Sun Ra
44 articles
Audio interviews
Interview by Mark Dery, Rock's Backpages audio, March 1991
The great bandleader and cosmologist talks about everything from being a visitor from Saturn to his spiritual home in Egypt, via much about making music, improvisation and the importance of discipline.
File format: mp3; file size: 86.2mb, interview length: 1h 34' 12" sound quality: ***
List of articles in the library
Review by William Russo, DownBeat, 6 October 1966
Rating for all: ★★½ ...
Sun Ra: Flying Saucers Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha!
Interview by Val Wilmer, Melody Maker, 29 October 1966
SUN RA sat in his Lower East Side apartment, surrounded by the weirdest collection of instruments existing outside a museum. A huge plastic canopy, illuminated ...
Sun Ra, an Interview: Collision of the Suns
Interview by John Sinclair, The Warren-Forest Sun, 1 April 1967
THE INTERVIEW with SUN RA, the master musician & prophet, was originally taped & edited by John Sinclair in December 1966 for GUERRILLA. The interview ...
Interview by John Sinclair, The Warren-Forest Sun, 14 April 1967
I KNOW I got something to help people but — I don't know what to do about it. I can put it over in music, ...
Sun Ra & the Myth-Science Solar Arkestra: Community Theater, Berkeley CA
Live Review by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 12 December 1968
Lift Missing in Space Music ...
Newport Jazz Festival 1969: New Records & Not All That Jazz
Live Review by Ian Dove, Billboard, 19 July 1969
NEWPORT, R.I. — On paper at least the experiment of adding rock music to the Newport Jazz Festival 1969 came from the purest of motives. ...
Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra: The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra. Vol. 1. (Fontana)
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 10 January 1970
'Heliocentric'; 'Outer Nothingness'; 'Other Worlds'; 'The Cosmos'; 'Of Heavenly Things'; 'Nebulae'; 'Dancing In The Sun'. ...
Sun Ra And The Arkestra: Sound Of Joy (Delmark DS-414)
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 21 March 1970
'El Is A Sound Of Joy'; 'Overtones Of China'; 'Two Tones'; 'Paradise'; 'Planet Earth'; 'Ankh'; 'Saturn'; 'Reflections In Blue'; 'El Viktor'. ...
Sun Ra: Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Live Review by Richard Williams, The Times, 11 November 1970
THE VISUAL element of jazz has always been notoriously conservative, ever since Chick Webb stopped painting jungle sunsets on his bass drum. At the Queen ...
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 4 March 1972
Ra's solar myth ...
Sun Ra And His Myth-Science Arkestra
Profile and Interview by John Sinclair, Creem, November 1972
If you find earth bor-ingJust the same old same thing –If you find earth bor-ingJust the same old same thing – Come on, sign up ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, June 1973
SAN RA SURE is a good old dog to have around. He's been spooning out this same clank for years, and it's every bit as ...
Sun Ra: Space Is The Place (Dir. John Coney)
Film/DVD/TV Review by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 14 November 1974
A timeless — also plotless — film of Sun Ra ...
OK, smarty, so how do y'shift the whole world off its axis?
Report by Brian Case, New Musical Express, August 1976
Simple. SUN RA knew that one way back. Every musician on the planet just gotta play a C7th — all at the same time. While ...
Guide by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 4 September 1976
WHEN IT comes to buying records, what's a bargain? Probably the best value I ever had was paying a princely 75 pence for a mint ...
Sun Ra: Squat Theatre, New York NY
Live Review by Davitt Sigerson, Melody Maker, 22 September 1979
Panto time with Sun Ra ...
Sun Ra Returns From Hyperspace
Profile and Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, 4 April 1981
SUN RA doesn't take a back seat to anyone when it comes to transforming a live performance into a musical and visual spectacle. ...
Sun Ra: Strange Celestial Road (Y)
Review by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 29 May 1982
HEAVEN UP HERE ...
Sun Ra: Strange Celestial Road (Y Records Y19)
Review by Brian Case, Melody Maker, 5 June 1982
OFTEN IN Sun Ra performances I've found myself keeping the faith up to the mark with reminders of the bandleader's pioneering work to avoid concentrating ...
Live Review by Mick Brown, The Guardian, 29 July 1982
FOR HERMAN Blount, life has never been the same since he decided to change his name. A former big-band piano player, Herman metamorphosed into Sun ...
Profile and Interview by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 7 August 1982
Last week the legendary SUN RA, who claims to come from the planet Saturn, beamed down to earth to play two sell-out concerts at London's ...
Interview by Lynden Barber, Melody Maker, 19 November 1983
Lynden Barber hero-worships SUN RA ...
Sun Ra & his Arkestra: The Fridge, Brixton, London
Live Review by Frank Owen, Melody Maker, 30 November 1985
IN A VAIN attempt to create something approaching a jazz boho ambience, someone had covered the walls of the Fridge with arty French slogans. One ...
Profile and Interview by Gene Santoro, Pulse!, September 1987
Sun Ra and the Arkestra Inhabit a Cavernous Musical Cosmos ...
Sun Ra: Not-so-lucky old Sun shines on
Profile and Interview by David Toop, The Times, 8 June 1990
David Toop talks to Sun Ra; supremely idiosyncratic veteran US bandleader ...
Live Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 23 June 1990
WORD OF mouth has drawn a near sell-out (To a free gig? — Ed) crowd to catch the legendary Sun Ra. Amidst rumours that he'll ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, March 1991
AFTER 50 YEARS IN JAZZ THE BANDLEADER FROM SATURN FINALLY LANDS A MAJOR LABEL DEAL. ...
Sun Ra, Julian Joseph: Ronnie Scott's, London
Live Review by David Stubbs, Melody Maker, 21 September 1991
HAVING accelerated towards a state of whiteout in the late Sixties with the antics of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra, a state beyond ...
Loving The Alien In Advance Of The Landing
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, February 1992
"IN THE MEANTIME," he said, speaking relentlessly but mesmerically softly, as gurus will, "I finally went to Chicago. I determined not to be a musician ...
Review by Byron Coley, Forced Exposure, 1993
…SUN RA is one of the truly legendary figures of modern jazz. He's led his Arkestra for better than 30 years and in that time ...
Sun Ra And His Intergalactic Harmonic Divergent Jazz Arkestra: S.O.B.'s, New York
Live Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, January 1993
WHEN SUN RA opened for Sonic Youth in Central Park last summer, the bill confirmed at least one unavoidable equation: No Sun Ra equals no ...
Review by Rob Chapman, MOJO, July 1998
LONG AFTER YOU AND I HAVE RETURNED to sub-atomic dust particles, Sun Ra will probably be acclaimed as the greatest composer of the 20th century. ...
Overview by Eric Weisbard, The Village Voice, 11 October 2000
IN HIS FAMOUS essay "Kafka and his Precursors," Jorge Luis Borges argues that Zeno, Han Yu, and Kierkegaard, though nothing alike, all now seem Kafkaesque. ...
Drowning in Genius: Surveying this season's mountain of greatest-hits albums
Review by Eric Weisbard, Spin, December 2000
SO, WHAT'LL IT BE: Tears for Fears? .38 Special? Whitesnake? It's become impossible to keep abreast of all the best-ofs, as labels keep foisting greatest-hits ...
Review by Byron Coley, The Wire, November 2002
Byron Coley appraises more archive treasures of free jazz and Improv unearthed in Atavistic's ongoing Unheard Music Series. ...
Comment by Sean O'Hagan, Observer Music Monthly, October 2003
Popular music will always need eccentrics, the people who show mainstream life how things can be stranger, more beautiful, or just... different. These 10 singers, ...
Cosmic Relief: Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra: The Magic Sun
Film/DVD/TV Review by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2005
Important documentary artefact of late-'60s avant-garde jazz ...
Essay by David Stubbs, The Guardian, 22 October 2005
"FUCK THE GHETTO! Look to space!" That, according to Wayne Kramer of MC5, in a nutshell was the message of Sun Ra, as conveyed over ...
Jerry Dammers' Spatial AKA Orchestra Presents a tribute to Sun Ra and other musical mavericks
Preview by John L. Walters, Barbican show programme, 10 March 2009
JERRY DAMMERS has long had a place in the nation's musical heart. His exuberant, hard-working band Special AKA (the Specials), helped to revive and redefine ...
Review by Stevie Chick, bbc.co.uk, 2012
Saturnian jazz godhead leaves Earth’s orbit. ...
The Solar Myth Revisited: Sun Ra's Centenary Observed
Report by Kirk Silsbee, Glendale News-Press, 4 April 2014
HIS BIRTH certificate said Birmingham, Alabama but the man who called himself Sun Ra declared that he was from the planet Saturn. Miles Davis set ...
The secret history of the jazz greats who were freemasons
Essay by John Lewis, The Guardian, 2 July 2014
Jazz and freemasonry are unlikely bedfellows, but in the 1950s, the secret society became a support network for musicians and the world's largest fraternity for ...
June Tyson: Saturnian Queen Of The Sun Ra Arkestra
Review by Neil Kulkarni, The Wire, June 2020
JUNE TYSON WASN'T just a collaborator with Sun Ra for 25 years, she was an integral Afrofuturist presence in The Arkestra, the only woman in ...
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