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American Masters S40E02 Sun Ra Do The Impossible
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00:01:00To distant lands and climes
00:01:05And even go beyond the moon
00:01:08To any planet in the sky
00:01:14If we came from nowhere here
00:01:19Why can't we go somewhere there?
00:01:52Why can't we go anywhere there?
00:02:05I believe that it is genuinely a mischaracterization to speak of one sun rock, right?
00:02:11At any given time, there was a whole bunch more.
00:02:24Sun Ra, the virtuoso, teacher, band leader, the poet, the cosmologist, historian, the Egyptologist,
00:02:35community leader, the patriarch, the mother, and that's just scratching the surface.
00:02:48He was pretty fearless, and it would take a lot, as a black man, to do all the things
00:02:55he did with so much sovereignty, with no examples of anyone like him in existence at all.
00:03:02I think of Sun Ra as one of the great visionaries of the 20th century.
00:03:07He's someone who made his life into a work of art.
00:03:11Every moment of his life feels like a performance and a provocation and a prophetic statement.
00:03:17You think you know where things stand.
00:03:19You think you know what the issues are.
00:03:21And then someone comes in who changes the frame of reference entirely.
00:03:28Sun Ra is a pioneer in Afrofuturism.
00:03:31He influenced mainstream cats.
00:03:33He influenced underground cats, everybody.
00:03:36His influence is just that vast.
00:03:38And he was making music for the future.
00:03:45Sun Ra thought that if he could reorder our way of thinking through sound, he could prepare
00:03:50us for a different world.
00:03:52That was his goal, right?
00:03:54A different world.
00:04:08Someone who is certain to be written up in the black music history books.
00:04:13He is Sun Ra, and he joins us today with his big band group, the Arquestra.
00:04:18I understand you and in reports that you believe you're an angel and that you were born on Saturn.
00:04:25Is that set us straight?
00:04:27Is that an act or do you really believe that?
00:04:29Well, I wasn't born there.
00:04:30I came from there.
00:04:31I don't remember being born.
00:04:33I've dealt with eternal things.
00:04:35Eternal things are not born.
00:04:36You came from Saturn.
00:04:38Yes.
00:04:39You are not a human being.
00:04:40No.
00:04:41What are you?
00:04:42I'm an angel.
00:04:44I probably have been promoted to be an archangel now.
00:04:48Not too much that a man or woman can do about this planet.
00:04:51It takes an angel.
00:04:59In 1936, Sun Ra claimed that he was in a white light, lifted to another place that he recognized
00:05:07as Saturn.
00:05:18My body was transmolecularized.
00:05:23That's what I call it.
00:05:24It became like light beams.
00:05:27I could see through myself.
00:05:29And I went on up.
00:05:36Aliens told him that through music, he would be able to deliver this complex but beautiful
00:05:40message of peace to the world.
00:05:43And so he comes back down with this powerful sense of mission.
00:05:57I have to play everything.
00:06:00All emotions that human beings know.
00:06:03And I have to touch the parts of them they don't know that's part of them.
00:06:08And that's my mission to touch the parts of them that they don't know they have.
00:06:20There's no stage persona called Sun Ra.
00:06:24That was him all the time, 24-7.
00:06:28And for the longest time, Sun Ra did a really good job of keeping his earthly origins a state
00:06:35secret or something.
00:06:36That wasn't consistent with who he wanted you to think he was and where he wanted you
00:06:41to think he was from.
00:06:52Birmingham, Alabama, also known as the Magic City, is where Sun Ra was born.
00:06:57In 1914, and his name was Herman Poole Blount.
00:07:08My whole family was black-minded.
00:07:10And when I was a child, they was playing nothing but Bess Smith, Paris Smith, Nameda Smith,
00:07:16and Upper One.
00:07:18And every week, some different black performers would come to town.
00:07:22They would take me.
00:07:23My mother bought me a piano.
00:07:26I was in elementary school.
00:07:28And no one had called me anything.
00:07:30I said I done played it.
00:07:31I was just a natural.
00:07:35Sun Ra was mentored by a man named Fess Watley.
00:07:39Fess Watley was a great musician who lived in Birmingham,
00:07:42and he helped develop a lot of the musicians that came out of Birmingham in that time.
00:07:51Sun Ra rose to the top as a teenager.
00:07:55He was known as having the best band in a city as important in the black South as Birmingham.
00:08:05Birmingham was sort of like an aristocratic center.
00:08:09I played for social clubs.
00:08:11Black ones who had that social club, and they were very beautiful.
00:08:17In the deep South, our black people were made to feel like they weren't anything.
00:08:24So the only thing we had was big bands.
00:08:30Unity, showing that some black men could be together.
00:08:34And that's where big bands were important to me.
00:08:42The bands were more than just performances.
00:08:45They were our communities.
00:08:47You know, we got this.
00:08:48They were everything.
00:08:49You know, if you were a musician, like those 18, 20 people that you traveled with a lot,
00:08:53you were like family.
00:08:57A big band leader.
00:08:59They used to themselves royalty.
00:09:00They called themselves counts.
00:09:02You know, Kings, King Pleasure, Duke Ellington.
00:09:07He would talk about how when he was young, Duke Ellington would come to Birmingham.
00:09:11Like, he would take his music to Duke Ellington.
00:09:13He would say, well, look at this, Duke would look at his music and say, uh-huh, and stay on
00:09:17it, keep on it.
00:09:19Above all, I like the discipline of Fletcher Henson.
00:09:24And no one else has ever come up to that.
00:09:26They were so together that, uh, I began to say they couldn't possibly have been men.
00:09:32They must have been angels.
00:09:34They must have been angels.
00:10:21He was an encyclopedia for movements in jazz.
00:10:25He felt that every phase of jazz, from New Orleans to the present day, should be respected.
00:10:34Sunrise's whole breath of sonic expression comes out of our entire past.
00:10:39He's a master at it.
00:10:49Now the draft becomes the means of mobilizing the mightiest fighting force in United States history.
00:11:02Sunrise was 27 years old when the United States entered World War II in 1941.
00:11:11Sunrise had become anti-war by reading Du Bois and Gandhi.
00:11:17The idea of going and killing somebody was just beyond him.
00:11:20So he declared himself as a conscientious objector.
00:11:24This was by no means common or well-received for the masses of black people.
00:11:30We were fighting to prove ourselves as soldiers within their army.
00:11:35And Sunrise wasn't having that.
00:11:50They arrested Sunni and they put him in jail.
00:11:55His incarceration separated him from his one love in life, music.
00:12:06He wrote letters from his confinement to authorities that he hoped could help him by relieving him of it.
00:12:13The arranging and composing, the rehearsing, the development of potential talent, that is my work and the only earthly pleasure
00:12:23I love.
00:12:25To separate me from music would be more cruel than standing me by a wall and shooting me.
00:12:31I think I would prefer the latter.
00:12:36Sun Ra was jailed in Birmingham for being a draft resistor.
00:12:40And eventually he was transferred to a camp in Pennsylvania.
00:12:46His family disowns him.
00:12:48They never come to visit him.
00:12:50He's gone.
00:12:52He was sent back to Birmingham.
00:12:54But now Birmingham was abhorred to him.
00:12:57When he returned, people acted like they had forgotten him and like they didn't want to have anything to do
00:13:04with him.
00:13:05He hung out in Birmingham for a while.
00:13:10But he really felt a really profound sense of alienation.
00:13:38In the mid-40s, Sun Ra migrates to Chicago.
00:13:44Like many African-Americans, sort of the tail end of that great migration.
00:13:50He arrives in a space that is possibly one of the most richest musical cultures at that particular moment.
00:13:57Dreaming.
00:13:58Dreaming.
00:14:01Seeks out Fletcher Henderson.
00:14:04Someone that Sun Ra just idolized as an organizer of sound and of people.
00:14:10Sun Ra gets a foot in the door and is basically a rehearsal pianist and then also a copyist and
00:14:17arranger.
00:14:20Fletcher seems to understand the promise of Sun Ra, but he's not exactly a seamless fit with the orchestra.
00:14:30He was wired a little differently.
00:14:34So the musical ideas that he was setting to paper, the way that he was expressing them at the piano,
00:14:40there were members of the band that resisted his influence and in fact resisted him.
00:14:47In Chicago is where I was given all kinds of tests by God, Satan, Lucifer, and the devil to see,
00:14:53could I stand up against the whole planet and answer them and turn them around the other way?
00:15:06In Chicago, in the early years, Sun Ra is part of a scene that's not simply about musical performance, but
00:15:15is about political activism.
00:15:18There's a place in the south side of Chicago called Washington Park.
00:15:23What you see is people giving harangues, getting up on a soapbox and trying to attract an audience.
00:15:31Sun Ra had a soapbox, too.
00:15:35When I was in Chicago, I would always go out in the park every day.
00:15:39A true democracy in the black community, I'd always be in trouble with them because I was talking about space.
00:15:45He brought these broadsheets.
00:15:48There are dozens of them, and they're making these really interesting connections among realms.
00:15:52Music, popular culture, politics, history, myth, and cosmology.
00:15:59He represents a tradition of black seekers who are autodidacts, and they teach themselves.
00:16:08They read their own books, alternate Bibles, different spiritual traditions, different magical traditions.
00:16:16And they take them all quite seriously as a way of creating narratives of black identity, black culture, and black
00:16:23possibility.
00:16:49He believed that black people were sort of stripped of our mythology.
00:16:52He believed that black people were sort of stripped of our mythology.
00:16:53And he felt he was put here to bring back a mythology, create a realm in the black imagination.
00:17:24He thought, we don't have enough of a fantasy world.
00:17:28And our fantasy world is often vulgarized and pushed toward very carnal things, sex, violence.
00:17:35And myth allows this sort of breathless, you know, backing away from all the carnal world and to fantasize about,
00:17:42you know, what would it be like to be a god?
00:17:45Can he be a god and a king?
00:17:46What would it be like to wear a crown?
00:17:48Can he be a man.
00:17:48He was able to really pick up on the fact that there wasn't anyone who was doing the actual grunt
00:17:53work of creating a black mythological world.
00:17:59In Chicago, Herman Poole Blount decides to transform and change his name to Les Sunny R. Ray, but publicly for
00:18:10his professional identity, Son Ra.
00:18:19And in that, we see him beginning to coalesce the intellectual, the political, and the artistic
00:18:25into an identity that will become even more powerful later on.
00:18:33My music concerns the cosmos and the greater universe.
00:18:39It also concerns the myth of things in opposition to the reality of things.
00:18:44So it moves beyond just music.
00:18:48He begins to put together small groups of like-minded musicians who he could teach, who he could share his
00:18:55visions with.
00:19:00People like John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Marshall Allen.
00:19:07Musicians who would remain with him as long as he remained on the earth.
00:19:19He was the first one to really introduce me into higher forms of music, you know, past what you might
00:19:24would say, what Bird and Monk and the fellows were doing.
00:19:28I didn't think anybody was ahead of them until I met Sun Ra, you know.
00:19:34Very highly advanced, you know.
00:19:35So when I saw that, I said, well, I think I'll make this to stop, you know.
00:19:47I was searching for a place in space.
00:19:52The heck with everything I'm exploring with him.
00:19:56You know, and so I can learn something.
00:19:59And so I can do something.
00:20:02When Marshall got in the van, he had to come to the house every day by himself for rehearsal.
00:20:10Drill you, drill you, drill you, drill you, drill you, drill you.
00:20:14Couldn't get away with nothing.
00:20:16With all your slick stuff.
00:20:18I'd come out of conservatory.
00:20:20I was sharp, you know.
00:20:22And, and, and, uh, he didn't want that.
00:20:26He wanted this.
00:20:28I'd tailor make music according to the person's spirit.
00:20:31And maybe sometime according to their potential if they're not exactly where they should be.
00:20:37And bring them up to the image of their potential.
00:20:41When he gets together, ooh, six, eight of these people, he realized he has an ensemble on his hands.
00:20:47And he calls that ensemble the orchestra.
00:21:17So, ha ha ha ha, he does do terrible stuff on his hands.
00:21:35He names the weight of them and he calls it and he calls the star to perform to this act.
00:21:36He lets it take a wash from now and bring them into theaffer's hands and side of his hands.
00:21:36The way that there's no reason is not to make the steps as if the politicallyDPI Ningley has access it.
00:21:37The newest sounds to come along in contemporary jazz are written by the composer arranger, the Sunra out of Chicago.
00:21:44La Sun Ra, among other things, fuses the snake-like bebop melodies with colors of Duke Ellington
00:21:51and the experimental changes of Theolonius Mount.
00:21:54La Sun Ra says of his music that it is a portrayal of everything the Negro really was, is, and
00:22:01is going to be,
00:22:02with emphasis focused on the Negro's triumph over the demonic currents of his experience.
00:22:21I have many names, names of splendor, names of shame.
00:22:32Some call me Mr. Ra, others call me Mystery.
00:22:37Call me Mystery.
00:22:39You can call me Mr. Mystery.
00:22:42Call me Mr. Mystery.
00:22:44As Sun Ra told us, he has many names.
00:22:48Sun Ra.
00:22:49Sun Ra and his orchestra.
00:22:52Sun Ra and his myth-science orchestra.
00:22:54Sun Ra and his solar myth.
00:22:56Sun Ra and his blue universe orchestra.
00:22:59Sun Ra and his astro-intergalactic orchestra.
00:23:02Sun Ra and his year 2000 orchestra.
00:23:04Sun Ra.
00:23:06I'm here to do something on this planet and no one is getting in the way.
00:23:13Sun Ra was one of the first black artists to own his own record label, Saturn Records, with his partner,
00:23:19Alton Abraham.
00:23:28How do you decide what's going to come out on Saturn Records?
00:23:32Whatever I think people are not going to listen to.
00:23:34I always recall that it would take them some time to maybe 20 years, 30 years before they'd really hear
00:23:41it.
00:23:44You had different jazz musicians that were releasing music independently.
00:23:50Max Roach and Charles Mingus had a label together.
00:23:53But I think Sun Ra might have been the most robust example because he did it for so long.
00:23:59It's everything from swing to bebop, to progressive, to music that doesn't even really sound like music.
00:24:08It's a lot of music to go through, you know.
00:24:10So a lot of Sun Ra fans that I know personally, I don't even think they've gotten through the whole
00:24:16catalog themselves.
00:24:18He is both a dream and this headache for record collectors.
00:24:31When an artist decides to make their own records for themselves and own the work, own the masters, that is,
00:24:38it's a breakthrough moment.
00:24:40It's a rejection of the system, of the plantation system that is a recorded industry.
00:24:46Plain and simple.
00:24:47I didn't want to go through that storm in the attic and all that food system.
00:24:51So I wanted to bypass that particular trauma that puts on Odyssey.
00:25:00It's me creating something that nobody owned but us.
00:25:21As Sun Ra is ramping up Saturn Records, one of the early statements that he makes as a composer, a
00:25:29band leader, is jazz in silhouette.
00:25:31And you get the sense of all of the musical language that Sun Ra has absorbed and mastered, even as
00:25:41he is moving into a new area of expression.
00:25:52On this album, Ancient Ethiopia is a beautiful song. It's very majestic.
00:26:10The flutes I love because it's like this really kind of free spirited movement, reflective of nature.
00:26:21And the melody connects with a lot of African music throughout the diaspora.
00:26:27He's really bringing in the sound of mystery because it's a far away land.
00:26:32It's not necessarily Ethiopia, but it's bringing our spirits back.
00:26:39It's a marmete.
00:26:40Thanks for there.
00:26:53It's beautiful today.
00:26:59Like on aiors pier cinco es inzig.
00:27:05And let me see you later.
00:27:06If you let the sun vide above day aprender because you may be элем to be bright.
00:27:07It's a norte cervejar that's pure in � halte if you were going to be replaced,
00:27:07You could hope you did it under the corona there.
00:27:09Interplanetary, interplanetary, interplanetary
00:27:11In Chicago, I introduced space music.
00:27:14Interplanetary melody
00:27:15I played many places there.
00:27:23Interplanetary, interplanetary, interplanetary
00:27:27Then I went to Montreal, Canada,
00:27:35where it was also said my music was too far.
00:27:50There's an outer space orchestra?
00:27:52Mm-hmm.
00:27:53It's an organization called the Cosmic Space Jazz Group,
00:27:56conducted by Mr. Sun Ra.
00:27:59Hey, sounds like a philosopher, Sun Ra.
00:28:02He is a philosopher, and he's a poet, and a pianist.
00:28:09Finally, I came to New York,
00:28:12although I was always told, don't go there.
00:28:16So being a rebel, I decided I would come anyway.
00:28:21I like New York.
00:28:23All it has been cannot compare to what it shall be
00:28:27after it becomes receptive of my space music.
00:28:38New York in the 1960s is wonderfully the weirdest place in the world.
00:28:44Poets and seers and mystics and artists.
00:28:49It's a space where jazz has moved into free jazz,
00:28:54which some people call also ecstatic jazz,
00:28:56because it really is about just this extreme ecstatic expression of sound.
00:29:08New York in the 60s is a dream,
00:29:11but even in that space, he's very different.
00:29:15One, two, three.
00:29:20I am strange.
00:29:22My mind is tinted with the colors of madness.
00:29:26They fight in silent furor in the effort to possess each other.
00:29:31I am strange.
00:29:33I have approached a degree of love that is so unwise
00:29:37in one world that it is wisdom in another.
00:29:42I am strange.
00:29:44I no longer have respect for hate,
00:29:48for I am stronger than hate.
00:29:49I am contemptuous of both those who hate and those who destroy.
00:29:53I am not a part of the world which hates and the world which destroys.
00:29:57I seek to live a better life.
00:30:00I am strange.
00:30:05Sometimes I don't know how he did it,
00:30:08but he found a place,
00:30:09and then we all moved in there.
00:30:12So we had a place to rehearse 24 hours a day.
00:30:17It was so jammed full of instruments and furniture.
00:30:22Had I stopped to think,
00:30:24I would have thought I don't know how people could live like this
00:30:27because it was so cluttered.
00:30:33He had a huge collection of books.
00:30:36You know,
00:30:36I can remember seeing J.A. Rogers' famous book,
00:30:39Sex and Race.
00:30:42There was something very practical
00:30:44to have his band under one roof,
00:30:47but there was also a utopian ideal,
00:30:50a notion that we are carving out
00:30:54a beautiful space
00:30:56for our lives and our art
00:30:59and our camaraderie
00:31:01and our imagination
00:31:03to coexist.
00:31:05No more work.
00:31:07No more work.
00:31:12No more work.
00:31:34Back in those days, it was a mixed bag critically, where Sun Ra was concerned.
00:31:42It didn't pass muster with critics and the critical elite.
00:32:12We played as Charles Siv. New York Times said that the musicians took out their weapons, and they began to
00:32:19play it.
00:32:24Sun Ra's music wasn't the sound of the time.
00:32:28Critics would have much rather listened to Miles, listened to Thelonious Monk, you know, stuff that they could, for the
00:32:36lack of a better term, digest a little bit better.
00:32:41He's interested in the idea of the avant-garde, using art, using culture to inspire new ways of being, which
00:32:52he thinks can be a way forward to black freedom and black liberation.
00:33:06I was part of the writer's workshop called Umbra, which I joined in 1963.
00:33:13One of our contributors was Sun Ra as a poet.
00:33:17Musicians like Sun Ra put a lot of pressure on us.
00:33:23They were able to write as well as, you know, perform on the instruments and compose music.
00:33:34One of Sun Ra's poems is entitled, I Am an Instrument.
00:33:40I am an instrument.
00:33:43The timbre of my voice flies with the winds of heaven.
00:33:49I belong to one, I belong to one who is more than a musician.
00:34:00He is an artist.
00:34:02I live to be his pleasure.
00:34:04I do not flee from him when he comes to me, for instruments are not sufficient in themselves.
00:34:10They are cold and lifeless without the touch of hands and mind.
00:34:15But I just hold myself tenderly in his hands.
00:34:20First he touches the streams of my heart to find if they are in tune with the universe.
00:34:28Then suddenly vibrant thought strikes the air and music from the world of time and space is born.
00:34:37Music, uh, that's part of his makeup.
00:34:45He's an instrument because he's driven by it.
00:34:49The music is playing him.
00:34:53Sun Ra's poetry, I think, is very private.
00:34:56His poetry reads more like notes or diaries,
00:34:59and carry his ideas about humanity.
00:35:09Now it is time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement,
00:35:15which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.
00:35:24Just before Apollo 11 goes to the moon in July 1969,
00:35:30Esquire magazine does this amazing feature called le mot juste for the moon,
00:35:36which means the right word for the moon landing.
00:35:42The magazine frames it as a collection of helpful hints for Neil Armstrong,
00:35:49who will be the first man to step on the moon.
00:35:5210, 9, ignition sequence start.
00:36:02They ask for suggestions from this remarkable range of figures.
00:36:08Muhammad Ali, Bob Hope, Timothy Leary.
00:36:13Some of them are saying,
00:36:16this is a moment of American triumph.
00:36:18We've beat the Soviets to the moon.
00:36:20Muhammad Ali says,
00:36:21bring me back a challenger because I've beaten everybody on Earth.
00:36:24And then they also ask Sun Ra,
00:36:27who they describe only as the space age jazz poet.
00:36:32And Sun Ra provides a poem that really sticks out.
00:36:40reality has touched against myth.
00:36:45Humanity can move to achieve the impossible.
00:36:50Because when you've achieved one impossible,
00:36:54the others come together to be with their brother.
00:36:56The first impossible borrowed from the rim of the myth.
00:37:03Happy space age to you.
00:37:06Altitude 4200.
00:37:08Go for landing, over.
00:37:10You're looking great.
00:37:12Reality touches myth.
00:37:14That's crucial when we do something that seems unreal.
00:37:19The eagle has landed.
00:37:21Because it shows us that we can do the impossible.
00:37:25It's one small step for man,
00:37:29one giant leap for mankind.
00:37:32There's not just one impossible.
00:37:34There's not just one step for mankind and we're done.
00:37:40There's other impossibles to come.
00:37:47Ra at the core of his philosophy is an embrace of impossibility.
00:37:57something that we have never really experienced.
00:38:01He's interested in making people feel unsettled.
00:38:08In the service of getting them to imagine the world
00:38:11in a way that they may have never imagined it before.
00:38:21Someone who always tried to redefine the space that he was in.
00:38:27Someone who always tried to redefine the space that he was in.
00:38:44Someone who always tried to redefine the space that he was in.
00:38:48Sun Ra was always looking for the new kind of electronics that were coming out.
00:38:56Back in the 40s, in Birmingham, he got this keyboard.
00:39:02It's called the Solovox.
00:39:03It had effects on it that no other organ at that time had.
00:39:15Not only did he have the Solovox,
00:39:18he had one of the first wire recorders,
00:39:21a sound mirror, a Wurlitzer.
00:39:23Then he had the clavioline.
00:39:28Years later in his 60s,
00:39:30as Sun Ra continued his sonic exploration,
00:39:34he met Tam Fiofori.
00:39:37He was a photographer as well as a jazz writer.
00:39:41Tam introduced him to the great synthesizer inventor,
00:39:46Bob Moog.
00:39:47I called Sun Ra and I told Sun Ra,
00:39:50come over to Robert Moog's studio.
00:39:53Sun Ra sat down behind his portable Moog.
00:39:58Moog was completely flabbergasted.
00:40:13In the 60s and 70s,
00:40:16incorporating these keyboards,
00:40:17nobody was doing that yet.
00:40:18It was a whole different approach for jazz.
00:40:22Usually, it was like rock bands that had picked up on the keyboards
00:40:25because they wanted to sound interstellar.
00:40:27But Sun Ra already pulled it into a whole different direction.
00:40:35When Sun Ra gets his hands on a new piece of musical equipment,
00:40:39he doesn't think of it in terms of a palette.
00:40:41He thinks of it in terms of a portal.
00:40:46He's just like,
00:40:48this is a shortcut to another dimension in sound.
00:40:58It's the next step in a musical progression.
00:41:01Sound, not melody, not rhythm,
00:41:04but sound itself as a completely legitimate sphere of expression
00:41:08for his spiritual ideas, political ideas, distortion,
00:41:12and the kind of electronic chaos of that period.
00:41:17But it's also,
00:41:18for those of us who listen to it enough,
00:41:21it's pleasurable too.
00:41:49As a band that has a reputation
00:41:51for being a little abstract,
00:41:53maybe a little abstruse,
00:41:55Sun Ra has a member of the orchestra
00:41:58that I think many people listening to the band
00:42:00could relate to
00:42:01because of their clarity and charisma.
00:42:12June Tyson,
00:42:14the voice of the Sun Ra orchestra,
00:42:18joins the band in the late 1960s.
00:42:31The thing about June is she had a voice
00:42:34that was not of this planet.
00:42:36Her voice was really somewhere else altogether.
00:42:41And her presence.
00:42:43She had this wonderful regal presence.
00:42:46Somebody else's idea of somebody else's world
00:42:49Is not my idea of things as they are
00:42:53Somebody else's idea of things to come
00:42:57Need not be the only way to live
00:43:02I think that Sun Ra gave June a lot of authority,
00:43:06in a sense, with the music.
00:43:09He gave her a lot of his poetry to interpret.
00:43:13She had kind of a natural sense of delivery.
00:43:17Simplicity.
00:43:19Spontaneous.
00:43:20Omnipresent duality.
00:43:22Boldness.
00:43:23Standing.
00:43:24Undaunted.
00:43:25Unashamed.
00:43:26Straight and tall.
00:43:29Noble.
00:43:31Point by point.
00:43:34Can make a straight line
00:43:36When drawn together.
00:43:45Sun Ra and June Tyson have this transcendent love
00:43:50that defies notions of romantic love
00:43:54and filial love and even the family
00:43:55And creates a lifelong collaboration.
00:44:00I hope you understand
00:44:04I hope you understand
00:44:08I hope you understand
00:44:13I hope you understand
00:44:15I hope you understand
00:44:18When the black man
00:44:20Who is the land
00:44:23Marrow was hidden on his throne
00:44:27When the black man
00:44:29Who is the land
00:44:31I saw Sun Ra last Saturday night in New York.
00:44:34His band played for a long time
00:44:36and they played really good music and everything
00:44:38but why does he have to walk out with capes on?
00:44:42He's been wearing those blue capes
00:44:43and playing electronic music since 1957.
00:44:46That's what I've been trying to tell all of you man.
00:44:48He's the master of it.
00:44:49No, they have a big set up
00:44:51and he had a lot of musicians in there
00:44:52playing good rhythms
00:44:53and he'd come walk out
00:44:53like walk up and down
00:44:55in front of everybody
00:44:56like smiling like he's a king
00:44:57or something like that.
00:44:58He's a king man.
00:44:59Can he be a god and a king?
00:45:01Can he be man?
00:45:02Let him be.
00:45:03Artistically he's being fulfilled
00:45:04and he puts on a cape
00:45:06and plays his electronic piano
00:45:07and walks up and smiles.
00:45:09He's a teacher
00:45:10and a great, great artist man.
00:45:14Son Ra wears the most wonderful flamboyant outfits,
00:45:20appreciates sparkle and glitter
00:45:21and gorgeous fabrics.
00:45:24When I first got together with his group
00:45:27and he'd say,
00:45:28oh, had everybody put on their space,
00:45:30space, you know, uniforms
00:45:32and I'm like,
00:45:33what is this guy talking about?
00:45:35Visually, Son Ra had his whole concept
00:45:38of what became part of the music
00:45:41on the stage.
00:45:43He was Hendrix, Little Richard,
00:45:45all those cats before
00:45:46in terms of his dress.
00:45:50He didn't conform to
00:45:52these forms of masculinity
00:45:54that were so associated
00:45:55with jazz music at the time.
00:45:57We had Miles Davis
00:45:58and John Coltrane
00:45:59and Miles Davis would turn his back
00:46:00on the audience
00:46:01and all these kinds of
00:46:02cool ways of being.
00:46:06Son Ra is one of those
00:46:08black men at the outskirts,
00:46:11at the edges
00:46:11of those forms of masculinity.
00:46:14I think it's about
00:46:16a refusal of normativity
00:46:18in all its senses,
00:46:20being otherwise,
00:46:22being different, being strange.
00:46:24He performs that
00:46:26in his everyday life
00:46:28as well as in his stage presence.
00:46:43PIANO PLAYS
00:47:03The Sun Ra would call a tune
00:47:05on the piano
00:47:07and then, you know,
00:47:08who knows where it would develop,
00:47:10right, where it might lead us.
00:47:26There'd be one of the songs
00:47:28and that kind of hypnotic,
00:47:30trancey thing.
00:47:30PIANO PLAYS
00:47:31The world
00:47:32is waiting
00:47:34for the sunrise
00:47:36for the sunrise
00:47:39The world
00:47:41is waiting
00:47:44Then, boom,
00:47:45really uptemper.
00:47:46Wow!
00:47:56Sun Ra's performances
00:47:58entailed more
00:47:59than just the music.
00:48:20You just had to be alert,
00:48:23kind of in tune
00:48:24to what Sun Ra wanted.
00:48:28and the physical expression
00:48:30of the music.
00:48:32Our bodies
00:48:32were the instrument.
00:48:34And the physical expression
00:49:02He said
00:49:03that when musicians
00:49:05are not able
00:49:06to express themselves,
00:49:08sometimes you need
00:49:09the movements
00:49:10of the physical body
00:49:11to take the people
00:49:12to the next level.
00:49:24It's a sonic ritual.
00:49:26It's a meditation.
00:49:27It's a device
00:49:28to take you
00:49:28from one place
00:49:29to the next.
00:49:34It's rooted in the tradition
00:49:35and the blues
00:49:36and the doo-wop
00:49:37and all the sounds
00:49:38that Sun Ra
00:49:39had to journey through.
00:49:48Although there are performers
00:49:51whose music and performance
00:49:54has a ritualistic quality,
00:49:56Sun Ra takes that
00:49:57to the extreme
00:49:58where his performances
00:50:00include dance,
00:50:03singing,
00:50:04sometimes poetic recitation,
00:50:05costume,
00:50:06in addition to music.
00:50:09that complete vision
00:50:11where it's a multimedia aesthetic
00:50:13is central to Sun Ra
00:50:15as a performer.
00:50:23My music is actually
00:50:24reaching outwards
00:50:27not being a part of the past
00:50:29or the present
00:50:30or the future.
00:50:32I should rather
00:50:34what I call
00:50:35an altered destiny.
00:50:40Sun Ra came
00:50:41with a mission
00:50:42to get us out of history,
00:50:44somebody else's story
00:50:45and to move us
00:50:47into our altered destiny.
00:50:49He told us all the time
00:50:51your survival
00:50:52depends on the unknown
00:50:53so stop trying to remix
00:50:56what you have.
00:50:58It won't work.
00:51:00I'm really striving
00:51:01to do something
00:51:01about humanity.
00:51:03The feeling
00:51:04that I would have
00:51:05to reject
00:51:06everything this planet
00:51:08has done so far
00:51:09is useless
00:51:09because it hasn't
00:51:11accomplished anything.
00:51:13I feel that musicians
00:51:15could actually
00:51:15achieve this
00:51:17because the politicians
00:51:18and the religious
00:51:19and other people
00:51:20haven't been able
00:51:21to do anything.
00:51:22And music is this
00:51:24vast thing
00:51:25that can do this.
00:51:29in this kind of music
00:51:31that's reaching out
00:51:32to vastness
00:51:33it actually could
00:51:34stimulate people
00:51:35to seek to reach out
00:51:36to be their
00:51:37impossible self.
00:51:39The self that they
00:51:40might have left behind
00:51:42or they didn't
00:51:42have the courage
00:51:43to be.
00:51:48Altered destiny.
00:51:50It's a negation.
00:51:51It's the thing
00:51:52you haven't thought
00:51:53of yet.
00:51:54It's a placeholder
00:51:56for an idea
00:51:57about utopia
00:51:59that is not
00:51:59connected to ideology.
00:52:02The altered destiny
00:52:04is a very early
00:52:05articulation
00:52:06of the notion
00:52:07that the future
00:52:08is not only
00:52:09unfixed
00:52:10but that we
00:52:11are trapped
00:52:11in notions
00:52:13of time
00:52:14that force us
00:52:15in places
00:52:16that we don't
00:52:16actually have to go.
00:52:17We can step out
00:52:19of time
00:52:19and create
00:52:20another trajectory.
00:52:27Sunbar understood
00:52:28that sound
00:52:29could be used
00:52:30to jolt people
00:52:31out of their complacency.
00:52:33Move people
00:52:33into another
00:52:34state of awareness.
00:52:36He had a device
00:52:37that he called
00:52:38the space cord.
00:52:40And the space cord
00:52:41was a seemingly
00:52:43random set of notes
00:52:45that he would call
00:52:47at a particular point.
00:53:06It brings you
00:53:07to these moments
00:53:08where things just seem
00:53:09to just lose themselves.
00:53:11That, for him,
00:53:12are these moments
00:53:12where you get to see
00:53:13and experience
00:53:14in his view
00:53:16a kind of
00:53:17liberating possibility.
00:53:45in New York,
00:53:47Sunra is part
00:53:48of a black
00:53:48avant-garde.
00:53:50But,
00:53:51he's got a vision
00:53:52to preach.
00:53:54Sunra begins
00:53:55to seek out
00:53:57larger
00:53:58and larger
00:53:59venues.
00:54:02He books shows
00:54:05with almost
00:54:06any other kind
00:54:06of band
00:54:06that'll have him.
00:54:11more and more
00:54:13white people
00:54:14playing pretty big
00:54:16venues,
00:54:16sometimes
00:54:17with rock bands
00:54:18MC5
00:54:19in Detroit.
00:54:22This leads
00:54:23to an expansion
00:54:24of Sunra's audience
00:54:26and he gets
00:54:27a reputation
00:54:27as an alien,
00:54:30a guy who's
00:54:30playing experimental
00:54:31music
00:54:32that rockers
00:54:33can get to, too.
00:54:36Ultimately,
00:54:36he lands
00:54:37on the cover
00:54:37of Rolling Stone.
00:54:49Check out the shades!
00:54:53The cover
00:54:54of the Rolling Stones.
00:54:55I haven't held one
00:54:56in my hands,
00:54:56so this is a great
00:54:57moment for me.
00:54:58infinity.
00:54:58You see,
00:54:59infinity has a lot
00:55:01of different parts.
00:55:02And, indeed,
00:55:03it does.
00:55:29We were sitting
00:55:30in the Sunra residence.
00:55:32also known
00:55:34as the
00:55:35Orchestral Institute
00:55:37of Sunra.
00:55:40Since 1968,
00:55:42this has been
00:55:42the headquarters
00:55:43for the
00:55:44orchestra.
00:55:46In New York,
00:55:47the building
00:55:48that they were
00:55:49renting
00:55:50was sold
00:55:51and they needed
00:55:52another place
00:55:53to land.
00:55:53And Marshall Allen,
00:55:55his father,
00:55:56was willing
00:55:57to sell them
00:55:58a building
00:55:58in Philadelphia
00:56:00for a dollar.
00:56:06Sunra,
00:56:07we're in this house
00:56:08by African principles.
00:56:11He was the chief
00:56:13and the chief rules.
00:56:15One, two, three, play.
00:56:17No women,
00:56:18no alcohol,
00:56:19no drugs,
00:56:21just music.
00:56:23That's what this house is for.
00:56:25is for a while.
00:56:42Sunra rehearsed
00:56:43all day,
00:56:44every day.
00:56:45He would fall asleep
00:56:46in the rehearsals.
00:56:48Oh, yeah.
00:56:49He was human.
00:56:51So he would be
00:56:52at the piano,
00:56:54fall asleep,
00:56:55and everybody
00:56:55would sneak out
00:56:56one by one.
00:56:59He used to say,
00:57:00A little birdie told me
00:57:02that you was over
00:57:03on Chew Avenue
00:57:04with so-and-so
00:57:05doing so-and-so
00:57:06and so-and-so
00:57:06and so-and-so.
00:57:09He would know
00:57:10the most uncanny things,
00:57:12but he wasn't judgmental.
00:57:15He wanted you
00:57:16to be focused
00:57:16on this goal,
00:57:18and his goal
00:57:19was to save our people.
00:57:28We were supposed to
00:57:30be warriors
00:57:31of this sound.
00:57:33If he had his way,
00:57:34we would have nothing
00:57:35to do
00:57:36but do music all day.
00:57:38You know,
00:57:38no family,
00:57:39no responsibilities,
00:57:41just play music.
00:57:44I wasn't gonna live
00:57:45in the room,
00:57:46no house with no musty men.
00:57:48You know,
00:57:49uh-uh, no.
00:57:49It was like an army.
00:57:51I said, no,
00:57:52I joined the army for that.
00:57:54I say, Sonny,
00:57:55can I go to take
00:57:57my girlfriend
00:57:58to the movies?
00:57:59He said, well,
00:58:00perhaps,
00:58:01but we're fighting
00:58:02a battle on this planet.
00:58:04The battle,
00:58:04you gotta be swinging
00:58:05on your horn.
00:58:06Now, play this.
00:58:07He'd knock on the door,
00:58:09hand your piece of music
00:58:10no matter what time it was.
00:58:13When the world
00:58:14was in darkness
00:58:15and darkness
00:58:16was ignorance
00:58:18along came rock
00:58:20along came rock
00:58:22along came rock
00:58:23when the world
00:58:24was in darkness
00:58:25and darkness
00:58:26was ignorant
00:58:28along came rock
00:58:30along came rock
00:58:32along came rock
00:58:32a living man
00:58:34a living man
00:58:36He had a way
00:58:38of picking people
00:58:39who had devotion
00:58:41to what it was
00:58:42that he did.
00:58:43To the extent
00:58:44that many people
00:58:45would give up
00:58:46their own desire
00:58:49for a musical career
00:58:52to work
00:58:53within his particular realm
00:58:56because it's always
00:58:57about him.
00:59:02I really was there
00:59:04just for the music.
00:59:09All of that space stuff
00:59:11was not really my thing.
00:59:14You know,
00:59:15if you want to call them
00:59:16true believers.
00:59:19It was almost like a cult.
00:59:23And I say that
00:59:25I'm trying to be diplomatic
00:59:27to find the words
00:59:28because I don't want that
00:59:30to be anything
00:59:31that's negative.
00:59:33But you had
00:59:35the people within the group
00:59:37believed
00:59:38very much
00:59:39in his philosophy.
00:59:42They were deep in it.
00:59:45I don't know
00:59:46what son I was.
00:59:47He was everything.
00:59:49He'd be a bad guy,
00:59:51good guy.
00:59:52He was just
00:59:52a special person.
00:59:54And when
00:59:55that come in your life
00:59:58you get what you can get
01:00:00straight in your life
01:00:01out.
01:00:03And Kurt was a family.
01:00:04Sun Ra
01:00:06had a mother's
01:00:07love.
01:00:08Not a father's love.
01:00:10Father's love
01:00:10is very judgmental.
01:00:12He had a mother's love.
01:00:14Unconditional.
01:00:17He used to say
01:00:17when I see a person
01:00:18I don't see them.
01:00:20When I look at you
01:00:21I don't see you.
01:00:22I see your potential.
01:00:29He used to say
01:00:30are you?
01:00:32I don't think
01:00:34he had a message
01:00:35but I know
01:00:40I'm going to
01:00:41He's a fan.
01:00:43What do I see
01:00:45in my family?
01:00:48What do I see
01:00:49do?
01:00:50that I see
01:00:51in my family?
01:00:51In my family?
01:00:52I see
01:00:52who's the one
01:00:53who's the one
01:00:53who's the one
01:00:54together. You have to have relationships with your musicians that, you know, they know they
01:01:00can come to you if they're in a bind and you'll help them out. So Sonny kept some money always
01:01:07so that if the musicians needed anything, you know, somebody's horn needed repair. If you're
01:01:14hungry, look, I'm out of groceries at my place. He'd take care of you. But he could be frugal on
01:01:22the pay.
01:01:24Every gig we play, he lost money. They tell him, bring 10 people, he brings 25. Tried to promote, it's
01:01:29crazy.
01:01:30And then when he paid you, he paid you with the deposits of the next gig, a gig six months
01:01:35down the road.
01:01:37Sometimes there would be long periods where there were no gigs, nothing happening. But if, you know,
01:01:44gigs come up, you want to be able to also be available. And so that was kind of a struggle
01:01:51to balance.
01:01:52Musicians that I do have have stuck with me a long time, which is a compliment to man that you
01:02:00can have
01:02:00some people who will stick with a leader through thick and thin without the thought of money.
01:02:09One time I said, Sun Ra, we've been on the road for almost two weeks now and I, you know,
01:02:14I haven't gotten paid and I would like to go pay some bills. And he went off on me.
01:02:20Damn it. I told you damn musicians about asking me about money. I'm on a spiritual plane. Don't ask
01:02:26me anybody any damn money. The manager came over to me and paid me a few hundred dollars and said,
01:02:34Sun Ra doesn't want you to play the first set. That's the Sun Ra jail.
01:02:43Sun Ra's whole concept of payment was not equitable. Maybe, you know, you would get $20
01:02:52for a gig. For the people who had families, I can't even imagine how they could explain that.
01:03:03I've got expenses. I've got to deal with it. He's like doling out money in a miserly way. But
01:03:09it was the love, uh, that, that I think I know that I felt for him and for what it
01:03:17was that he was
01:03:18doing. I knew that there was a greater sense of purpose here.
01:03:36Every day I composed something for the creative. When I first started, 11 years old, that's what I was
01:03:43playing. I wouldn't even play for my family. I played just for the creative.
01:03:56Some Ra woke up with the sun. And he sat down at the piano and he improvised a new piece
01:04:04of music.
01:04:06The band never played it. He never played it live. That was purely to give thanks to the creator for
01:04:13his gifts.
01:04:22He had a room. We called it the chaos room. He said, well, this is where I hide my treasures.
01:04:28Music everywhere.
01:04:34He would always be writing music. We'd go on a train. He'd be writing music. In his room, writing music.
01:04:58There's no time you ever spoke to Sun Ra where he didn't mention the creator. He said, everybody
01:05:04all over this planet is always asking the creator for things. Nobody ever gives the creator
01:05:11anything. So every morning, I give the creator a song.
01:05:35He kept coming. He turned out. He didn't mention the creator. He's the author.
01:05:59He got to see the creator of the universe. He got to see the creator of the universe.
01:06:08My music is about giving people an exorcist they never experienced before.
01:06:15They go crazy down here with sex and that's not really love.
01:06:19There's some more things that can give you more ecstasy.
01:06:27You can have a lot of pleasure with dope and sex and religion and different things.
01:06:31A lot of pleasures on the airplane, but I know something else better because I've been part of it.
01:06:39That makes the difference.
01:06:40If I hadn't been part of something better than what's here, I could accept this as the ultimate.
01:06:46But I came from somewhere else and where I came from, I was part of something that's so wonderful that
01:06:53no words to express it.
01:06:59One night we was in the room, me and Sun Ra.
01:07:02He said, I just need me a big, big woman.
01:07:20I remember Sun Ra saying, yeah, I had a woman once.
01:07:23One time he said to me, Craig, you need to stop that, you know, womanizing and get yourself a boyfriend.
01:07:29I'm like, how can I?
01:07:33I never saw him like involved with anybody, but every time we would go to Chicago, there was a black
01:07:42gentleman, very flamboyant.
01:07:46Roland, I think that was his name.
01:07:48And he said, sometimes he gets a little uncomfortable when I'm around, but I know he's happy to see me.
01:07:59Maybe it wasn't easy at all for Sun Ra to be in a world where sex is everywhere and all
01:08:08things.
01:08:10It was not consistent with his mission, his purpose, his reason for being on the planet.
01:08:17And yet he was one of the most fertile beings that I've ever read about or encountered in all of
01:08:26time.
01:08:27Just fertility. He made things. He just didn't make people.
01:08:35Music is a language and my music speaks of everything.
01:08:39So in order to understand the music, you would have to know some of the things that I have studied.
01:08:44Vincent, if you're studying something about Bach or Brahms and Beethoven, you need to study that life too.
01:08:52In 1971, Sun Ra was invited to lecture at UC Berkeley and he taught a class, Black Man in the
01:09:01Cosmos.
01:09:02He was an intellectual and he was noticed by other intellectuals.
01:09:07When you look at this course, you really see the kind of eclectic taste.
01:09:13On the one hand, you have Russian philosophers of language.
01:09:18On the other hand, you have advocates of Black power and Black militancy.
01:09:23He's thinking beyond Eurocentric or Afrocentric approaches.
01:09:28He's thinking beyond race.
01:09:31He's just deeply committed to a life of study.
01:09:34And the life of study to which he's committed is inseparable from this project of making the world better.
01:09:42And in the midst of that thinking and in the midst of that work of bettering the world, we generate
01:09:48beauty.
01:09:54Just Boom presenta questa sera un concerto dal vivo di Sun Ra.
01:10:00Al hochtopunto del festival è l'Archesta Sun Ra.
01:10:04L'Archesta Sun Ra.
01:10:06Questo è un programma con Sun Ra.
01:10:08Lo ideale di Sun Ra.
01:10:31I had an audience, but it wasn't a vast audience.
01:10:36Here, anything new had to be sanitized
01:10:39and everything was more commercialized.
01:10:41In Europe, people looked at certain forms of music
01:10:46a lot differently.
01:10:47So you had many artists that had to leave this country
01:10:50just to go someplace else
01:10:52because people understood what they were doing.
01:10:56When I went to Europe at Sun Ra,
01:10:58it was a huge audience of people.
01:11:16We had been on tour in Europe
01:11:18and this was a large ensemble.
01:11:21I think we had five or six dancers with us
01:11:24and tons and tons of equipment.
01:11:30Nobody knew Sun Ra was negotiating
01:11:33with one of the festivals that we had performed in
01:11:36that they would take care of the tickets for us to go to Egypt.
01:11:48When the black man ruled this land,
01:11:52Pharaoh was sitting on his throne.
01:11:57When the black man ruled this land,
01:12:02Pharaoh was sitting on his throne.
01:12:08Going to Egypt was a totally incredible experience.
01:12:14Seeing our history, it was all in the sculpture.
01:12:18It was all in the art.
01:12:27His vision was futuristic, but at the same time,
01:12:32it was rooted in an ancient culture and mythology,
01:12:38which we had forgotten about or maybe never knew about.
01:12:45That was really very empowering.
01:12:50Taking us there was like a gift.
01:12:53And he also considered himself a Pharaoh.
01:12:57And so to me, that was like his fulfillment
01:13:00of something in himself for himself.
01:13:03Pharaoh was sitting on his throne.
01:13:08Several local mystics have predicted their landing from space this afternoon
01:13:12in the presence of a black musician and thinker named Sun Ra.
01:13:15And upon landing here, he will reveal to the world his so-called
01:13:18plan for the salvation of the black race.
01:13:27In the early 1970s, in a moment of despair, in a moment of impossibility, the promise
01:13:38of law and order is stomping out black rebellion.
01:13:42Ra makes a film called Space is the Place.
01:13:47And it really is an attempt to capture his philosophy.
01:13:54There's this moment I love in the film where Sun Ra seems to be beamed down into this community
01:14:01center in a black neighborhood in the Bay Area in California.
01:14:05And he encounters these teenagers who seem to be non-professional actors.
01:14:12Greetings, black youth, planet Earth, what it is, what it is.
01:14:18I am Sun Ra, ambassador from the intergalactic regions of the Council of Outer Space.
01:14:32Walking around in all these funny clothes, I know I probably take off running.
01:14:35I've seen somebody walking down the street coming, talking all that mess to me, talking
01:14:37about going to outer space.
01:14:39Is he for real?
01:14:40How do you know I'm real?
01:14:42Yes.
01:14:43I'm not real, I'm just like you.
01:14:46You don't exist in this society.
01:14:48If you did, your people wouldn't be seeking equal rights.
01:14:52You're not real.
01:14:54If you were, you'd have some status among the nations of the world.
01:14:58So we'll both miss.
01:15:04You have someone standing in front of you who says, I come from another planet.
01:15:10He's making me think about my situation in the United States as a kind of alien, as someone
01:15:17who might as well be from outer space.
01:15:20Even when he seems to be a bit of a trickster figure, saying things that seem like they're
01:15:27just throw-offs, there's thought behind it.
01:15:30Are there any whiteys up there?
01:15:31They take frequent trips to the moon.
01:15:34I know there's none of you have been invited.
01:15:37He understood the power of cinema to reimagine the black origin story.
01:15:43That feeling of seeing that type of spaceship land with us on it, playing music that way,
01:15:50announcing that we're not in this linear time construct that includes our subjugation.
01:15:56It was a profoundly necessary piece of visual, sonic, performative, comedic imagination.
01:16:04Space is a place with clear.
01:16:07He was just given the metaphor of what the music represented to give us an alternative way
01:16:14of looking at life, because the space is inside here.
01:16:19Another place in the universe, up under different stars, that would be where the alter destiny
01:16:25would come in.
01:16:27We bring them here through isotope teleportation, trans-molecularization.
01:16:36Trans-molecularization, right?
01:16:37It would invoke the other world through those intense musical relationships.
01:16:43The effect of what the music would do, we are transported and we are fundamentally changed.
01:16:51And we can take that a number of ways.
01:16:53It could be abstract.
01:16:53It could be a very concrete claim.
01:16:58Who is he actually bringing with him?
01:17:00Is it only black people?
01:17:02Is it also white people?
01:17:05He invites everybody to join him in the Omniverse.
01:17:10One of Sun Ra's favorite songs was Over the Rainbow.
01:17:15Coming from The Wizard of Oz, which is the narrative of another world, of other possibilities.
01:17:22It's utopian.
01:17:23It all makes sense.
01:17:27Sun Ra is known as the godfather of the movement called Afrofuturism.
01:17:35His ideas would take a much longer time to sort of seep into the cultural bloodstream.
01:17:41And so we are lucky to have found a prophet that is just so in sync with where people are
01:17:47right now.
01:17:47Sun Ra!
01:17:51Sun Ra!
01:17:52Sun Ra!
01:17:54Sun Ra!
01:17:58Sun Ra!
01:18:02Sun Ra!
01:18:05Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
01:18:11oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
01:18:13oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
01:18:13oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
01:18:13oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
01:18:17oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
01:18:37Truth cannot save you because the truth is what you do every day.
01:18:41Your only hope now is a lie.
01:18:44But I don't call a lie a lie, I'm calling a myth, you see.
01:18:48So I'm telling the people that they've tried everything and now they have to try mythocracy.
01:18:53They got a democracy, they come out of theocracy, but they should try the mythocracy.
01:19:02His way of working in the world involved, invoking our skepticism rather than running from it.
01:19:10You know, you meet a guy and he hands you his business card and he says,
01:19:13look, I consort with ancient Egyptians and I'm from outer space.
01:19:17And you're supposed to take him seriously, he's on a mission from the Creator.
01:19:21You're supposed to take him seriously, would you?
01:19:24He doesn't want himself to be taken seriously in that way.
01:19:28He wanted you to get the point.
01:19:30It's going to take change of a religious scope and scale.
01:19:40Sunrise program was change and change radically.
01:19:45Turn or burn.
01:19:46Turn or burn.
01:20:26Just, I miss him, you know.
01:20:30He said, I'm here to help mankind.
01:20:33I think I'm going to fail.
01:20:37Mankind is on the right road.
01:20:39We're going in the wrong direction.
01:20:43He said he was doing the music for the 21st century.
01:20:47Love and life interested me so
01:20:50That I dare to knock at the door of the cosmos
01:20:54I think that that's why this music is here.
01:20:57It's here to awaken folks.
01:21:24I really believed strongly in that alternate myth that Sun Ra was talking about.
01:21:31He had that power and that charisma, but also he was offering something that nobody else was.
01:21:38Dare to knock at the door of the cosmos
01:21:43My story is endless.
01:21:45Because it never repeats itself.
01:21:49I'm not part of history.
01:21:52I'm more part of the mystery.
01:21:54I'm not part of history.
01:22:21I'm not part of history.
01:22:26The space waves, the space waves, the space waves
01:22:30From planet to planet
01:22:34From planet to planet
01:22:38Now we've got more
01:22:42The space waves, the space waves, the space waves
01:22:46From planet to planet
01:22:50From planet to planet
01:22:55Travel with love
01:22:58The same way, the same way, the same way
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