa, with him about a year or more, until he left there and went to [inaudible]. So you might say I played with his last band. [pause] What? Oh no, his brother had his own band, his brother had moved to - I think - to Seattle, and then Denver, I think. [pause] Yeah. So I never met his brother. But he had a great band too. [pause] Well, see what happened is, it was his band, it wasn't the last band, of a band he picked up in - let's see - Pittsburgh. He picked that band up because Fletcher had so much trouble [inaudible] So he just decided he would pick up a player. So in this case, he just picked up a whole band in Pittsburgh. And that was the band that he brought to Chicago, and he had a piano player who was an arranger. The piano player was also studying law. So he had to play until 4 o'clock in the morning, and go to school too. So one night, when the show started he was missing, `cause he was asleep in the car. Fletcher sent for me. He needed someone to sight-read, and after I came and played that night, Fletcher kept me. [pause] Well, I was in Chicago, and I was playing. The musicians in Chicago liked what I was doing, and I was always working, with trios and duos, and whatever. They were fascinated by what I was doing, playing a different sort of piano. And I always worked. And then I played off nights at the club de Lisa with another band. And they had nothing but top acts in there. [pause] In South Side, on State Street. Near 55th Street, or Garfield Boulevard, and it stayed open until 4 and 5 in the morning; you could always go and see a show at 4 o'clock in the morning, the last show, and it was very inexpensive. It helped a lot of people, and you could always go there and see the last show. And they had top acts in there. [pause] That's where Fletcher was playing, and when he played a show, the stage would rise up for people to see the show, and the band would rise up. And then after the show, the stage would come down, and it had a dance floor, and the people would dance by the band, and then Fletcher would play about four numbers, something like that. And then after intermission, the stage would go back up in the air, and the show would proceed. So everybody could see the show. [pause] Oh, I was playing, and I had terrible trouble out of the band, who really was upset by me playing what they called those ``strange chords.'' But Fletcher Henderson played piano; he hired me, and I had to always be cussing them out, and telling them that Fletcher hired me, and he's a piano player, and I'm one too, so Fletcher knew more about the piano than they did, so they should shut up. But I had problems with them. [short pause] Everybody in the band! They weren't used to nobody like me, because I was busy creating! [pause] I was already hearing them. And then I went, and I had to find out about the white race, whether they'd do it, so I had to investigate them. So I went and took me a job in a burlesque club. So I could see what they're doing down there. I had to find out, what are the hillbillies doing? I had to investigate. And so I stayed in the Burlesque club for about three years, deliberately, in Chicago. In Calumet City. It's near Chicago. You don't have too far to go before you come to Calumet City. Calumet City, which had nothing but troubles there. They say gangsters owned the town. But that's all they had there, so you could go out of one burlesque club and into the other. [pause] I think I went to Chicago in the 40s; I believe I did. [pause] I went there to play in a band called Sir Oliver Bib's And you'd have to really delve back into music history to find out about him, because nobody misses him, but he had a band. And he was reorganizing his band. And he heard me play, and he wanted me to play with the band. They were planning to wear period costumes, you know like Frenchmen and all like that. What the Frenchmen were wearing in the 17th Century, or something. [pause] Yeah, they would wear that! But he never did. And I left. [pause] Well, actually, the band he had was a pickup band from Pittsburgh, and it wasn't his band in one sense; it was in another sense, because he paid them well. So I would say, they respected that. I don't know whether they respected anything else. And Fletcher was a model bandleader, he wasn't getting high or doing nothing like that. Well, he had one fault, if you'd call it that - everybody talked about it - he played the horses every day. [pause] Well, that's the only thing I saw that was trouble: Fletcher playing the horses. And I don't know if he ever won, really. I never did see. In fact he borrowed a hundred dollars from me to play the horses; I never did get it back. But I never did ask for it. I was delighted. [pause] Right, when I wasn't doing anything else, the musicians out there would always call me to come to Calumet City, and I had to play from 8 o'clock to 5 in the morning sometimes. And I didn't get but ten dollars a night, but I didn't care; I was doing my research. They would bring out whole symphonies written, they had that music. And you had to be able to read, you couldn't just play there, when they come in there they brought their music and you had to play their arrangements. So this way, I learned a lot of different songs. [pause] A lot of songs. And I know a lot of standards. [pause] Oh, well I'm a natural, you see, like birds come here to fly, I just have a gift that's on a cosmic level. The only trouble is I'm a scholar, and I'd like to be a scholar, but then some forces say, ``No, you have people.'' I said, ``Why me? Because,'' I say, ``you got preachers, you got teachers, you got counselors, you got presidents, and kings, and all that, and I'm just a poor person.'' You see, I arrived here in Alabama, which is supposed to be the most discriminatory state. But when Governor Wallace was in office, he sent for me to come to his mansion. And I went down there, in his mansion, a little party, and then he had me come up to Birmingham Alabama, and he gave me an American Music award - composer, covering all planes of music. That's what Alabama did. Now my band had never played there, and about two, three months ago, the booker who books us insisted I go to Alabama, but none of the places were open for me to go. So he put me in a place, a hillbilly, redneck, motorcycle gang, Nazi, Ku Klux Klan place that was rough, and they had five pool tables in the back. Now, he put me in this place, on the edge of a black neighborhood. Black people who knew about it, they weren't going in there. So then they put me on a Tuesday night, which as you know is a slow night for night clubs, but the place was packed, standing room only, and when I got through playing there, the people surrounded me and said, ``Love is around you in Alabama.'' And then they shouted my name for about fifteen minutes. Shouted, ``Ra! Ra!'' I had to get out of there and go in the bus. Yes! The Ku Klux Klan and rednecks too! Something happened to me too in New York City too, at Carnegie Hall. I, some time, marched around the harbor; this time I marched around the block. And then I was terrified: I said, ``You know what? It looks like some hillbillies was following me!'' And they said, ``It was! Two bus-loads of hillbillies jumped out and walked behind me in New York City, around Carnegie Hall. I played at an opening of a stadium going to be named after Louis Armstrong. So they had me play there with six pieces. And then the hillbillies, when they heard me, they said that America wasn't treating me right, that that was the greatest music America had, and they came up there in their buses from the South, and they came to hear us, and they had their tickets for every event. In protest, about me not getting recognized like I should be by America, all the hillbillies turned in their tickets and got one ticket to come to Carnegie Hall, to hear the band, and that was them, marching around with me. [pause] Well, actually what I represent is totally impossible. It affects every nation on the planet - on this planet. It affects government, it affects schools, it affects churches; the whole thing has got to be turned to another way of thought. A blueprint for another kind of world. So naturally, I don't have recourse to churches or anything, it's just me, I'm all alone, you might say, talking something the planet never heard before! Therefore, I prefer to play it low profile, and pass by. [pause] Well, they're busy feeling that they'd better find out what I'm talking about, just in case I'm telling the truth. [pause] Yes. [pause] Well, you know, when they first called me, I said ``I'm not going to do it.'' And so the booking agent said, ``Well, America needs to hear you, and you should do this, because there are going to be some top stars on there and everything, and they'll be able to hear you.'' And so finally he convinced me I should do this. So they gave me this ``Dumbo,'' you see. So then I had to get - I'm very thorough, you know - I went and got the videotape, I had never even seen that, and I listened to it, and then they had an arranger who was going to arrange [for] me. And then when he came up there, he hands some stuff to the band, and they play nothing like this, this is not suitable, so in the studio, I had to sit down and write that arrangement. I tailor-made it, and it came out very nice; even the singing. [pause] Right, it had the spirit. Now, in New York City, they're talking about me playing at the Bottom Line, and playing a whole night of nothing but Walt Disney. [pause] Of course I'm interested; I'm always interested in something which everybody can't do. You see, I'm teaching musicians a lesson on this planet, and I'm always doing something they can't do. And I'll be quite delighted; they'll be trying to steal my stuff and catch up with me, and I really got them this time, because I did a concert with John Cage, now they can't do that! John Cage is very exclusive; and he tends to stay over there writing his operas and things, and he never was on the same stage with any other musician. So I jumped up - teach that Cecil Taylor and the rest of them a lesson - and I was right there with John Cage on the same stage, and played some - I've got that record out. It's historical. And we did a concert at Coney Island, and everybody was shook up. The producer of the show made a mistake, because they sold every ticket for twenty dollars, and only about 200 people could get in there. So it was in a side show, you might say - it had been a side show, with snake charmers and all that - so then what happened is it's possible to open up the side, because the people on the boardwalk wanted to hear, so they opened that up, and we had a lot of people standing outside listening to me and John Cage. [pause] And it's on that record, you know. He's reciting; he's doing some chants there. And you'll hear. Well, what he was doing, he had his watch. So then he deals with silences too, so he had a watch, and he'd be chanting and all that, and then he'd look at the watch, and he had two minutes of silence. The audience was sitting up, nobody saying nothing, then he'd start chanting again. Then maybe the next thing maybe he'd have one minute of silence. And that's on the record. [pause] [tape ends]

Shortly after the tape ran out, Sun Ra began asking the Denver Post reporter about Denver. Specifically, he wanted to know about ``breatharians'': people who exist solely by breathing pure air; Sun Ra had heard that some such people supposedly lived in or near Denver where the high altitude made for particularly good air. Sun Ra said he was considering asking certain members of the Arkestra who ate too much to become breatharians. I mention this because, as most readers will suspect by now, Sun Ra had a dry sense of humor, and it was - and is - difficult to know how he meant some of his remarks. -- Dan Plonsey


nathanielturner.com


Sun Ra (1914-1993) -- at times seemingly controversial, weird, unpatriotic -- was a major innovator who made use of mythology and costumes, looking back on ancient Egypt and forward with a galactic narrative. He made something like 125 LPs. He performed everything from 30s hotel-band schmaltz to synthesizer pieces

1914 (May 22)-- Born ("arrived on the planet") Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount in Birmingham, Alabama (The Magic City). bout his family we know little. He had an older brother, Robert, an older half-sister, Mary, and an older stepbrother, Cary Blount, Jr. Three more stepsiblings resided in Demopolis, Alabama. His mother ran restaurants. The Blounts did not live in either a black neighborhood or a white neighborhood. Theirs was the only house on an entire city block. They were located across the street from the Post Office and close to the main railroad station. There was a piano in the house and Sonny was a genuine prodigy.

1932 (January) -- Graduated from high school. Was already playing piano on a substitute basis with bands like the Society Troubadours.

1933 -- Sonny transcribes a band arrangement Fletcher Henderson's Yeah Manoff a record for the first time.

1934 -- Sonny led his own band for the first time. Fall, went on a tour of the Southeast with a band led by Ethel Harper, a biology teacher who had ambitions to make it as a singer. She left in mid-tour with a vocal group, leaving Sonny in charge. The Sonny Blount Band ranged as far as Chicago, where Sonny joined the Musicians' Union local on December 15, 1934.

1935-1936 -- Attended Alabama A&M University in Huntsville as a music education major. "I think I studied everything in that college except farming." Dr. S. F. Harris paid for scholarships for Sonny and several other musicians from his high school. Studied Chopin and Rachmaninov. Ended up eighth in his freshman class, with a Grade Point Average of 3.18. Sonny dreams he traveled with robed figures to the planet Jupiter.

1936-1946 -- Led the Sonny Blount Orchestra.

1930s -- Moves north, first to Washington and then to Chicago.

1942 (October) -- Drafted but declares himself a Conscientious Objector. Spends five weeks in jail in Jasper, Alabama. Later sent to a Civilian Public Service Camp in a place called Marienville, in the boondocks of Northwestern Pennsylvania.

1943 (March) -- Leaves Civilian Public Service camp on a physical disability discharge, because he had a hernia.

1946 -- Headed north to Nashville, where for three or four months he backed R&B singer Wynonie Harris at Club Zanzibar. Harris and his combo made four sides for the local Bullet label. One of them was Sonny's feature, Dig This Boogie. Picks up the idea of costuming from Chicago-based drummer Oliver Bibb who led a society band that dressed up in Revolutionary War Patriot uniforms.

1946 (August) -1947 (May 18)-- Worked with Fletch Henderson and his band, South Side Chicago at Club DeLisa. Sonny replacing Henderson on the piano. The club featured all of the top entertainers in Chicago: singer Lurleen Hunter, blues vocalist Little Miss Cornshucks, impressionist George Kirby, and another singer named Jo Jo Adams, who was renowned for his wardrobe of outrageously colored tuxedos. There were tap dancers like the Four Step Brothers and Cozy Cole's Drum Dancers. Picked up many of his ideas about entertainment.

Fall of 1947 -- Was music director of a successful medium-sized band.

1948 (November) -- Recorded with Eugene Wright's Duke of Swing, Yusef Lateef on sax. Arranged the Dukes' entire book.

1948 (December) --During this period Sonny also played for a month at the North Side of town with Coleman Hawkins and Stuff Smith.

Mid-1949 -- Sonny and Tommy Hunter began playing in trios in Calumet City, a Chicago suburb mainly known for its strip joints. On his very first tape machine, a Sound Mirror, Sonny recorded Stuff and himself playing the Solovox, a primitive electronic instrument in his tiny apartment.

Early 1950s -- Worked at the Birdland and Robert's Lounge Club in Chicago, playing for Red Saunders, Red Holloway, Sonny Stitt and accompanying B.B. King on a tour through the States. During this period Sonny became "busy with spirit things . . .I wasn't even really here." His concerns about racism and man's inhumanity together with his extensive readings from books about the occult the hidden meanings found in the Bible and anthropological speculations on Egypt as the source of all civilization. Sonny discovered we are all "children of the sun."

Sonny associated with a loose secret society on the South Side of Chicago,. an unusual variety of Black Nationalism, admonishing Black men to recognize the importance of outer space. Alton Abraham, the Arkestra's manager and head of Sun Ra's record label, was affiliated with this group, as were Lawrence Allen, T. S. Mims, Sr., and others who would later provide financial backing for recordings. Abraham and his friends may have been local gangsters.

1951 -- Sonny formed the Space Trio to play his far-out music: one charter member was Pat Patrick (1929-1991), who played alto and baritone sax. The drum chair was occupied on some occasions by Tommy Hunter.

1952 -- Sonny proclaimed he was a citizen of Saturn, not of Planet Earth; that he was not human, but rather of an angel race; that he was to serve as the Cosmic Communicator, bringing the Creator's message to benighted Earthlings.

1952 (October 20) -- Sonny officially changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra -- Ra after the Egyptian sun god. Sun Ra (sometimes Le Sun Ra) was technically his stage name.

1953 -- Sun Ra leads a trio with Richard Evans and Robert Barry. John Gilmore and Charles Davis joined the band.

1954 -- Birth of Arkestra (renames his band, a respelling that happens to include "Ra" both forwards and backwards)., after Marshall Allen, Pat Patrick, Art Hoyle, Julian Priester, and James Scale join up with Sonny's band. They called themselves alternately the Mythscience or Solar Arkestra.

John Gilmore (born 1931 in Summit, Mississippi, but raised in Chicago) had attended DuSable High School with its fabled band program. After getting out of the Air Force in 1953, he worked with Earl Hines and quickly became regarded as one of the up and coming young musicians in Chicago.

1954 -1958 -- Sun Ra wrote songs in four-part harmony -- Black Sky and Blue Moon, Take the Outer Drive to the South Side. Many of these are lost, but not all.

Early 1956 -- Wilburn Green was playing what Sunny quaintly called the "electronic bass" and Gilmore's old Air Force buddy Art Hoyle had become the Arkestra's main trumpeter. Some money must have been available, because time was booked at RCA Studios.

1956 (Jul 12) -- Arkestra records first album Jazz by Sun Ra -- Sun Song, for Transition

1957 -- Arkestra records an album for Delmark. The first Arkestra was a hard-bop band. It was modal hard-bop, polytonal hard-bop, polyrhythmic hard-bop. Sunny wrote a new tune in honor of his "home planet" -- Saturn; it became the band's theme song Sun Ra begins using an electric piano.

1957 -- Supersonic Jazz released.

1958 -- Jazz in Silhouette released.

1959 -- Sun Ra composed the score of a documentary, The Crya of Jazz."

1961 -- Arkestra left Chicago for a concert in Montreal and in a town in the mountains of Quebec.

1961 -- Arkestra moves to New York. Between 1961-1965 Arkestra records ten albums for their Saturn label.

1963 -- Sun Ra uses the clavoline.

1965 -- Arkestra makes first recording for ESP DISK, titled Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol.1, followed by Vol. 2 on November 16, 1965.

1966 (May) -- Records one album (last for ESP) with Pharaoh Sanders, who replaced John Gilmore, title Nothing Is.

1960s -- Sun Ra developed style for ensemble play; produced a distinctive environment of music and dress.

Late 60s -- Sun Ra records first solo album Monorails and Satellites.

1966-1972 -- Regular gig at Slug's Saloon in the Lower East Side in New York, few blocks from Sun Ra's home.

1968 -- El Is a Sound of Joy ,one of Sunny's best compositions (ca. 1956), released by Delmark

1969 -- Sun Ra uses the Moog synthesizer, plays celesta, organ, rocksichord, harpsichord, and piano

1970 -- Sun Ra begins sing or preach to the audience. Arkestra plays at Berlin Jazz Festival. Misunderstood by Germans -- the dancing, lighting, walking and playing. An album of performance made by Germans.

1970 -- Arkestra's The Solar Myth Approach, Vols. 1 and 2 released by BYG-Actuel. Relocated his group to Philadelphia

1971 -- Arkestra plays in front of pyramids in Egypt.

1972 -- Arkestra tours and records all through the States and returns to Chicago. Plays the Ann Arbor Festival.

1978 -- Sun Ra makes a duo album with Walt Dickerson.

1993 (Memorial Day) -- Sun Ra returns to home planet, Saturn




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