Night after night, in city after city, Sun Ra still wages the battle.
Never mind that he`s approaching age 80, that he recently suffered a stroke, that he has been inciting musical revolutions as far back as the late 1930s. Now, in his seventh decade on the front lines of the avant-garde, he refuses to relinquish the stage.
”I still face a lot of opposition, I`ve still got a lot of work to do,” says Ra, on the eve of returning to the city where his tumultuous musical journey began more than half a century ago.
”You know, physically, I actually feel pretty good,” adds Ra, who will bring his Arkestra to the Oak Theatre, 2000 N. Western Ave., Friday. ”But
(emotionally) I`m not feeling too well, because I`ve still got a lot of opposition.
”See, the public still comes around to see me, but it`s the musicians-they can`t own to the ideas I have.”
Indeed, the jazz musical establishment has been resisting Ra nearly since the beginning, often dismissing him as crackpot, fraud, lowbrow comic and worse. But Ra, a man who was born to swim upstream, in a way relished the resistance. The more he was spurned, the more far-out his ideas became.
Born in Birmingham, Ala., the innately gifted musician came to Chicago in the late `30s (on the invitation of bandleader Fess Whatley), where he was known as Herman ”Sonny” Blount. His gifts as pianist and arranger quickly established him as a force to be reckoned with, and by the early `40s he had become part of the first great swing band of them all, led by Fletcher Henderson at the long-gone Club de Lisa.
”Fletcher was a splendid musician with a splendid band,” recalls Ra, who wasted no time in shaking things up. ”You might say I arranged for the crazy side of Club de Lisa.”
Having learned a few things playing the burlesque houses of Calumet City, he began sprucing up the Club de Lisa stage shows with flashy costumes, free- flowing choreography and other uninhibited expressions. But that was just the beginning.
”The whole thing really all started in Chicago, because that`s where I had my first outer space experiences,” says Ra, who had changed his name to reflect his new, cosmic orientation.
”When the first electronic piano came out (in the early `40s), I got one right away,” and, for Ra, at least, the space age had begun.
While other jazz musicians were trying to master the complexities of `40s be-bop or, later, the ”cool” school of Miles Davis and the post-bop dissonance of John Coltrane, Ra was practically on another planet with his newly coined ”space music.”
Donning glittering turban and gowns, forging a music that careened between classic swing and seemingly free-form improvisation, Ra was inventing a new and original musical language.
More than that, he was creating a vocabulary for art forms that had yet to be conceived, including performance art and multimedia shows. The free-wheeling improvisations of Ornette Coleman, the percussion experiments of Chicago`s avant-garde of the `60s (and beyond), even the pre-bop revival of today all owe a debt to Ra.
To his group of instrumentalists, singers, dancers, baton-twirlers and the like he gave the name Arkestra, ”because that`s how I pronounced the word `orchestra,”` says Ra, who was not exactly welcomed by less daring elements.
”Even when I was playing for Fletcher Henderson, I had a lot of trouble,” says Ra. ”The band members kept saying I was too `different.` And when I went to play the Club Morocco in Canada (in the late `50s), I got fired because the man said I was playing God`s music. He asked me to change my style, which I refused to do, so they paid me off and told me to get out.”
Yet Ra persevered, venturing to such far-off places as ”Saturn” and
”Magic City,” two of his early recordings, long before anyone had so much as set foot on the moon.
To those who actually listened to the music before putting it down, there was no question that Ra was not some musical counterfeiter but the real thing. ”I used to go to some of the rehearsals of his band,” recalls veteran Chicago jazz impresario Joe Segal, ”and it was clear that Sonny had hit on something. He was a real musician who could really swing, and he found a new way to do it, and I respected him for it.”
Aided by such virtuosos as alto saxophonist Marshall Allen and tenorist John Gilmore, Ra took his act to New York, Europe and anyplace else with an open ear. Eventually, in the `60s and `70s, Ra and his Arkestra became at least a cult success, and it`s easy to understand why.
The sheer exuberance of the music-with its odd mixture of vintage tunes and other-worldly sounds-was bound to surprise the ear. Throw in gyrating dancers and the like, and you have a show that, if nothing else, stood out for its sheer novelty.
Why did Ra stick to his guns?
”Because I knew it`s a historical thing where people, or at least musicians, always have rejected new ideas,” he says.
”But I knew I was having at least a little better time of it in Europe, where people were more friendly to me.”
More remarkable still, Ra has lived long enough to see signs of mainstream acceptance even in the States (for the record, the history books say he was born in 1915, though Ra once told an interviewer that he was ”born on Saturn 5,000 years ago”).
The Evidence label recently released a series of compact discs documenting rare Ra recordings of the `50s and `60s (the CD titles are ”Sound Sun Pleasure,” ”Holiday for Soul Dance,” ”Jazz in Silhouettes,”
”Monorails and Satellites” and ”Supersonic Jazz). And no less than the New England Conservatory of music recently honored the great inventor by establshing a ”Sun Ra Day” during a recent visit.
Is Ra delighted with these unmistakeable signs of acceptance?
Of course not-what revolutionary worthy of the name would be?
”Sure, I was amazed about that `Sun Ra Day` thing,” he says, ”and I`m glad about the CDs. But this fight isn`t over, because I`m doing a lot of other things now that aren`t on record yet. I`m still talking about the avant- garde, I`m still talking about outer space, and I`m still facing opposition from musicians,” adds Ra, returning to a favorite theme.
”The musicians, the ones who are academic, they still want to hold onto the past, they want to hold onto the one thing they know how to do. But people want something fresh and new.
”And all I`m saying is that the space age is here to stay-and nobody can really run away from it.”
