Space is the Place

from the LP Space is the Place, Blue Thumb Records, 1972



Sun Ra and his far out Arkestra remain (and likely will always remain) a wholly unique phenomenon inside the world of jazz music, and for most intensive purposes, outside of jazz as well, having no contemporaries for many years in either philosophy or sound. Sonny, as he sometimes called himself, was born in Alabama in 1914, suffering through the realities of the American South and finding himself to be magnetically drawn to the piano. Through his career he often spoke of the moment his life changed, being teleported to the planet of Saturn one day in the late ‘30s while he was contemplating existence in his room, being filled with the light of the universe, and being told that Earth was heading for some terrible times, which he could help diminish by spreading an interplanetary musical message of peace & understanding. Can you fucking dig it, man?! I want some of what he was smoking that day… It might just have been a bunch of mumbo jumbo except for the fact that Sun Ra was a prodigious talent, both musically and poetically, becoming something of a jazz philosopher over the years. Most consider this work to be his magnum opus, a sprawling piece of avant-garde electronic jazz wrapped around a steady column of modal (somewhat traditional) cadence, lifting the listener into that ether where he & his Arkestra made their home; considering the cosmological fact that we are all, indeed, essentially the remnants of star dust, and certain laws of quantum physics would make possible a psychic (and perhaps even physiological) journey to Saturn, maybe homeboy was on to something. Space is the place. Word.