SUN RA

by John Sinclair, Sun Ra

Composer, bandleader, pianist and space philosopher, Sun Ra was a unique individual and one of the most colorful and enduring of musical legacies, transcending time, place and culture. From the mid 1950s until his death in 1993, Sun Ra led The Arkestra , a fluid collective that lived and played together under the despotic tutelage of their leader, who claimed to hail from Saturn. Their music was jazz, but avant garde compositions in which players were instructed to adhere to a space key improvising without regard for conventional tonal centers was symptomatic of an altogether different direction in electronic music, space music and free improvisation. But Sun Ra s legendary status was earned as much for his eccentricities as for his unique artistic vision. He developed and propagated a mystifying sci-fi mythology which he weaved into both the music and Dadaist performances of The Arkestra (performances which inspired artists as diverse as George Clinton and MC5). This book collects together for the first time interviews with Sun Ra, the people that knew him, and his contemporaries, alongside illuminating essays and conversational pieces regarding his prolific musical output, mystique, philosophy, fans, and much more.

Genres: Music, Jazz, Nonfiction, Poetry, Essays

100 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

John Sinclair (born October 2, 1941) is an American poet, writer, and political activist from Flint, Michigan. Sinclair's defining style is jazz poetry, and he has released most of his works in audio formats. Most of his pieces include musical accompaniment, usually by a varying group of collaborators dubbed Blues Scholars.

As an emerging young poet in the mid-1960s, Sinclair took on the role of manager for the Detroit rock band MC5. The band's politically charged music and its Yippie core audience dovetailed with Sinclair's own radical development. In 1968, while still working with the band, he conspicuously served as a founding member of the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist socialist group and counterpart of the Black Panthers.

Arrested for possession of marijuana in 1969, Sinclair was given ten years in prison. The sentence was criticized by many as unduly harsh, and it galvanized a noisy protest movement led by prominent figures of the 1960s counterculture. Various public and private protests culminated in the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally" at Ann Arbor's Crisler Arena in December 1971. The event brought together celebrities including John Lennon and Yoko Ono; musicians David Peel, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and Bob Seger, Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd; poets Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders; and countercultural speakers including Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale. Three days after the rally, Sinclair was released from prison when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state's marijuana statutes were unconstitutional but he remained in litigation – his case against the government for illegal domestic surveillance was successfully pleaded to the US Supreme Court in United States v. U.S. District Court (1972).

Sinclair eventually left the US and took up residency in Amsterdam. He continues to write and record and, since 2005, has hosted a regular radio program, The John Sinclair Radio Show, as well as produced a line-up of other shows on his own radio station, Radio Free Amsterdam.

Sinclair was the first person to purchase recreational marijuana when it became legal in Michigan on December 1, 2019.

Reviews

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to follow.

[Matt Lohr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fans and acolytes of the legendary, iconoclastic pianist, composer and bandleader Sun Ra will of course want to read anything associated with him, and this collection, curated by longtime Ra associate and general countercultural broker Sinclair, has a nice variety of pieces, from interviews with longtime Arkestra stalwarts Marshall Allen and Michael Ray, to original poetic meditations on Ra by Amiri Baraka and others, to reviews of Ra's film appearances, and even an obituary from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, written by Sinclair himself, on the occasion of Ra's "transition" to his next plane of existence.

But given the essays' diverse sources, much of the material is repetitive, as each piece had to contextualize Ra's life and career for what were, upon their original writing, isolated readerships. We get the story of Ra's birth, activities in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, management and education of the Arkestra, and post-passing legacy over and over again; the individual recountings are well-written in and of themselves, but how many different ways do we need to hear these writers say the same thing?

The book does need to be given credit for one quality I always look for in writings on a musical artist: It made me want to revisit Ra's work.

[Devin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book, but very misleading in its title and overall, I'm disappointed.

I took "Sun Ra: Interviews & Essays" to mean interviews WITH Sun Ra, and essays BY Sun Ra. I was sure there would be a few other voices in here, but I didn't expect the complete opposite. Unfortunately, that's what I got.

There is actually only one interview WITH Sun Ra in this entire book. And there are zero essays of Ra. All interviews, save the one with Sun Ra, are done after his death, and the essays are all from other people simply revisiting Sun Ra's life or their life with Sun Ra. I wouldn't mind a little bit of that, but that's what the entire book is. I was hoping to hear more from Sun Ra himself.

The content isn't bad; it's pretty awesome to read some insights from people who with Sun Ra at the height of his cosmic, Afrofuturistic journey; some of the essays even include Ra's poetry, which was nice.

I DO like the interview with Marshall Allen, who is as of now (2020) the longest-tenured and oldest-surviving member of the Arkestra, at 95 years old. He was with Ra in the beginning and remained with him until his ~return to Saturn~.

[Christopher Brodt]

A really great book if you want to know more about Sun Ra; lots of discography information for the old Saturn label imprint and what people are (were) doing to re-release his enormous body of work. Many of the essayists also do a good job of contextualizing Sun Ra's persona and beliefs into the time period of where and when he grew up, which includes the civil rights movement of the 60's and the birth of the atomic age. John Sinclair remains an interesting product of the 1960's midwestern counter-culture that spawned the MC5 and the Stooges, and does a good job of editing this work I think. As for his music, best in his own words: "People have two harps in their head, their ears, just like a harp. They hear by the strings in their ears. If I play something very strange, then some strings that never vibrated before will vibrate. The whole nervous system will become alive."

[RA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't get enough about Sun Ra. Edited by John Sinclair, with a variety of articles about concerts, residencies, experiences, poetry, recordings, film reviews, etc. One of the most important music figures of the 20th century.

[Bawbee · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is only one actual interview with Sun Ra in this book, and none of the essays are written by him. You'll mostly find anecdotal stories from former bandmates and bands that played with the Arkestra. read this if you want to know the specifics about Sun Ra's back catalog and recording history, which is impressive, but kind of dull.

[Cobertizo · Rating 3 out of 5]

"La gente dice que soy Herman Blount, pero yo a ése no lo conozco, es una persona imaginaria que nunca ha existido. Tengo una hermana y un hermano llamados Blount, pero su padre murió diez años antes de que yo llegará al planeta. Él no es mi padre. Si me propusiera hacer algo con el nombre de Sonny Blount, no podría... Yo no soy terrestre, soy un ser celeste"