The squiggly, futuristic sounds of that instrument are heard prominently on the vital, thoroughly impressive Swirling, which features new recordings of nine Sun Ra standards, plus two songs written by Allen and a track from film composer Thomas Newman.

The wide-ranging album moves through big-band swing, otherworldly doo-wop, and electronic noise. It mixes the diverse influences that course through Sun Ra’s cacophonous music, from Fletcher Henderson to Schoenberg to John Cage, says trumpeter Michael Ray.

“It’s got space music and skull-busting songs,” Ray says, Zooming in from his home in Trenton.

Swirling includes contributions from saxophonist Danny Ray Thompson and conga player Stanley Morgan, both of whom have died since it was recorded in 2018 at Rittenhouse Soundworks, not far from the Pharaoh’s Den, on Morton Street. (Ra bought the house from Allen’s father for $1). Allen, Scott, and a few other members of the 15-or-so-piece band still reside there.

Under Allen’s leadership, the Arkestra has focused on live performance, rather than make new recordings that would compete with the enormous amount of Sun Ra’s material that’s already available.

Much of that has been reissued since his centenary in 2014, when Strut put out the excellent Allen-curated primer, In the Orbit of Ra. There has also been a flood of Ra releases on the music platform Bandcamp, where over 100 albums are available.

» READ MORE: ‘Are you sure it’s Sun Ra?’: Rare recording by the Philly jazz giant at Haverford College finally sees the light of day

Among the most intriguing is June Tyson: Saturnian Queen of the Sun Ra Arkestra, a collection highlighting Tyson, who died in 1992 and was the band’s only female vocalist before current singer Tara Middleton. Another highlight is Haverford College, 1980, a rare recording of Ra playing solo on a Fender Rhodes electric piano. It set the spaceways abuzz when it was released last December.

But while eschewing the recording studio, the band has toured the world with astonishing regularity, considering their leader is a nonagenarian. (Allen’s history with Ra dates back to the 1950s, after a 10-year stint in the U.S. Army in which he helped liberate Sicily, along with concentration camps in Germany and Austria.)

“Marshall has this feeling of alacrity, of enjoying what he’s doing,” says trumpeter Ray.

The 67-year-old horn man, who got his start with Patti LaBelle and the Delfonics, began playing with Sun Ra in the 1970s and has since split his touring time between the Arkestra and Kool & the Gang.

He recalls a recent tour that took the Sun Ra Arkestra to Tuva, the Russian republic in southern Siberia where throat singers excel at singing two pitches at the same time.

“We’re traveling across the Himalayas in a Russian transport with no shocks,” Ray recalls. “I’m looking down over the side of the road saying, ‘I can’t take this!’ And I look over at Marshall and he’s just sitting there. So in my mind, I’m like, I don’t have a right to complain about any of this, if he isn’t.”

“Marshall is the maestro,” says Middleton, 40, a classically trained violinist who became an Arkestra acolyte after seeing a gig at the Painted Bride in 2000. “He is the leader.” She joined in 2012 as a violinist, and after two years studying with Allen became lead vocalist.

“Marshall is always about the legacy of the music, and making sure it’s performed properly,” says Middleton, who’s married to Arkestra guitarist Dave Hotep.

Middleton, who wrote lyrics for Swirling’s title cut one day at rehearsal, at Allen’s instruction, spoke on Zoom from a location she would only reveal as “out here, somewhere.”

The band never has a set list, so “when you’re on stage with Marshall and he points that finger at you, you better be ready,” she laughs. “It keeps you honest as an artist.”

The coronavirus pandemic has shut down the band’s touring operation, and Middleton says, “I don’t even know that there is a word that can truly express” how much she misses performing.

Ray, who’s recovering from two knee operations, jokes that the COVID-19 shutdown is just another obstacle thrown at musicians trying to survive a disreputable business. “They say that the music industry is like a long plastic hallway where thieves and murderers run free and men and women die like dogs,” he says. “Then there’s the negative side.”

Scott, 74, is philosophical. The pandemic has allowed him “to concentrate on developing my understanding of music.”

Allen is sanguine. “I stay in the house on the piano, writing music for the band, all day and all night. I’m used to staying in.”

The band got together for an outdoor gig on Election Day, playing on a flatbed truck provided by the advocacy group Joy to the Polls at a South Philly polling place. “We were giving people something that they need,” says Scott. “We were doing our job.”

They hope Swirling “is of use to people to give them some happiness during this turbulent chunk of time,” Scott says. "You want to change your vibration a little bit, get away from COVID for awhile and travel the spaceways with us. "

At the sound of the word “spaceways,” Allen bursts into song.

“The space age is here to stay,” he sings. “There’s no place you can run away.”

He grins, and Scott joins him, joyfully singing the words of Sun Ra’s adaptation of the spiritual “No Hiding Place Down Here.”

“If you run to the rock to hide your face, the rock’ll cry out, ‘No hiding place!’”

'Nidhamu' (The Outer Bridge) 

In the half-between world 

Dwell they the tone-scientists 

Sound 

Mathematically precise 

They speak of many things 

The sound-scientists 

Architects of planes of discipline. 

......Sun Ra (poem on Back Cover) 

Alto Saxophone, Congas – Larry Northington

Alto Saxophone, Flute – Danny Davis, Hakim Rahim

Alto Saxophone, Flute, Oboe – Marshall Allen

Baritone Saxophone – Pat Patrick

Baritone Saxophone, Flute – Danny Thompson*

Bass Clarinet – Elo Omoe*

Composed By, Arranged By, Piano, Organ, Synthesizer [Moog, Rockichord] – Sun Ra

Engineer [Recording Engineer] – Tam Fiofori

Percussion – Lex Humphries, Tommy Hunter

Photography [Liner Photo] – Mike Evans*

Photography By – Sam Bankhead

Producer – Ihnfinity Inc. And The East*

Tenor Saxophone, Percussion – John Gilmore

Trumpet, Congas – Kwame Hadi

Vocals – June Tyson

Interview with Sun Ra

Francis Davis conducts a recorded interview with Sun Ra in Germantown, Philadelphia in 1990

Slought is pleased to announce a series of recordings from 1990 of Sun Ra in conversation with Jazz critic Francis Davis, released online in conjunction with "Sun Ra Meets Napoleon," an exhibition on display at Slought from November 20, 2004-January 31, 2005.

On Monday, January 29, 1990, jazz critic Francis Davis interviewed Sun Ra at the Sun Ra house on Morton Street in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Davis recalls that while several resident Arkestra members were present, the mailman arrived at the door at almost the exact moment that he did, handed him the mail without knowing who he was, and said "good luck." One item in the mail that day was an Ed McMahon millionaire sweepstakes letter, addressed to Arkestra saxophonist John Gilmore. "JOHN GILMORE MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER," it read, and the Arkestra made quite a deal about that--as if it were an omen of some sort. Subsequent to Davis' visit, Sun Ra performed at the Philadelphia's African American Museum, and City Council honored him with a miniature Liberty Bell generally given to visiting celebrities and dignataries.

In the definitive biography of Sun Ra Space is the Place: The lives and times of Sun Ra, biographer John Szwed asks, “What is the legacy of a musician who thrived on paradox and mystery, and made contradiction an art form?”  What often happens with Sun Ra and his legacy is that people either project what they want onto him or they misunderstand him completely.  Until recently most of his writings have not been widely available so much of the philosophy behind the music has been mired in obscurity.  With the recent publications of Sun Ra’s poetry, the Immeasurable Equation as well as the trio of books published by Whitewalls including The Wisdom of Sun Ra.  It is easier to now historically place Sun Ra within the larger context of African American thinkers. 

Sun Ra draws from so many different sources and makes so many thought-provoking conclusions it is often hard to keep up.  He used sound, the written word, theatre, and film to get across a consistent vision.  It is all done with a very specific and focused intent.  When you look at the entirety of Sun Ra’s works across the different mediums you see a unified pattern of themes and messages.  Below I’ve compiled quotes from Sun Ra and critics that shed some light on his unique philosophy.

In Szwed’s biography Space is the Place: The lives and times of Sun Ra, he explains why there is such difficulty in understanding Sun Ra’s philosophy:

Sometimes these interviews and semipublic lectures were published with ideas abruptly introduced without context, or left hanging and undeveloped.  In part this was Sun Ra’s style: his ideas were almost never complete, parts of them were dropped in one conversation to be continued in an interview the same night, or another night, with another interviewer.  The meaning might only become obvious after hearing ten or twenty lectures, or after reading thirty interviews.  In any case, he detested completeness—things which were complete were “finished,” “ended,” dead.  But in large part the difficulty in understanding Sun Ra was the result of him being edited and abbreviated, inaccurately transcribed or poorly translated (345 Szwed).

Sun Ra always took a very Afrocentric approach that was common among Black Muslims at the time.  In The Wisdom of Sun Ra, Arkestra saxophonist John Gilmore explains:

At the time when I got introduced to his wisdom, he was printing his philosophy on these papers, a lot of which Black Muslims embraced.  They embraced a lot of his philosophy and started putting it in their newspapers as their own thing.  He and I would always hang out and they would always be questioning Sun Ra.  They used to love to talk with him because he would always tell them the opposite of what they would be expecting to be told.  They loved to talk with Sun Ra…That’s how they got some of their philosophy because he would share things with them.  For instance, he told them that Negro meant “dead body” and it came from a word “necromancy.”  He told them about interchangeable G’s and C’s and other grammar, that’s when they started giving themselves X’s.  But they were filtering information from some of Sun Ra’s papers too.  Coltrane was influenced by his papers.  Sun used to print up these papers and give them out to people who were interested in expanding their scope of how they’d been looking at things.  Before Sun Ra, they didn’t know anything about the type of stuff he was talking about.  He researched and found about this stuff by himself and nobody was familiar with what he was talking about but he just spread it out and that’s how Trane got hold of some of it.  Pat Patrick let him have a few papers and a few records.  Reading Sun Ra’s philosophy and listening to the music opened up his mind (5 Ra, Corbett).

The interchangeable G’s and C’s is illustrated in one of the recently published broadsheets that Gilmore spoke of above:

Jesus said let the Negro bury the Negro at least that is what he said in the original Greek version of the New Testament.  But according to genesis C and G are interchangeable and for this reason the words of Jesus also reads, “let the Negro bury the necro.”  In the present day language, the sentence just quoted reads: “let the dead bury the dead.”  The original Greek and ancient Hebrew definition of Negro or Necro is dead body.  Many people think that Negro means black but if it really meant black only black people could be called Negro…Unfortunately for the Negro the word Negro means dead body…The cemetery itself is named after the word Negro: Necropolis or city of the dead.  The word Niger is a Latin word meaning Black and Simon the Apostle upon whom the church was built was called Niger because he was a black man (66 Ra, Corbett).

In a lot of these writings he is riffing on derogatory names for African Americans finding hidden meanings or solutions to equations, as he would call it by making word plays.

Stop.  Look!  Listen!  What people on earth call themselves spooks?  In what country do the spooks dwel?  In what country do the spooks dwel?...In America of course…...Outside of America there are no people called spooks….The spooks are in America…No other black or brown race call themselves spooks the spooks in America are different from any other race on this planet.  Individual self….they hate the thought of being what they are…They want to be white rather than the black and brown that God made them.  They are completely off course….They are without wisdom or understanding….they are the perfect prototype of Babylon…the Babylon that God destroyed…They are the ruined city of tophet……They are the mystery..Babylon the great whore, mother of whores……(72 Ra, Corbett).

His philosophy of a lost black history is further explained in the following passage:

……..There are two ethiopias……………………….

The American Negro is not an original inhabitant of America.  The American Negro is likewise not an original inhabitant of Africa…the secret of the racial origin of the Negro is in Asia; his early history begins there.  Two places hold the keys to the identity of the American Negro: Egypt and India.  The first Ethiopia was in India.  India was a civilization before Egypt.  What we call civilization started in Asia.  Asia is in the east therefore we call the Ethiopians of India “Eastern Ethiopians.”  The Eastern Ethiopians migrated to the vicinity of Egypt…they are the true founders of Egypt, they are known as “the mighty builders.”  They were considered as the wisest of men, and were called “the blameless Ethiops…(81 Ra, Corbett).

In a recent book The Astro Black and Other Myths, critics and fans wrote essays trying to understand and place the legacy of Sun Ra in a coherent context.  The artist Kerry James Marshall writes:

So why did “Sonny” Blount choose the Egyptian style instead of the traditional Baptist, Christian model?  I believe Sun Ra was inspired by early Afro-centric teachings promoted by Elijah Mohammed, through the Nation of Islam, and self-taught historians like J.A Rogers.  The miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson, creator of Negro History Week and stolen Legacy by G.M. James were also highly influential in the emerging field of Afro-American studies.  The “Black” man was the original man.  They said, “Egyptian civilization,” which European historians managed to de-link from the “Mother Continent” was a black, African, civilization.  For a people desperate to recover a sense of dignity, this is pretty great stuff (59 Corbett, Elms).

Graham Locke the author of the book Blutopia, goes even further in his essay in, The Astro Black and Other Myths book finding striking similarities of the idea Space is the Place and an old text from the 19th century.

The film Space is the Place opens with a scene in which Sun Ra inspects a distant planet to check its suitability for habitation by black people from Earth.  The reference here is to Martin Delany, a pioneer of black nationalism, who, in 1859, led an expedition to the Niger Valley to find locations in which African Americans would be able to settle.  Delany’s report of that expedition was republished in 1969 under the title The Search for a Place, filmed in 1972, answers directly, a point underlined by the fact that the film’s title first appears onscreen immediately after Ra has approved for black settlement the planet he’s been inspecting (33 Corbett, Elms).

That could in fact be the origins of the idea Space is the Place but Sun Ra made it clear later in his career that the idea of space was a universal and open-ended idea and not confined to the issue of race.  In the John Szwed biography Space is the Place The lives and times of Sun Ra, Szwed quotes Sun Ra talking about space:

When I say space music, I’m dealing with the void, because that is of space too; but I’m dealing with the outer void, because somehow man is trapped in playing roles into the haven or heaven of the inner void, but I am not in that.  That particular aim/goal does not interest my spirit-mind and because of that it moves out to something else where the word space is the synonym for a multi-dimension of different things other than what people might at present think it means.  So I leave the word space open, like space is supposed to be, when I say space-music (384 Szwed).

Blacks thought I was talking about whites.

But I was Talking about everybody (382 Szwed).

Bibliography

Corbett, John, Anthony Elms, and Terri Kapsalis. Sun-Ra: Traveling the Spaceways : The Astro Black and Other Solar Myths. New York, NY: WhiteWalls, 2010. Print.

Sun, Ra, and John Corbett. The Wisdom of Sun-Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets. Chicago, Il.: WhiteWalls, 2006. Print.

Szwed, John F. Space Is the Place: The Lives and times of Sun Ra. New York: Da Capo, 1998. Print.

Composer and multidisciplinary icon Sun Ra wrote and stars in this Afrofuturist sci-fi film, featuring a killer free jazz soundtrack performed on camera by his Arkestra. Ra’s tripped out philosophy - a visionary entanglement of outer space, egyptian mythology, and world peace - is on full display, as the film explores Ra’s “origin story”; an alleged trip to Saturn he undertook in the 1930’s, a time when most other jazz musicians were still dancing the jitterbug. The stark coolness of this legendary mind warp is matched only by the rareness of Sun Ra’s Arkestra performing live in Los Angeles