10 songs to make (some) sense of Sun Ra - part one
When I was a teenager, getting into jazz, Sun Ra was the Great White Whale. However deep I would get into the freakier, weirder edges of jazz, however far out I could go, there was always someone out there who was further out than I could ever hope to witness: Sun Ra, the pioneering band leader, composer, piano and synth player who took his name from the Egyptian god of the Sun and claimed to come from Saturn on a mission to preach peace.
But where to start with his music? In the physical music era, this was a real problem. Sun Ra has more than 100 albums to his name and if you picked the “wrong” one - which is to say, the wrong one to start with, rather than a bad album - you might be left baffled. I managed, all the same, to pick up some Sun Ra music - the odd album on friend’s recommendations - but it was music streaming that really blew Sun Ra open to me, allowing me to taste the full range of his remarkable talent.
I am no Sun Ra expert and I haven’t listened to his full discography. All the same, I felt inspired to write a miniature guide to the music of Sun Ra, 10 songs to get you started or deepen your knowledge - or, if you like, to argue with me over - that I feel go some way towards exploring who Sun Ra was.
Inevitably, many people will disagree. And I definitely want to hear your views. But first, here are mine.
Sun Ra and His Arkestra - Enlightenment (1959)
AKA Something trad.
Sun Ra has always felt to me like the musical embodiment of the idea that you have to know how to do something in order to break it, a notion that is often applied to the more avant-garde visual artists, when they do something like painting a canvas in one bold colour or displaying their lived-in bed.
Because, yes, some of Sun Ra’s more bizarre work does sound a bit like someone plonking their fingers down on the keyboard at random while a wasp gets trapped in the french horn (yes, Solar Myth Approach, I’m talking about you) but Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount in 1914) was an incredibly skilled pianist, who was composing and sight reading by the age of 12 and won a scholarship to study music at the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University.
His journey from there to his debut album, 1957’s Jazz by Sun Ra, is far too long and tangled to relate here. But the basics involve: a visionary experience in which he was teleported to Saturn; a relocation to Chicago and early experiences as a musical hired hand; Blount legally changing his name to Le Sony’r Ra; forming his Space Trio and then The Sun Ra Arkestra; creating El Saturn records with Alton Abraham, which released several 45 singles by Sun Ra and related artists; and finally the release, in 1957, of Jazz by Sun Ra, Ra’s debut album.
Both Jazz by Sun Ra and Super-Sonic Jazz, both credited to Sun Ra and his Arkestra, are fairly traditional big-band jazz, with little indication of the madness that is to come. But it is Sun Ra’s third studio album, 1959’s Jazz in Silhouette, that is generally considered the peak of Sun Ra’s early, jazz-as-your-grandparents-would-know-it, period, full of rich melody and easy swing. Songs like Saturn and Ancient Aiethopia hint at the radical transformation that is to come - but, for the moment, why not luxuriate in the eminently cool jazz sounds of Enlightenment, which features some brilliantly languid piano playing from Sun Ra and just a hint of Latin American influence?
Sun Ra - Outer Nothingness (1965)
AKA Something far out.
It feels like a shame to rush past gems such as 1962’s The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, which, despite its name, is actually a very accessible Sun Ra album, one that brings percussion to the fore of what is otherwise pretty traditional post-bop jazz. (Check out Tapestry from an Asteroid, which is a sumptuous, late-night ballad.)
But rush forward we must in order to dive head first into the really weird shit, starting with 1965’s The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One, an album based on improvisation, in which the Arkestra basically gave up on traditional ideas of structured rhythm and regularised harmony in favour of pure expression, where the joy is to be found not so much in the repetition of musical themes but in the strength of interweaving musical ideas, based on mood and feel. Get your ears around that and The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra is an incredibly rewarding listen that goes beyond musical tradition into something more profound, which tugs at the ground beneath you, even as you struggle to stay on top.
Outer Nothingness, for example, feels like being tugged into the outer reaches of the cosmos, out of control, as your brain slowly freezes over at the prospect of cold, infinite space. (See also The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two, Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy and The Solar-Myth Approach Vol 1 & Vol 2.)
Sun Ra - Space is the Place (1973)
AKA something iconic.
Could this - a 21-minute excursion into astral jazz funk - be Sun Ra’s greatest hit? I mean… maybe? Certainly, on a musical level, Space is the Place sums up much of what is so brilliant about Sun Ra’s work, with hugely catchy vocal lines (courtesy of June Tyson, Ruth Wright, Cheryl Banks and Judith Hilton) coming up against a swinging drum beat, wandering bass line and a WHOLE LOAD of dissonant brass skronk, as if two separate bands are fighting for our attention. The genius of Sun Ra, of course, is this is one band not two, one that perfectly incorporates the hard and the soft, the melodic and the dissonant, the far out and the traditional and other seemingly unsolvable ideas.
That would be enough to cement Space in the Place’s position in the Sun Ra firmament. But there is so much more to the song than that. The title, for example, is the perfect introduction to Sun Ra’s fascination with the Space Age, while the song’s lyrics drive home the idea of being able to find freedom in in space (particularly relevant, I would imagine, for a Black man born in American’s Deep South in 1914), such as “There’s no limit to the things that you can do / your thoughts be free”.
The song’s parent album, which bears the same name, also features the iconic picture of Sun Ra wearing an elaborate Egyptian crown, topped with an orb and possibly radar antennae, suggesting his dual interests in space and ancient Egypt, while his eyes look ever upwards, as if scanning the cosmos for his home planet.
Sun Ra - Where Pathways Meet (1978)
AKA something funky.
1978’s Languidity is often described as Sun Ra’s best and / or most accessible album, as Ra edges away from the hard experimentation of The Heliocentric Worlds in favour of a sound that, if not exactly following the rules of modern jazz, vaguely acknowledges that they may have a right to exist.
Languidity, the album, includes gorgeously laid-back grooves (the title track), eerie electronics that reflect Ra’s interest in new musical technology (There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)) and even a touch of rock music (That’s How I Feel), all of it dabbled with Sun Ra’s wayward genius.
But for me the key track is Where Pathways Meet, an outrageously funky groove, where brass riffs meet insouciant piano and rolling percussion, not unlike a Curtis Mayfield groove, albeit one where the song’s key can’t quite settle, the melody every so slightly warped in a way I can’t quite make sense of. The result is like a jazz funk groove being warped by dangerous solar rays, a band selling its soul to the cosmos in order to be able to play just that bit funkier. This might be Sun Ra’s funkiest song, in fact, in a catalogue that is full of them.
See also: Pink Elephant on Parade, a cover of the Disney classic that was first released (I think) on the 1988 Disney tribute album Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films, alongside covers from Tom Waits, Los Lobos, Ringo Starr and more. It is as giddily strange as you might imagine. The band would later put out a whole album of their Disney covers, recorded live with varying sound quality. So if you’ve ever wanted to hear Sun Ra’s squelch synth-heavy cover of Mary Poppins’ Let’s Go Fly a Kite, then you’re in luck. Sun Ra was apparently a huge fan of the music in Disney films and his band once played a gig as Sun Ra and his Disney Odyssey Adventure Arkestra.
Sun Ra - UFO (1979)
AKA something disco.
Sun Ra does disco? Oh yes. 1979 was an incredibly creative year for Sun Ra and his Arkestra, with five studio albums released over its 12 months. That year the band had a residence in New York as the “house band” at the Squat Theatre, where Sun Ra was often to be found playing three synths and simultaneously directing his band. After gigs, the Arkestra would retreat to the Variety Arts Studios to jam and it was from these sessions that the 1979 album On Jupiter would emerge.
It’s all great but the album’s most important track is UFO, which sounds precisely like you’d want a Sun Ra album recorded in New York in the disco era to sound: eight and a half minutes of strutting disco funk grooves, with a perfectly catchy vocal line, strident sax, scratch guitar, pop bass, studio effects and more than a hint of chaos, like 30 people are striving for attention in the studio at the same time or Funkadelic after the fifth tab hits.
Praise, too, for Strut Records, which has recently embarked on a re-issue campaign of some of Sun Ra’s more accessible records, including a newly remastered On Jupiter.
Oh and - typically obtuse - Sun Ra and his Arkestra’s 1978 album Disco 3000 has absolutely nothing to do with disco. But don’t let that put you off.
… and that concludes part one. Part two comes next week. Why not sign up and get it straight to your inbox?