Vibrations - "Omniverse" The Black Space Legacy of Sun Ra

Ninety years ago, a visitor took form in the southeastern part of a continent known to us as North America. The place and time was where an African people had created distinct musics during a particularly oppressive period of domination by violent Whites. On the calendar read 1914. About 50 years earlier, Whites had had almost all of the people working to their deaths to make America rich.

..."this empire, the empire of the South, they had so much power, they were hurting the North financially, because they had people working free for them, and the North had to pay people, and so therefore they were running rings around the North, their businessmen. And that's what happened. That's when they had the war, because they wanted to break the power of the South, who had more like an aristocracy throughout their society. You can see it in Gone with the Wind what they had. Mansions. They had money, money, money. And England, the rest of the world would deal with the South for their cotton. And they didn't really have an allegiance as far as this government is concerned, and so the war was fought not to free black people; it was fought to try to break the financial power of the South. And that's what happened: they broke it."
J. Rycenga interviews Sun Ra
1988

The visitor, named by his caretakers Herman P. 'Sonny' Blount had landed in Birmingham, Alabama, and knew right away that the musics of the people: gospel, blues and jazz helped to solve many problems. Touching a piano given to him before he was ten years old, the child taught himself to play. He read music without learning it from a teacher. Sonny was the leader of a band as a youth. And a member of the high school band put together by Fess Whatley, a young trumpet sensation and teacher of music. A fellow musician, trumpeter Walter Miller, would join Sonny's band, the 1960s Arkestra, one day. The fertile African neighborhoods, though racially oppressed and often in fear of the wrath of aggressive Whites, had many cultural pots boiling, especially with the new music.

Birmingham-born children Sonny's age and younger-or older-were Jo Jones, who would go on to become the famed Count basie drummer, Dinah Washington, the blues and soul queen, and Nat 'King' Cole, the ballad crooner and piano giant. Erskine Hawkins, trumpeter and leader, Teddy Hill, the one day manager of Harlem's Minton's Playhouse, where a 1940s art storm would begin, with Thelonius Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, and Cholly Atkins, a dancer and one day choreographer for Motown's Temptations, all were born in Birmingham. Almost all, however, moved with their families to the north because of the hostility and denial of their Human Rights.

By the time he was a young man, Sonny mystified his friends and the city by leading discussions on philosophy, nonwestern ideologies, musics of the world, African folklore that survived the Atlantic deathships and religions. He walked the streets wearing all white robes, an ancient African custom. The tones of his keyboard, the instructions he gave to some of the most skilled of musicians frustrated them, and frightened others. But among the advanced, including professional musicians in traveling US South bands, short, plump Sonny was recognized as an original.

During a period when African peoples' music art forms were being co-opted wholesale, the 1930s, he lead the band at his college, Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical and began a 60 year composing and arranging career. His childhood inspirations besides musicians he heard around the town, playing blues guitar, harmonica (or even a kazoo or comb, as he and young children had) piano or violin, were Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith and Fletcher Henderson. His way was paid for, by scholarship, because of his ability. Opposed to the racist and imperialist US military, he refused to be a part of it, and was sent to prison. Despite a medical condition, he had to endure. Like many young Africans who knew they weren't called or treated as Americans, except when the US wanted them on the front line, Sonny said no. His spirituality, his cosmic awareness of something other than submission to America was developing quickly.

Not all musicians shared the serious young man's views, which he shared with anyone who might be interested. He knew the Egyptians weren't White, that the Greeks and Romans had only a splinter of what ancient Nubians had shared with them. Backwards was backwards-America was warring upon the world yet called itself a Christian nation. Africans followed the Whites in nearly everything to their detriment. Vegetarian diets and meditation, right then, in mid 30s America was a route to true living. Interested listeners came from distant locations to hear Sonny's marathon lectures.

Having seen part of the eastern US as a youth band member, Sonny decided to leave the South and Birmingham, and its lethal, soul sapping environment. Whites were still terrorizing people, as they would continually up into the days when their dynamite explosions earned the city the name 'Bombingham'. Martin Luther King was thrown into the city's jail and wrote a now famous book. Economics of the apartheid US sector was losing money and 'law and order' when the 1955 Birmingham bus boycott saw Africans asserting some political muscle. The violence by Whites escalated. In 1963, four African girls died in a Sunday church bombing. The church was a base for Africans organizing to vote and end racial discrimination.

After he had gone nearly a thousand miles north to the city of Washington, DC, for private study, he searched for stability. There was Gary, Indiana, and then his future long time base, Chicago.

Wynonie Harris, tall, green eyed mixed race singer of the popular, city blues style, had Sonny on piano for a 1946 record date. He is also reported to have played on a Eugene Wright and His Dukes of Swing date in 1948. In the same period, he became a composer/arranger for Fletcher Henderson's band. Sonny was paying dues-playing music to striptease crowds, playing and arranging simple, commercial material that was far below his artistry, however linked by the blues to the tradition. At this point, he made decisions to not pursue the money-first line. Instead, he was formulating a way to preserve and take forward, in a dignified way, his music. And this position was strongly influenced, as all African music in America, by the social realities.

Fletcher, the mild mannered Georgia native had become a shadow due to the "King Of Swing", Benny Goodman, making the money on ideas Fletcher had created 20 years earlier. But Sonny did not want to follow in that path. He did not want to be exploited, and he knew that his outspokenness was better turned into energy to develop a new concept. The young master began to find his orbit beyond Fletcher Henderson, who passed on in 1952, seventeen years older than the 38 year old man who was now calling himself Le Sony'r Ra.

Fletcher Henderson had admired Sonny and the South Side Chicago's Club De Lisa, at what is known today as 55th and State, was swinging with dance and ballad sounds Sonny made. This is where the refugees from the US South, driven off land that they had bought, or put off of plantations, ended up. Sonny met some Alabama friends, more musicians and read even more books, debated with other philosophers on street corners and bookshops. Solutions to racial degradation, pre-colonial African history, Egypt, economics and resisting America were some topics. The thoughts and feelings of many African people in America, especially in the American heyday of military victory in Japan and Europe, was that freedom, liberty and justice could be theirs too.

Chicago's clubs, like New York's were owned by, in Black Chicago commentator Dempsey Travis's words, "the jazz slave masters", no matter the powerful headway that greats like Lil Hardin Armstrong and then husband, Louis had made. All the greats, from Earl Fatha Hines, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, had to take a beating when it came to royalties, booking charges, segregated and inferior hotels lodgings and the limits on their performance art. Recording studios, magazines, stages and unions were all eventually controlled by Whites, in many cases, gangsters. Even the numbers, illegal gambling, which had been invented by Africans in America, saw the heavy receipts going to White gangsters and police. If you wanted marijuana, you would get the cheapest prices from White dealers like Mezz Mezzrow, who became rich selling to Louis Armstrong.

For some, like the man calling himself Sun Ra by the fifties, there was something far beyond the sky, the American dreamers and the world as most knew it. The chords he hit on the keyboard were too much for most people trained to listen only to European influenced sounds. Whenever electric organs or new boxes emitting "odd keyed" tones were released, Sun Ra was on to it. His comments on life in general, along with Western ideas, were brief, biting, and crisply delivered in his southern tongue.

Red Hollaway, who Sun Ra played with in the 1950s, had this to say about how complex and forward thinking the music was compared to the creativity of legendary pianist/composer Thelonius Monk:

"Yes, but nobody understood it. So he didn't have his band that he wanted together, you know. But in fact he told me, he was going to New York. He said, 'When I go to New York, I am going to revolutionize music,' he said, "You think that Thelonious Monk is something? Wait 'til I get my band!"

Forming his own groups, at first small combos, he began making his vision happen. Colorful suits and hats brought home the break with typical entertainment. Tours with Red Holloway, BB King, Sonny Stitt, playing Chicago with violinist Stuff Smith, and reedmen Coleman Hawkins and Yusef Lateef, Sun Ra gained experience traveling and managing on the road, gigging for months at a time.

But his music was something that was vital not just for the thrill it provided but for the energy it gave-directly and in a surge, he meant to bring salvation to Africa's children in America. He had worked this out in the only place that a person can find it, among the people, on the ground. And if anyone had to ask, Space was the place that he had come from, and where they should look for deliverance. Saturn was where he appeared from, having never been born, and he had the answers.

Sonic crashes of the electric piano, organ and the dissonant horns playing various pitches, stop time repetitively, it was all a part of a new beginning, or a continuum, depending how the listener engaged with it. Gongs, clavinets, ukeleles and whistles produced startling nonwestern combinations, and group chanting was a staple of African peoples vocal art. Sun Ra added to and resurfaced that which had been obscured while the American commercial music corporations took over. If people speak differently at different times, why would musicians play the same all the time, or play as anyone else did?

Sun Ra relates what people need:

"They got to have what I call the Omniversal language. Omniversal language: is music. And it happens to be Jazz".

1953 to Infinity - who told you this is all there is?

Sun Ra - The Elder

Before there was "Bootsy" there was Sun Ra!

Sun Ra, at almost 40, had met and interacted on stage with very good artists that he felt were outrageous in their persona and "hip" posturing-while they were in fact getting ripped off. Most of these musicians, like himself, had become resigned to the circuit known as TOBA, or popularly, Tough On Black Asses. Yet, a new, young generation, coming of age in the the Atomic Age, the rumblings of what would become America's Space Age, didn't all feel that way. Especially in the urban North, the children of the 1 million or more peons and US South refugees made it clear to White America that they wanted better.

Sun Ra, who knew what terror was, growing up in the repressive era of war upon African people (nearly 5,000 lynchings of African women and men in the first two thirds of the 20th century) and like many adults saw the heroin addictions of the early 50s, the infighting of youth in city and country, as self destruction. With his music, he foresaw a Space Age of spirituality and healing, and he would make this come about through the lessons he had learned.

Discipline was his mainstay principle.

In an interview, Sun Ra said:

"...the foundation of all freedom is discipline. The universe itself demonstrates a discipline and nature demonstrates discipline everywhere you look. Nature variates things and it has this precision and discipline in doing this. "

Tommy Hunter recalls his Chicago days as a young drummer with Sun Ra:

"Every day it was different. One day Sun Ra might single out Pat Patrick, and a whole day would be devoted to Pat and the arrangements, and Pat's place in that arrangement. The next day would be John Gilmore, or the next day it would be Ronnie Boykins. But it would never be me! [Laughs] I mean, he used to cuss me out. He was saying, "Listen, why do you want to be Max Roach? It's never going to do anything for you being Max Roach, because Max Roach already exists. You want to be something else. You want to do something else. You want to do something better. Well, you can't do it as long as you're doing Max Roach. I don't want you to play in my band! Go over there and sit down and listen."

His mentor also steered him intellectually:

" See, Sun Ra used to come to my house every day. Every day. Not a day passed that I didn't see Sun Ra after I got to know him. He used to take me in to libraries and show me books to read, and he used to tell me a lot. I got very impressed with what he was talking about. Not everything I agreed with, but there were some things that really had been bothering me all my life, and I couldn't figure out the answers to them -- so he talked a lot to me. We would go to the park and sit in the park all day, and he would talk . . . "

In ancient Kemet (Egypt), discipline was essential. This is made plain in any review of the society, monument building, and structure of command. Sun Ra made the poems, songs and lectures that he gave to his bands relevant to this point. His "performances" were then in reality rituals to demonstrate the discipline, and in his eyes, the elevation beyond a chaotic, if technically advancing Western dominated world.

While moving out and away from the negative life Americanization Africans in America too often dwell in, Sun Ra claimed from the late 1940s, (like Chicago based Elijah Muhammad, Hammurabi, and others) pride and desire for the peoples' improvement through self love, self knowledge, and growth. Through discipline.

He has said that Black people will never be free until they return to Saturn. That the people came from there to Kemet to build the pyramids. Darkness, or myth is beyond the blackness of the people. From ancient Africa, it is also said that an adult can become an elder at 40 years old.

In 1954, Sun Ra was beginning to teach.

The Myth Science Arkestra

In the early 1950s, Marshall Allen had come from Paris, France, after Conservatory study and was told by Sun Ra to learn. His saxophone was at his side ready for an audition, but for three days, he was told to report to a room. To the room, and from the room he went. He had to listen to Sun Ra speak all of three days-and was hired for the band without playing a note.

Pat Patrick, another soon to be veteran joined in this period also, growing with other young men in the strikingly different large ensemble, complete with tympani players, and Sun Ra on Wurlitzer and Hammond electric organs.

Julian Priester, a trombonist that would go on to record with Max Roach, joined on. He also went to school at Dusable High, like 'Jug' Gene Ammons, Nat 'King' Cole, Dinah Washington, and someone who would become one of Sun Ra's chief instrumentalists.

A slim Chicago youth, born in Summit, Mississippi in 1931, finished up an Earl Hines orchestra tour, found out about Sun Ra's 1953 Arkestra, and joined. Sun Ra has this to say about a saxophone playing man that John Coltrane was in awe of:

"...his mind has expanded. . .outside of what they might call jazz although it is a superior form of jazz because it's built on sincerity, it's based on feelings"

John Gilmore, who would be recorded only a few times again in "mainstream jazz", notably 1957's "Blowin' in from Chicago", with South Side Chicago sax mate Clifford Jordan, became a protégé of Sun Ra, musically, and in every way. Alton Abraham, a Hebrew Israelite aided Sun Ra in establishing Saturn Records during the mid 50s. Saturn was the name of a composition which intrigued John. And after performing for a few years, John Gilmore played on the first Arkestra record, on Transition. It was called "Jazz by Sun Ra".

The period of the mid fifties spurred the Arkestra to feature the reed master John Gilmore, who learned to play the clarinet as a child, and who would later play the drum trap set, also sing and leave listener's in awe with the bass clarinet.

Some titles and personnel of the early Arkestra, which also was called Le Sun Ra and his Arkestra and Sun Ra and his Arkestra were:

On this LP, Sun Ra utilized space bells, timbales, electric pianos and organs, trombones, and many musicians doubled up on percussion. The LP was recorded at RCA Chicago studios and the records were hand painted, some with ancient Kemet symbols on the bright hand painted covers. This would become standard throughout his career. Sun Ra was interested in self production of his own records, distribution was done at concerts and through word of mouth.

Sun Ra's anti globalization move was definitely different than Charles Mingus and Max Roach starting a record label, Debut Records, which lasted from 1952-57.

By 1960, Sun Ra was directing, singing, playing and leading his Arkestra in his own distinctive way, and attracting followers. Trumpet player Eddie Gale, drum hurricane Clifford Jarvis, Walter Miller,on trumpet, up from Birmingham, Wilbur Green, Charles Davis, Richard Evans and Ronnie Boykins, bassists, Phil Cohran from Chicago on trumpet and zither, all lined up with John, Marshall and Pat, who would eventually appear on nearly 200 recordings with Sun Ra.

Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor were taking New York by storm. John Coltrane, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Rashied Ali, Eric Dolphy,Albert Ayler, and Charles Mingus were not far behind. While some were beginning to voice social protest through lyrics , and began playing that which alarmed the self-appointed critics of the African classical art called jazz, Sun Ra had for a decade made action speak louder than words, building an alternative with highly skilled artists. In coming days, the branch of the tree extended to Pharoah Sanders (who had played with Sun Ra), Alice Coltrane, AACM in Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Eddie Harris, even the electric sound of Miles Davis and his synthesized musical son, 70s Herbie Hancock. Vocalists giving some wordless and lyrical resistance to cultural death of Africans in the US, Aminata Moseka (Abbey Lincoln), Jeannie Lee, Leon Thomas, Andy Bey and the Bey Sisters and others would echo Sun Ra via John Coltrane, another master gone in the midst of cultural rebellion/creation, as Charlie Parker had left.

Anthony Braxton had this to say:

"I'm interested in looking at the continuity of a person's involvement, and I draw strength from that; from people like Sun Ra...because it really is about a life's commitment ...Sun Ra is not a joke! People would like to think of him as a joke, but he has understood something, something very serious... Because he has already demonstrated a viewpoint that could take into account the whole planet and the galactic perspective of things. This is a man who understands the world of abstract consciousness and the mystical dynamics of music...Thanks to Sun Ra I would begin to understand different levels of responsibility, and not be afraid to move towards the visionary or to think of Earth culture."

But it was the Sun Ra Intergalactic sound that was totally grounded in the both the future and the past. Listen to We Travel the Spaceways, the 1963 hit, as well as intense 'off key' versions of Thelonius Monk's 'Round Midnight or the standard, Porgy and Bess. These could be heard and experienced when the caftan and masked, multihued Arkestra members danced in the aisles. Nubia, Aiethiopia and Tapestry From an Asteroid might be followed by the music Sun Ra called 'truly black beauty', a big band rendition of a Fletcher Henderson classic, Queer Notions.

At the same time, artists began to change their names to reflect new consciousness.

Sun Ra, meaning the sun god, had become a master teacher. The benefits of the strict no cigarette smoking, no alcohol, even extending to no women being allowed in music workshops, meant that the focus was on performance. Sun Ra was a life long single man, and expected discipline. As the 60s dawned, women vocalists, and then, dancers performed.

June Tyson, a lithe dancer, vocalist, composer and violinist became an integral force in the Arkestra, and several women, also dancers and singers, illustrated elements of the compositions joined the group.

Sun Ra had clear and boldly firm ideas about what he wanted and what he did not want.

He explains his musicians task in the philosophy:

" I'm dealing with pure sounds. I call musicians tone scientists. Every musician has to realize what time and key is good for him mentally. He must not only play for the people, he must play for his well being too.

The early and mid 60s found Sun Ra recording more, preserving the many hours of making art. He did not regard any playing away from the bandstand as a rehearsal, and the hours upon hours demanded that his two dozen or more musicians remain sharp, open to criticism and stick to Sun Ra's guidelines.

In New York now, the Arkestra had the public's attention. Pharaoh Sanders performed with it, and the controversial and finally, well paid John Coltrane came running down the aisle once, on being blown away by John Gilmore's complete mastery of the tenor saxophone. He shouted to one and all that Gilmore had "the concept"!

The meeting with a young Nigerian called Olutunji who found Africans in the US hungering for traditional West African culture, had Sun Ra incorporating djembes and other instruments into the Arkestra. Still, there were creative ideas sprouting everywhere-in 1960, Marshall Allen built the morrow, which is a clarinet mouthpiece attached to a wood flute body, giving a high reedy tone.

Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy, from 1963 was echo filled and had strong reverb deliberately produced in the studio. This recording awakened even more people to the strivings of a Sun Ra still a few decades (eons?) in front of the musical pack. This Saturn LP was not released until 1967, and today is finally available on Evidence CDs.

The dozens of LPs Sun Ra produced have had varying distribution. Only some of the other labels he was recorded on sent his works out into many stores. But more and more people began to notice. Musicians were paid small wages. Few complained. Some gigged elsewhere for a time.

The Sage was impacting from what he said was beyond the universe, the omniverse.

Philadelphia and The Transition

"My name is Ra, some call me Re
Some call me Mister Ra
Some call me Mister Re
But you can call me Mister Mystery"

From 1980 film, 'A Joyful Noise', about Sun Ra and his Arkestra

Sun Ra performed before startled Germans at Berlin in the early 1970s. Except for a couple of months in Quebec, the Arkestra had been based in large US cities much of the time. But then, once based in Philadelphia, in the Germantown section on Morton Street, the collective began to play internationally. In 1973, Sun Ra invited the bass legend Wilbur Ware, a longtime retired Chicago friend from the 1950s, to privately jam and record some selections.

Sun Ra had gone to the upstate home of Robert Moog and purchased a mini Moog that he was now playing in addition to the rack of keyboards, often electric ones. June Tyson's soulfully elegant singing on the Space is The Place film made in the beginning of the decade had made her presence known to new followers. Astro Black, a song that June sang, gave gravity and dignity to the ensemble's ancient African rooted rituals-yet could be instantly ripe for witty sayings of the caped, masked, rotund Sun Ra, now in his sixties, appearing onstage, smiling. Universities, underground clubs, even featuring bills shared with White rock groups and early punk rock outfits, were simply venues for the now large scale dramatics of Sun Ra and the Arkestra.

But the message remained strong and critical, even in the town he pronounced

"death's headquarters". Philadelphia was where the Arkestra would be based from the early seventies on, until the leader had to make his transition.

One of the oldest of US cities, and once capital of the US, Sun Ra was well versed on its Masonic and everyday cruelties-cultural and political dissidents had been dealt with harshly by its Anglo-Irish patrician and lately ascendant Italian immigrant guardians. In one of the most class conscious of the metro areas with many African people, Sun Ra saw few friends he could say were Black sisters and brothers. Instead he called them "Block people", because many of them halted his and others an opportunity wherever they could.

Sun Ra played a concert at the pyramids in Egypt in the 1970s. In West Africa in 1977, the Arkestra performed before 5000. Sun Ra and the family were joyful.

Outside of Philadelphia, a few hours west on US Route 76, there had been an emergency, in 1979. Three Mile Island nuclear plant had spurted out radioactive gases. A Chernobyl like meltdown, though less poisonous, claimed officials, this wouldn't be acknowledged as critical until 1985. Man, Sun Ra reminded listeners, was headed for a fall. His 1982 song Nuclear War speaks to this:

"Nuclear war, it's a motherf*cker...If they push that button, your ass gotta' go,"

Several Philadelphia musicians had already been associated with Sun Ra, including talented Walt Dickerson, a vibe player. Lex Humphries, from Philadelphia took over drum duties on the trapset on several European tours. Now James 'Jac' Jackson, bassoon, flute and later in life a percussion player, Marshall Allen, and Pat Patrick were coaching new generations in the Sun Ra house near 5600 Morton in the city's northwest.

Then artistic sister June Tyson left the planet in 1993.

Fame, though not fortune, came and travel to far points of the globe ensued, with tremendous support in Europe, but also places like Turkey and Japan.

Pictured - Sun Ra & June Tyson

The favorites schooled some audience members, and new compositions have brought Sun Ra's book to a reported 500 written tunes. Extensive musical satire, Tribute to Disney, for instance, annoyed some fans, and a few musicians in recent years. Sun Ra began to get, like most artists that survive years of racist exploitation, belated American honors and awards. He played solo at Carnegie Hall.

This is where Sun Ra would essentially end his days. His failing health meant less and less activity, and by October, 1992 he was bound to a bed.

Then artistic sister June Tyson left the planet in 1993.

On 30 May, 1993, after a 79 year exploration and effort to change a world he could not settle for, Sun Ra, visionary, and activist force in preserving the Great Black Music Ancient To The Future, returned to Saturn.

Musical tributes to Sun Ra were held in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and one from the Afro American Cultural Museum in Philadelphia was aired worldwide over Voice of America on 16 October, 1993.

John Gilmore, taking over the band leading and tours, followed on the celestial path in 1995.

The 1970s recordings and those of the remainder of his life today are now popular and gaining new listeners. They remain difficult to find in some cases.

Pictured Marshall Allen & The 'Arkestra'

The Arkestra is led by 80 year old Marshall Allen and he has said that the Arkestra will continue eternally.

Written by: ExiledOne
6 March 2004

"Musicians often play wonderful things, bring together wonderful sounds, but it doesn't mean a thing. Not for themselves, not for other people, everyone says: that's wonderful, that's the work of a great musician. Of course that's true, but what's the significance of it? People don't get better because of the music, even thought they certainly need help. I believe that every artist should realize that. That his work has no meaning whatsoever unless he helps people with it."
- SUN RA "Space is the Place. The Lives and Times of Sun Ra" by John F. Szwed (p.236)