Imaginary Worlds - Music From Saturn

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Sun Ra claimed to be an extraterrestrial being from Saturn who could teleport you to other planets with his music. That may or may not have been true, but he certainly was the leader of one of the most influential jazz ensembles of the 20th century, and he’s often called the father of Afrofuturism. I talk with artist Cauleen Smith and writer John Corbett about Sun Ra’s creative journey, and why he was light years ahead of his time. The musician Idris Ackamoor explains why Sun Ra was an inspiration for his band The Pyramids. And Ytasha Womack, author of fiction and non-fiction books about Afrofuturism, discusses why imagining the future is still a radical act. Today's episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? We have partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email [e-mail] or click the link below to get started. Imaginary Worlds AdvertiseCast Listing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. So this podcast is about science fiction and fantasy, which are big passions of mine. But I have other interests too, which just don't come up. Like I really love jazz. I've made many trips to New Orleans. I've seen Wynton Marsalis in concert more times than I can count. And I was heartbroken when one of my favorite clubs in New York, the Jazz Standard, had to

shut down because of the pandemic. But there is one place where my two interests of science fiction and jazz collide. The musician Sun Ra. That's sun, like the sun in the sky, and Ra, like the Egyptian god. Sun Ra is considered one of the best jazz composers, musicians, and band leaders of his time. The height of his career was the 1970s. But he stood out for other reasons. He created a sci-fi mythology around himself through his music and costuming. And he said he wasn't from Earth. He was from Saturn. If I told you I'm from outer space, you wouldn't want to believe a word I said, would you?

Why should you? You've lost your way. Sun Ra is also considered the father of Afrofuturism, the movement that blends science fiction with the African-American experience. And even though Sun Ra died in 1993, he has become more influential than ever, and not just in music. You lost your celestial rights. You can't go to Jupiter. You can't even go to Mars. You can't go to any other of the planets and out in the stars.

Now, I hate to be boring and factual about this, but Sun Ra was not actually born on Saturn. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, and his given name was Herman Blunt. When he was a teenager, he had an experience that sounds like the classic alien abduction. Not the scary one with the alien probes, but the one that people used to report before that. The enlightening version, where he claimed that he was visited by these benign extraterrestrials who transported him to Saturn. They told him that our world was in chaos, and it was his job to heal the human race through music. He didn't tell anyone about that for a long

time, but he had other reasons to feel like an alien. When World War II broke out, he declared himself a conscientious objector, and that was a tough stance for anyone to take back then, conscientious objector. And that was a tough stance for anyone to take back then, let alone a black man. He was thrown in prison for years, which was severely traumatic. And after the war, he fled the South and moved to Chicago. And for a long time, he pursued a fairly conventional career as a jazz musician. And then in the early 1950s, he told his manager about that extraterrestrial experience he had as a teenager. And his manager, who was also a good friend, encouraged him to use that creatively in his music. John Corbett wrote several books about Sun Ra. And he says, if you were in Chicago at that time, and you went to see Sun Ra and his band, The Orchestra, that's A-R-K-E-S-T-R-A. The Orchestra at that

point might be wearing like glittery capes and a couple of the members of the band might be wearing these Buck Rogers caps that had blinking red lights on top of them. And apparently in some of those performances, band members would send little robots, little battery-operated robots out into the audience. So that must have been quite, I think, quite a surprise for people who came out just to see an evening of jazz. Now, Sun Ra founded his band in 1954. 1954 was also the year that a book called Stolen Legacy came out. The book had a huge influence on him and a lot of African Americans because it claimed that Egypt and North Africa was the real birthplace of modern civilization. That's when he changed his name to Sun Ra and started wearing costumes all the time.

His most famous one was sort of an Egyptian-style headdress with a giant spiked ball on his head that was sometimes gold or glass. And Sun Ra and his band wore these metallic and gold garments, sometimes capes, and their costumes looked ancient and futuristic at the same time. And his song titles became more fantastical, like Dance of the Cosmos Aliens, or Tapestry from an Asteroid, or Space is the Place. As you can imagine, a lot of music critics back then were skeptical about Sun Ra.

They thought the sci-fi thing was just a gimmick. But John interviewed him several times. He told me he was really interested in comic books. And he was interested in comics in particular, including some of the space-oriented comics and science fiction comics that were popular in the era that he came up. He took it very seriously. The space aspect of what he was

doing was a very serious aspect of it. And it was not that uncommon thing to be interested in. The space race was an everyday part of the news. Although the bigger question was whether Sun Ra himself was a persona. I mean, he claimed he was from outer space, and he used to carry around a passport that listed his birthplace as Saturn. There was a cover story on him in a major jazz magazine that literally said, genius or charlatan. The word charlatan came up in a lot of articles about Sun Ra during his lifetime. And I have to admit, I used to think he was putting on a persona, although I admired what I thought was his commitment to this really compelling character he created. I spent a bunch of time with Sun Ra,

and Sun Ra was not a persona. Yes, he was dressed a little bit more wildly on stage than he was off stage, but it wasn't like he came off stage and suddenly turned back into Herman Blunt. He was always Sun Ra. And he always had a sense of humor about himself. Famously, when asked about Star Wars, if he had seen the movie Star Wars, he said, I did. It was very accurate. Colleen Smith is an artist and filmmaker who spent three years producing various multimedia projects about Sun Ra and his influence on pop culture. I don't think he was like pretending or acting. I think he was like offering a proposal about how a black cultural production might be understood, positioned and utilized through this idea of an other, of an alien. People said, oh, I just thought he was ridiculous, like a cartoon character. And I was like, I don't, and for me, I don't even know how that's possible if you're actually listening to the music.

Because the music is like, has like these levels of dynamism and complexity that really suggests his artistic practice extended beyond music into the performative, into the material. In that sense, Sun Ra was using outer space as a way to talk about Black liberation. He wasn't necessarily encouraging Black people to literally go into space, although he did often point out the lack of Black astronauts at NASA. But he was more interested in inspiring people to transport themselves through their imagination and find freedom and creativity. And he practiced what he preached.

He worked with a lot of Black-owned businesses in producing his records and the band's other paraphernalia. In fact, I was watching a documentary about Sun Ra, and at one point, we see a community bodega that's run by one of his band members. And the shop is branded with Sun Ra's iconography and messaging. Well, now you see right over there, I got assigned space as the place. So I try to teach the children about space, outer space, decision and discipline. These enterprises and initiatives are simply extensions of what he thinks his music does. And again, this is like something that I think, you know, Brent Hayes Edwards, the scholar writes about so beautifully in terms of understanding so many African-American 20th century musicians

is that you can't wholly understand them simply through their music. You have to look at all of the different extensions of their practice, the writing, visual arts, performative, et cetera. And with Sun Ra, I think that's especially true. We're living in the space age. We're living in the space age But I think the best way to understand how science fiction influenced his music and philosophy is to look at the science fiction movie that he starred in from 1974 called Space is the Place. The movie was made by a white filmmaker who was inspired by a series of lectures that Sun Ra gave at Berkeley. And the movie is kind of a strange hybrid of a concert film, an experimental art film,

and a blaxploitation movie. But I really like the movie because it's so earnest, and the production design is great, even though they were on such a low budget. The movie starts with a prologue of Sun Ra on another planet. He's in this extraterrestrial garden with these fantastical plants. He's wearing his classic Egyptian-like costume with a giant spiked ball on his head. He's followed around by a figure in a black robe whose face is a mirror.

And Sun Ra has a scepter that floats in the air like a tentacle, with a sort of little UFO on top. The music is different here. The vibrations are different. Not like Planet Ray. Planet Ray's sound of guns, anger, frustration. There was no one to talk to on planet Earth, if you understand. We set up a colony of black people here. We bring them here through either isotope teleportation, transmolecularization, or better still, teleport the whole planet here through music. After that, Sun Ra flies to Earth. His ship looks like a giant pair of yellow binoculars with fiery eyeballs at the end.

And when he lands in California, his band emerges from the ship like the day the Earth stood still, surrounded by press. This is incredible. I can't believe it is really happening. In a later scene, Sun Ra appears at a youth center in Oakland. And he literally appears out of thin air. He's flanked by guards who are wearing giant Egyptian-style animal heads with futuristic antennas on top.

But a lot of the kids laugh at him and ask if he's for real. How do you know I'm real? Yeah. I'm not real. I'm just like you. You don't exist in this society. If you did, your people wouldn't be seeking equal rights. You're not real. If you were, you'd have some status among the nations of the world.

So we're both myths. I do not come to you as a reality. I come to you as the myth. Yatasha Womack wrote a book about Afrofuturism, and she thinks that Sun Ra was using the metaphor of an alien to talk about the Black experience in America and also his own experience in the music industry. think that at the time when sound rock came of age he could only contextualize these very futuristic ideas and approaches he had to music by thinking of himself as being an alien and if he thought of himself as alien then he could sort of justify how he wanted to justify these new sounds that he was creating that didn't always fall within the musical paradigms that people were familiar with at the time. So to think of yourself as coming from Saturn, that you're really here to heal the world, that you are connected to an ancient deity.

It roots you in a past, but also projects you into the future and is incredibly empowering. So at that point, you can create any kind of music you want, and you aren't limited by this identity of being Herman from Birmingham. by this identity of being Herman from Birmingham. Over time, Sun Ra earned the respect of music critics, although the musicians of his generation always had huge respect for him. But it was frustrating to wait that long before he got recognition.

Again, John Corbett. I think he thought that he deserved to be better known by the world, by the planet, than he was. When I talked to him, a couple of the times that I talked to him in separate cases, he mentioned that he was playing the low profile. Because the creator had told him he should play the low profile, and in the long run that would be better. And in some ways that's actually what's turned out to happen. But during his lifetime, he did struggle. He struggled a lot, and part of the reason he struggled is that he had the absolutely unrealistic goal

of keeping a big band together in a period where big bands were completely impossible. And since Sun Ra was appreciated more in Europe, he went on a lot of European tours that were costly, to the point where he couldn't afford to keep the whole band together by the end of the tour. And at one point, he and the band moved into a communal house together in Philadelphia. Part of the reason he wanted that is that Ra wanted to be able to call a rehearsal at four o'clock in the morning if he had a great idea. By all accounts, he would do that with some frequency.

Did the band resent that? Doesn't seem like it. Sun Ra died in 1993, but the orchestra is still together. Their current leader, Marshall Allen, is 96 years old, and they've brought in younger members, so the orchestra can keep playing Sun Ra's music indefinitely. Sun Ra always thought he was ahead of his time, and he definitely was. In many ways, we are living in the future that he imagined. We'll turn the record over after the break. that he imagined.

We'll turn the record over after the break. Canada for a limited time. It's time for dance. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. Hey, it stinks down here. Why do armpits get all of the attention? We're down here all day with no odor protection. Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea. That's Old Spice Total Body deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use.

It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. Gameplay is a podcast that looks at how video games and virtual worlds can create immersive experiences and social connections. The host, James Parkinson, has worked with NPR, and his show has a similar sound design to Imaginary Worlds, where they use a documentary approach

in explaining a wide variety of stories around the world of games. You could start with episodes like The Sound of Hades, which looks at the challenge of writing music for video games, where the music has to be flexible enough to adapt to the interactive nature of gaming. But it can't be too monotonous, repeating the same musical phrases over and over again. And if you liked my episode,

The Power of the Makeover Mage, you should check out their episode, The Real You, which is about how trans gamers can explore identity and create safe spaces through games. I was fascinated by their episode Autocraft, which is about a man who created a version of Minecraft for his autistic son and any other autistic children. You can subscribe to Gameplay in your favorite podcast app

and learn more at gameplay.co. There's an old joke about the Velvet Underground, that their first album sold only so many copies, but everybody who bought it started their own band. The same can be said for Sun Ra. I talked with a musician in the Bay Area named Idris Akamor, and his group, The Pyramids, was heavily influenced by Sun Ra, not just with their music, but with costumes as well. Back in the 70s, Idris used to love seeing Sun Ra in concert. One of the things that was incredible was they're known for breaking the fourth wall. Of getting off the stage and, you know, taking the music from the stage and the pageantry into the audience.

And then creating that mystique in the audience, not only just music, but it's music, it's dance, it's costume, it's light shows, the merging of the forms, which is also very African. Having lived in Africa, that was one of the things I came away with, the interdisciplinary nature. In Africa, you don't usually have a single art discipline being done. Idris also appreciated the way that Sun Ra took his art and his message seriously, but he always had fun with it. But not in a kind of a parody kind of way, but just in certain things that make you smile. Travel the spaceways from planet to planet. We travel the spaceways. You never get that out of your mind.

Next stop, Jupiter. Next stop, Jupiter. of your mind, you know? Next stop, Jupiter. Next stop, Jupiter. You know? You know, like, I mean, you can't, it makes you laugh. It makes you feel good, you know?

As I mentioned earlier, Colleen Smith was inspired to create a series of multimedia artworks about Sun Ra. And in one of her films, she created a flash mob, a hundred-piece high school marching band that played Space is the Place in Chicago. And even though it was pouring rain that day, the kids were so committed and inspired. Colleen debated whether to send the band to a Black neighborhood or a white neighborhood. And instead, she decided to send them to Chinatown. Like in many cities, Chinatown in Chicago functions as this barrier between white Chicago

and then brown and black Chicago. And so the thing about flash bombs is you don't really get permission. They just happen. So it was kind of a delicate prospect of like invading this community with another community. And I was kind of curious to see what was happening. I was hopeful that them being a marching band, young people playing this music would,

the gesture would be understood as it was intended as an invitation and a celebration. It's just kind of phenomenal to watch them do this. And it's like exactly, exactly what Sun Ra was so interested in was this sort of like ferocity of youth and its potential combined with what's possible when some discipline and organization and singular purpose is applied. I got really lucky with that video, but it's one of the works that I'm proudest of from that period of working on Sun Ra. that period of working on Sun Ra. Now, the biggest impact that Sun Ra made on science fiction was Afrofuturism, which is remarkable because the word Afrofuturism wasn't coined until 1993, the year that Sun Ra died. When the journalist Mark Derry invented that term, he was trying to describe a kind of work that had existed for a long time

but didn't have a category. Sun Ra was one of the first artists who was retroactively deemed Afrofuturist. But the resurgence of Sun Ra really began around the time that Black Panther came out. There was a lot of new interest in Afrofuturism, and many of the articles that explained what Afrofuturism was featured Sun Ra as their prime example. Or they'd put a picture of Sun Ra next to a picture of Janelle Monae from the cover of her album The Arch-Android, when she was dressed as her alter ego, an android from the distant future called Cindy Mayweather, who wore a costume that looked both futuristic and ancient Egyptian. And music critics were connecting the dots from Sun Ra to Parliament Funkadelic, Outkast, Solange, and Daveed Diggs' group, Clipping, which creates sci-fi concept albums.

Yatasha Womack wrote a book about Afrofuturism, and when she started promoting her book eight years ago, and I asked people about Sun Ra, 99% of the people who I spoke to, even if they were music enthusiasts, had no idea who he was. And today, if I'm in a room and I ask people if they've heard of Sun Ra, a significant number of people in the room know who he is. In fact, she was once at a celebration of Sun Ra's music in Chicago. And someone introduced me to a gentleman who had been in Sun Ra's band. They showed them a copy of my book, Afrofuturism. The singer, he was looking at the book and he said, oh, this looks really cool. You know, Sunny, meaning Sun Ra, would have really loved this book. And I said, oh my God,

he's in the book. Like, what do you mean? He wouldn't have just liked it. He's in it. He's part of the reason why this book even exists. And the smile that came across this man's face was one that I'll always remember. But it's also a reminder to me that you had so many innovators who were in the trenches who influenced so many, and they don't always get to see that impact. And they don't always get to see that impact. Now, of course, there were Black science fiction creators before Sun Ra, but he was one of the first people to gain national and international recognition. And one of the ways that he influenced Afrofuturism was the way that he imagined time as being nonlinear, not just the costumes, but also in his music. He would incorporate classic songs from the 1930s with experimental modern jazz.

with thinking about the future is that it makes people remember that many people in the past were thinking about futures and that's how they were able to push past difficult moments. And so in that, you start thinking of yourself as being part of a continuum because you're in someone else's future. Imagining the future can still be a radical act. Yutasha discovered that when she was asked to give a talk about Afrofuturism to a group of fifth graders in Chicago. And I'm thinking, oh, this will be great. They're kids. You know, as soon as they start talking about the future, they're going to talk about, you know, space societies and technology. societies and technology. But when I started thinking, talking about Afrofuturism and sort of describing what it was, it became very obvious to me that the kids weren't comfortable imagining futures. So I would say, oh, what are some things you would like to see in the future? And they would say, oh, well, you know, I don't want to see violence. And I'm thinking, oh, okay.

It's like, oh, we don't want to see people being killed or gang rivalries. And then I said, oh, wow, okay. Well, let's talk about what a world looks like if there is no violence, because you've had plenty of experiences where that weren't shaped by violence. So let's talk about that. How do people treat one another if there's no violence? You know, they thought about it for a moment and they said, oh, well,

you're nice to people and people are respectful and it means we could play outside. You know, people are respectful and it means we could play outside. You know, slowly we were able to get into this point where we started talking about futures and what futures look like. But for them, it was very in the moment, you know, I mean, at one point, one of the kids said, well, you know, I don't want to see racism. I said, all right, you know, they started saying, can Afrofuturism stop racism? I said, all right. You know, they started saying, can Afrofuturism stop racism? And these are fifth graders. I just found the moment to be very profound. At the end of the class, one of the kids said, one of the young ladies, she said, well, are you trying assume that children have these active imaginations. And generally speaking, they do. But it was really interesting to see that so many of them by fifth grade had already started to kind of shut down around even thinking about a future because to do so was not realistic. thinking about a future because to do so was not realistic. And so this big epiphany for one of the students who said, oh, wait,

you're telling us we can actually change the world. We can actually change our neighborhoods. There was this moment of empowerment and, you know, they were like, okay, I'm going to make alien music and change in my neighborhood. I'm into racism. I mean, it was very beautiful, but it was the process of getting there was one that stuck with me. When I heard that story, I kept thinking about the scene in the movie Space is the Place, when Sun Ra appeared at the youth center in Oakland almost 50 years ago. And if you think of time as being non-linear, then he is still materializing in spirit at these teachable moments.

One of the great qualities of science fiction is that you can use your imagination to transcend reality and reinvent yourself, never settling for the categories that society puts you in. Sun Ra accomplished that and a lot more by creating another world and inviting people to join him. Although it seems like the only person who actually got to live in that world all the time was Sun Ra. Darkness, darkness was ignorant, so long came rock.

When the world was in darkness, darkness was ignorant, so long came rock. When the world was in darkness, darkness was ignorant, so long came rock. When the world was in darkness Darkness was ignorant The law came raw That is it for this week.

Thank you for listening. Special thanks to John Corbett, Colleen Smith, Yatasha Womack, and Idris Akamor. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman.

You can like the show on Facebook, a tweet at eMolinski and Imagine Worlds Pod. The best way to support the show is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you get either free Imagine World stickers, a mug,

a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which is a full-length interviews of every guest in every episode. You can learn more at imaginaryworldspodcast.org where I also put videos of Sun Ra and Colleen Smith's Flash Mob, playing Space is the Place. I am Ra, the living simplicity of an angel visiting planet Earth. God bless you.