Space is the Place ...

The history of jazz -- indeed, the history of music -- has never seen anyone quite like Le Sony'r Ra, better known as Sun Ra, and his variously-subtitled Arkestra. Although his earthy incarnation was born to humble circumstances as Herman Poole Blount in Alabama in 1914, Ra always insisted that he was actually from the planet Saturn. As he wrote in his essay "Fallen Angel," 

I'm not a human.  I never called anybody mother.  The woman who's supposed to be my mother I call other momma. I never call nobody mother. I never call nobody father.  I never felt that way. You have to realize this planet is not only inhabited by humans, it's inhabited by aliens too. They got the books say they fell from heaven with Satan. So, in mixed up among humans you have angels. The danger spot is the United States. You have more angels in the country than anywhere else. You see, it was planned.

However that may be, his otherworldly qualities were evident from his first recording, 1948's "I am an Instrument," backed with "I am Strange." He one near-hit single was about his favorite planet, "Journey to Saturn" in 1973; by that time, he and the Arkestra had taken up communal residence in a big house in Philadelphia; the band lived upstairs and had their record label and pressing plant in the basement. Fresh stock was delivered to local record shops by means of a Radio-Flyer hand-pulled wagon. In 1974, he produced a feature-length film, Space is the Place, which opens with a pair of animal horns floating through space, as the Arkestra chants "It's after the end of the world ... don't you know that yet?" The film has since become a touchstone of a larger artistic and critical movement known as Afrofuturism, located (as Ra says) on "the other side of time."

I saw the Arkestra perform only once, at the Blue Grotto in New Haven, CT in 1986. When the curtain rose, Ra was already on stage; the Arkestra came in as a sort of procession, their enormous twisty horns sticking up like something out of Dr. Seuss, all of them festooned with jingling bells. The opening tunes were a sort of 'greatest hits' of the band, including "If I Told You I Am from Outer Space,"  "Discipline 27-II," and "We Travel the Spaceways." In the middle of their two sets, the Arkestra left the stage, and Ra played a couple of old jazz classics -- "Yeah, Man!" and "Beautiful Love" -- as instrumentals on his Hammond organ. 

Since Ra's death in 1993 -- or, some say, his return to Saturn -- the Arkestra has continued to perform around the world. Oh, and there's one more very local connection: Deval Patrick is the son of Pat Patrick, for four decades a pivotal member of the Arkestra.

Note: No response required this week, though comments are welcome!

Pale Blue Dot

To anyone who was around in the 1980's, Carl Sagan was an almost ubiquitous presence; somehow, he managed to combine being incredibly nerdy with being incredibly cool. Parodied by SNL and Johnny Carson, he took it all in stride, even titling his final book Billions and Billions -- a catchphrase from Carson's parody that Dr. Sagan himself didn't actually utter.

Over his career, who wrote seventeen books and countless scientific papers, but it was his television series, Cosmos, that cemented his place in the pop-cultural science universe. Airing over thirteen weeks from September to December of 1980, it became the highest-rated show in the history of public television. For its time, the show's production values were remarkable, giving Sagan the seeming ability to walk through a giant solar system (actually, the planets were quite small models), and featuring appropriately "spacey" music from Vangelis.

One might say that his timing was also perfect; just a decade after the Moon landing and at a time before the space shuttle program experienced its first failures, it was a time of increasing optimism about space and space travel; the kids who had drunk their Tang and eaten their Space Food Sticks in the 1960's were now young adults, primed for a curious, celebratory, and slightly speculative journey into the outer reaches of the universe.

There was a tie-in book, which of course became a best-seller; Sagan followed it with others. In one curious twist, his fictional narrative, Contact -- originally a screenplay, which Sagan decided to turn into a novel when he wasn't able to get it made into a movie -- did get made into a movie a few years later, starring Jodie Foster (Sagan, alas, didn't live to see it.) Pale Blue Dot is, to my mind, the best of the later books; it's the most philosophical, and connects best with our overall theme of exploration. Sagan was closely involved in the two Voyager space probes, and lamented that Nasa decided to set aside plans for further exploration of space after the Apollo program ended. At the same time, he knew -- and emphasizes in the book -- the practical truth that there's no home away from home for us earthlings -- at least "not yet."

NB: Be sure to check out the "Planetary Update" I've just added!