Sun Ra denies being born because being birthed is to ‘be earthed’, or buried. And if you’re buried, you’re dead, so he was not born. On the other hand, his sister said he was born in Alabama at his aunt’s house (by a train station).
And so begins John Szwed’s biography of the musician Sun Ra, Space is the Place.
The biography was mostly facts. Sun Ra said this, John Szwed found out something else and put the two narratives side by side so the reader could decide.
But Sun Ra and humanly facts didn’t always contradict. Sun Ra said he was from Saturn (the planet) and his US passport backed him up. When doctors asked A&O-ish questions, he got an exemption for otherwise failing answers.
It would be easy to say Sun Ra was crazy, a troll, performing, or a combination of the three. Szwed didn’t give much of an opinion on why Sun Ra said the things he did – which included A LOT of criticism of Jesus Christ’s efficiency as a messiah and wordplay (see birthed/be earthed). He did what he did because he was Sun Ra – a freakishly smart jazz musician who lived on a different plane of reality than most people and on that plane he was sane.
The biography was kind of dry, but it worked because Sun Ra was so out of this world (heh) that making it dynamic would probably make it messy. Whatever the truth was, was exceptional. And denying that is a lot harder to deny that he was from Saturn.
For those unfamiliar with the guy, here is a description of one of his concerts:
“His first UK performance… was one of the most spectacular concerts ever held in this country. Not spectacular so much in terms of effects, which were low on budget but high on strange atmosphere; spectacular in terms of presenting a complete world view, so occult, so other, to all of us in the audience that the only possible responses were outright dismissal or complete intuitive empathy with a man who had chosen to discard all the possibilities of a normal life, even a normal jazz life, in favour of an unremitting alien identity. Fire-eaters, a golden-robed dancer carrying a sun symbol, tornadoes of percussion, eerie cello glissandi, ferocious blasts and tendrils of electronic sound from Sun Ra on Farfisa organ and Moog synthesizer, futuristic lyrics of the advertising age sung by June Tyson – ‘If you find earth boring, just the same old thing, come on sign up for Outer Spaceways Incorporated’ ….”