I have been re-reading, listening and watching all things related to Sun Ra recently.
A truly wondrous clip filmed in Japan in 1988 from YouTube:
From all kinds of angles, Ra and the Arkestra show us ways to live and work. From a curator's perspective I am particularly inspired by his statements concerning audiences. In 'Space is the Place' , there is a scene where Ra plays a piano in a cabaret, creating such an enormous sound that many people run out of the building, clutching their ears. I think the sound was a 'space chord', a huge resonating physical sound of all notes being played together. I read somewhere that Sun Ra liked the idea that people who could not cope with this sound were driven out, leaving only those who could tune into his intuitive celestial arkestra. He spoke at length about 'discipline', and I think that his ideas about audiences, and publics relate to this too. Spirit Sounds must be respected. It cannot be instrumentalized for profane purposes. There is little room for 'outreach' in the current museological sense of inclusion and enlightenment. The sounds come. It is up to each individual to tune in, assign antennae and hear the intergalactic chamber music echo!
"Discipline" sounds like something related to an esoteric way of thinking, like the music of Robert Fripp.
I think it interesting to think of Sun Ra as an esoteric thinker who happened to be a musician. He had a "system" of his own, which consisted of pieces of occultism.
John Corbett ed., The Wisdom of Sun-Ra (Chicago: WhiteWalls, 2006) shows how well versed in the esoteric way of thinking Sun Ra was. John Gilmore says Sun Ra's thoughts had an influence on Nation of Islam, which itself is a mixture or Fundamental Christianity and the esoteric teachings and Islamic thoughts.
Posted by: ma-tango | June 21, 2009 at 11:09 PM