Quantum 4:
Jazz & Pop 6:10, p. 15
(10/67)
Marion Brown
on Sun Ra
Sun Ra lives in a small three-room apartment, and the rehearsals were happening all day, every day. Sometimes there would be twenty or thirty musicians packed in there. When I had no place to go I often spent whole days there.
The band was different every day, and always full of surprises. Sun Ra is an administrator, like Duke Ellington. He plays you, and you play your instrument. Like all good administrators, he knows how to use each of his men to the fullest. Sometimes spectators think that he doesn't do much while the band is playing, but he is really directing every bit of the activity.
The American music world has imposed some kind of a sentence of silence on Sun Ra. He has been playing this music and thinking about outer space for thirty years, before it even occurred to the rest of them. The difference is that he sees it as a pleasant, beautiful, peaceful place, and not in the military and economic terms for which America wants to exploit it.
There are a lot of younger musicians around that people should hear more and know more about, too. I enjoy listening to Pharaoh Saunders and John Gilmore on tenors, and Robin Kenyatta and Arthur Jones on altos. These cats are too busy working out their things to worry about getting their names before the public.
Sun Ra is not looking for permanent answers or rules in his music -- he knows that there aren't any. He's just steady moving down a road toward the future. There are no stop signs, except those that society puts in front of him. Playing with Sun Ra was the most positive musical experience I have had.
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