blowin in from chicago Vol 2 in the 70s

[Guest youmustbe]

There's no story, unless you consider human nature a shocker!

I would have thought that by now, everybody knew that Sun Ra was Gay. And the reason that men spent their whole adult lives living with him.

It was no big deal then, and certainly not now in 2006. except that perhaps in the Jazz world, like Sports, it's difficult to get past the macho image that has prevailed.

[Lazaro Vega]

It's been a while since I read Szwed's book "Space is the Place," but didn't he talk about how Sun Ra's testicles didn't drop all the way through his body as they do in "normal" development and the malady, which was eventually corrected, imprinted heavily on his sexuality? From what I remember, though, Ra's response was to de-emphasize sex, esepcially in his music -- not that erotica ignored June Tyson, or that the Arkestra couldn't bump and grind, but Sun Ra's poems and lyrics meditate on love more than sex, don't they? I don't recall Szwed's take on homosexuality but it would seem strange that the male preference exerted itself in business (keeping Gilmore from recording outside the fold) and little in poetry or music.

There must be more interesting things to wonder about out loud as relates to the mystery, Mr.Ra.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

okokokok youmustb---

1)how does what you just said account for SunRa not wanting Gilmore to record Blowin vol II? i dont see the connection

2) when you said: .....that Sun Ra was Gay. And the reason that men spent their whole adult lives living with him.

R U TRYING TO SAY THE ARKESTRA WAS LIVING TOGETHER IN THAT HOUSE BEACUSE THEY WERE ALL HOOKING UP. are you overshotting that just a little youmustbe....are you saying everyone in the house was in love with sun ra and thats why they all lived with him etc. im not saying none of them, but all, or the majority? can you clairify your post, thnx

[sidewinder]

There must be more interesting things to wonder about out loud as relates to the mystery, Mr.Ra.

Indeed.

[Guest youmustbe]

Life isn't really that interesting, come to think of it, when you get to my age and look back.

Jazz itself isn't that interesting.

And Sun Ra definately isn't that interesting.

Heard him a few times but I always thought he was a Minstrel show for White Liberals, who were miffed that they were excluded from the Black Power Movement. As Leroi Jones said at a famous meeting at the Village Vanguard in 65 to the White Liberal audience...'Thanks, but we don't need you anymore'.

And the music, with the exception of Gilmore, was amateurish.

OK, you asked for it...in order to stay in the house, you had to 'pork' Sunny regularly! You don't have to have testicles to have a guy ream you up the ass! Are you happy?! Now you understand what it was ALL about? Think men in jail...men in the Navy...and on and on.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

YOUMUSTBE: you gotta cite your sources space-soul-brother or at least vaguely tell us where u get this from. i thought the house was all about the music, u know some steady centere so they can practice. youre saying it was a REQUIREMENT to do sun ra to live there. that is very far out man. so how did u come up with that? did you see it? did you hear about it? etc?

[Lazaro Vega]

Boy, you know the state of cultural affairs is gone to zilch when Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor get the tabloid treatment.

"The Magic City" is not mediocre, it's one of the great orchestral jazz works of the era.

[paul secor]

All I can say is that whenever I've listened to Sun Ra's (and Cecil Taylor's) music, I've never once thought about their sexual preferences.

[Hot Ptah]

Life isn't really that interesting, come to think of it, when you get to my age and look back.

Jazz itself isn't that interesting.

And Sun Ra definately isn't that interesting.

Heard him a few times but I always thought he was a Minstrel show for White Liberals, who were miffed that they were excluded from the Black Power Movement. As Leroi Jones said at a famous meeting at the Village Vanguard in 65 to the White Liberal audience...'Thanks, but we don't need you anymore'.

And the music, with the exception of Gilmore, was amateurish.

I saw Sun Ra live many times and got a lot more out of the music than you have said here. The music was not amateurish at any of the concerts I attended. I heard a lot of great soloing by many musicians, and some tight, swinging music, together with some great avant garde stuff. I never heard any "Minstrel Show for White Liberals" connotations at all.

I don't understand what you are talking about.

[clifford_thornton]

Ugh. Who gives a shit?

[Matthew]

Ugh. Who gives a shit?

Truly -- all parties concerned are either dead or too old. Let them rest in peace and just listen to the music.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

nono c. chew-chew is interested: since i never got to see sun ra im not satisfied. whats all this about 'minstrel show for while liberals' about? and could youmustbe see my previous post, thankx

'

[Hot Ptah]

I wonder if youmustbe and I saw Sun Ra at very different times. I saw him live in the 1978-90 period. I wonder if youmustbe is referring to an earlier point in time for his "Minstrel Show for White Liberals" comment.

youmustbe, are you referring to an earlier time, or did you also mean the 1978-90 period?

When I saw Sun Ra several times from 1978-90, I saw theatrical shows, certainly, but with little political content. It was often more funny/weird than anything. I think that most members of the audience, regardless of race, saw the theatrical elements as either being strangely entertaining, and diverting in their way, even though a lot of it was difficult to literally understand---or as being over-the-top and somewhat unfortunate, something to sit through and until the good musical parts came. Either way, I think that much of the audience cut Sun Ra some slack on those theatrical elements because they knew that music was coming. Occasionally the theatrical elements were genuinely exciting or fun.

I heard the Arkestra often play tight, swinging renditions of Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson songs, expertly rendered. I once took a woman who loved 1930s big band recordings and no other jazz to a 1981 Sun Ra show, and she loved the big band swing sections. She thought that the rest was "too loud."

I heard the Arkestra play many great avant garde pieces, with excellent solos by many musicians, not just Gilmore by any means. Some of the avant garde pieces were quiet, even delicate. Sun Ra himself played some excellent piano and organ solos at many of the concerts. When he concentrated on playing as well as he could, he was a really good pianist, in mainstream styles as well as avant garde.

I also heard them Arkestra play some very appealing, melodic, "inside" compositions by Sun Ra, in tight, focused performances, which were quite beautiful. I can recall a version of "Fate in a Pleasant Mood" with flute solos that were lovely, by Marshall Allen and others.

One performance at the Detroit Art Museum in 1980 on Halloween stands out in my mind. After a swinging, bouncy, very tight and subtle big band rendition of "Satin Doll", which has to be one of the best big band swing performances I have ever heard by anyone, the next song consisted of many Arkestra members playing percussion instruments in a frenzied way, while individual Arkestra members danced wildly at center stage in Halloween costumes, which they tore off at the end of their interpretive dance, to reveal who was underneath the costume. The wildest dancer was in a Darth Vader costume (this was a few months after the second Star Wars movie had been released). At the end of the dance, Darth Vader tore off his helmet to reveal John Gilmore underneath, and the audience roared with laughter.

What is one to make of this? To me, it was great music followed by zany fun--or maybe just dumb stuff meant to be fun in some way. I don't know why it is a "Minstrel Show for White Liberals" though.

Another time, at the 1978 Ann Arbor Jazz Festival, the show started with June Tyson singing, "the sky is a sea of darkness when there is no sun, when there is no sun to light the way..." The Arkestra erupted into an all out free jazz blowout, nearly deafening. Slowly, some movement appeared in the center of the stage. Sun Ra slowly rose out of the stage floor, on a part of the stage which could raise and lower. He was wildly strumming the very thin, long wires of a sculpture that had been in the lobby of the theater before the show, as he rose higher and higher out of the ground, finally to stage level. Suddenly the entire Arkestra went from all out shrieking to dead silence, and only the nearly inaudible sounds of the tiny wires being strummed could be heard. The audience screamed--it was an amazing spectacle. Again, this is unusual, but why is it a "Minstrel Show for White Liberals?" A few mintues later, the Arkestra played a great, swinging, tight rendition of Fletcher Henderson's "Yeah Man". I have a tape of this performance.

When I did hear Sun Ra talk about politics at his concerts, they were anti-nuclear war rants. The Soviet Union and U.S. were enemies then, with large nuclear arsenals pointing at each other, and Sun Ra would shout out his theories that the Soviet and U.S. leaders were planning to escape into outer space and blow up Earth. Again, why a "Minstrel Show for White Liberals"? I don't see it, but maybe youmustbe saw something different, or had a different interpretation of what was being presented.

Edited July 31, 2006 by Hot Ptah

[Guest akanalog]

hot ptah-to me that DOES sound like a minstrel show for white liberals.

so is this whole premise laid out by youmustbe a joke? it doesn't really make sense. wasn't the house sort of in squalor and i can't imagine ra paid so well. why would so many musicians pay "that price" unless they were all gay. were they? did ra only hire homosexual musicians? because they could all find work elsewhere that didn't involve anal sex, couldn't they? and this still doesn't explain why ra wouldn't let gilmore play with other people. is this a joke?

[Hot Ptah]

hot ptah-to me that DOES sound like a minstrel show for white liberals.

so is this whole premise laid out by youmustbe a joke? it doesn't really make sense. wasn't the house sort of in squalor and i can't imagine ra paid so well. why would so many musicians pay "that price" unless they were all gay. were they? did ra only hire homosexual musicians? because they could all find work elsewhere that didn't involve anal sex, couldn't they? and this still doesn't explain why ra wouldn't let gilmore play with other people. is this a joke?

Here's what I don't understand. I can see how some people could interpret Sun Ra's theatrical act as a minstrel show, although I strongly disagree with that. To me, it was anything but a "minstrel show" in the tradition of earlier minstrel shows.

But anyway, why "for white liberals"? To me, there was absolutely no targeting to either white people, or to people of any conventional political persuasion. Sun Ra's talks and song lyrics at these concerts did not make any conventional sense. I often found myself completely confused and nonplussed by what he was saying. As it got more and more frustrating to follow, I would finally just think to myself, "oh well, who cares what it means."

Actually, John Zwed's biography contains some background to Sun Ra's belief system which now helps me to understand better what Sun Ra had been talking about, and it has absolutely nothing to do with "white liberals."

Am I missing something?

[andybleaden]

Fact or fiction , I spy the increasing cult of leering at others private lives going on here.

Never had an opinion one way or another about Sun Ra's music and this adds nothing to the picture.

(still like the track- nuclear war though!)

[David Ayers]

Queer theory asks that we DO take account of sexuality, as much as of race or gender. The next important study of Sun Ra won't be about the cheesy arrangements and shapeless free blows, but about the queer house that Ra ran and the mode of camp it projected in its shows. There is an important chunk of history and theory to get worked out here. It doesn't do to say 'we are sexuality-blind, just listen to the music' any more than it ever did to say 'we are race-blind' 'we are gender-blind'. Ra's contexts were NOT sexuality-blind and our knowledge of his history cannot be either. Even having said all of that, his hold over his men seems to have been rather unusual and it would be helpful to know more. And by the way that music is SO camp - didn't you notice.

[Niko]

I began to wonder whether the social/caritative thing (including the addition of Lawrence Jackson and Freddie Douglas) around Elmo Hope's Sounds from Rikers Island were just a trick applied in order to let Sun Ra allow Gilmore to participate

[andybleaden]

Oh yes I understand that and accept that we cannot be blind to the group and or Sun Ra's sexuality. Him and his music are of course influenced by who he was as a person- goes without saying

My point is that the interest seemed not to be in the politics of this issue but more the nudge nudge wink wink attitude that seemed to be dominant in these threads not about the politics behind him or his music.

Puerile, finger pointing and sniggering about men together in a house does not add to anything thats all.

[David Ayers]

Puerile, finger pointing and sniggering about men together in a house does not add to anything thats all.

Totally get you.

That said, this goes back to a period when communal loving had become an established practice in some quarters, and the sociology of gay black polyamorism has yet (I think) to be investigated. At that time, black gayness had enough difficulty getting out of the closet as Black political discourse tended to be heavily gendered (consider e.g. James Baldwin). Maybe there is a good source on this? If not, there will be. Eventually.

[Hot Ptah]

I have to say that I find this entire topic to be somewhat of a yawn. There were and are gay people in show business? Wow, what a stunning revelation! Who could have imagined it?

Also, the stories of women having to grant sexual favors to powerful men in the entertainment industry throughout the decades are so legion as to be a cliche. So why is a similar story about a gay man in a position of leadership so fascinating?

If Sun Ra's concerts were based on gay culture, it sure went over the heads of everyone I attended them with. I wonder if some of the people commenting here never saw one of his concerts. Apart from the excellent jazz playing, they were a very strange universe onto themselves, on some level not capable of being verbally explained or broken down. To pin a label on them or pigeonhole them into anything else on Earth does not do them justice--in my humble opinion.

Edited August 1, 2006 by Hot Ptah

[Lazaro Vega]

Agreed: the anthropological aspects of Sun Ra's "Cosmo Dramas" trumped the sexual ones, if there were any. Saw Sun Ra many times and never thought, Oh look, the black Village People. This is at a time when Parliment and the Ohio Players were sexifying in all kinds of ways. Ra's music seemed a-sexual to me -- there was more going on that dealt with an Afro-Centric total music approach wrapped up in an escapist cosmology that, underneath the camp and kitsch, aimed at truth telling about the human condition. Ra was about as free a musician as I've ever encountered -- free to do anything. If he wanted to talk free love the idea he'd be stopped by propriety is whack.

[clifford_thornton]

I'm certainly not one to bemoan the valuable interest in the personality and the man - if I were, then interviewing musicians and artists wouldn't be a passion of mine, mythology and all - but I've just heard the "are they or aren't they" debate w/r/t Sunny and Cecil a number of times and, frankly, to me it gets a little boring. They're complicated and eminently fascinating individuals, whatever their sexual orientation (and cosmic, and literary), so I'm willing to take it all as part and parcel of the equation AND enjoy the music.

[Hot Ptah]

Agreed: the anthropological aspects of Sun Ra's "Cosmo Dramas" trumped the sexual ones, if there were any. Saw Sun Ra many times and never thought, Oh look, the black Village People. This is at a time when Parliment and the Ohio Players were sexifying in all kinds of ways. Ra's music seemed a-sexual to me -- there was more going on that dealt with an Afro-Centric total music approach wrapped up in an escapist cosmology that, underneath the camp and kitsch, aimed at truth telling about the human condition. Ra was about as free a musician as I've ever encountered -- free to do anything. If he wanted to talk free love the idea he'd be stopped by propriety is whack.

This post is very much on the mark, in my opinion. You said it better than I could about his concerts.

After reading, and listening to tapes, of several of his extended interviews, I think it is fair to say that if Sun Ra wanted to talk about literally anything, the idea that he'd be stopped by literally anything "is whack."

[.:.impossible]

Alright, alright... whatever. Why would Ra prevent Gilmore from recording with other musicians. That is the question we are interested in. I'm not at all interested in whether or not he was a homosexual.

It seems highly unlikely that anyone's sexuality would be a factor in this situation. I mean, I know "absurd" applies to a lot of what Ra presented in his time on this planet, but this is just...

Why would Ra prevent Gilmore from recording with other musicians?