Space is the Place...

 I have been looking for a couple photos I took at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival in 1993. I can't find them and I have tossed the house looking at least five times since I retired and this Covid thing started. The photos, old 35mm prints are of the Sun Ra Arkestra in performance. Sun Ra himself was not with them as he was in poor health and passed away later on that month. With the state of the world I have been think about this music and his philosophy. 

A little biographical info taken from Wiki, Su Ra was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Al. in 1914. He started playing and touring by 1934 in the big bands of the day made up of highly disciplined, educated musicians who who toured the south and Midwest playing white society events. About 1936, there are some discrepancies when and where this happened, he reported a vision and abduction by aliens and he told the story with little change to the end of his life:

   "My whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up... I wasn't in human form... I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn... they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools... the world was going into complete chaos... I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That's what they told me."

Given the public interest and recent government admissions that they have evidence it's worth a note that Su Ra's experience is reported to happen 10 years before flying saucers entered the public imagination and 20 years before anyone reported being abducted by aliens. 

Su Ra went on to play with many jazz greats in the 40s and changed his name in 1952. He considered his old name a slave name from a family that was not his. If you look at the Su Ra documentary on Amazon Prime TV he talks about history, It's HIS STORY, not mine. Sun Ra's story was that he was on a mission to preach peace. 

Sun Ra's music evolved from big band swing to cosmic jazz and back again. It was often free form but touched on the standards of Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson and Jelly Roll Morton. Hundreds of musicians passed through his bands with some staying for decades and a legacy band that has toured as recently as 2019. 

I just missed seeing Su Ra. I wish I could find those photos and I will keep looking, just Like Sun Ra did with his music. He's a great and we need him now.