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Sun Ra: Stranger from Outer Space. In tomorrow's world, men will not need artificial instruments such as jets and space ships. In the world of Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra, the new man will 'think' the place he wants to go, then Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra mind will take him there. Nothing about Sun Ra's six-decade musical career could be called normal. He recorded somewhere around albums, although no one knows for sure. He toured the world, was revered in Europe, and staged at least three piece concerts, one at the pyramids in Egypt. He Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra the subject of several films, pioneered the use of electronic keyboards like Moog synthesizers, created his own independent record label, and influenced countless jazz and rock musicians. His pronouncements were drenched in his unique cosmic mysticism, and his band members claimed he had telepathic powers. Most importantly, he made music, as he wrote, "rushing forth like a fiery law. If you were lucky enough to catch Sun Ra's live show before he died inyou probably believed him. Ra came from the tradition of vaudeville, swing, and Chicago show clubs. He was also deeply spiritual, and his live shows encompassed all of these elements. They were several hour ritualistic ceremonies featuring a hot orchestra of a dozen or more referred to as the "Arkestra"poetry, light shows, dancers, marches through the audience, and squealing sax solos. Sometimes the band members would take the stage to the chant of "Heigh-ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go. If he was in the mood, Ra would take a synthesizer solo Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra inevitably erupted in a volcanic crescendo. The Arkestra members wore colorful, glistening outfits that were a combination of African tribesman garb and outer space suits. As was appropriate for a high priest, Sun Ra usually wore the most outrageous outfit, with a headdress and flowing cloak. Jerry Gordon, who co-owns Evidence Music, which has re-issued twenty early Sun Ra albums on CD, remembers being overwhelmed by the first Sun Ra show he saw in the early 70s. Ra and the dancers were wearing capes. Fans on the floor blew the capes so they looked like multicolored wings. They had a spiral light on John Gilmore during his solos that created a tunnel effect. Ra was also using lights to make it look like he was sticking his head in a black hole in space. It was just unbelievable. I considered it holy music, music people should hear. If you didn't get a chance to see Sun Ra perform, you should seek out Space is the Place, an early 70s movie starring the jazz master from Saturn himself. The movie has a cosmic humor, and like Sun Ra it is at times fascinating, indecipherable, and absurd. The Arkestra makes several appearances in the film in full regalia, and the soundtrack, also re-issued by Evidence, is full of ferocious full-orchestra jams. Horn, percussion, and synthesizer freakouts move in and out like waves of turbulence on sixteen tracks of Sun Ra favorites. Sun Ra's costumes are extravagant, even for him. The film Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra directed by filmmaker Jim Newman, who has since admitted that even he doesn't understand it. Space is the Place is currently available on video from Rhapsody Films. If you find earth boring Just the same old same thing C'mon sign up with Outer Spaceways, Incorporated. Sun Ra was born Herman P. Blount on May 22,in Birmingham, Alabama. His father left the family when he was a child, and he was raised mostly by his aunt and grandmother. He formed his own band in high school, and an associate from those days recalls that back then Sonny was able "to get different rhythms and peculiar notes. He would transcribe the popular swing band tunes from the radio and soon have his band playing them. While in college, an incident took place that transformed his life. He claimed that he had been transported into Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra spaceship by aliens, who informed him of his higher calling. He dropped out of college and, for several years leading up to World War II, played throughout the South with various Birmingham-based bands. He had to play behind a curtain in certain southern clubs because the white patrons objected to the sight of black musicians. It was during this time that Blount developed a rehearsal style that he would use the rest of his life: he turned his living quarters into a rehearsal and recording studio and practiced virtually around the clock. He also recruited a cadre of musicians--not quite a 'band' because they performed in public very infrequently--and gave them free music lessons if they were willing to show up at his house on short notice and try out his arrangements. He was so engrossed in music and his research in ancient black cultures and so adverse to violence, that fighting in a war was inconceivable to him. He left Birmingham for good after the war and moved to Chicago, a jazz hotbed. He was soon hired as the practice pianist at the popular and glamorous Club DeLisa, which had show girls, comedians, singers, and floor shows. At the DeLisa he got to work with his idol, Fletcher Henderson, one of the originators of the swing sound. Even in the '40s other musicians spoke of the strangeness of the music he played. Erskine Hawkins said of Blount in the '40s, "Sun Ra would go into chords that nowadays are pretty common but back then were in another world. In the early '50s, he formed small groups that played mostly be-bop and standards. He slowly increased the number of musicians in his combo. Some of them were still in high school. As trumpeter Phil Cohran explains, "He had a lot of trouble with the so-called good musicians. He became successful when he started training young guys. John Gilmore, the band's tenor saxophone mainstay for the next four decades, joined Le Sony'r Ra, as he was known then, in after a stint in the Army. Pat Patrick and Marshall Allen, sax players who would work with Sun Ra for decades, also joined up during this early period. By the mid-'50s, he had dubbed himself Sun Ra, and the band, which had grown to a dozen players, was known as his 'Arkestra. This was an extremely creative period for Ra, who would write new material constantly and sleep very little. His band practiced, recorded, and played virtually every day. After a few years, Ra had whipped the outfit into a tight, focused, swingin' machine. It was an eccentric ensemble that could swing or play exotic mood pieces. By the late '50s, Ra was incorporating odd instruments into the Arkestra's sound, like zithers, timbales, chimes, claves, all kinds of bells and gongs, and things with names like "solar drum," "space lute," and "boom bam. Some of the early costumes were hand-me-downs from a Chicago opera company. The Arkestra's sound was becoming increasingly abstract. Ra was experimenting with pieces that dealt more with sound coloring and texture than structure. He was also utilizing African rhythms with multiple percussionists, which was unusual for the late '50s. Inthe Arkestra moved to Montreal briefly and, following a series of aborted gigs, then to New York. Within a few years, Ra built the ensemble back up to full strength with New York musicians and began to attract attention. He was part of the "free jazz" revolution taking place in Greenwich Village in the '60s along with John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, and others. By the mid-'60s, Sun Ra and the Arkestra weren't just visiting deep space; it was their permanent residence. The music had become an otherworldly mix of atonal, aberrant, sounds and effects. Sun Ra had transformed his eccentric big band of hard bop soloists into a experimental open-improvisation ensemble. Ra was becoming "the philosopher-king of Afro-psychedelia," as writer Michael Shore put it. Ra's music of this period was typified by counter melodies, off-key horn barrages, polyrhythms, titanic organ and synthesizer solos, and dissonant note clusters. The works were getting longer and the solos more stretched-out. A piece might be in several different keys, in no key at all, or in Ra's so-called "space key. Despite the pioneering far-outness, Sun Ra objected to the term "free" jazz. His pieces weren't free. They were carefully crafted, structured works. The pay was usually so low that many of the musicians played outside gigs with other bands. In lateRa Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra the Arkestra to Philadelphia. Actually, the Arkestra was faced with eviction from the house it rented in the Lower East Side, so the band relocated when Marshall Allen's mother offered them a rowhouse in the Germantown section of the city. In the late '60s, vocalist and dancer June Tyson joined the arkestra. Ra had decided to spread his message through lyrics as well as music, and Tyson fit the Arkestra perfectly in spirit and style. She eventually became Sun Ra's foil, confidently espousing Ra's puzzling ideology. She said that when she was on stage singing Sun Ra's lyrics, she thought of herself as a celestial being. During the next few years, Ra and the Arkestra traveled several times to California. The reading list included the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Bible, and books on hieroglyphics. Ra also spent part of each class playing the keyboards. He responded to the puzzled students' questions with a riddle or a knowing smile. He was never paid for the course. These releases gave him wide distribution and international exposure for the first time. As Sun Ra's reputation grew, he and the Arkestra, which at times grew to thirty members, Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra extensively especially in Europe. They even visited Egypt for a spiritual vacation and concert. Gilmore calls the visit to the pyramids, "The most beautiful experience I had on this earth. It made everything worthwhile. Like many jazz musicians, Ra received much more acclaim in Europe than in the U. Unfortunately, the European tours usually generated no more income than was necessary for expenses. Gilmore remembered the Arkestra returning from a European tour with nothing more than pocket change. Sun Ra- Space is the Place

At the close of the book Szwed himself acknowledges the challenge that Ra presents: "Sun Ra refused to accept a fixed identity, or a locatable historical position; he resisted closure. Ironically, Szwed meets this chaotic challenge in the traditional biographer's manner and in the process Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra a fascinating, multi-faceted image of this enigmatic being. He recounts Ra's life chronologically, following him from Alabama to Chicago, from New York to Philadelphia, all over and eventually out of this world. Szwed re-creates Ra's life by using a rich variety of interviews, first person accounts and rehearsal tapes. The latter combined with Arkestra member interviews provide some of the most valuable insights into Ra's music, method and mind. In turn, these accounts help us as listeners to stop approaching Ra's music intellectually and to instead let it move our spirits. Szwed shows how badly some attempts to intellectualize Ra's music have failed when he includes a sizable excerpt of some French critics discoursing on Ra's music. They posture on about Ra's "deconstruction of music", his "drugstore-styled Africa" and yes, even a "double deconstruction". The critics do identify important elements in his music and performances, but in the end they succeed mostly in robbing both of their essential joy. Here is Ra's own advice about how to listen: Pure music is what you must face If you limit, if you reject, if you do not consider If you are selfish- earthly bound, Pure music is your Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. Many critics and fans have attempted to pigeonhole Ra in other manners, saying he derived his philosophy as a response to racism, or that he simply played a vaudevillian mix of free jazz and big band swing. Both perspectives hold some truth, but Szwed points out that Ra's musical and philosophical roots ran deeper and illustrates how Ra transcended the musical and social revolutions of his time. Instead of being a product of the times, Ra created his own time, his own Afro-Cosmos mythology, inventing past and future simultaneously. Szwed puts Ra in an earlier, forgotten philosophical tradition, that of Plato, Pythagoras, turn-of-the-century theosophists and the Sacred Cosmos of the Afro-Baptist church. Musically, we learn that Ra gained inspiration from musical visionaries like Scriabin and Wagner, as well as the Hollywood exotica of Lee Baxter and Martin Denny. Ra looked to earlier models, the orchestras of Ellington and Henderson, where he saw the models of unity and discipline he felt music and the world lacked. Szwed drives home the idea that Ra intentionally travelled beyond the barriers of the expected. Ra obsessively searched out obscure books and practiced his own kinds of numerology and word play, and from these he developed his own unique belief system. In two long sections Szwed paraphrases Ra's beliefs, assuming a voice that might have been Ra's own. Szwed actually explains in the notes that he is paraphrasing Ra's own words, culled from hours of interviews. This technique, while not convincing at first, becomes valuable after examining exactly why Szwed chose it. Readers can feel that they are hearing Ra's own voice, therefore strengthening the words' impact and authenticity. Secondly, by paraphrasing Ra's often-convoluted speech, Szwed distills his ideas to their essence, thereby granting us earthbound beings access to the spaced-out meaning. Some might see all this as crackpot mysticism, or worse, insane ramblings, yet Szwed's paraphrasing shows us that Ra was continually revising history in Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra to revise the future. He was hopefully trying to show us the impossible in ourselves and in society. What does all of this detailed chronology and extended paraphrasing do to the style of book, though? Szwed writes in an unadorned, straightforward style that often gets a bit tedious to read. He seems intent on including as many facts and ideas as possible from the mountain of research he probably has on this subject. Szwed succeeds most in Space is the Place by not falling into the post-modern trap many critics fall into: he doesn't try to graft some new meaning onto Ra's music. Ironically, this is what Ra was most into, this re-writing of history and the future. Danny Thompson, long-time Arkestra member, says "Sun Ra didn't say you had to believe; you should just check it out for yourself. And by going along for the ride, he helps us glimpse and even understand Ra's positive, inspiring vision of tomorrow's world. By John F. Sponsored by Vinyl Me, Please. Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories and includes your local jazz events calendar. Reset your password Click Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra eye to show your password. Membership has its privileges. Learn more. Sun Ra refused to accept a fixed identity, or a locatable historical position; he resisted closure. Sun Ra's music challenges listeners to approach it with no preconceptions of right and wrong; Sun Ra himself challenges the biographer in the same manner. Sun Ra thought in ways that run counter to how a majority of society conceives of life. To start with, how should we respond when he claims that he was not really born, that he just appeared on this planet as a representative of Saturn? That claim stops most people from listening to him, let alone his provocative music. Szwed DaCapo Press September pages. Showcase Buy Now. Buy Now. Featured Albums. By Nicholas F. Mondello Jazz: A Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra Letter. By Mark Sullivan Bix. All About Jazz needs your support Donate. Get more of a good thing Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories and includes your local jazz events calendar. Sign in Sign up Email address. Password Reset your password Click the eye to show your password. First name and Last name. First name only. Email address It will remain private. Yemen Yugoslavia Zaire Zambia Zimbabwe. Verification code. Email address. We sent a confirmation message to. Look for it, then click the link to activate your account. Thanks for joining the All About Jazz community! Find articles, news, musician pages, and more! Sun Ra: Stranger from the Outer Space

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Space is the Place by John Szwed. Sun Ra, a. Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount —has been hailed as "one of the great big-band leaders, pianists, and surrealists of jazz" New York Times and as "the missing link between Duke Ellington and Public Enemy" Rolling Stone. Composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn, Sun Ra led his "Intergala Sun Ra, a. Composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn, Sun Ra led his "Intergalactic Arkestra" of thirty-plus musicians in a career that ranged from boogie-woogie and swing to be-bop, free jazz, fusion, and New Age music. This definitive biography reveals the life, philosophy, and musical growth of one of the twentieth century's greatest avant-garde musicians. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. Published August 22nd by Da Capo Press first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions 8. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Space is the Placeplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. I grew up in Baltimore. Sun Ra was based in Philly during alotof of my adult yrs there. He played in Baltimore fairly often. It wasn't a big place but the stage cd manage to hold the Arkestra. He did it to me. If I didn't love him for 10 zillion other reasons I think I might just love him for that alone. Lardy knows I was dirt-poor in those days but I still managed to buy one of each - as I recall, they weren't that expensive. What an incredible person! What incredible music! Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra incredible philosophy! What incredible imagination! What incredible humor! Sun Ra, I wish there were a paradise for you to go to where yr immense creativity cd flourish even more than it did on this shithole of a human cesspit that some people have the audacity to call "society". View all 7 comments. May 21, Eddie Watkins rated it really liked it Shelves: musicbiography. Sun Ra was fascinating and inspiring and more than a little weird, though not as weird as his persona might proclaim, which is to say for all his cosmic out-thereness Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra was groundedand this book gives a nicely detailed view into how he managed to keep a marginal big band jazz outfit alive and thriving for forty years or more. It also provides lots of information on his particular philosophy and how he developed it. Sun Ra was like an alien Duke Ellington in tinsel who managed, through luck o Sun Ra was fascinating and inspiring and more than a little weird, though not as weird as his persona might proclaim, which is to say for all his cosmic out-thereness he was groundedand this book gives a nicely detailed view into how he managed to keep a marginal big band jazz outfit alive and thriving for forty years or more. Sun Ra was like an alien Duke Ellington in tinsel who managed, through luck or cosmic fate, to be right there in the thick of developments in jazz at a time when many major developments were happening, but who did it on absolutely his own terms with not much recognition from the mainstream. He was a slightly warped encyclopedia of all things jazz; his playbook consisted of everything from tight classic jazz to the freest jazz anyone has put out to psychedelically warped moog Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. But even with his strangeness he managed to procure two short-lived university gigs, strange to think, in Montreal and Berkeley. I feel a particular connection to Sun Ra for a few reasons, besides aspects of his philosophy and his music - I live in Philly which her termed the City of Brotherly Shove where he was based for the last years of his life. We're also both Geminis and he died on my birthday in For a while I even reckoned my age from instead ofas if I were born anew when Sun Ra passed on and ascended to Saturn; which would make me at the moment a youthful and confused 19 years old. I don't usually go in for astrology stuff, but in Sun Ra's case I find it significant, with of course an ironical touch. I never actually saw Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra play but his Arkestra is still around Philly and they still tour and play quite a bit. Aug 20, Andy rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: intergalactic jazz fans. Shelves: jazznbeats. I don't know if this book de-mystifies Sun Ra or confirms his weirdness, but one thing's for certain: this is a great book that entertains like only the best jazz can. Many members of his big band remained loyal to him for over thirty years, and its easy to see why. Sun Ra started out emulating Duke Ellington until he got hooked into the Martin Denny lounge groove while constantly experimenting with then new keyboards and exotic arrangements ; his movie "Space Is The Place" was a combination of I don't know if this book de-mystifies Sun Ra or confirms his weirdness, but one thing's for certain: this is a great book that entertains like only the best jazz can. Sun Ra started out emulating Duke Ellington until he got hooked into the Martin Denny lounge groove while constantly experimenting with then new keyboards and exotic arrangements ; his movie "Space Is The Place" was a combination of El Topo, Dolemite, and Star Wars. One of the best jazz bios around. Sep 20, flannery rated it it was amazing Shelves: musicmythmonomythfebruary Not spectacular so much in terms of effects, which were low on budget but high on strange atmosphere; spectacular in terms of presenting a complete world view, so occult, so other, to all of us in the audience that the only possible responses were outright dismissal or complete intuitive empathy with a man who had chosen to discard all possibilities of a normal life, even a normal jazz life, in favor "His first UK performance Not spectacular so much in terms of effects, which were low on budget but high on strange atmosphere; spectacular in terms of presenting a complete world view, so occult, so other, to all of us in the audience that the only possible responses were outright dismissal or complete intuitive empathy with a man who had chosen to discard all possibilities of Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra normal life, even a normal jazz life, in favor of an unremitting alien identity. Stand your ground. Jan 18, Wes Freeman rated it it was amazing. Certainly the best biography of an unbiographiable person, maybe the best biography of a musician ever. Telling the story of a man who spent his adulthood trying to outdistance his own humanity is a tall order. The most concrete things Swzed has to go on are government documents, Ra's notebooks the parsing of same requiring at the very least a slide rule, etymological dictionary and a library of pre-Civil Rights era books on Black Nationalismand offhanded comments from the man that might hin Certainly the best biography of an unbiographiable person, maybe the best biography of a musician ever. The most concrete things Swzed has to Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra on are government documents, Ra's notebooks the parsing of same requiring at the very least a slide rule, etymological dictionary and a library of pre-Civil Rights era books on Black Nationalismand offhanded comments from the man that might hint at his essentially terrestrial nature. If you're not knowing Sun Ra, dude said he was from space. Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra the end, the most comprehensive document anyone has is his music, and there seems to be almost no approach to it that isn't largely intuitive, so it's a lucky thing that Szwed seems to have amassed so much information and so many useful insights to it. This book got good marks from critics, but it's still an underrated achievement. Feb 06, Tom rated it it was amazing. Very well done biography on a difficult and enigmatic subject. One slight disappointment is that the later years of Ra's life esp. And, maybe it's just my opinion, but I would have liked to see more interviews with Arkestra musicians explaining why they stayed with Ra despite low remuneration, rigorous practice sessions, etc. For instance, there Very well done biography on a difficult and enigmatic subject. For instance, there's one vignette late in the book where Ra thanks someone, and it was the first time the observer could remember him doing so, but there was no further elaboration. Still, Szwed does thorough and quality research and I will likely reread the book. The production and editing standards are high which can't be said of all books nowadaysthough Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra copy had some annoying wavy print and obscured characters in the last 25 or so pages. Apr 11, Mister Mank rated it really liked it. On the final page of this biography, Szwed calls Sun Ra "difficult to follow and hard to believe," and that pretty much sums him up. Sun Ra resists definition — a black nationalist who was evicted from a Black Panthers-owned house, a theologist who undermined religion, an Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra composer who paid homage to big band swing, a serious intellectual who lectured at UC Berkeley with a gift for humor and word play. Reading this book won't answer too many questions about what Sun Ra was actually On the final page of this biography, Szwed calls Sun Ra "difficult to follow and hard to believe," and that pretty much sums him up. Reading this book won't answer too many questions about what Sun Ra was actually like, but it can, through its many inexplicable stories, entertain and inspire. Jan 23, Scott rated it it was amazing. The most inspiring book I've read while unemployed and feeling completely uncreative. Very glad somebody with a background in Afro-American cultural studies wrote a book about Le'Sony Ra. Instead of exoticizing Herman P. Blount like most of the musical world has, Szwed contextualizes Sun Ra in a continuum of Black American occult and futurist philosophers, authors, musicians, and artists. Feb 15, Phil Overeem rated it really liked it. Quite a bio. Szwed has the task of taking a musician who was certifiably half genius and half lunatic and portraying him Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra understanding and dignity, not to mention illuminating him.