Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Through deft writing and detailed chronology, Yale professor and music critic Szwed manages to make the seemingly unintelligible, shiny-turbaned pioneer of big-band free jazz more accessible to society at large. Born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Ala., Sun Ra (1914-1993) denounced his past with unprecedented thoroughnesshe often said he wasn't born and that he had no familywhen transforming himself in the 1940s and '50s from a gifted young jazz pianist into the leader of 30-odd musicians and followers who recorded ceaselessly and could play "for the sake of beauty and enlightenment" for 10 to 15 hours straight. As Szwed shows, an elaborate, paranoid and finally incoherent pastiche of cosmology, history and sci-fi fantasy underlay Sun Ra's musical and verbal ramblings, resulting in innovations like the "space key," in which a drone anchored the piece while musicians improvised without the benefit of a particular key. Convincingly, Szwed finds method in this madness, juxtaposing Sun Ra's career and thoughts with the developing civil rights movement, and showing with encyclopedic aplomb (and an invaluable discography) how "Sonny's" career stretched from the 1930's Fletcher Henderson era through the extraordinary flowering of the black avant-garde in the 1960s and '70s, and beyond. Sun Ra, who by then had won the respect, if not the admiration, of some critics and musicians like Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, continued to compose, record and perform until his death. Photos. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The late jazz musician Sun Ra, who claimed to be from Saturn, is vividly and respectfully portrayed and defended against those who thought this self-described jester of the creator was a crackpot. Sun Ra, born Henry Poole Blount in 1914, always elicited a strong response with his music and ideas. Norman Mailer claimed the strangely horrible music cured him of a cold. One jazz critic seeing a show in 1967 wrote, ""There is no pigeon-hole for it. It is ugly and beautiful and terribly interesting."" Sun Ra's music was well grounded in traditional jazz, but his wild sensibilities could drive the music into extreme breakdowns of noise--not to be purposefully obtuse or avant-garde, but because Sun Ra was on an all-consuming quest for truth in his music, which he once called a cosmic newspaper. He rehearsed his band endlessly and discouraged drinking, drug use, and womanizing. This rigor was a surprising backdrop to what often seemed like ""love generation"" sensibilities. The band wore wild hats, old opera costumes or African clothes, danced in the aisles, and played with improvisational abandon. As elucidated by Szwed (Anthropology, Afro-American Studies, Music, and American Studies/Yale) Sun Ra's seemingly outlandish ideas make a certain sense. For instance, the musician's claim to be Sun Ra from Saturn is placed in the cultural context of ""ritual renaming"" among African-Americans, from Malcolm X to Duke Ellington. Much space is also devoted to explaining Egyptology and other important ideas that led Sun Ra to fertile areas of thought and creativity. Readers will find some of Sun Ra's ideas hard to swallow. Listeners to his music will find some passages difficult or unlistenable. But Szwed also makes a strong case for Sun Ra as creative genius. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
