Recently, my wife and I watched a 1980 documentary about the avant-garde composer and musician, and idiosyncratic, self-styled visionary, Sun Ra — Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise, directed by Robert Mugges. The life of outer space and the mythology of Ancient Egypt were touchstones for Ra, acknowledged sources for his music, self-image, clothing and stage settings.
Two highlights for me:
Sun Ra tells us that a policeman came to see him to tell him that his neighbors were unhappy about Ra’s loud music. Ra clarified the matter for the officer, “That’s not ‘music.’ That’s what the Bible tells us to make: A joyful noise to the Lord.”
(Psalms 100, v. 1-2: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. / Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.”)
In another correction of conventional error, Sun Ra informs us: “I am not a man of history, of his-story. I am a spiritual being of mystery, of my-story.”
(If you want to learn more about Sun Ra, explore “The Interstellar Style of Sun Ra” by Rebecca Bengal https://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9866-the-interstellar-style-of-sun-ra/ , which appeared in a 2014 issue of The Pitchfork Review.) As Ra would surely join in wishing us: May all our traveling, earthly and unearthly, enlarge our loves and illumine our souls!
I saw Sun Ra and his Arkestra perform twice in the 80s, at an outdoor music festival in Birmingham, and in a music bar in the town where I live. Both performances were of course, stellar.