Journal from December eighth

The subject was "An important leader" - however you interpret that.

An Important leader

If you were to ask me, “Who’s Sun Ra?”, I’d simply say, “He’s a jazz musician from Saturn.” He was a pianist/keyboardist, and led an ‘Arkestra’ of about thirty members, though the personnel changed constantly.

The Arkestra lived in a house with him in Philadelphia. To pay rent, they operated a corner grocery store. Ra taught the Arkestra members not only about harmony (a subject on which he was very knowledgeable), but about his ‘Cosmic philosophy’. In Robert Mugge’s documentary ‘Sun Ra: a joyful noise’, we see Ra in interviews in an Egyptian exhibit at a museum - they couldn’t afford to fly him to the pyramids - saying things like (I’m gonna have to paraphrase a bit here), “Each of my songs tells a different story. The sunrise doesn’t repeat itself - why should I repeat myself?”, and “Some call me Mr. Ra, others call me Mr. E. You can call me Mr. Mystery.”

In an interview outside the White House, he says, “I’m standing outside the White House, and I’m looking across the street, and I don’t see the Black House. A thing cannot exist without its opposite.” You see, he’s just proved that the White House doesn’t actually exist, which works for me.

One definition I’ve found of the word “Leader” is “a person who inspires others” - Sun Ra was definitely this for his Arkestra, and for many others, to be sure. One of the few longstanding members of the Arkestra, tenor saxman John Gilmore¹ is asked in ‘A joyful noise’, “You’re one of the most respected saxophonists around - why do you stay here with Sun Ra?” He says, “Well, I used to play with Mingus and Monk, and I thought they wrote some mean intervals². I’d been playing with Sun Ra for six months, learning this song, but I’d never really got it. And then, all of a sudden….I just got it. And I said to myself, ‘My lord, this man is more stretched out than Monk!!’”

I’ve known about Sun Ra practically since I was born, but didn’t ‘get into’ him until just last year. Of everything I’ve heard by him (which is relatively little), the album Lanquidity is easily my favourite. Sometime in the new year, I’m hoping to do an arrangement of the song “Where pathways meet” at a Coffee House.

----

1: John Gilmore joined the Arkestra in the ‘50s, and is now one of its leaders as Sun Ra has returned to Saturn.

2: Mean Intervals: An interval is the name given to the difference in pitch between two notes, either sounded in succession or in unison. For example, the interval between a C and an F is called a fourth, because they are four notes apart (counting the C and the F, not just the notes between them - C-D-E-F). Now, Gilmore is using the word ‘Mean’ in the same way I would use the word ‘Wicked’ when referring to the guitar technique of ‘dead-stringing’.