Continuing in an Orbit Around Sun Ra

Sun Ra, a pianist and composer, was a legendary jazz avant-gardist. He also was one of the most curious artists to ever appear--in jazz or elsewhere.

Ra claimed that he was from the planet Saturn, that he was a secret agent for the Creator and that his music--especially as it was revealed by his “intergalactic band,” the Myth-Science (or Solar) Arkestra--built a connection to another dimension and provided a metaphysical bridge to the cosmos.

These claims aside, Sun Ra, who died in 1993 at the age of 79, was an innovative composer who was a kind of African American extension of an American tradition of musical visionaries--Charles Ives, Harry Partch, Henry Cowell and John Cage among them.

Viewed by some as an inventive genius, he was also derided by others, who considered his space-oriented philosophizing as the meanderings of a naive mind. But his impact, both direct and indirect, spread in many directions, reaching from the edgy, communal music of Chicago’s Assn. for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the Art Ensemble of Chicago to the rock and R&B; of Jimi Hendrix and George Clinton.

Ra’s musical resume ranged from swing music to bebop to avant-garde to retro mainstream. Concerts by the Arkestra, dating to the ‘50s, were (and continue to be) colorful blends of theater, ritual and music--performance works that predated even the era when performance works were referred to as “happenings” and “action music.” Among the many first-rate players who drifted through the band over the years were saxophonists Pat Patrick, John Gilmore and Von Freeman, trumpeters Dave Young and Eddie Gale, trombonist Julian Priester and drummer Clifford Jarvis.

The Arkestra has had a wide variety of instrumentation over time. The current incarnation usually consists of around 10 to 15 players, often with the addition of a singer. It now continues under the leadership of a longtime Ra associate, saxophonist Marshall Allen.

The group makes two rare appearances in the Southland this week--at Billboard Live on Friday, followed by a free performance the next evening at the California Plaza.

In characteristic Sun Ra fashion, the Arkestra will make an offbeat presentation.

“We’re doing a Disney repertoire,” says trombonist Tyrone Hill, a longtime band member. “Music from ‘Pocahontas,’ ‘The Lion King,’ ‘Peter Pan.’ We’ll do ‘Pink Elephants on Parade’ from ‘Dumbo.’ But, of course,” he adds with a chuckle, “we’ll be giving the music our own personal touch.”

It sounds like an interesting combination (Sun Ra actually toured a program of Disney music in the late ‘80s under the title of the Disney Odyssey Arkestra). The Ra predilection for spacey, futuristic costumes, broad humor and parades through the audience aren’t all that distant from the Magic Kingdom’s imaginative fantasies.

“This is just one of the things we can do,” Allen says. “There are many styles in the band. We can play smooth style, combo style, dance style or what we call the ‘spiral style,’ which never ends; it just goes on and on. And all of these are part of the vast program Sun Ra left for us.”

The perpetuation of the legacy through the Arkestra has been a continuing goal for the surviving Arkestra players since Ra died.

“He activated people’s minds, musicians’ minds, and he gave us a goal to reach,” Allen says. “He was good at that, at bringing the best out of musicians, at pointing out the right direction. He drew the road map, and if we stay on the right road, all we have to do is follow his map.”

The group’s name, as with so many other elements in Sun Ra’s complex verbal lexicon, had many references--the most obvious to the ark of the Egyptian god Ra, but also to the ark of the covenant.

Sun Ra’s own long, strange journey began in Birmingham, Ala., where he was born Herman Blount on May 22, 1914. But he worked hard to obscure his past, suggesting that he came from, and would return to, Saturn (many of the Arkestra’s albums were released on Ra’s El Saturn label). In 1952, for a variety of mystical reasons, he legally changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra, which eventually became Sun Ra.

He freelanced with Fletcher Henderson, in the ‘40s, developing first-rate skills as an orchestrator-composer and as a bop-tinged, harmonically complex pianist. But his true career as a jazz innovator began in the ‘50s, when he formed the first version of the Arkestra. His views on space, time, the galaxy, spiritual matters and race relations were rapidly coming into focus at this time, and he worked with his ensemble in a communal environment, as teacher, lecturer and moral leader.

Ra’s instructions to his players often included directions such as, “Don’t play notes, play the warmth of the sun.” Yet, despite the impressionistic qualities of his directions, he also stressed elements that he believed were equally vital to the proper production of music--precision and discipline.

The Arkestra lived, for the most part, in a communal lifestyle in which drugs and alcohol were forbidden, and involvement with women was discouraged. Ra’s linkage with the Arkestra--even more than Duke Ellington’s classic use of his band as his expressive voice--was inseparable from who he was as an artist and a philosophic voice. Community was vital, both to his beliefs and to his music.

Which explains why the core members of the Arkestra--especially Allen, Hill and saxophonist Yahya Majio--are so determined to carry on Ra’s work. “He told us to keep playing,” Hill says. “And the music has never stopped.”

Allen agrees, reverting to typically enigmatic Ra-type description of the legacy that is being carried on by the Arkestra.

“Sun Ra taught us that you can’t go beyond until you go to the impossible,” Allen says. “And when you go to the impossible you’ve still got another place to go. That’s what we’re doing with the band, trying to find the next impossibility, and do the best we can with it.”

The World Wide Web has dozens of sites focused on Sun Ra and the Arkestra. Among the more interesting: Sun Ra Poems (www.fusebox.com/ ~jimr/SunRaPoem.html), Sun Ra (www.furious.com/perfect/sunra.html), Planet Sun Ra (www.holeworld.com/stellar.html) and Saturn (www-hrml.vpad.uab.edu/saturn/index.htm). The latter site also has a Sun Ra bibliography (www-hrml.vpad.uab.edu/saturn/chasebib.htm) and discography (www-hrml.vpad.uab.edu/saturn/discintr.htm)

BE THERE

The Sun Ra Arkestra, Friday at Billboard Live, 9039 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 8 p.m., $20. (310) 274-5800. Saturday at the California Plaza Watercourt, 300-350 S. Grand Ave., 8 p.m. Free. (213) 687-2159.