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The Sun Ra Arkestraunder the direction of Marshall Allen+ John Sinclair and The Founder Effect

Sat 31 May 7.30pm

FeaturingMarshall Allendirector, alto sax, fluteCecil BrookstrumpetFred AdamstrumpetKnoel Scottalto saxJames Stuarttenor sax

Danny Ray Thompsonbaritone saxDave DavistromboneDave HotepguitarFarid BarronpianoElson Nascimentopercussion, surdoStephen MitchellbassCraig Haynesdrums

The Liquid Light Orchestra

John Sinclair and The Founder Effectwill open the evening

There will be one interval in this concert

The missing link between Duke Ellington andPublic Enemy, Sun Ra is the most mythologised jazzmusician since the unrecorded, early 20th-centurycornetist Buddy Bolden. The myth-making beganwith Ra himself. He denied being born HermanBlount in Alabama in 1914 and maintained that he

was from Saturn. His real name, he said, was LeSonyr Ra and he was here to restore the culture ofthe Ancient Blacks, the people of pre-Biblical Egypt,and so bring peace and harmony to earth. Hislegacy is as much philosophical and political as itis musical.

Ra died in 1993. For much of his career, theAmerican critical establishment dismissed him asa charlatan, ridiculing his belief in space traveland cosmic forces, and asserting that such ideaswere incompatible with serious artistic endeavour.What these critics did not acknowledge, probablybecause they were unaware of it, was the rolescience fiction played in African American culture,where it had long been employed as a parable in

the liberation struggle. If black people could notfind equality in the here and now, suggested thistradition, they should try to find it on another planet,in another dimension. The sentiment informs onestrand of modern Afro-Futurism.

Marshall Allen

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Ras persona made better sense to AfricanAmericans. The poet and polemicist Amiri Baraka,whose Black Nationalist philosophy was shapedby historical determinism rather than mysticism,empathised with Ra in a 1996 tribute. Sun Ra spuna cosmic metaphor, wrote Baraka. His consistentstatement, musically and spoken, is that this is aprimitive world. Its practices, beliefs, religions, areuneducated, unenlightened, savage, destructive,already in the past. Thats why Sun Ra returned onlyto say he left into the future. Into space.

Since 1995, the Arkestra has been led bysaxophonist andkoraplayer Marshall Allen, whojoined the band in 1958. Sun Ra was a visionary,says Allen. With the Arkestra today, I try to keepthe spiritual side of his music alive. That isnt hard,because the deepest experience in my life was SunRa. He taught me how to play music and do it for areason, not just for fun.

Under Allen, the Arkestra continues to embraceRas extraordinary stylistic eclecticism, whichincluded free improvisation, swing (Ra worked asan arranger for bandleader Fletcher Henderson inthe 1940s), doo-wop, rhythm n blues, Broadwaysongs, Disney tunes and the Arkestras trademarkspace-chants.

Ras music fascinates a similarly broad spectrum oflisteners. Sun Ra stood apart because he had sucheccentricity, says Sonic Youth co-founder ThurstonMoore, a long-time enthusiast. He wrote books ofpoetry and songs that referenced Egyptology andthe Ancient Blacks, but he didnt come across onthe bandstand with the language and demeanourof Black Nationalism. He was very gentle andvery sweet and he had humour. When he spokeabout racism being evil and racists going to burnit was almost funny, and it was across the board.It was all about looking at musicians as angels, ascommunicators from another world.

Programme notes Chris May

Produced by the Barbican

The City of LondonCorporation is the founder andprincipal funderof the Barbican Centre

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