All language subtitles for American.Masters.S40E02.Sun.Ra.Do.The.Impossible.1080p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta[EZTVx.to]

♪♪

♪♪

-♪ Imagination is
a magic carpet ♪

♪ Upon which we may soar ♪

♪ To distant lands and climes ♪

♪ And even go beyond the moon ♪

♪ To any planet in the sky ♪

♪ If we came from nowhere here ♪

♪ Why can't we go
somewhere there? ♪

♪♪

-I believe that it is
genuinely a mischaracterization

to speak of one Sun Ra, right?

At any given time
there was a whole bunch more.

♪♪

Sun Ra the virtuoso,
teacher, bandleader, the poet,

the cosmologist,
the historian, the Egyptologist,

community leader, the patriarch,

the mother, and that's
just scratching the surface.

♪♪

-He was pretty fearless,

and it would take a lot
as a Black man

to do all of the things
he did with so much sovereignty,

with no examples of anyone
like him in existence at all.

-I think of Sun Ra

as one of the great visionaries
of the 20th century.

He's someone who made
his life into a work of art.

Every moment of his life
feels like a performance

and a provocation
and a prophetic statement.

You think you know
where things stand,

you think you know
what the issues are,

and then someone comes in
who changes the frame

of reference entirely.

-Sun Ra is a pioneer
in Afrofuturism.

He influenced mainstream cats.

He influenced underground cats,
everybody.

His influence is just that vast

and he was making music
for the future.

-Sun Ra thought
that if he could reorder our way

of thinking through sound,

he could prepare us
for a different world.

That was his goal.
A different world.

♪♪

-Someone who is certain
to be written up

in the Black music
history books.

He is Sun Ra

and he joins us today with his
big band group, the Arkestra.

I understand in reports
that you believe you're an angel

and that you were born
on Saturn.

Is that, uh -- Set us straight.

Is that an act
or do you really believe that?

-Well, I wasn't born there.

I came from there.
I don't remember being born.

I've dealt with eternal things.

Eternal things are not born.

-You came from Saturn?
-Yes.

-You are not a human being?
-No.

-What are you?
-I'm an angel.

I probably have been promoted
to be an ark angel now.

Not too much that a man or woman
can do about this planet.

It takes an angel.

♪♪

-In 1936,

Sun Ra claimed he was in a white
light lifted to another place

that he recognized as Saturn.

♪♪

-My body was transmolecularized,

that's what I call it.

It became like light beams.

I could see through myself
and I went on up.

♪♪

-Aliens told him
that through music

he would be able to deliver
this complex

but beautiful message of peace
to the world.

And so he comes back down with
this powerful sense of mission.

♪♪

♪♪

-There's no stage persona
called Sun Ra.

That was him all the time.

24/7.

And for the longest time
Sun Ra did a really good job

of keeping his earthly origins
a state secret or something.

That wasn't consistent with who
he wanted you to think he was

and where he wanted
you to think he was from.

♪♪

Birmingham, Alabama,

also known as the Magic City, is
where Sun Ra was born, in 1914,

and his name was
Herman Poole Blount.

-Sun Ra was mentored
by a man named Fess Whatley.

Fess Watley was a great musician
who lived in Birmingham

and he helped develop a lot
of the musicians

that came out of Birmingham
in that time.

-Sun Ra rose to the top
as a teenager.

He was known as having
the best band

in a city as important in
the Black South as Birmingham.

♪♪

-The bands were more
than just performances,

they were our communities.

They were everything
if you were a musician.

Those 18, 20 people
that you traveled with a lot,

you were like a family.

-Big band leaders consider
themselves royalty.

They call themselves counts,
kings --

King Pleasure, Duke Ellington.

-He would talk about how
when he was young,

Duke Ellington
would come to Birmingham,

like, he would take
his music to Duke Ellington.

He would say "Look at this,"

Duke would look at his music and
say "Stay on it, keep on it."

♪♪

-He was an encyclopedia
for movements in jazz.

He felt that every phase of jazz
from New Orleans

to the present day
should be respected.

-Sun Ra's whole breadth
of sonic expression

comes out of our entire past.

He's a master at it.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Now the draft becomes
the means of mobilizing

the mightiest fighting force
in United States history.

♪♪

-Sun Ra was 27 years old

when the United States
entered World War II in 1941.

-Sun Ra had become anti-war
by reading DuBois and Gandhi.

The idea of going and killing
somebody was just beyond him.

So he declared himself
as a conscientious objector.

-This was by no means common,

or well received
for the masses of Black people.

We were fighting
to prove ourselves

as soldiers within their army,

and Sun Ra wasn't having that.

♪♪

-They arrested Sonny
and they put him in jail.

His incarceration separated him

from his one love in life,
music.

He wrote letters from
his confinement to authorities

that he hoped could help him
by relieving him of it.

-The arranging and composing,

the rehearsing, the developing
of potential talent,

that is my work and the only
earthly pleasure I love.

To separate me from music
would be more cruel

than standing me by a wall
and shooting me.

I think I would prefer
the latter.

-Sun Ra was jailed in Birmingham
for being a draft resister,

and eventually
he was transferred

to a camp in Pennsylvania.

-His family disowns him.
They never come to visit him.

He's gone.

He was sent back to Birmingham,

but now Birmingham was
abhorrent to him.

-When he returned, people acted
like they had forgotten him

and like they didn't want
to have anything to do with him.

He hung out in Birmingham
for a while,

but he really felt a really
profound sense of alienation.

♪♪

-♪ Dream, dreaming,
dreaming, dreaming, dreaming ♪

-♪ Here I am dreaming again ♪
-♪ Here I am dreaming again ♪

-♪ Dreaming, dreaming,
dreaming, dreaming ♪

-In the mid-'40s,

Sun Ra migrates to Chicago
like many African-Americans,

sort of the tail end
of that Great Migration.

He arrives in a space

that is possibly one of the
most richest musical cultures

at that particular moment.

-♪ Dreaming, dreaming,
dreaming, dreaming ♪

-He seeks out
Fletcher Henderson,

someone that Sun Ra
just idolized as an organizer

of sound and of people.

Sun Ra gets a foot in the door

and is basically
a rehearsal pianist

and then also a copyist
and arranger.

Fletcher seems to understand
the promise of Sun Ra,

but he's not exactly a
seamless fit with the orchestra.

He was wired
a little differently.

And so the musical ideas
that he was setting to paper,

the way that he was
expressing them at the piano,

there were members of the band
that resisted his influence

and in fact resisted him.

♪♪

-In Chicago,

in the early years,
Sun Ra is part of a scene

that is not simply
about musical performance

but is about political activism.

There's a place
in the Southside of Chicago

called Washington Park.

What you see is people
giving harangues,

getting up on a soapbox and
trying to attract an audience.

Sun Ra had a soapbox, too.

He brought these broadsheets.

There are dozens of them.

And they're making these
really interesting connections

among realms -- music,
popular culture, politics,

history, myth, and cosmology.

-He represents a tradition
of Black seekers

who are autodidacts.

And they teach themselves.
They read their own books.

Alternate bibles,
different spiritual traditions,

different magical traditions,

and they take them all
quite seriously as a way

of creating narratives
of Black identity,

Black culture,
and Black possibility.

-If you're not a myth,
whose reality are you?

If you're not a myth,
whose reality are you?

If you're not a reality,
whose myth are you?

Whose reality are you?

-He believed that Black people
are sort of stripped

of our mythology

and he felt he was put here
to bring back a mythology,

create a realm
in the Black imagination.

He thought we don't have
enough of a fantasy world,

and our fantasy world
is often vulgarized

and pushed toward
very carnal things --

sex, violence --
and myth

allows this sort of
breathless backing away

from all the carnal world

and to fantasize about what
would it be like to be a god?

Can he be a god and a king?

What would it be like
to wear a crown?

He was able to really pick up
on the fact

that there wasn't anyone

who was doing
the actual grunt work

of creating a Black
mythological world.

In Chicago,

Herman Poole Blount
decides to transform

and change his name
to Le Sony'r Ra,

but publicly for his
professional identity, Sun Ra.

♪♪

And in that,

we see him beginning
to coalesce the intellectual,

the political, and the artistic
into an identity

that will become
even more powerful later on.

-My music concerns the cosmos
and the greater universe.

It also concerns the myth
of things,

in opposition
to the reality of things.

So it moves out
beyond just music.

-He begins to put together small
groups of like-minded musicians

who he could teach, who
he could share his visions with.

People like John Gilmore,
Pat Patrick, Marshall Allen,

musicians who would remain
with him as long

as he remained on the Earth.

♪♪

-He was the first one
to really introduce me

into higher forms of music.

Past what you might say Bird and
Monk and the fellows were doing.

I didn't really think
anyone was ahead of them

until I met Sun Ra, you know?

Very highly advanced, you know.

So when I saw that
I said,

"Well, I think I'll make this
the stop," you know?

♪♪

-When Marshall got in the band,
he had to come to the house

every day by himself
for rehearsal.

-Drill you, drill you,
drill you, drill you, drill you.

You couldn't get away
with nothing,

with all your slick stuff.

And he didn't want that.

He wanted this.

-When he gets together,
six, eight of these people,

he realized he has
an ensemble on his hands,

and he calls that ensemble
The Arkestra.

♪♪

♪♪

-The newest sounds to come along
in contemporary jazz

are written by the composer,
arranger,

Le Sun Ra out of Chicago.

Le Sun Ra, among other things,

fuses the snakelike
bebop melodies

with colors of Duke Ellington,

and the experimental changes
of Thelonious Monk.

Le Sun Ra says of his music,

that it is a portrayal of
everything the Negro really was,

is, and is going to be,

with emphasis focused
on the Negro's triumph

over the demonic currents
of his experience.

♪♪

-♪ I have many names ♪
-♪ Many names ♪

-♪ Names of splendor ♪
-♪ Names of splendor ♪

-♪ Names of shame ♪
-♪ Names of shame ♪

-♪ Some call me Mr. Ra ♪
-♪ Some call me Mr. Ra ♪

-♪ Others call me Mystery ♪
-♪ Others call me Mystery ♪

-♪ You can call me Mr. Mystery ♪
-♪ You can call me Mr. Mystery ♪

-As Sun Ra told us,
he has many names.

Sun Ra.
Sun Ra and his Arkestra.

Sun Ra
and his Myth-Science Arkestra.

Sun Ra
and his Solar-Myth Arkestra.

Sun Ra and his Astro
Intergalactic Research Arkestra.

Sun Ra and his Year 2000
Myth Science...

-Sun Ra is one
of the first Black artists

to own his own record label,

Saturn Records,
with his partner Alton Abraham.

♪♪

-How do you decide what's going
to come out on Saturn Records?

-Whatever I think people are
not gon' to listen to.

I always recorded it

where it would take them
some time maybe 20 years,

30 years, 40 years
before they'd really hear it.

-You had different
jazz musicians

that were releasing
music independently.

Max Roach and Charles Mingus
had a label together,

but I think Sun Ra might've been
the most robust example

because he did it for so long.

It's everything from swing
to bebop to progressive,

to music that doesn't
even really sound like music.

That's a lot of music
to go through.

A lot of Sun Ra fans
that I know personally,

I don't even think
they've gotten through

the whole catalog themselves.

-He is both a dream and this
headache for record collectors.

♪♪

-When an artist decides to make
their own records for themselves

and own the work,
own the masters,

that is,
it's a breakthrough moment.

It's a rejection of the system,

of the plantation system
that is a recorded industry,

plain and simple.

♪♪

-As Sun Ra is ramping
up Saturn records,

one of the early statements

that he makes
as a composer-bandleader

is "Jazz in Silhouette."

And you get the sense
of all of the musical language

that Sun Ra has absorbed
and mastered even

as he is moving
into a new area of expression.

♪♪

-On this album, "Ancient
Ethiopia" is a beautiful song.

It's very majestic.

♪♪

The flutes I love

because it's like this really
kind of free-spirited movement

reflective of nature,

and the melody connects
with a lot of African music

throughout the diaspora.

He's really bringing
in the sound of mystery

because it's a far away land.

It's not necessarily Ethiopia,

but it's bringing
our spirits back.

♪♪

♪♪

-♪ Interplanetary ♪

♪ Interplanetary,
interplanetary music ♪

♪ Interplanetary ♪

♪ Interplanetary,
interplanetary music ♪

♪♪

♪♪

-There's an outer space
orchestra?

-Mm-hmm. An organization called
the Cosmic Space Jazz group

conducted by Mr. Le Sun Ra.

-Sounds like a philosopher,
Le Sun Ra.

-He is a philosopher.
He's a poet and a pianist.

♪♪

-New York in the 1960s

is wonderfully
the weirdest place in the world.

Poets and seers
and mystics and artists.

A space where jazz has moved
into free jazz,

which some people call
also ecstatic jazz,

because it really is
about just this extreme,

ecstatic expression of sound.

♪♪

New York in the sixties is
a dream but even in that space,

he's very different.

-One, two.

♪♪

♪ I am strange ♪

♪ My mind is tinted
with the colors of madness ♪

♪ They fight in silent fury ♪

♪ And left to assess
each other ♪

♪ I am strange ♪

♪I have pushed
a degree of love ♪

♪ That is so unwise ♪

♪ In one world
that it is wisdom in another ♪

♪ I am strange ♪

♪ I no longer have respect
for hate ♪

♪ For I am stronger than hate ♪

♪ I'm contemptuous of both those
who hate and those who destroy ♪

♪ I'm not a part of the world
which hates and destroys ♪

♪ I seek to live a better life ♪

♪ I am strange ♪

-Sun Ra, I don't know
how he did it,

but he found a place
and then we all moved in there.

So we had a place to rehearse,
24 hours a day.

-It was so jammed full
of instruments and furniture,

had I stopped to think,

I would've thought I don't know
how people could live like this

because it was so cluttered.

He had a huge collection
of books.

I could remember seeing
J. A. Rogers' famous book,

"Sex and Race."

-There was something
very practical

to have this band
under one roof,

but there was also
a utopian ideal.

A notion that we are carving out

a beautiful space for our lives

and our art and our camaraderie

and our imagination to coexist.

♪♪

-Back in those days
it was a mixed bag critically,

where Sun Ra was concerned.

It didn't pass muster with the
critics and the critical elite.

♪♪

♪♪

-Sun Ra's music wasn't
the sound of the time.

Critics would've
much rather listened to Miles,

listened to Thelonious Monk,
stuff that they could,

for the lack of a better term,
digest a little bit better.

-He's interested
in the idea of the avant-garde,

using art, using culture
to inspire new ways of being,

which he thinks can be
a way forward to Black freedom

and Black liberation.

♪♪

-I was part of the writers
workshop called Umbra,

which I joined in 1963,

and one of our contributors
was Sun Ra, as a poet.

The musicians like Sun Ra
put a lot of pressure on us.

They were able to write as well
as perform on their instruments

and compose music.

One of Sun Ra's poems is
entitled "I Am An Instrument."

"I am an instrument.

The timbre of my voice flies
with the winds of heaven..."

-I belong to one
who is more than a musician.

♪♪

He's an artist.

I live to be his pleasure.

I do not flee from him
when he comes to me.

For instruments are
not sufficient in themselves.

They are cold and lifeless

without the touch
of hands and mind.

The artist holds myself
tenderly in his hands.

First, he touches the strings
of my heart,

to find if they are
in tune with the universe.

Then suddenly
vibrant thoughts strikes there

and music from the world
of time,

and space is born.

-Music that's part of
his makeup.

He's an instrument
because he's driven by it.

The music is playing him.

Sun Ra's poetry I think
is very private.

His poetry reads more
like notes or diaries

and carry his ideas
about humanity.

♪♪

-Now it is time

for this nation
to take a clearly leading role

in space achievement,

which in many ways may hold
the key to our future on Earth.

-Just before Apollo 11
goes to the moon in July 1969,

Esquire magazine does
this amazing feature called

"Le Mot Juste for the Moon,"

which means the right word
for the moon landing.

[ Laughs ]

The magazine frames it
as a collection of helpful hints

for Neil Armstrong
who will be the first man

to step on the moon.

-10, 9,
ignition sequence start...

♪♪

-They ask for suggestions
from this remarkable range

of figures -- Muhammad Ali,
Bob Hope, Timothy Leary.

Some of them are saying, "This
is a moment of American triumph.

We've beat the Soviets
to the moon."

Muhammad Ali says,

"Bring me back a challenger

because I've beaten
everybody on Earth."

And then they also ask Sun Ra,

who they describe only
as "the space-age jazz poet,"

and Sun Ra provides a poem
that really sticks out --

-Reality has touched
against myth /

Humanity can move
to achieve the impossible /

Because when you've achieved
one impossible the others /

Come together
to be with their brother,

the first impossible /

Borrowed from the rim
of the myth /

Happy Space Age To You...

-Altitude 4,200

-Houston, you're go for landing,
over.

We are looking great.

-Reality touches myth.

That's crucial when we do
something that seems unreal.

-The eagle has landed.

-Because it shows us
that we can do the impossible.

-That's one small step for man

and one giant leap for mankind.

-There's not just one
impossible,

there's not just one step
for mankind and we're done.

There's other impossibles
to come.

-Ra at the core
of his philosophy

is an embrace
of the impossibility,

something that we have
never really experienced.

He's interested
in making people feel unsettled

in the service of getting them
to imagine the world in a way

that they may have never
imagined it before.

♪♪

Someone who always tried
to redefine

the space that he was in.

♪♪

-Sun Ra was always looking for
the new electronics

that were coming out.

Back in the '40s in Birmingham,

he got this keyboard called
the Solovox.

It had effects on it that
no other organ at that time had.

♪♪

Not only did he have
the Solovox,

he had one
of the first wire recorders.

A Sound Mirror, a Wurlitzer,
then he had the Clavioline.

Years later in the '60s,

as Sun Ra continued
his sonic exploration,

he met Tam Fiofori.

He was a photographer
as well as a jazz writer.

Tam introduced him to the great
synthesizer inventor Bob Moog.

-I called Sun Ra
and I told Sun Ra to come over

to Robert Moog's studio.

Sun Ra sat down
behind his portable Moog.

Moog was completely
flabbergasted.

♪♪

In the '60s and '70s,
incorporating these keyboards,

nobody was doing that yet.

It was a whole
different approach for jazz.

Usually it was like rock bands

that had picked up
on the keyboards

because they wanted to sound
interstellar,

but Sun Ra already pulled it

into a whole
different direction.

-When Sun Ra gets his hands on a
new piece of musical equipment,

he doesn't think of it
in terms of a palette.

He thinks of it
in terms of a portal.

He's just like,

"this is a shortcut
to another dimension in sound."

♪♪

It's the next step
in the musical progression.

-Sound, not melody, not rhythm,

but sound itself as
a completely legitimate sphere

of expression for his spiritual
ideas, political ideas,

distortion, and the kind of
electronic chaos of that period.

But it's also for those of us
who listen to it enough,

it's pleasurable, too.

♪♪

-♪ Jupiter, second stop ♪

♪ Jupiter, second stop ♪

♪ Jupiter, jup jup jup ♪

♪ Jupiter... ♪

-As a band that has a reputation
for being a little abstract,

maybe a little abstruse,

Sun Ra has a member
of the Arkestra

that I think many people
listening to the band

could relate to because of
the clarity and charisma.

♪♪

June Tyson, the voice
of the Sun Ra Arkestra,

joins the band
in the late 1960s.

♪♪

-The thing about June
is that she had a voice

that was not of this planet.

Her voice was really
somewhere else altogether.

And her presence, she had
this wonderful regal presence.

-♪ Somebody else's ideas
of somebody else's world ♪

♪ Is not my idea of things
as they are ♪

♪ Somebody else's idea
of things to come ♪

♪ Need not be the only way
to live ♪

-I think that Sun Ra gave
June a lot of authority

in a sense with the music.

He gave her a lot of his poetry
to interpret.

She had kind of
a natural sense of delivery.

-♪ Simplicity, spontaneous ♪

♪ Omnipresent duality ♪

♪ Boldness standing undaunted
unashamed ♪

♪ Straight and tall ♪

♪ Noble ♪

♪ Point by point
can make a straight line ♪

♪ When drawn together ♪

♪ I hope you understand ♪

-Sun Ra and June Tyson have this
transcendent sort of agape love

that defies notions
of romantic love and filial love

and even the family and creates
a lifelong collaboration.

-♪ I hope you understand ♪

♪ I hope you understand ♪

♪ I hope you understand when
the Black man ruled this land ♪

♪ Pharaoh was sitting
on his throne ♪

♪ When the Black man
ruled this land ♪

-I saw Sun Ra last Saturday
night in New York

and his band played
for a long time

and they played really good
music and everything,

but why does he have to walk out
with capes on?

-He's been wearing
those blue capes

and playing electronic music
since 1957.

That's what I've been trying
to tell all of you, man.

He's the master of it.

-They have a big set up

and he had a lot of musicians
in there

and they're playing good rhythms
and then he'd come walk out,

like walk up and down
smiling at everyone

like he's a king
or something like that.

-He is a king, man.
Can't he be a god and a king?

Can't he be, man? Let him be.

Artistically, he's
being fulfilled,

he puts on a cape
and plays his electronic piano

and walks up and smiles.

He's a teacher and a great,
great artist, man.

-Sun Ra wears the most
wonderful, flamboyant outfits,

appreciates sparkle and glitter
and gorgeous fabrics.

-When I first got together
with this group and he'd say,

"All right, everybody put on
their space uniforms."

And I'm like, "What is
this guy talking about"?

Visually, Sun Ra had
his whole concept

of what became part of the music
on the stage.

He was Hendrix, Little Richard,

all those cats before
in terms of his dress.

-He didn't conform
to these forms of masculinity

that were so associated
with jazz music at the time.

We had Miles Davis
and John Coltrane,

and Miles Davis would turn
his back on the audience

and all of these kinds
of cool ways of being.

-Sun Ra is one of those
Black men at the outskirts,

at the edges of those forms
of masculinity.

I think it's about a refusal of
normativity in all its senses,

being otherwise,
being different, being strange.

He performs that
in his everyday life,

as well as
in his stage presence.

♪♪

-Sun Ra would call a tune
on the piano

and then, you know, who knows
where it would develop,

where it might lead us.

♪♪

There'd be one of the songs,
maybe the hypnotic trancy thing.

-♪ The world is waiting for
the sunrise, for the sunrise ♪

♪ The world is waiting for
the sunrise ♪

-Then boom really uptempo, wow!

♪♪

-Sun Ra's performances entailed
more than just the music.

♪♪

You just had to be alert

and kind of in tune
to what Sun Ra wanted.

-I'm the physical expression
of the music.

Our bodies were the instrument.

♪♪

-He said that when musicians are
not able to express themselves,

sometimes you need the movements
of the physical body

to take the people
to the next level.

♪♪

It's a sonic ritual,
it's a meditation,

it's a device to take you
from one place to the next.

It's rooted in the tradition
and the blues

and the doo wop
and all the sounds

that Sun Ra had to journey
through.

♪♪

-Although there are performers
whose music and performance

has a ritualistic quality,

Sun Ra takes that
to the extreme,

where his performances
include dance, singing,

sometimes poetic recitation,
costume, in addition to music.

That complete vision,

where it's
a multimedia aesthetic,

is central to Sun Ra
as a performer.

♪♪

-My music actually is
reaching outwards,

not being a part of the past
or the present or the future.

But rather what I call
an alter destiny.

-Sun Ra came with a mission
to get us out of history,

somebody else's story, and to
move us into our alter destiny.

He told us all the time.

"Your survival depends on
the unknown.

So stop trying
to remix what you have.

It won't work."

Alter Destiny.
It's a negation.

It's the thing
you haven't thought of yet.

It's a placeholder
for an idea about utopia

that is not connected
to ideology.

-The alter destiny is a very
early articulation of the notion

that the future is not only
unfixed,

but that we are trapped
in notions of time

that force us in places that
we don't actually have to go.

We can step out of time
and create another trajectory.

♪♪

-Sun Ra understood

that sound could be used to jolt
people out of their complacency,

to move people
to another state of awareness.

He had a device
that he called the space chord,

and the space chord was
a seemingly random set of notes

that he would call
at particular points.

♪♪

-He brings you to these moments

where things just seem
to just lose themselves.

That for him are these moments

where you get to see
and experience in his view

a kind of liberating
possibility.

♪♪

-In New York, Sun Ra is part
of a Black avant-garde,

but he's got a vision to preach.

Sun Ra begins to seek out larger
and larger venues.

He books shows with
almost any other kind of band

that'll have him.

He begins attracting more
and more white people,

playing pretty big venues

sometimes with rock bands,
MC5 in Detroit.

This leads to an expansion
of Sun Ra's audience

and he gets a reputation
as an alien, a guy

who's playing experimental music
that rockers can get to, too.

Ultimately he lands
on the cover of Rolling Stone.

♪♪

Check out the shades.

The cover of Rolling Stone.

I haven't held one in my hands,

so this is a great moment
for me.

"You see infinity has a lot
of different parts,"

and indeed it does.

♪♪

-We're sitting in
the Sun Ra residence,

also known as the Arkestral
Institute of Sun Ra.

Since 1968 this has been the
headquarters for the Arkestra.

-In New York, the building
that they were renting was sold

and they needed another place
to land and Marshall Allen,

his father
was willing to sell them

a building in Philadelphia
for a dollar.

♪♪

-Sun Ra ran this house
by African principles.

He was the chief
and the chief rules.

-One, two, three, play.

-No women, no alcohol, no drugs.

Just music,
that's what the house was for.

♪♪

-Sun Ra rehearsed
all day every day.

He would fall asleep
in rehearsals.

Oh, yeah, he was human.

He'd be at the piano,
fall asleep,

and everybody would sneak out
one by one.

-He used to say,

"A little birdie told me
that you was over on Chew Avenue

with so and so doing so and so."

[ Laughs ]

He would know the
most uncanny things,

but he wasn't judgmental.

He wanted you to be focused
on his goal.

And his goal was
to save our people.

♪♪

-We were supposed
to be warriors of this sound.

If he had his way,
we would have nothing to do

but do music all day, you know,

no family, no responsibilities,
just play music.

-I wasn't gonna live in no room,
no house,

with no musty men, you know?

No, no. It was like the Army.

I said no,
I joined the Army for that.

-I say, "Sonny, can I go to take
my girlfriend to the movies?"

He said, "Well, perhaps,

but we're fighting a battle
on this planet.

You got to be swinging
on your horn, now play this."

-He'd knock on the door,

hand you a piece of music
no matter what time it was.

-♪ When the world
was in darkness ♪

♪ And darkness was ignorance ♪

♪ Along came Ra ♪

-♪ Along came Ra ♪

-♪ When the world
was in darkness ♪

♪ And darkness was ignorance ♪

♪ Along came Ra ♪

-♪ Along came Ra ♪

-♪ The living myth ♪

-He had a way of picking people
who had devotion

to what it was that he did,
to the extent

that many people
would give up their own desire

for a musical career to work
within his particular realm.

'Cause it's always about him.

♪♪

-I really was there
just for the music.

-♪ The living myth ♪

-And all of that space stuff
was not really my thing.

You know, if you wanna
call them true believers.

[ Laughs ]

-It was almost like a cult.

And I say that -- I'm trying to
be diplomatic to find the words

because I don't want that
to be anything that's negative,

but you had the people
within the group

who believed very much
in his philosophy

and they were deep in it.

-I don't know what Sun Ra was.
He was everything.

He'd be a bad guy, good guy.

He was just a special person

and when that come in your life,

you get what you can get,
straighten your life out.

-It wasn't a cult,
it was a family.

Sun Ra had a mother's love,
not a father's love.

A father's love is
very judgmental.

He had a mother's love,
unconditional.

He used to say, "When I see
a person, I don't see them.

When I look at you I don't see
you, I see your potential."

-♪ The Sound of Joy
is Enlightenment ♪

♪ Space, Fire, Truth is
Enlightenment ♪

♪ Space Fire,
sometimes it's Music ♪

♪ Strange Mathematics ♪

♪ Rhythmic Equations ♪

-It's hard to keep
a big band together.

You have to have relationships
with your musicians

that they know
that they can come to you

in a bind
and you'll help them out.

So Sonny kept some money always

so that if
the musicians needed anything,

somebody's horn needed repair,
if you're hungry,

"Look, I'm out of groceries
in my place,"

he'd take care of you.

But he could be frugal
on the pay.

-Every gig we played,
he lost money.

They told him bring 10 people,
he brings 25.

Drive the promoters crazy.
And then when he paid you,

he paid you with the deposits
of the next gig,

a gig six months down the road.

-Sometimes there would be
long periods

where there were no gigs,
nothing happening,

but if gigs come up, you want to
be able to also be available,

and so that was
kind of a struggle to balance.

-Musicians I do have
have stuck with me a long time,

which is a compliment to man

that you can have some people
who will stick with a leader

through thick and thin
without the thought of money.

-One time I said,

"Sun Ra, we've been on the road
for almost two weeks now,

and I haven't gotten paid,

and I would like to
go pay some bills."

And he went off on me,
"[Bleep] damn it,

I told you [bleep]damn musicians
about asking me about money.

I'm on a spiritual plane.

Don't ask me about
any [bleep] damn money."

The manager came over to me and
paid me a few hundred dollars,

and said, "Sun Ra doesn't want
you to play the first set."

That's the Sun Ra jail.

♪♪

-Sun Ra's whole concept
of payment was not equitable.

Maybe, you know,
you would get $20 for a gig.

For the people who had families,

I can't even imagine
how they could explain that.

-I've got expenses
I've got to deal with.

And he's doling out money
in a miserly way.

But it was the love
that I think --

I know that I felt for him

and for what it was
that he was doing.

I knew that there was
a greater sense of purpose here.

♪♪

-Sun Ra woke up with the sun,
and he sat down at the piano

and he improvised a new piece
of music.

The band never played it,
he never played it live.

That was purely to give thanks
to the Creator for his gifts.

♪♪

-He had a room,
we called it the chaos room.

He said, "This is
where I hide my treasures."

Music everywhere.

♪♪

He would always
be writing music.

We'd go on a train,
he'd be writing music,

in his room writing music.

♪♪

-There's no time
you ever spoke to Sun Ra

where he didn't mention
the Creator.

He said,
"Everybody all over this planet

is always asking the Creator
for things.

Nobody ever gives
the Creator anything.

So every morning I give
the Creator a song."

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-One night we was in the room,
me and Sun Ra, and he said,

"Man, I just need me
a big leg woman."

I laughed.

-♪ Sunrise, love everlasting ♪

♪ Reaches outward to a love ♪

-I remember Sun Ra saying,
"Yeah, I had a woman once."

One time he said to me, "Craig,

you need to stop that womanizing
and get yourself a boyfriend."

I'm like -- [ Laughs ]

-I never saw him, like,
involved with anybody.

But every time
we would go to Chicago,

there was a Black gentleman,
very flamboyant.

Roland, I think that was
his name.

And he said,

"Sometimes he gets a little
uncomfortable when I'm around,

but I know he's happy
to see me."

-Maybe it wasn't easy
for Sun Ra to be in a world

where sex is everywhere
and all things.

-It was not consistent
with his mission, his purpose,

his reason for being
on the planet.

And yet he was one
of the most fertile beings

that I've ever read about
or encountered in all of time.

Just fertility.

He made things.
He just didn't make people.

-Music is a language, and
my music speaks of everything.

So in order
to understand the music,

you would have to know some of
the things that I have studied.

For instance, if you're studying
something about Bach or Brahms

and Beethoven, you need to
study their life too.

-In 1971, Sun Ra was invited
to lecture at UC Berkeley,

and he taught a class,
"Black Man in the Cosmos."

He was an intellectual

and he was noticed
by other intellectuals.

-When you look at this course,

you really see the kind of
eclectic taste.

On the one hand,

you have Russian philosophers
of language,

on the other hand,

you have advocates of
Black power and Black militancy.

He's thinking beyond
either Eurocentric

or Afrocentric approaches.

He's thinking beyond race.

-He's just deeply committed
to a life of study,

and the life of study
to which he's committed

is inseparable from his project
of making the world better.

And in the midst
of that thinking,

and in the midst of that work
of bettering the world,

we generate beauty.

-[ Speaking Italian ]

-[ Speaking Dutch ]

-[ Speaking Spanish ]

-[ Speaking Italian ]

-♪ We travel the spaceways ♪

♪ From planet to planet ♪

-Here in this country
Sun Ra had an audience,

but it wasn't a vast audience.

Here, anything new
had to be sanitized,

and everything was
more commercialized.

In Europe,

people looked at certain forms
of music a lot differently.

So you had many artists

that had to leave this country
just to go someplace else

because people understood
what they were doing.

When I went to Europe
with Sun Ra,

it was a huge audience
of people.

-♪ We travel the spaceways ♪

♪ From planet... ♪

-We had been on tour in Europe,

and this was a large ensemble.

I think we had five
or six dancers with us

and tons and tons of
equipment.

Nobody knew Sun Ra
was negotiating with one

of the festivals
that we had performed in

that they would take care of the
tickets for us to go to Egypt.

♪♪

-♪ When the Black man
ruled this land ♪

♪ Pharaoh was sitting
on his throne ♪

♪ When the Black man
ruled this land ♪

♪ Pharaoh was sitting
on his throne ♪

-Going to Egypt was a
totally incredible experience.

Seeing our history,
it was all in the sculpture,

it was all in the art.

-♪ I hope you understand ♪

♪ I hope you understand ♪

-His vision was futuristic,
but at the same time

it was rooted in
an ancient culture and mythology

which we had forgotten about
or maybe never knew about.

That was really very empowering.

-Taking us there
was like a gift.

And he also considered
himself a Pharaoh.

And so to me that was like
his fulfillment of something

in himself for himself.

-♪ Pharaoh was sitting
on his throne ♪

-Several local mystics

have predicted a landing
from space this afternoon

in the person of
a Black musician and thinker

named Sun Ra.

And upon landing,
he will reveal to the world

his so-called plan for
the salvation of the Black race.

-I am the alter destiny.

The presence of the living myth.

-In the early 1970s,
in a moment of despair,

in a moment of impossibility,

the promise of law and order
is stomping out Black rebellion.

Ra makes a film called
"Space Is The Place,"

and it really is an attempt
to capture his philosophy.

-There's this moment
I love in the film

where Sun Ra seems to be beamed
down into this community center

in a Black neighborhood
in the Bay Area in California,

and he encounters
these teenagers

who seem to be
non-professional actors.

-Greetings, Black youth
of planet Earth.

What it is, what it is.

I am Sun Ra,

ambassador from
the intergalactic regions

of the counsel of outer space.

-Walking around
in all these funny clothes.

[Bleep], I'd probably
take off running,

I see someone walking
down the street, coming,

talking all that mess to me,

talking 'bout going to
outer space.

-Is he for real?

-How do you know I'm real?
-Yes.

-I'm not real.
I'm just like you.

You don't exist in this society.

If you did, your people wouldn't
be seeking equal rights.

You're not real.

If you were,

you'd have some status
among the nations of the world,

so we're both myths.

-If someone's standing
in front of you who says,

"I come from another planet,"

he's making me think about my
situation in the United States,

as a kind of alien,

as someone who might
as well be from outer space.

Even when he seems to be
a bit of a trickster figure,

saying things that seem
like they're just throw offs,

there's thought behind it.

-Are there any whiteys up there?

-They take frequent trips
to the moon.

I notice,
none of you have been invited.

-He understood the power
of cinema

to re-imagine
the Black origin story.

That feeling of seeing that type
of spaceship land with us on it,

playing music that way,

and also announcing
that we're not

in this linear time construct
that includes our subjugation,

it was a profoundly
necessary piece of visual,

sonic, performative,
comedic imagination.

-"Space Is The Place" was clear.

He was just giving the metaphor
of what the music represented

to give us an alternative way
of looking at life.

Because the space is
inside here.

-Transmolecularization, right,
would invoke the other world

through those intense
musical relationships.

The effect of what
the music would do.

We are transported and
we are fundamentally changed.

And we can take that
a number of ways.

It could be abstract, it could
be a very concrete claim.

Who is he actually bringing
with him?

Is it only Black people?
Is it also white people?

He invites everybody
to join him in the omniverse.

-One of Sun Ra's favorite songs
was "Over the Rainbow,"

coming from "The Wizard of Oz"

which is the narrative
of another world,

of other possibilities.

It's utopian.

It all makes sense.

Sun Ra is known
as the godfather of the movement

called Afrofuturism.

His ideas would take
a much longer time

to sort of seep into
the cultural bloodstream

and so we are lucky
to have found a prophet

that is just so in sync with
where people are right now.

-Sun Ra!

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪♪

♪♪

-♪ Space is the place ♪

♪ Space is the place ♪

♪ Yeah, space is the place ♪

♪ Outerspace, Outerspace ♪

-♪ Space is the place ♪

♪ Yeah, space is the place

♪ A place that's real ♪

♪ Space is the place ♪

♪ A place that's real ♪

♪ Space is the place ♪

♪♪

-His way of working in the world

involved invoking
our skepticism,

rather than running from it.

You know, you meet a guy and
he hands you his business card

and he says "Look, I consort
with ancient Egyptians

and I'm from outer space."

And you're supposed
to take him seriously.

He's on a mission
from the Creator.

You're supposed to take
him seriously. Would you?

He doesn't want himself to
be taken seriously in that way.

He wanted you to get the point
--

it's going to take change
of a religious scope and scale.

Sun Ra's program was change
and change radically.

Turn or burn.

[ Applause ]

♪♪

-Just I miss him.

You know?

He said,
"I'm here to help mankind,

but I think I'm going to fail."

Mankind is on the right road,

we're going in
the wrong direction.

-He said he was doing
the music for the 21st century.

-♪ Love and light
interested me so ♪

♪ That I dare to knock
at the Door of the Cosmos ♪

-I think that that's
why this music is here,

it's here to awaken folks.

♪♪

-I really believed strongly
in that alternate myth

that Sun Ra was talking about.

He had that power
and that charisma,

but also he was offering
something that nobody else was.

-♪ That I dare to knock
at the Door of the Cosmos ♪

♪♪

♪♪

-♪ We travel ♪

-♪ The spaceways, the spaceways,
the spaceways ♪

♪ From planet to planet ♪

♪ We travel, we travel ♪

♪ The spaceways, the spaceways,
the spaceways ♪

♪ From planet to planet ♪

♪ We travel, we travel ♪

♪ The spaceways, the spaceways,
the spaceways ♪