Sun Ra

• Born: May 22, 1914
• Birthplace: Birmingham, Alabama
• Died: May 30, 1993
• Place of death: Birmingham, Alabama

Jazz musician and composer

Sun Ra was an innovative jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who made more than one hundred recordings and performed internationally for six decades. Through his pioneering compositions, performance techniques, and use of percussion and electronic instruments, he expanded the genre of jazz and influenced generations of musicians.

Areas of achievement: Music: boogie-woogie; Music: composition; Music: jazz

Early Life

Le Sony’r Ra was born Herman Poole Blount in 1914 to Ida and Carry Blount. His parent separated when he was very young, and he was raised collectively by his mother, great-aunt, and maternal grandmother. His mother kept him away from his biological father, who reportedly made several attempts to kidnap the young Sun Ra. He was named for the well-known African American magician Black Herman, who was famous for raising the dead during his performances. Sun Ra legally changed his name in 1952 to Le Sony’r Ra but was best known to audiences as Sun Ra. The name reflects his interests in history and religion, astronomy and science, and specifically ancient Egyptian culture.

Sun Ra suffered throughout his life from untreated cryptorchidism, an absence of one or both testes, which may have resulted in a wide array of discomforts and ailments. Historians speculate that it might also have been a source of shame that could explain his reclusive behavior. Family and friends often called attention to his periods of melancholy and lack of sexual relationships. Cryptorchidism is also know in some cases to engender long-term psychological problems, and Sun Ra’s mental health was questioned while he was under scrutiny by military psychologists.

Sun Ra’s great-aunt Ida frequently took him to the theater to see vaudeville acts and touring bands such as those led by Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and Fats Waller. When he was eleven, his great-aunt bought him a piano, which he began to play immediately without lessons. Sun Ra used his sister’s music books to teach himself to read music, and by age twelve he had begun composing. His first professional gig came in his senior year at Birmingham Industrial High School when he filled in for another pianist in the Sax-O-Society Orchestra. In the summer of 1932, Sun Ra began touring with a group called the Troubadours as far east as Virginia and as far north as Wisconsin. He performed on the radio with a group known as the Nighthawks of Harmony, and a commission for arrangements led to a regular position with the Ethel Harper Band. In the summer of 1934, Sun Ra served as the leader on tour with a band backed by John T. (Fess) Whatley.

After returning from the tour, Sun Ra enrolled as a music education major at the State Agricultural and Mechanical Institute for Negroes (now Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University). There he took his first formal piano lessons with Lula Hopkins Randall, who introduced him to baroque, classical, romantic, and twentieth century concert music. Although he excelled in his music studies, Sun Ra wanted to solve problems that would make a lasting impact. His longtime fascination with Scripture intensified, and he resolved to dedicate himself to interpreting the Bible in order to find its true meaning.

It was during this time (c. 1936) that Sun Ra reported his abduction by aliens. The aliens contacted him, he said, and asked him to go with them into space. Through a process Sun Ra referred to as “transmolecularization,” he landed on Saturn and found himself in a large, dark stadium. The aliens warned of looming chaos and trouble in the world and urged him to leave college and speak out. In Space Is the Place, John F. Szwed pointed out that Sun Ra’s experience was a complex mixture of a classic UFO-abduction story and spiritual discernment. Sun Ra was both taken away by others and called to service by supreme beings. Ostensibly, his intensive reading in both science and religion played a role in shaping the experience. Sun Ra’s early memories of his father’s attempts to abduct him also might have been a factor.

Whatever the experience was, it was a pivotal moment in Sun Ra’s life. He left college and began to recruit musicians with whom he felt a spiritual connection, regardless of their skill level. He formed a group that focused on enlightenment through music. He had never smoked, drank, or used drugs, and he became obsessed with healthy foods and vitamin supplements. In addition, his sleeping habits were highly irregular.

Sun Ra was drafted in 1942, but to the embarrassment of his family he declared himself a conscientious objector, citing an objection to war and killing. His case was rejected by the local court, but Sun Ra continued to fight it at the national level for another year. He was jailed for some time and then moved to a forestry camp in Pennsylvania before finally being released in 1943. Shortly after returning to Alabama, his great-aunt Ida died, and he decided to leave home for Chicago.

Life’s Work

Sun Ra remained in Chicago for the next fifteen years. He made his first commercial recordings in 1946, and his ability to play in a wide variety of styles enabled him to work with numerous musicians as a sideman. He frequently performed in the strip clubs of Calumet City before finally leading a group in 1952 known as the Space Trio. Sun Ra used the trio to begin experimenting with increasingly abstract music structures and devices. With the inclusion of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, the trio began to expand into what would eventually be known as the Arkestra.

Sun Ra’s Arkestra was in constant flux, in terms of both its members and its name (Solor Arkestra, Myth Science Arkestra, Cosmos Discipline Arkestra, and many more). It was while working with the Arkestra in the late 1950’s that Sun Ra began to perform in the elaborate costumes and headgear for which he later became known. It was also during these years that Alton Abraham took over management of the group and established El Saturn Records as an outlet for Sun Ra’s music. His compositions and arrangements had now moved beyond his earlier swing-influenced style to feature more bebop qualities and some non-Western melodic ideas.

In 1961, Sun Ra and his most dedicated band members left Chicago for New York. The Arkestra expanded further to include multiple percussionists, and improvisations became more free (or “phre,” as Sun Ra called it). Sun Ra now required his musicians to double on percussion, and he began conducting through body gestures. He also incorporated a Minimoog synthesizer and electronic keyboards into his setup. The group’s fan base also expanded to include followers of the Beat generation. After moving again to Philadelphia in 1968, Sun Ra and his Arkestra became stylistically eclectic, featuring Sun Ra’s avant-garde compositions alongside standards and swing tunes.

Sun Ra performed until nearly the end of his life. Even after a stroke in 1990, he continued to compose and lead the Arkestra. When he could no longer perform, he asked John Gilmore to take over leadership of the Arkestra and returned to Birmingham. He contracted pneumonia, which was aggravated by circulatory problems and more strokes and led to his death in 1993.

Significance

Sun Ra was a prolific jazz recording artist and performer. He is known for his groundbreaking compositions and arrangements, as well as his pioneering use of electronic instruments, percussion, and free-form improvisations. He staged elaborate performances with up to thirty musicians that sometimes included dance and poetry. In addition, he was skilled in a wide array of jazz styles and could easily move between boogie-woogie and bebop. The Arkestra continues to perform. In addition, El Saturn Records continues to record new artists under its parent corporation, Universal Music Group.

Sun Ra also is known for his poetry and philosophy, and for his role in a movement that has since become referred to as Afro-Futurism. In his article “Black to the Future,” Mark Dery described Afro-Futurism as visual or performance art that incorporates African American themes in the context of technological and future-oriented narratives. Sun Ra, in this sense, not only produced art that helped define the concept of Afro-Futurism but also personified the science-fiction narrative of abduction, which can be seen to represent the abduction of Africans from their homeland by Europeans. Sun Ra’s esoteric ideas were heavily saturated in wordplay and biblical references and frequently aimed at revealing truths about previously accepted beliefs.

Bibliography

Corbett, John, Anthony Elms, and Terri Kapsalis. Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn, and Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68. Chicago: WhiteWalls, 2006. Explores Sun Ra’s musical experimentation and the developments of his philosophical thought during his years in Chicago.

Lock, Graham. Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999. Places Sun Ra’s thought in historical context and reveals how he used music to reinvent the past, present, and future.

Sinclair, John. Sun Ra: Interviews and Essays. London, England: Headpress, 2009. Includes early interviews with Sun Ra, poems and essays, and commentary from his contemporaries.

Szwed, John F. Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997. This definitive biography includes lengthy interview excepts and an extensive discography.