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Music from Saturn Transcript 1 You’re listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I’m Eric Molinsky. This podcast is about sci-fi and other fantasy genres – which of course is a big passion of mine. But I have other interests too, which don’t come up -- like I really love jazz. I’ve made a lot of trips to New Orleans. I’ve seen Wynton Marsalis in concert more times than I could count. And I was heartbroken when one of my favorite clubs in New York, The Jazz Standard, closed due to the pandemic. But there is one place where my interests collide: Sun Ra. That’s sun, like the sun in the sky, and Ra, like the Egyptian god. CLIP: If I told you, I was from outer space, you wouldn’t believe a word I said, would you? Why should you? You lost your way; you have nothing to say. Sun Ra is considered one of the best jazz composers, musicians and band leaders of his era. The height of his career being the 1970s. But he stood out for other reasons. He created a sci-fi mythology around himself through his music, his costuming, and himself. He said he wasn’t from Earth. He was from Saturn. CLIP: You lost your celestial rights, you can’t go Jupiter, you can’t even go to Mars, you can’t even go to any other planets in the stars. Sun Ra is also considered the father of Afrofuturism – the movement that blends science fiction with the African American experience. Even through Sun Ra died in 1993, he has become more influential than ever, and not just in music. Now, I hate to be a killjoy in saying this, but Sun Ra was not actually born on Saturn. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914. And his given name was Herman Blount. When he was a teenager, he had an experience that sounds like the classic alien abduction, not the scary one with alien probes, but the enlightening version. He claimed that he was visited by extraterrestrials who teleported him to Saturn. They told him that our world was in chaos, and it was his job to heal to the human race through music. For a long time, he kept that experience to himself. But he had other reasons to feel like an alien. When World War II broke out, he declared himself a conscientious objector. That was a tough stance for anyone to take back then, let 2 alone a Black man. He was thrown in prison, for years, which was severely traumatic. After the war, he fled the South and moved to Chicago. For a long while, he pursued fairly conventional career as a jazz musician. And then in the 1950s, he told his manager about that extraterrestrial encounter he had in the ‘30s. And his manager – who was a good friend -- encouraged him to use that experience creatively in his music. John Corbett wrote several books on Sun Ra. He says if you were in Chicago back then and you went to see Sun Ra’s band, The Arkestra – that’s a-r-k-e-s-t-r-a. JOHN: The Arkestra at that point might be wearing like glittery capes. And a couple of the members of the band might be playing, might be wearing these Buck Rogers caps that had blinking red lights on top of them specifically. And apparently in some of those performances band members would send little robots, little battery-operated robots out into the audience that, so that must've been I think, quite a surprise for people who came out just to see an evening of jazz. Sun Ra founded his band in 1954. That was also the year that a book called Stolen Legacy came out. The book had a huge influence on him, and a lot of African Americans because it claimed that Egypt and North Africa was the real birthplace of modern civilization. That’s when he changed his name his Sun Ra and started wearing costumes all the time. His most famous one was an Egyptian-like headdress with a giant spiked ball on his head that was either gold or glass. Sun Ra and his band were also dressed in metallic gold and silver garments, and capes, that looked ancient and futuristic as the same time. And his song titles became more fantastical, like “Dance of the Cosmos Aliens” or “Tapestry from an Asteroid,” or his most famous song, “Space is the Place.” As you can imagine, a lot of music critics back then were skeptical about Sun Ra. They thought the sci-fi thing was a gimmick. But John interviewed him several times. JOHN: He told me he was really interested in, in comic books. And, uh, he was interested in comics in particular and including some of the space oriented, uh, comics and science fiction comics that were popular in that era that he came up. 3 He took it very seriously. The space aspect of what he was doing was a very serious aspect of it. It was also not that uncommon thing to be interested in, the space race was an everyday part of the news. Although the bigger question was whether Sun Ran himself was a persona. I mean, he claimed he was from outer space. And he started carrying around a passport that listed his birthplace as Saturn. JOHN: There was a cover story on him in a major jazz magazine that said, “genius or charlatan.” The word “charlatan” came up in a lot of articles I found about him. And I have to admit, I used to think Sun Ra was a persona – although I admired what I thought was his commitment to this character he created. JOHN: I spent a bunch of time with Sun Ra and Sun Ra was not a persona. Yes, he was dressed a little bit more wildly on stage than he was off stage, but it wasn't like he came off stage and suddenly turned back into Herman Blount. He was always Sun Ra. And he always had a sense of humor about himself. JOHN: Famously when asked about Star Wars. If he had seen the movie, Star Wars, he said, I did, it was very accurate. Cauleen Smith is an artist and filmmaker who spent three years producing multi- media projects about Sun Ra and his influence on pop culture. CAULEEN: I don't think he was like pretending or acting. I think he was like offering a proposal about how, um, a Black cultural production might be understood, positioned and utilized through this idea of an other, of an alien. People's like, oh, I just thought he was ridiculous, like a cartoon character. And for me, I don't even know how that's possible if you're actually listening to the music. Um, cause the music is like, has like these levels of dynamism and complexity that really suggests his artistic practice is extended beyond music into the performative into the material. In that sense, Sun Ra was using outer space as a way to talk about Black liberation. He wasn’t necessarily encouraging Black people to go into space – although he did often point out that there weren’t enough Black astronauts. But he was more interested in inspiring people to transport themselves through their imagination and find freedom in creativity. And he practiced what he preached. 4 He worked with as many Black-owned business as he could in producing his records, and the band’s other paraphernalia. In fact, I was watching a documentary about Sun Ra – and at one point, we see a community bodega that was run by one of his band members. And the shop was branded with Sun Ra’s iconography and messaging. CLIP: You see right over there, there’s a sign, space is the place, and I try to teach the kids about space, precision and discipline… CAULEEN: These are these enterprises and initiatives are simply extensions of what he thinks his music does. And again, this is like something that I think, um, you know, Brent Hayes Edwards, a scholar writes about so beautifully in terms of understanding so many African American 20th century musicians is that you can't wholly understand them simply through their music. You have to look at all of the different extensions of their practice, the writing, visual arts performative, et cetera. And with Sun Ra I think that's especially true. But I think the best way to understand how sci-fi influenced his music and philosophy is to look at the science fiction movie he starred in from 1974, called Space is the Place. The movie was made by a white filmmaker who was inspired by a series of lectures that Sun Ra gave at Berkeley. The movie is a strange hybrid of a concert film, an experimental art film, and a blaxploitation film. But I love it because it’s so earnest. And the production design is great even though they were on such a low budget. The movie starts with a prologue of Sun Ra on another planet. He’s in this extraterrestrial garden, with fantastical plants. He’s wearing his classic Egyptian- like costume with a gigantic spikey ball on his head. He’s followed by a figure in a black robe, whose face is a mirror. And Sun Ra has a scepter that floats in the air like a tentacle, with a sort of UFO on top.
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