Lee Santa on Sun Ra

Lee Santa photo, 1970

Sun Ra and Arkestra

Freeborn Hall, University of California, Davis, California, April, 1968

My first exposure to Sun Ra occurred while in the U.S. Army sometime during 1966/67.  The entire time I was in the army I maintained my subscription to Down Beat and learned of him either via the magazine or because of the ESP record label.  What I suspect happened is I bought Albert Ayler’s ESP album Spiritual Unity and learned of Sun Ra through the label’s catalog. However it occurred, during this time period I purchased from ESP The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra vols. 1 and 2.  My first reaction was “this must be what the creation of the universe sounded like.”

Okay, so that may be an exaggeration…

The Freeborn Hall concert was my first of many live Arkestra concerts. (Sometime ago I estimated the number of hours I had seen Sun Ra in live concerts and it came to about 36 hours.) A Sun Ra concert was like being in a mystery play with some of the most intense music imaginable.

The concert started with solo cello playing behind the stage curtain.  This went on for several minutes and then the curtain was drawn, revealing the lone musician on the stage.  Gradually other musicians wandered out to join the cellist.   As more and more musicians joined in the music grew in intensity.  Once the entire ensemble (about 13 to 15 musicians) was on stage the music reached a sustained crescendo that went on for several minutes.

The music took on a physical element as alto saxophonists Marshall Allen and Danny Davis took center stage and leaned on each other as they played.  Soon two more alto sax players (probably Danny Thompson and Pat Patrick) came up close behind Allen and Davis, pushing against their bodies with their own.  They created an odd-looking and highly visual, many-limbed saxophone mass that could be construed as animalistic.  The playing became increasingly frenzied before one of them fell to the floor.  The other three surrounded him, playing at him as if they were attacking.  It was as if their playing had taken down a beast that they now taunted with abstract sound.

Freeborn Hall had no chairs in it and the audience sat on the floor. The Arkestra wandered into the audience.  Occasionally some of the musicians would surround a few audience members and play at them for a few seconds.  I saw one person who was surrounded quickly get up and run out of the building as if he was on fire.  I was with some other people and we just assumed he was having a bad acid trip.

Later on, when all the musicians were back on stage, June Tyson started singing.  Sun Ra came up behind her and started whispering into her ear, feeding her improvised lyrics in what seemed to me to be a male/female muse role reversal. 

In short, this was a concert like none I’d ever seen before—a highly theatrical celebration with aural and visual elements.  

I was hooked on Sun Ra.

RBP will publish Lee Santa's A Journey into Jazz, a memoir with photos, early 2014.

TS