Greg Tate is an African-American writer, musician, and producer. The focus of his writing has been African-American music and culture. He is a founding member of the Black Rock Coalition and the leader of Burnt Sugar.

Tate was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. When he was 13 years old, his family moved to Washington, D.C.^[1][2] He credits Amiri Baraka's Black Music and Rolling Stone, which he first read when he was 14, with stimulating his interest in collecting and writing about music.^[3] As a teenager, Tate taught himself how to play guitar. He attended Howard University, where he studied journalism and film.^[4]

In 1982, Tate moved to New York City, where he developed friendships with other musicians, including James "Blood" Ulmer and Vernon Reid. In 1985 he co-founded the Black Rock Coalition with some of the African-American musicians he knew who shared a common interest in playing rock music.^[4]

Tate became a staff writer for The Village Voice in 1987, a position he held until 2005.^[5] His work has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Artforum, Down Beat, Essence, JazzTimes, Rolling Stone, and VIBE.^[6] The Source described Tate as one of "the Godfathers of hip-hop journalism".^[7]

In 1999, Tate established Burnt Sugar, an improvisational ensemble that varies in size between 13 to 35 musicians.^[5] Tate described the band in 2004 as "a band I wanted to hear but could not find".^[8]

Tate has been a visiting professor of Africana studies at Brown University and the Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies.^[6][7] In 2010, he was awarded a United States Artists fellowship.^[9][10]

Works[link]

• Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1992. ISBN 0-671-72965-9. 
• Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture. New York: Broadway Books. 2003. ISBN 0-7679-0808-2. 
• Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. 2003. ISBN 1-55652-469-2. 
• Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader. Duke University Press. Forthcoming. 
• James Brown's Body and the Revolution of the Mind. Riverhead Press. Forthcoming. 

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Greg Tate

• Articles by Greg Tate at The Village Voice

Further reading[link]

• Dawes, Laina (September 20, 2005). "Everything But the Burden: An Interview with Author and Cultural Theorist Greg Tate". AfroToronto. http://www.afrotoronto.com/site/index.php/books/everything-but-the-burden-an-interview-with-author-and-cultural-theorist-greg-tate.html. 
• Hunter, J. (January 26, 2012). "Interview: Greg Tate of Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber". Nippertown. http://www.nippertown.com/2012/01/26/interview-greg-tate-of-burnt-sugar-the-arkestra-chamber/. 

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art. It is a network of four art museums: Tate Britain, London (previously known as the Tate Gallery, founded 1897), Tate Liverpool (founded 1988), Tate St Ives, Cornwall (founded 1993) and Tate Modern, London (founded 2000), with a complementary website, Tate Online (created 1998). There are plans to open a TATE in Southampton in 2020. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.^[1]

Tate is used as the operating name for the corporate body which was established by the Museums and Galleries Act 1992 as The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery.

The gallery was founded in 1897, as the National Gallery of British Art. When its role was changed to include the national collection of Modern Art as well as the national collection of British art, in 1932, it was renamed the Tate Gallery after sugar magnate Henry Tate of Tate & Lyle, who had laid the foundations for the collection. The Tate Gallery was housed in the current building occupied by Tate Britain which is situated in Millbank, London. In 2000, the Tate Gallery transformed itself into the current-day Tate, or the Tate Modern, which consists of a federation of four museums: Tate Britain which displays the collection of British art from 1500 to the present day; Tate Modern which is also in London, houses the Tate's collection of British and International Modern and Contemporary Art from 1900 to the present day. Tate Liverpool, in Liverpool has the same purpose as Tate Modern but on a smaller scale, and Tate St Ives displays Modern and Contemporary Art by artists who have connections with the area. All four museums share the Tate Collection. One of the Tate's most publicised art events is the awarding of the annual Turner Prize, which takes place at Tate Britain.

History and development[link]

The original Tate Gallery, now renamed Tate Britain

The original Tate art gallery was called the National Gallery of British Art, situated on Millbank, Pimlico, London at the site of the former Millbank Prison. The idea of a National Gallery of British Art was first proposed in the 1820s by Sir John Leicester, Baron de Tabley. It took a step nearer when Robert Vernon gave his collection to the National Gallery in 1847. A decade later John Sheepshanks gave his collection to the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria & Albert Museum), known for years as the National Gallery of Art (the same title as the Tate Gallery had). Forty years later Sir Henry Tate who was a sugar magnate and a major collector of Victorian art, offered to fund the building of the gallery to house British Art on the condition that the State pay for the site and revenue costs. Henry Tate also donated his own collection to the gallery. It was initially a collection solely of modern British art, concentrating on the works of modern—that is Victorian era—painters. It was controlled by the National Gallery until 1954.

In 1915, Hugh Lane bequeathed his collection of European Modern Art to Dublin, but controversially this went to the Tate, which expanded its collection to include foreign art and continued to acquire contemporary art. In 1926, and 1937, the art dealer and patron Joseph Duveen paid for two major expansions of the gallery building. His father had earlier paid for an extension to house the major part of the Turner Bequest, which in 1987 was transferred to a wing paid for by Sir Charles Clore. Henry Courtauld also endowed Tate with a purchase fund. By the mid 20th century, it was fulfilling a dual function of showing the history of British art as well as international Modern art. In 1954, the Tate Gallery was finally separated from the National Gallery.

Tate Liverpool opened in 1988

During the 1950s and 1960s, the visual arts department of the Arts Council of Great Britain funded and organised temporary exhibitions at the Tate Gallery including, in 1966, a retrospective of Marcel Duchamp. Later, the Tate began organising its own temporary exhibition programme. In 1979 with funding from a Japanese bank a large modern extension was opened that would also house larger income generating exhibitions. In 1987, the Clore Wing opened to house the major part of the Turner bequest and also provided a 200 seat auditorium. (The "Centenary Development," in 2001, provided improved access and public amenities)

Tate St Ives (on right), opened 1993, overlooks Porthmeor Beach

In 1988, an outpost in the North West England opened as Tate Liverpool. This shows various works of modern art from the Tate collection as well as mounting its own temporary exhibitions. In 2007, Tate Liverpool hosted the Turner Prize, the first time this has been held outside London. This is an overture to Liverpool's being the European Capital of Culture 2008.

In 1993, another offshoot opened, Tate St Ives. It exhibits work by modern British artists, particularly those of the St Ives School. Additionally the Tate also manages the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, which opened in 1980.

Tate Modern opened in 2000

Neither of these two new Tates had a significant effect on the functioning of the original London Tate Gallery, whose size was increasingly proving a constraint as the collection grew. It was a logical step to separate the "British" and "Modern" aspects of the collection, and they are now housed in separate buildings in London. The original gallery is now called Tate Britain and is the national gallery for British art from 1500 to the present day, as well as some modern British art. Tate Modern, in Bankside Power Station on the south side of the Thames, opened in 2000 and now exhibits the national collection of modern art from 1900 to the present day, including some modern British art. In its first year, the Tate Modern was the most popular museum in the world, with 5,250,000 visitors.

Sir Nicholas Serota has been the director of the Tate since 1988, when he took over from Sir Alan Bowness.

Tate Online[link]

Tate Online is the Tate's web site. Since its launch in 1998, the site has provided information on all four physical Tate galleries (Tate Britain, Tate St Ives, Tate Liverpool and Tate Modern) under the same domain. Tate Online helps visitors prepare and extend visits to the physical sites but also acts as a destination in its own right. Other resources include illustrated information on all works in Tate's Collection of British and Modern international art, structured and informal e-learning opportunities for all visitors, over 600 hours of archived webcast events, all articles from the magazine Tate Etc., and a series of bespoke net art commissions. BT was the primary sponsor of Tate Online from 2001 to 2009.

In addition to providing information about the galleries and organisation, Tate Online has been used as a platform for Internet art exhibits, termed Net Art,^[2] which are organised as part of Tate's Intermedia Art initiative^[3] covering new media art. So far, 13 net art exhibitions have been shown since the initiative started in 2000 including Tate in Space (2002) which was nominated in the Interactive Art category for the 2003 BAFTA Interactive awards.

Administration[link]

The Tate receives annual funding from the Department for Culture, Media & Sport. It is administered by a board of trustees, who are responsible for the running of the gallery and appoint the Director (for a period of seven years). Under the Charities Act 1993, the Tate is an exempt charity accountable directly to Government rather than the Charity Commission for financial returns etc. However, the Trustees are still expected to follow the broad responsibilities of charity trustees, and may be subject to Charity Commission oversight on these elements of their activities.

Various bodies have been set up to support the Tate including Tate Members for the general public, where a yearly fee gives rights such as free entry to charging exhibitions and members rooms. There is also Tate Patrons for a higher subscription fee and the Tate Foundation. There are a number of corporate sponsors. In addition individual shows are often sponsored.

The Outset Contemporary Art Fund was established in 2003, by Tate patrons Yana Peel and Candida Gertler. In collaboration with the Frieze Art Fair, the fund buys works from the fair for the Tate's collections.

Controversies[link]

• In the 19th century, there was dispute over the acquisitions made with the Chantrey bequest and accusations that favouritism resulted in the purchase of dull work by Royal Academicians
• In 1971, an exhibition by Robert Morris called Bodyspacemotionthings was closed after five days due to health and safety concerns^[4][5]
• In 1972, the Tate Gallery purchased a work by Carl Andre called Equivalent VIII. During a 1976 exhibition of the work, The Times newspaper published an article using the work to complain about institutional waste of taxpayers' money. The article made the piece infamous and it was subjected to ridicule in the media and vandalism. The work is still popularly known as "The Bricks," and has entered the British public lexicon
• Each year, the Turner Prize is held at a Tate Gallery (historically at Tate Britain) and is awarded to an artist under 50 who is either British or primarily working in Great Britain. It is the subject of great controversy and creates much media attention for contemporary British art, as well as attracting demonstrations
• In 1995, it was revealed that the Tate had accepted a gift of £20,000 from art fraudster John Drewe. The gallery had given Drewe access to its archives which he then used to forge documents authenticating fake modern paintings that he then sold
• In 1998, Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, conceived 'Operation Cobalt', the secret and ultimately successful buyback of two of the Tate's paintings by JMW Turner that had been stolen from a German gallery in 1994. See Frankfurt art theft (1994)
• Charles Saatchi stated that an offer of a major gift of works was rejected by Serota. Serota responded that no such offer had been made
• In 2005, the Stuckists offered a donation of 175 paintings which had been exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery. This was rejected and the Tate was accused of "snubbing one of Britain’s foremost collections"^[6]
• In 2005, there was a scandal over the Tate's purchase of its trustee Chris Ofili's work The Upper Room for £705,000, and accusations of conflict of interest^[7] In July 2006, the Charity Commission completed an investigation into this and censured the gallery for acting outside its legal powers^[8]
• In 2006, a legal opinion was given that the Tate and National Gallery have no legal right to ownership of the Turner Bequest, as Turner's conditions for that had never been fulfilled and are still binding^[9]
• In 2006, it was revealed that the Tate was the only national-funded museum not to be accredited to the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), as it did not wish to abide by guidelines that deaccessioned work should first be offered to other museums. The MLA threatened to bar the Tate from acquiring works under the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme, whereby works are given to the nation to settle inheritance tax. A total of 1,800 museums are accredited with the MLA^[10]
• Tate has been criticised for its partnership with BP. Environmental campaigners Art Not Oil have called for a protest against the petrol company's sponsorship of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.^[11]

Logo and brand[link]

The Tate logo was designed by international brand consultancy Wolff Olins in 2000 as part of a larger rebranding effort focused around the idea "look again, think again." The museum uses a range of logos that move in and out of focus, "suggesting the dynamic nature of Tate - always changing but always recognizable"^[12] Variations include a standard logo, a blurred version, a faded version and a halftone version consisting of dots rather than smooth fading.^[13]

See also[link]

• Tate Etc.
• Turner Prize
• Tate Publishing Ltd, a publisher of art books associated with the Tate Gallery

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tate Online 65,000 works from the Tate Collection online, information on Tate's exhibitions and events programmes, and online learning resources
• TATE ETC. Magazine
• Tate online shop Classic, modern and contemporary design products for adults and children, including items produced exclusively by Tate and items represented in its collection.
• Turner Worldwide - an ongoing online cataloguing of JMW Turner's work around the world
• Turner Collection Online The online catalogue of Tate's collection of nearly 300 oil paintings and 30,000 works on paper by JMW Turner
• Tate Gallery Records Tate's own historical records
• Tate Podcasts Audio and video podcasts from Tate
• Tate in Space
• Turner Museum
• Tate Channel Filmed artist talks and interviews, studio visits, and exhibitions

Media related to Tate at Wikimedia Commons

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Sun Ra
Sun Ra at the New England Conservatory of Music, February 27, 1992
Background information
Birth name	Herman Poole Blount
Also known as	Sun Ra, Le Sony'r Ra
Born	(1914-05-22)May 22, 1914
Origin	Birmingham, Alabama, United States
Died	May 30, 1993(1993-05-30) (aged 79)
Genres	Hard bop, swing, avant-garde jazz, free jazz, experimental music, Hip-Hop
Occupations	Bandleader, composer
Instruments	Hammond organ, piano, organ, keyboards, Minimoog, Celesta
Years active	1934–1993
Labels	El Saturn Records, Impulse!, MPS Records, ESP-Disk, Black Saint, A&M, Leo
Associated acts	Arkestra

Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, legal name Le Sony'r Ra;^[1] May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993) was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He is a 1979 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

"Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial," critic Scott Yanow said,^[2] because of Sun Ra's eclectic music and unorthodox lifestyle. Claiming that he was of the "Angel Race" and not from Earth, but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona using "cosmic" philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afrofuturism. He preached awareness and peace above all. He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the Egyptian God of the Sun), and used several other names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee.^[3] Sun Ra denied any connection with his birth name, saying "That's an imaginary person, never existed … Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym."^[4]

From the mid-1950s to his death, Sun Ra led "The Arkestra" (a deliberate re-spelling of "orchestra"), an ensemble with an ever-changing lineup and name. It was by turns called "The Solar Myth Arkestra", "His Cosmo Discipline Arkestra", the "Blue Universe Arkestra", "The Jet Set Omniverse Arkestra", as well as many other permutations. Sun Ra asserted that the ever-changing name of his ensemble reflected the ever-changing nature of his music. His mainstream success was limited, but Sun Ra was a prolific recording artist and frequent live performer. His music ranged from keyboard solos to big bands of over 30 musicians and touched on virtually the entire history of jazz, from ragtime to swing music, from bebop to free jazz. He was also a pioneer of electronic music and space music.^[5] He also used free improvisation and was one of the first musicians, of any genre, to make extensive use of electronic keyboards.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

For decades, very little was known about Sun Ra's early life, much of it being obscured by Sun Ra himself. He routinely gave evasive, contradictory or seemingly nonsensical answers to personal questions and even denied his birth name. His birthday for years remained unknown, his birth year being claimed as years ranging from 1910 to 1918. Only a few years before his death, the date of Sun Ra's birth remained a mystery. Jim Macnie's notes for Blue Delight (1989) could only state that Sun Ra was believed to be about 75 years old. However, Ra's biographer John F. Szwed was able to uncover a wealth of information about Ra's early life, including confirming a May 22, 1914 birth date. Named after the popular vaudeville stage magician Black Herman, who had deeply impressed his mother, Sun Ra would speculate, only half in jest, that he was distantly related to Elijah Poole, later famous as Elijah Muhammed, leader of the Nation of Islam. He was nicknamed "Sonny" from his childhood, had an older sister and half-brother, and was doted upon by his mother and grandmother.

Herman Blount was a skilled pianist as a child. By 11 or 12 years old he was writing original songs,^[6] and was able to sight read sheet music. Birmingham was an important stop for touring musicians, and he saw famous musicians like Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, along with less-famous performers who were often just as talented as their better-known peers, with Sun Ra once stating "the world let down a lot of good musicians".^[7] In his teenage years, Blount demonstrated prodigious musical talent: many times, according to acquaintances, he would see big band performances and produce full transcriptions of the bands' songs from memory. By his mid-teens Blount was performing semi-professionally as a solo pianist, or as a member of various ad hoc jazz and R&B groups. He attended Birmingham's Industrial High School (now known as Parker High School) where he studied under famed music teacher John T. "Fess" Whatley, a demanding disciplinarian who was widely respected and whose classes produced many professional musicians.

At ten years old Blount joined the Knights of Pythias, and remained a member until he graduated from high school. His family was deeply religious but was not formally associated with any Christian church or sect. Blount had few or no close friends in high school but was remembered as kind-natured and quiet, an honor roll student, and a voracious reader. The Black Masonic Lodge was one of the few places in Birmingham where African-Americans had essentially unlimited access to books, and the Lodge's many books on Freemasonry and other esoteric concepts made a large impression on him.

Also by his teens, Blount suffered from cryptorchidism,^[8] a chronic testicular hernia that left him with a nearly constant discomfort that sometimes flared into severe pain. Szwed suggests that the condition left Blount with a sense of shame and increased his sense of isolation.

Early professional career and college[link]

In 1934 Blount was offered his first full-time musical job when Industrial High School Biology teacher Ethel Harper organized a band and decided to pursue a career as a singer. Blount joined a musicians' trade union and Harper's group toured through the US southeast and Midwest. Harper left the group mid-tour to move to New York (she later was a member of the modestly successful singing group the Ginger Snaps), and Blount took over leadership of the group, renaming it the Sonny Blount Orchestra. They continued touring for several months before dissolving the unprofitable group. Though the first edition of the Sonny Blount Orchestra was not financially successful, they earned positive notice from fans and other musicians, and Blount afterwards found steady employment in Birmingham.

The clubs of Birmingham often featured exotic trappings such as vivid lighting and murals with tropical or oasis scenes that were believed to have influenced Sun Ra's later stage shows. The big bands also imparted a sense of pride and togetherness to black musicians: musicians were highly regarded in the black community, and were expected to be disciplined and presentable, and in the segregated south, black musicians arguably had the most acceptance in white society, often performing for white high society audiences (though they were typically forbidden from associating with the audiences).

In 1936 Whatley's intercession led to Blount being awarded a scholarship at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University. He was a music education major, studying composition, orchestration, and music theory, but after a year, he dropped out.

"Trip to Saturn"[link]

Finances and his increasing sense of isolation are believed to have been a factor in Sun Ra's leaving college, but perhaps more importantly, he claimed a visionary experience as a college student, a strange event that was to have a major long-term influence on the young pianist. In 1936 or 1937, in the midst of deep religious concentration, Sun Ra claimed that a bright light appeared around him, and, as he later stated,

… my whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up … I wasn't in human form … I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn … they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools … the world was going into complete chaos … I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That's what they told me.^[9]

Sun Ra said that this experience occurred in 1936 or 1937, but according to Swzed, even his closest associates cannot date the story any earlier than 1952 (Sun Ra also stated that it occurred when he was living in Chicago, a town he did not regularly inhabit until the late 1940s). With no substantial variations, Sun Ra discussed the vision to the end of his life. The trip to Saturn allegedly happened a full decade before flying saucers entered public consciousness with the 1947 encounter of Kenneth Arnold; about 15 years before the contactees and their stories of benevolent Space Brothers were publicized by the likes of George Adamski; and almost 20 years before sinister UFO abductions were a public concept with the 1961 case of Barney and Betty Hill. Szwed states that "even if this story is revisionist autobiography … Sonny was pulling together several strains of his life. He was both prophesizing his future and explaining his past with a single act of personal mythology."^[10]

New devotion to music (late 1930s)[link]

Even putting Blount's strange vision aside, after leaving college, he became known as perhaps the most singularly devoted musician in Birmingham. He rarely slept, citing Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, and Napoleon as fellow highly productive cat-nappers. He transformed the first floor of his family's home into a conservatory-workshop where he wrote songs, transcribed recordings, rehearsed with the many musicians who were nearly constantly drifting in and out, and discussed Biblical and esoteric concepts with whomever was interested.^[11]

Blount became a regular at Birmingham's Forbes Piano Company, a white-owned company which—astoundingly for a business in the Deep South^{[citation needed]}—simply ignored the strict Jim Crow laws of the racially segregated era. Blount visited the Forbes building almost daily to play music, swap ideas with staff and customers, or copy sheet music into his notebooks. He formed a new band, and, like his old teacher Whatley, insisted on rigorous daily rehearsals. The new Sonny Blount Orchestra earned a reputation as an impressive, disciplined band that could play in a wide variety of styles with equal skill.

Draft and wartime experiences[link]

In October 1942 Blount received a selective service notification that he had been drafted into the Military of the United States. He quickly declared himself a conscientious objector, citing religious objections to war and killing, his financial support of his great-aunt Ida, and his chronic hernia. His case was rejected by the local draft board, and in his appeal to the national draft board, Blount wrote that the lack of black men on the draft appeal board "smacks of Hitlerism".^[12] His family was deeply embarrassed by Sonny's refusal to join the military, and he was effectively ostracized by many of his relatives. Blount was eventually approved for alternate service at Civilian Public Service camp in Pennsylvania. However, Blount didn't appear at the camp as scheduled on December 8, 1942, and shortly thereafter, he was arrested in Alabama.

In court, Blount declared that even alternate service was unacceptable to him, and he debated the judge on points of law and Biblical interpretation. Though sympathetic to Blount, the judge also declared that he was clearly in violation of the law, and was risking forcible induction into the U.S. Military. Blount declared that if he were inducted, he would use his military weapons and training to kill the first high-ranking military officer he could. The judge sentenced Blount to jail (pending draft board and CPS rulings), and then declared "I've never seen a nigger like you before;" Blount replied, "No, and you never will again."^[13]

In January 1943 a desperate Blount wrote to the United States Marshals Service from the Walker County, Alabama jail in Jasper. He said he was facing a nervous breakdown from the stress of imprisonment, that he was suicidal, and that he was in constant fear of sexual assault. His conscientious objector status was eventually reaffirmed in February 1943 and Blount was escorted to Pennsylvania where he conducted forestry work in the day and was allowed to play piano at night. Psychiatrists there described him as "a psychopathic personality [and] sexually perverted" but also as "a well-educated colored intellectual".^[14]

In March 1943 Blount was classified as 4-F because of his hernia. He returned to Birmingham embittered and angered by his experiences. He formed a new band and quickly was playing professionally. After his beloved great-aunt Ida died in 1945, Blount felt no reason to stay in Birmingham. He dissolved the band, and moved to Chicago, part of the wave of southern African Americans who moved north during and after World War II.

Chicago years (1945–1961)[link]

In Chicago Blount quickly found work, notably with blues singer Wynonie Harris, with whom he made his recording debut on two 1946 singles, "Dig This Boogie/Lightning Struck the Poorhouse" and "My Baby's Barrelhouse"/"Drinking By Myself;" "Dig This Boogie" was also Blount's first recorded piano solo. He performed with the locally successful Lil Green band and played bump-and-grind music for months in Calumet City strip clubs.

In August 1946, Blount earned a lengthy engagement at the Club DeLisa under bandleader and composer Fletcher Henderson. Blount had long admired Henderson, but Henderson's fortunes were fading (his band was now made of up middling musicians rather than the stars of earlier years) in large part because of his instability, due to Fletcher's long term injuries from a car accident. Henderson hired Blount as pianist and arranger, replacing Marl Young. Ra's arrangements initially showed a degree of bebop influence, but the band members resisted the new music, despite Henderson's encouragement.

In 1948 Blount performed briefly in a trio with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and violinist Stuff Smith, both preeminent swing-era musicians. There are no known recordings of this trio, but a home recording of a Blount-Smith duet from 1953 appears on Sound Sun Pleasure, and one of Sun Ra's final recordings was a rare sideman appearance on violinist Billy Bang's Tribute to Stuff Smith.

In addition to professional advancement, Chicago also changed Blount's personal outlook. The city was a center of African American political activism and fringe movements, with Black Muslims, Black Hebrews, and others proselytizing, debating, and printing leaflets or books. Blount absorbed it all and was fascinated with the city's many ancient Egyptian-styled buildings and monuments. He read books like George G.M. James's Stolen Legacy (which argued that classical Greek philosophy actually had its roots in ancient Egypt), which convinced Blount that the accomplishments and history of Africans had been systematically suppressed and denied by European cultures.

By 1952 Blount was leading the Space Trio with drummer Tommy "Bugs" Hunter and saxophonist Pat Patrick, two of the most accomplished musicians he had known. They performed regularly and Sun Ra began writing more advanced songs.

On October 20, 1952 Blount legally changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra. Sun Ra claimed^[15] to have always been uncomfortable with his birth name of Blount, seeing it as a slave name of a family that he was not really a member of. One observer has argued that this change was similar to the way "Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali … [dropped] their slave names in the process of attaining a new self-awareness and self-esteem".^[16]

Patrick left the group to move to Florida with his new wife; not long after, Patrick's friend John Gilmore (tenor sax) joined the group, and Marshall Allen (alto sax) soon joined the fold. Patrick was in and out of the group until the end of his life, but Allen and Gilmore—who would both earn critical praise for their talents—were the two most devoted members of the Arkestra. Saxophonist James Spaulding and trombonist Julian Priester also recorded with Sun Ra in Chicago, and both went on to notable careers of their own. The Chicago tenorist Von Freeman also did a short stint with the band of the early 1950s.^[17]

In Chicago, Blount met Alton Abraham, a precociously intelligent teenager and something of a kindred spirit who became the Arkestra's biggest booster and one of Sun Ra's closest friends. The men both felt like outsiders and shared an interest in fringe esoterica. Abraham's strengths balanced Ra's shortcomings: though he was a disciplined bandleader, Sun Ra was somewhat introverted and lacked business sense (a trait that would haunt his entire career); Abraham was outgoing, well-connected, and practical. Though still a teenager, Abraham eventually became Sun Ra's de facto business manager: he booked performances, suggested musicians for the Arkestra, and introduced several popular songs into the group's repertoire. Ra, Abraham and others formed a sort of book club to trade ideas and discuss the offbeat topics that so intrigued them. This group printed a number of pamphlets and broadsides explaining their conclusions and ideas; some of these were collected by critic John Corbett and Anthony Elms as The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets (2006).

Sun Ra and Abraham also formed an independent record label in the mid-1950s; it was generally known as El Saturn Records, though (as with the Arkestra) there were several variants of the name. Initially focused on 45 rpm singles by Sun Ra and artists related to him, Saturn Records did issue two full-length albums during the 1950s: Super-Sonic Jazz (1957) and Jazz In Silhouette (1959). Producer Tom Wilson was actually the first to release a Sun Ra album, through his independent label Transition Records in 1957, entitled Jazz by Sun Ra.^[18] During this era, Sun Ran recorded the first of dozens of singles as a band-for-hire backing a range of doo wop and R&B singers; several dozen of these were reissued in a two-CD set, The Singles, by Evidence Records.

It was during the late 1950s that Sun Ra and his band began wearing the outlandish, Egyptian-styled or science fiction-themed costumes and headdresses for which they would become known. These costumes had multiple purposes: they evidenced Sun Ra's abiding fascination with ancient Egypt and the space age; they provided a sort of distinctive, memorable uniform for the Arkestra; they were a way to take on a new identity, at least while onstage; and they provided comic relief (Sun Ra thought avant garde musicians typically took themselves far too seriously).

New York years (1961–1968)[link]

Sun Ra and some of his core musicians (Allen, Gilmore, and Boykins) left Chicago in July 1961, staying in Montreal through the end of September before settling in New York City. They initially had trouble finding performance venues and began living communally because of New York's higher cost of living. This frustration helped to fuel the drastic changes in the Arkestra's sound as Sun Ra's music underwent a free jazz-influenced experimental period.

In March 1966 the Arkestra scored a regular Monday night gig at Slug's Saloon. This proved to be a breakthrough to new audiences and recognition. Sun Ra's popularity reached an early peak during this period, as the beat generation and early followers of psychedelia embraced him. Regularly for the next year and a half (and intermittently for another half-decade afterwards), Sun Ra and company performed at Slug's for audiences that eventually came to include music critics and notable jazz musicians. Opinions of Sun Ra's music were divided (and hecklers were not uncommon), but high praise came from two of the architects of bebop: trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie offered encouragement, once stating, "Keep it up, Sonny, they tried to do the same shit to me",^[19] while pianist Thelonious Monk chided someone who said Sun Ra was "too far out" by responding, "Yeah, but it swings."^[20]

Philadelphia years (1968–1993)[link]

In 1968, when the New York building they were renting was put up for sale, Sun Ra and the Arkestra relocated to the Germantown section of Philadelphia, where his Morton Street house remained the Arkestra's base of operations until Sun Ra's death. Apart from occasional complaints about the noise of rehearsals, they were soon regarded as good neighbors because of their friendliness, drug-free living, and rapport with youngsters. Saxophonist Danny Thompson owned and operated the Pharaoh's Den, a convenience store in the neighborhood. When lightning struck a tree on their street, Sun Ra took it as a good omen and multireedist James Jacson fashioned the Cosmic Infinity Drum from the scorched tree trunk. They still commuted via railroad to New York for the Monday night gig at Slug's and for other engagements.

In late 1968 Sun Ra and the Arkestra undertook their first tour of the US West Coast. Reactions were mixed; even hippies accustomed to long-form psychedelia like the Grateful Dead were often bewildered by the Arkestra, which included 20–30 musicians, dancers, singers, fire-eaters, and elaborate lighting. John Burks of Rolling Stone wrote a positive review of a San Jose State College concert that led to Sun Ra being featured on the April 19, 1969 cover of the magazine and introducing Sun Ra's inscrutable gaze to millions. This first West Coast tour also led to vibraphonist Damon Choice, then an art student at San Jose, joining the Arkestra.

Starting with concerts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in 1970, the Arkestra began to find opportunities for working outside the US, playing to audiences who had hitherto known his music only through records. Sun Ra continued playing in Europe to nearly the end of his life. Given Sun Ra's unorthodox financial management, saxophonist Danny Thompson became a de facto tour and business manager during this era, specializing in what he called "no bullshit C.O.D.",^[21] preferring to take cash before performing or delivering records.

In early 1971 Sun Ra was artist-in-residence at University of California, Berkeley, teaching a course called "The Black Man In the Cosmos". Rather few students enrolled but the classes were often full of curious persons from the surrounding community. One half-hour of each class was devoted to a lecture (complete with handouts and homework assignments), the other half-hour to an Arkestra performance or Sun Ra keyboard solo. Reading lists included the works of Madame Blavatsky and Henry Dumas, the Book of the Dead, Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons, The Book of Oahspe and assorted volumes concerning Egyptian hieroglyphs, African American folklore, and other topics.

In 1971, Sun Ra traveled throughout Egypt with the Arkestra at the invitation of drummer Salah Ragab. He would travel to Egypt in again 1983 and 1984, when he would record with Ragab once more. Recordings made in Egypt have been released on Live in Egypt, Nidhamu, Sun Ra Meets Salah Ragab, Egypt Strut and Horizon.^[22][23][24]

In 1972 San Francisco public TV station KQED producer John Coney, producer Jim Newman, and screen writer Joshua Smith worked with Sun Ra to produce an 85-minute feature film, entitled Space Is the Place, with Sun Ra's Arkestra and an ensemble of actors assembled by the production team. It was filmed in Oakland and San Francisco. On May 20, 1978 Sun Ra and the Arkestra appeared on Saturday Night Live.

In the mid-1970s, the Arkestra would sometimes play free Saturday afternoon concerts in a Germantown park near their Philadelphia home. Sometimes at their mid 1970s shows in Philadelphia nightclubs, someone would stand at the back of the room, selling stacks of unmarked LPs in plain white sleeves, pressed from recordings of the band's live performances (including one Halloween show where the salesman was dressed as a golden alien, and the LPs included a cover arrangement of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow").

Back in New York City, in the fall of 1979, Sun Ra and the Arkestra were essentially the 'house band' at the notorious Squat Theater on 23rd St.-the performance home of the avant garde Hungarian theater troupe. Their young mastermind manager, Janos, transformed the theater into a riveting nightclub while the core of the troupe was away that season performing in Europe. Debbie Harry, 'The Velvet Underground's' John Cale and Nico (from Andy Warhol's factory days), John Lurie and 'The Lounge Lizards' and other pop and avant garde musicians were regulars. Sun Ra was a disciplined person who avoided drinking anything other than club soda at the gigs, but did not impose his strict code on his musicians, the majority of whom regarded his claim that he was a 'messenger' from Saturn with wry skepticism. Nevertheless it was clear they deeply respected his genius, discipline and authority. Soft spoken and charismatic, Sun Ra turned Squat Theater into a syncopated universe of big band 'space' jazz backed by a floor show of writhing, sexy, Jupiterettes—him directing and playing three synthesizers at the same time. In those days 'Space Is The Place' was the space at Squat.

The Arkestra continued their touring and recording through the 1980s and into the 1990s, and Sun Ra became a fixture in Philadelphia, appearing semi-regularly on WXPN radio, giving lectures to community groups, or haunting the city's libraries.

Even after a stroke in 1990, Sun Ra kept composing, performing, and leading the Arkestra. Late in his career, Sun Ra opened a few concerts for New York–based rock group Sonic Youth. Eventually, Sun Ra grew too ill to perform and tour, and he entrusted Gilmore with leading the Arkestra. (Gilmore himself was frail from emphysema, and when he died, Allen would take over leadership of the Arkestra.) Sun Ra went back to Birmingham and reconnected with his sister whom he had rarely seen for nearly 40 years. He contracted pneumonia, died in Birmingham on May 30, 1993, and was buried at the Elmwood Cemetery. According to the hospital, he had also been affected by circulatory system problems and numerous strokes shortly before his death.^[3] The small footstone read only "Sonny Blount (aka [sic] Le Son'y [sic] Ra)".^[25]

The Arkestra continues[link]

Following Sun Ra's death, the Arkestra was led by tenor saxophonist John Gilmore. Following Gilmore's death, the group has performed under the direction of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who celebrated his 80th birthday on stage during Arkestra performances at the Vox Populi gallery in Philadelphia and the Vision Festival in New York City. A 1999 album led by Allen, Song for the Sun, features Jimmy Hopps and Dick Griffin. In the summer of 2004 the Arkestra became the first American jazz band to perform in Tuva, playing five sets at the Ustuu-Huree Festival.^[26] As of May 2008, the Arkestra continues to tour and perform, with captain Marshall Allen celebrating his 84th birthday on stage at New York City's Sullivan Hall. In September 2008 they played for 7 days in a row at the ZXZW festival, every day emphasizing different aspects of the musical legacy of Sun Ra. The Arkestra celebrated Allen's 85th birthday on May 24, 2009 to a packed house at Johnny Brenda's in Philadelphia's Fishtown neighborhood. A month later, they performed at Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art in conjunction with an exhibition that explored the intersection of the Arkestra's performative legacy and the practice of contemporary art.^[27] More recently they ventured to Australia for the first time for the 2011 Melbourne International Jazz Festival, still under the control of the sprightly 87-year-old Marshall Allen, playing to very enthusiastic sold-out crowds.

Music[link]

Sun Ra's piano technique touched on many styles: his youthful fascination with boogie woogie, stride piano and blues, a sometimes refined touch reminiscent of Count Basie or Ahmad Jamal, and angular phrases in the style of Thelonious Monk or brutal, percussive attacks like Cecil Taylor. Often overlooked is the range of influences from classical music—Sun Ra cited Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Schoenberg and Shostakovich as his favorite composers for the piano.^[28]

As a synthesizer and electric keyboard player, Sun Ra ranks among one of the earliest and most radical pioneers. By the mid-1950s, he used a variety of electric keyboards, and almost immediately, he exploited their potential perhaps more than anyone, sometimes modifying them himself to produce sounds rarely if ever heard before. His live albums from the late 1960s and early 1970s feature some of the noisiest, most bizarre keyboard work ever recorded. Sun Ra's music can be roughly divided into three phases, but his records and performances were full of surprises.

Chicago phase[link]

The first period occurred in the 1950s when Sun Ra's music evolved from big band swing into the outer-space-themed "cosmic jazz" for which he was best known. Music critics and jazz historians say some of his best work was recorded during this period and it is also some of his most accessible music. Sun Ra's music in this era was often tightly arranged and sometimes reminiscent of Duke Ellington's, Count Basie's, or other important swing music ensembles. However, there was a strong influence from post-swing styles like bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, and touches of the exotic and hints of the experimentalism that would dominate his later music. Notable Sun Ra albums from the 1950s include Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth, Interstellar Low Ways, Super-Sonic Jazz, We Travel the Spaceways, The Nubians of Plutonia and Jazz In Silhouette.

Ronnie Boykins, Sun Ra's bassist, has been described as "the pivot around which much of Sun Ra's music revolved for eight years". This is especially pronounced on the key recordings from 1965 (The Magic City, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One, and The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two) where the intertwining lines of Boykins' bass and Ra's electronic keyboards provide cohesion.

New York phase[link]

After the move to New York, Sun Ra and company plunged headlong into the experimentalism that they had only hinted at in Chicago. The music was often extremely loud and the Arkestra grew to include multiple drummers and percussionists. Recordings of this era began to utilize new technological possibilities such as extensive use of tape delay systems to assemble spatial sound pieces which are far removed from earlier compositions such as "Saturn". Recordings and live performances often featured passages for unusual instrumental combinations and passages of collective playing which point towards free improvisation—in fact, it is often difficult to tell where the compositions end and the improvisations begin.

In this era Sun Ra began conducting using hand and body gestures. This system would inspire cornetist Butch Morris, who would later develop his own more highly refined way to conduct improvisers.

Though often associated with avant-garde jazz, Sun Ra did not believe his work could be classified as "free music": "I have to make sure that every note, every nuance, is correct. … If you want to call it that, spell it p-h-r-e, because ph is a definite article and re is the name of the sun. So I play phre music—music of the sun."^[29]

Seeking to broaden his compositional possibilities, Sun Ra insisted all band members double on various percussion instruments—predating world music by drawing on various ethnic musical forms—and most saxophonists became multireedists, adding instruments such as flutes, oboes, or clarinets to their arsenals. In this era, Sun Ra was among the first of any musicians to make extensive and pioneering use of synthesizers and other various electronic keyboards; he was given a prototype Minimoog by its inventor, Robert Moog.

Notable titles from this period include The Magic City, Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, When Sun Comes Out, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One, Atlantis, Secrets of the Sun and Other Planes of There.

Philadelphia phase[link]

During their third period, beginning in the 1970s and onward, Sun Ra and the Arkestra settled down into a relatively conventional sound, often incorporating swing standards, though their records and concerts were still highly eclectic and energetic, and typically included at least one lengthy, semi-improvised percussion jam. Sun Ra was explicitly asserting a continuity with the ignored jazz tradition: "They tried to fool you, now I got to school you, about jazz, all about jazz" he rapped, framing the inclusion of pieces by Fletcher Henderson and Jelly Roll Morton.

In the 1970s Sun Ra took a liking to the films of Walt Disney. He incorporated smatterings of Disney musical numbers into many of his performances from then on. In the late 1980s the Arkestra performed a concert at Walt Disney World. The Arkestra's version of "Pink Elephants on Parade" is available on Stay Awake, a tribute album of Disney tunes played by various artists and produced by Hal Willner. A number of Sun Ra's 1970s concerts are available on CD, but none have received a wide release in comparison to his earlier music. The album Atlantis can be considered the landmark that led into his 1970s era. In 1978-1980 performances, Sun Ra added a large electronic creation, the Outerspace Visual Communicator, which produced images rather than sounds; this was performed at a keyboard by its inventor, Bill Sebastian. During concerts, the OVC usually was positioned at center stage behind the Arkestra while Sebastian sat on stage with the musicians.

Musicians[link]

Certainly dozens of musicians—perhaps hundreds—passed through Sun Ra's bands over the years. Some stayed with him for decades, while others made only a few recordings or performances.

Sun Ra was personally responsible for the vast majority of the constant changes in the Arkestra's lineup. According to contrabassist Jiunie Booth, himself a member of the Arkestra, Sun Ra would not confront any musician whose performance he was unsatisfied with. Instead, Sun Ra would simply gather the entire Arkestra minus the offending musician, and skip town, leaving the fired musician stranded. After repeated instances of US jazz musicians becoming stranded in foreign countries, Sun Ra's unique method of dismissal became a diplomatic liability for the United States. The U.S. State Department was compelled to tell Sun Ra to bring any fired musicians stateside rather than leaving them stranded.^{[citation needed]}

The following is a partial list of musical collaborators and the eras in which they played with Sun Ra and/or the Arkestra: