It's excellent to see this on HN. Sun Ra and the Arkestra's genres transcend space and time, and their discography is massive, so it can be hard to tell people where to start listening, but "Jazz in Silhouette" (1959) is fine introduction to their more traditional style that won't startle you if you don't listen to much free jazz. In fact I just threw it on the ol turntable. If that tickles you, try "Space is the Place" (1973) on for something more experimental. In between, you cannot go wrong with the "Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra" albums (1965)
Interstellar Low Ways is one of my favorite Jazz albums of all time. Scratch that. It's one of my favorite _albums_ of all time. It's another one that won't scare you away if you're not used to listening to free jazz, and it's just epic from start to finish.
> My favorites are a bit later – Lanquidity (1978)
Thanks for the recommendation. I put this on and was floored by recognising the opening bars from a sample in an old Mo' Wax record[0]. Formative sounds for me.
Indeed they are. Anything on Saturn goes for big bucks, especially ones with handmade covers. Impulse did a solid run of re-releases in the mid 70s that are much more accessible.
I mean the original pressings for sure, if you are a completionist you will go mad.
He had a lot of early recordings that had no distribution and were only sold at live shows, and he was known for recording everything he ever did even if some are pretty lofi.
But all the popular recordings are available as repressings, and you can find plenty affordably new online or used at discogs.
I’ve never found any Sun Ra in the $2 Goodwill bins but I’ve found plenty of other great jazz records there.
I saw Sun Ra back once back in the mid-70s in NYC. Easily the most memorable jazz concert I've ever seen. My recollection is not 100%, but what I do remember is the Arkestra lined up in a row of chairs facing the audience. There were 2 dancers female dressed in filmy clothes that were essentially circling the players and dancing around the stage. Sun Ra was basically directing the entire performance. I don't believe he was playing anything? (I could be mistaken there though. it was a long time ago) Maybe he played keys at one point?
The most amazing part were the solos. Sun Ra would point to each player in turn and each would stand and deliver the most blistering solo for about 5 minutes each, barely taking a breath. Then Sun Ra would motion to the next and this would continue until everyone had a turn.
The music was incredibly spacey and so good. "Space is the place"!
Not to get off on a tangent, but this reminds me of my middle school jazz band. There'd definitely be structured rehearsals, but the days that our director threw that all out the window and emphasized improvisation were the best.
We'd get to class, he'd tell us what song to pull out, and he'd just start us off like normal. Plod along, get to the usual solo section and the person slated to perform the solo does their own thing, but the director doesn't allow us out of those looped bars. Nope, without telling us, he points to the next person and has them solo. Then the next. Then the next.
Suddenly, we've reached the end of class and he finally lets us move on and finish the song after tons of people got a chance to work on their improv.
Yeah, we were in middle school and weren't top notch musicians or anything, but those still remain some of my favorite musical experiences.
Experimentation is a key part of learning how things work together, and when they don't. Having learning too structured can impair deeper understanding
I just got to see Sun Ra a couple weeks ago in Central Park. They still put on a good show with a lot of the details you are describing.
For anyone interested in something similar, check out Shibusashirazu Orchestra from Japan. Very similar performance of a conductor, lots of solos, dancers, etc.
A friend once saw Run Ra in a small venue, sometime in the late 1980s. After the show, my friend saw that the man himself was arguing with the owner about getting paid.
My friend credits that as being the last straw for him pursuing his own professional music career. "If Sun Ra still has to argue about getting paid, at his level of fame, then this business ain't it."
Madlib called Sun Ra and Arkestra is one of his biggest inspiration artistically and he seems to bring him up every chance he gets in interviews. Which makes sense as he too is all about being music history/future obsessed multi instrumentalist with a tangent for the weird.
Sun Ra still lives on through music just like Prince and other strange experimentalists of that mark.
He put me on to Sun Ra and Azymuth, it's high praise coming from Madlib. Other highly individual/stylized artists also share the love for Ra; Earl sweatshirt and members of sLums New York group.
A funny anecdote from a concert a few years ago: Allen was playing a solo, holding a note and blowing as hard as he could on his little soprano sax. Next thing you his teeth fly out, and there's a general commotion on as the rest of the band goes searching for the denture on the stage.
Amazing to be alive at that age, to be touring and rocking it, that's another level.
One of my favorite shows was them doing a live score to "Space is the Place" during a Winter Jazz Fest. It was a lot of fun, looks like someone took some video of the beginning of it [1]. They used to play somewhat regularly in summers at a dive bar/venue near me in Brooklyn, which always felt ridiculous that such an important group was playing where countless crappy bands also played, but was sort of perfect.
Here's my fun personal story about the Sun Ra Arkestra:
I grew up as a music-mad kid in the Philly metro region, and a friend of mine and a fellow music fan somehow got the phone number for the Arkestra group home where Sun Ra and a bunch of the band members lived. It was in my wallet for a few months and I told myself the next time I hit the city, I'd call the number and ask to speak to Sun Ra while it was a local call.
So one night I call the number and this gruff voice says "Hello?" and I say, "Hello, I'd like to speak to Sun Ra" and this voice that I immediately recognized as that of John Gilmore, the sax player, yells at me "Go to bed, white boy!" and hangs up on me. Me and my friend, who was on an extension, burst out laughing...
The sort of intellectual curiosity and enrichment the Arkestra and Sun Ra's compositions foster and inspire is, I would argue, exactly the sort of thing that belongs on HN in droves.
For all the words portraying Sun Ra’s visionary attitude, that might be something others have projected onto him, for his real views and self-importance were the opposite of some of the suggestions written here.
For example, he objected to the late, great, Carla Bley, being in the Guild because she was a woman!
“In one meeting, Sun Ra said aloud to all the members of the group that I would sink the ship because that’s what women do. I was furious. I got up and said, ‘You son of a…’ I really yelled at him.”
I mean, he evoked sailor superstition to claim women were bad luck on a ship. Talk about old-fashioned.
As far out as the music was, everything about him was fabricated, but music and mystique aside, it’s still disappointing to again see an African-American man contributing to the marginalization of women, a long tradition that ought to be understood just as well as the contribution to culture.
