Sun Ra
Melody Maker, November 4th 1989
by Simon Reynolds
photo portrait by Pat Blashill
SUN RA - DROPPING SCIENCE
In the summer, of 1989 I interviewed Sun Ra, through the auspices of a friend at A&M, for whom Sun Ra recorded a couple of so-so LPs around the cusp of the Nineties. It took place in a hotel in mid-Manhattan. He wore the robes and there was this sort of hovering presence of acolytes in attendance throughout. Very much an aura of... if not quite majesty, then certainly being ushered into the presence of a potentate, a very special personage.
"Interviewed" - more like, granted an audience. 90 minutes or thereabouts ensued of nodding my head while the great man dropped science in his soft, serene voice. It very quickly became very clear to me that any attempts on my part to steer the conversation or ask an actual, y'know, question would be both presumptuous and surplus to requirements. He just kept going.
I must have been in a hurry when it came time to transcribe and write it up, because all I have is a partial transcript, the choicest quotes, with other bits in paraphrase or shorthand. In those days, with only a few exceptions I always thriftily recycled interview tapes once they were transcribed. So Sun Ra's wit and wisdom was doubtless erased by something like the Snapdragons.
Which leads on to a further indignity: the fact that Sun Ra, Prophet-God of 20th Century Music, Ambassador for the Omniverse, etc, should end up in Sidelines, a section of Melody Maker comprised of quarter-page and third-of-page featurettes mostly about up-and-coming bands, with the occasional oldie / comeback/ reissue / twilight-of-career veteran. Doubtless with that particular issue, Sun Ra would have kept company with a runt-of-the-litter baggy bandwagon-jumper, a chill-out house chancer on Rhythm King, and perhaps a new project involving ex-members of Bomb Party and Gaye Bykers on Acid.
Below are most of the maxims, aphorisms and stories I transcribed from the "interview". For more on Sun Ra check also this Quietus 100th Birthday tribute by David Stubbs, whose copy of Disco 3000 I taped as my baptismal experience of Ra-ism when we were students, and with whom I would go see the Arkestra when they played the Fridge in Brixton in late 1985.
"The
intellectuals were the ones who pushed jazz. Where I came from it was the schoolteachers, the
intelligentsia."
"The
intellectuals liked to have big bands to play at their social affairs. When I
was in a big band, I never used to play bars or taverns, just social
affairs."
"In the big
bands, that's where they played big sounds, so their minds were expanded.
Nowadays with these musicians who play in combos, their minds aren't as
expanded."
"Jazz is a
big band music for intellectuals, it doesn't come from the bottom - people who
like it listen for the creativity not the monotony.
"Musicians
just have the twelve notes, and they perform miracles with them. Music is a
language, but unlike the alphabet which has twenty six letters, music only has
twelve notes."
" Most trained
musicians deal with what they are being taught, the known, But I'm dealing with the
unknown - giving impressions of the unknown."
"I don't speak
about the Universe cos that's the oneness
of things, I'm talking about the Omniverse, the multiplicity of things,
out in space, world after world after world"
"People trying to
make this place home when they should be thinking about being citizens of the
Omniverse, beyond the Universe - how can you get people on the street to think
like
that?"
"What I'm saying
is strange to your ears, but you should listen cos I was on this planet before
you were born - an animal in a forest would be silent and listen to the strange
sound"
"Right now freedom
would do the students and the masses no
good, forget it - they need not evolution but ever-lution. Their minds would have to advance."
"What Man is doing
to this planet is the Omniverse's
business now, and they are gonna eliminate mankind when they see what we
done to it. Decline of the Indians, the Egyptians, whose five thousand empire
eradicated."
" A reverend said
that my music is world survival music. I did a very interesting interview with
him and I said some things that even shocked me"
"Time is like a skiff
- I saw that in a vision about Time. I have dreams - dream are instructive,
they're also examinations or tests about how sharp your responses
are. Every day you're being observed.
Every thought you ever had is being
written down - and you gonna be judged by that, and
what you should have done, would have down, could have
done, oughtna have
down. You get judged by all those different dimensions. This makes life
very complex for human beings, but all
the while they're thinking of love, or politics, and all the while they're
being judged as cosmic or cosmo-beings.
Everybody has some part of them that's the cosmos part."
"People might shut
their ears to what I'm saying, but if it's music it will go down into their
subconscious and stay there."
" Everyone asks
where you from - even in America - so I say Egypt. Wouldn't accept that I'm
from US - so I said that I'm an Ancient American - I don't know about anything
about Africa so I can't call myself
Afro-American like some militants of the so-called Black America."
"Everything in
nature changes, why shouldn't I? Like flowers or clouds - there are no two
alike."
"I became aware of other
dimensions when I was 3 years old. I
was strange to my family and they was strange too. Same with my friends, very good friends, but I was a
stranger to them too. I was part of them, but there was another part of me they
knew nothing about, and I never discussed it.
I could see they were stopped before they started. I
was right too. Maybe I could have helped
them, if I had discussed the other side of me."
"I can see the
destinations - like with the Chinese students [of Tianamen Square protests], I could see; they're in trouble.
And sure enough, they all got shot. They're not gonna make it, cos they don't
have the cosmos on their side, cos they're against their elders. The cosmos is
on the side of the elders. The students might be 'right', but the cosmos doesn't care about 'right'.
The elders have authority and seniority."
"The students
spend all their energy on that, but they don't have any foundation, cos they
don't have any music. When one of the
emperors banned all instruments except for the flute, that was the downfall of
China. You've got a period of vacuum in Chinese culture, and they
better get down to making some music and beauty before they go after anything
else. Cos the cosmos don't care about anybody unless they've got some culture.
If you don't, why should they be interested in you. Why should you be
interested in every grain of sand, or blade of grass, or every little ant? And that's what we are to the cosmos. They
got their own standards."
" I would say
humanity is in trouble - they being judged by some cosmos standards. And they
don't know their standards."
"My job is
probably the most neglected factor in the
universe. I knew when I was three years old that I had to do something I
didn't want to do, tell people all about this. I didn't even want to play,
then. I dedicated my so-called life to the Creator, in that seeing that he's
seen and heard everything, I'd play something he'd never heard before.
"Here's something you've never ever experienced before. I
have to play for this Creator because other things coming from this planet he's
not pleased with - it's like static, pollution in every way, mental, physical,
that's all that goes up there.
"That's my advice
to musicians - do something that the Creator might sit up and take notice of."
"I did this to
maintain a low profile, but it didn't work. I was a great failure at
maintaining a low profile. See, the whole world wants to know what I've been doing, ten
minutes ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago.
"Fifty years ago I
was singing a song "we take a trip to outer space, next stop Mars. That
was fifty years ago. So people should have listened to me.
"Hitler put his
Mein Kampf and then tried to apply. I put my book out there too, but it's in
music. But I'm going to apply it too.
Interplanetary travel is now a reality. All of what I said has come
true. But that's what I was saying fifty years ago. Now I'm far in advance I'm the top innovator on the planet, and
if I'm English American that makes me belong to England and England needs an
innovator they haven't got one."
"Born, or so they
say, in Alabama, but I say I'm from Saturn, not born there.
"I'm more of a spirit than a human being, this
is not my body. Your body belongs
to your mother and father, it's part of the reproduction system, and what's
reproduced cannot be part of Creation, it's just a facsimile. That body is not
really you. What is you is your spirit, which comes from Eternity. The way you
look you've been brainwashed to thinkof as you. Now it's
time to get acquainted with you."
"I don't really live in time, there's no yesterday and no
tomorrow it's all continuous fabric."
"I'm explaining what
I do, but I'm saying that I've touched
the unknown, the real Creation. You have to be
real advanced to do that, and talking about righteousness is the wrong way to
get there. The Creator told me that he doesn't regard no person as good person
or bad person. Doing good things does not make them good, and vice versa. Every
living thing is ensured, they are his children, you got the ant nation, you got
the ostrich nation, all of them following the laws."
"How could a kingdom as powerful as
Persia fall? They fell because something happened to the music. Same thing
happening to the West - you got the
commercial forces."
"I'm in human form
and nobody in human form has ever done
the proper thing for solving the riddle that is humanity. Each one before
failed - the prophets failed. Humanity is still on the treadmill. There's a possibility
that I might do it."
"Learn from the
birds and animals - they got better societies and family relations than humans."
"The Bible says a
lot of stuff about Man - that he's filth and abomination - that are not
conducive to my happiness. So I refuse to be Man."
"There's a lot of good people that
are poor, but a lot of good people that are rich.But it's written that it's harder for rich man to enter
the kingdom of heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle. That's discrimination.Why should a rich person be imposed on or kept out of
somewhere?"
"I'm from somewhere
else, definitely. If I was "born", I
definitely existed somewhere else before birth."
"If life was real - it would protect you. You
go out there and you see all those poor
people - that's life - going hungry for days in a very rich country - that's
life. America getting ready to build
more jails - is that life? - of course it is! And those undertakers, and these
hospitals where people are suffering - is that life? So I'm looking at all
that, and thinking: I'm not part of that.
"I prefer to part of myth. I say: history is his story.
Mystery is my story."
"I can use the so-called Bible to do it - even though it's
unprofitable to humanity - but I can turn around bits of it. 'Turn your other cheek to your enemy' - I don't
recognise any enemies - the whole world is my friend, or should be, cos I'm
doing something that's in their interest.
"Everyone on the planet should do everything they can to help
me."
"The Cross - it's a crossword - the Bible is a giant
puzzle you have to figure out. Ministers
can't do it.
I can figure it out. I can figure out hieroglyphics - I've
been taught by higher forces.
"But I don't want to be out there leading people, I 'm a
scholar."
"In Chicago, a so-called black man said: 'God made the Universe
in six days, on the seventh he rested. And he aint done a damn thing since'. I was standing there utterly amazed.
"In Penn Station, 3 in the morning, another so-called black man
was saying 'God is with me - he been with me a whole life time. I don't mind telling
you, I don't mind telling the police, I don't mind telling the world . But he
been fucking me up'. I listened - I was utterly amazed.
"What caused that man to say that??"
"I saw a black man on TV and he turned to the camera and said
'God can kiss my black ass'.I looked with utter astonishment."
"Looking at the black people of America, I can say that these
three men were right. God is messing people up. I seen in Bible where it says
that God is delighted when his children defeat him in battle. And where it says
I have given them laws that are evil.
"I go through the Bible with a red pencil
"It's a book where nobody managed to break the code - except
me.
"People say it's the Good Book - how can it be good when
it's got people murdering each other,
betraying each other?
"I had to get the equations. The Cosmic Forces say yeah it's
a good book, in that it's accurate, God says he'll do certain things and he
makes good his word, even though what he does is bad.
"In Hebrew ra is evil, but
in Ancient Egypt it means sun, it means good. Same word, but different
meaning. And in England and America the word doesn't mean evil cos when you go
to a football match everybody shouts "ra, ra" which is a good cheer.
"So why is it that in Hebrew territory it means evil?
Somebody switching values, made good
into evil. And Bible says woe unto he
who makes good into evil and evil into good.
"So the world got to get together and rectify the duplicity
of words, cos that's why we're in this mess.
- black people came
into this country as goods, not men and women. Good is spelt god in some
European countries - they came into America as gods - don't have any second
names, the mark of being a King for the Hebrews. That's why America having
difficulty with black people - because how can youtake a god and make a man out of him?
"They say black is
beautiful. How can they prove it, though?. I have the mathematics to prove it . For in the Benine language in African, the word 'belack' means beautiful in that language. So I can get humanity out of this through
words."
"How am I gonna do it? Set up my blueprint. I've been talking
for a long while about setting up my Omniversity, I could set up my Outer Space Employment Bureau. But I am
just going to
sit back and not get involved. Only thing I got involved in
was Leroy Jones Black Theatre in Harlem."
" I'm here to help".
"A cab driver in London said to me 'I'm a musician. maybe I can be in the band'. I say 'where's your instrument?. 'Left it at home'. 'That's a five hundred dollar fine'. A bit later, 'I didn't do too well as a musician, maybe I can just be the janitor, sweep up afterwards'. 'Where's your broom?'. 'I don't have one'. 'That's another five hundred dollar fine'. So he's says 'I've only just joined the band and I've lost 1000 dollars'
"I like the English sense of humour"
"The seventh sense after sixth (ESP) is humour.
"There are nine senses - I deal with the nine all the time."
"Doubleday rejected my poetry. Said it might as well have been written
in a foreign language."
"I'm the ambassador of the Creator of the Universe"
"But I'm not looking for followers. People want to put up defences, because they are addicted to the
monotony. The status quo."
"People who aren't attuned to the cosmos are like babies -
and when babies come along you have to look after them, they can't survive"
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