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Sun Ra
1,341,474 plays (106,724 listeners)
Birmingham AL, United States (1914 – 1993)
Sun Ra (May 22nd, 1914 – May 30th, 1993) was an innovative jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, who came to be known as much for his Cosmic Afro-futurist Philosophy as well as for his phenomenal musical compositions and performances.Sun Ra eschewed racism and its institutions; contended with racism as a black male and as an independent black producer.
Born as Herman Poole Blount, in Birmingham, Alabama, he was nicknamed Sonny from his youth. Later, after his release from a detention camp for protesting world war II, he took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (the ancient Egyptian Sun God). Claiming that he was of the “Angel Race” and not from Earth, but rather from Saturn; borrowing from African and Afro-American theater, theosophy and masonic Afro-futurism, Ra developed a complicated but consistent library of cosmic philosophies and lyrical poetry that preached spiritual awareness and peace above all.
He could play many modern classical works from memory and had worked in country and western bands before moving to Chicago. His personal music collection contained over 10,000 discs, and he was constantly reviewing and studying. Many of Ra’s improvisation and compositional innovations were extensions of ideas from Twentieth Century European composers, bringing these ideas into jazz music often decades before the same methods were popularized by the commercial artists. Ra fans in the East Village included Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane.
Born as Herman Poole Blount, in Birmingham, Alabama, he was nicknamed Sonny from his youth. Later, after his release from a detention camp for protesting world war II, he took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (the ancient Egyptian Sun God). Claiming that he was of the “Angel Race” and not from Earth, but rather from Saturn; borrowing from African and Afro-American theater, theosophy and masonic Afro-futurism, Ra developed a complicated but consistent library of cosmic philosophies and lyrical poetry that preached spiritual awareness and peace above all.
He could play many modern classical works from memory and had worked in country and western bands before moving to Chicago. His personal music collection contained over 10,000 discs, and he was constantly reviewing and studying. Many of Ra’s improvisation and compositional innovations were extensions of ideas from Twentieth Century European composers, bringing these ideas into jazz music often decades before the same methods were popularized by the commercial artists. Ra fans in the East Village included Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane.
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It's After the End of the World
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Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, vol. 2
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Jazz In Silhouette
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Space Is the Place
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Enlightenment
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Space Is the Place
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Heliocentric
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Discipline
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Tapestry from an Asteroid
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Love in Outer Space
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Shoutbox
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MondoTofu wrote:
Last Sunday, my local radio station played Stars Fell on Alabama. The best part was that they didn't stop and explain it or apologize to anyone for it being "out." It just fit nicely into the jazz program.
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Inci90 wrote:
placental_fluid listens to david bowie and pink floyd. he knows what he's talking about.
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K-Willa wrote:
still my favorite jazz artist ever
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placental_fluid wrote:
Too mainstream.
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allbadendsall wrote:
anyone have the Space is the Place soundtrack in HQ? I can only find 80kbps.
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Inci90 wrote:
he was of the angel race
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jefffq wrote:
i'm convinced he really was from space
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Edelce wrote:
impresionante imagen
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KlangHarcun wrote:
Artists like Him make me love Jazz much stronger.
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Inci90 wrote:
The Soul Vibrations of Man (1977). Part II contains Halloween in Harlem.
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lordinfamous wrote:
So which Sun Ra records would be most appropriate for Halloween listening, I'm thinking "Strange Strings" and "Nothing Is" for starters...
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sGarrista- wrote:
great nonetheless
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Inci90 wrote:
art ensemble and ornette coleman would be more up most hipsters alley
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sGarrista- wrote:
good thing that on this artist page they can easily find out that this is not the case. more annoying to me, however, would be the more knowledgeable people with obscurantist tendencies that would start belittlling Sun Ra because of this
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SixShooterSam wrote:
Lately I feel like I've seen a surge of hipsters/people who think he's the only creative free jazz musician that was around...
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nancykitten wrote:
I wonder if the Arkestra still stick to that strict lifestyle. I plan to seduce them with liquor and whores when I see them in December.
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Inci90 wrote:
'...In the case of Sun Ra, the band members were forced to abstain from women and drugs and they were often punished for missing practice or even screwing up an arrangement. Szwed also used a football analogy to describe the discipline within the Arkestra: "Drugs were forbidden, certainly, as was drunkenness; and involvement with women was discouraged, especially across race lines. This meant that some of the band had to go out to drink, sneak a joint on the gig or see women on the sly, like athletes tricking the coach."' - Brian L. Knight, 'Legends Before Their Time: A Zappa/Sun Ra Comparison', Vermont Review.
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Inci90 wrote:
How avant-garde.
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nancykitten wrote:
I say we rape.
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noffle wrote:
So young, he was only two and a half Saturn years old
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wppss connected Sun Ra to the group all you is is a word and what you see words. Wednesday morning
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