FREE SPACE IS THE PLACE: THE LIVES AND TIMES OF SUN RA PDF John F. Szwed | 496 pages | 21 Aug 1998 | The Perseus Books Group | 9780306808555 | English | Cambridge, MA, United States Duke University Press - Space Is the Place 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.