Legendary jazz musician Sun Ra was born on this date in 1914 in Birmingham, Alabama. An iconoclast, Sun Ra was an innovative and pioneering songwriter and performer whose lasting legacy influences not just jazz, but electronic, experimental and avant garde music, and beyond to nearly all forms of popular music.
Sun Ra’s biography is both storied and mythologized, full of life experiences — perceived and otherwise — that transcend to the outer reaches of the universe. His massive body of recorded work — over 100 albums and more than 1000 original songs — is as impressive as his life story, whose final chapter came when Sun Ra exited the planet on May 30, 1993, at age 79.
Born Herman Poole Blount and later legally changing his name to Le Sony’r Ra, the pianist and bandleader described a life-changing event that occurred in the late-1930s when he was said to have been teleported to the planet Saturn. Cosmic elements and outer space themes mixed with ancient Egyptian culture became prominent in Sun Ra’s music, laying the foundation for Afrofuturism and serving as a vehicle to advance Black Civil Rights.
Sun Ra avoided serving in World War II as a conscientious objector, which led to his jailing for failing to show for alternative homeland service. Shortly after, he relocated to Chicago where he was an integral figure in the city’s avant-garde jazz scene of the late-1940s and 1950s. During that time, he established his record label, Saturn Records, which he used to self-release scores of albums, often in extremely limited pressings. Sun Ra’s still-going backing band, The Arkestra (currently led by 96-year-old Marshall Allen, who joined in 1957), was also established around this time.
In the early-1960, Sun Ra and the members of The Arkestra moved to New York City, where they stayed until 1968. Sun Ra was an early adopter of electronic keyboards, utilizing electric piano, clavioline, celeste and various synthesizers, including early Moog models. Philadelphia became home for Sun Ra and The Arkestra in 1968 and remains their headquarters, despite a partial collapse of the band house earlier this year.
In 1982 the National Endowment For The Arts honored Sun Ra as a member of the inaugural class of NEA Jazz Masters. Part of his dedication reads:
Sun Ra was one of the most unusual musicians in the history of jazz, moving from Fletcher Henderson swing to free jazz with ease, sometimes in the same song. Portraying himself as a product of outer space, he “traveled the spaceways” with a colorful troupe of musicians, using a multitude of percussion and unusual instrumentation, from tree drum to celeste …
An outsider who linked the African-American experience with ancient Egyptian mythology and outer space, Sun Ra was years ahead of all other avant-garde musicians in his experimentation with sound and instruments, a pioneer in group improvisations and the use of electric instruments in jazz.
The NEA identified five Sun Ra albums to showcase his incredible career: Singles (1952), Jazz In Silhouette (1958), The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1 & 2 (1965), Space Is The Place (1972) and Purple Night (1989). Clearly only touching the surface of Sun Ra’s legacy of sound, the Spotify Playlist below features those records (or close approximations) with some slight updating/expanding, stream it here:
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