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ASTRO-BLACK
MYTHOLOGY
by
Ben Schot
In
the first scenes of the film SPACE IS THE PLACE a spaceship
from an idyllic planet sets course for the Earth. Sun Ra is
in command. From behind his keyboards he pilots the music-driven
ship and its crew, The Intergalactic Solar Arkestra, first to
Egypt and then, across deserts, mountains and cities, to the
United States. Sun Ra has come to our planet with a mission:
the salvation of the Afro-Americans. His ship offers them the
possibility to leave the Earth and to build a new life on Saturn
without the interference of whites. The Earth is doomed, the
arrival of the musician is an omen of the Apocalypse. When his
ship lands and The Arkestra, surrounded by pulsating laser beams,
set foot on our planet, a prophesy is fulfilled and the end
of time has come. 'We work on the other side
of time', Sun Ra explains.
SPACE
IS THE PLACE dates from 1972 and is largely set in the ghetto
of Oakland, California, at that time the stronghold of the Black
Panther Party. One of the backgrounds of the film is the ideological
conflict between Sun Ra and the Black Panthers that came to
a crisis in 1972 and led to The Arkestra's departure from Oakland.
While the Panthers practised a Marxist liberation theory, Sun
Ra, in his lectures at the University of California, pleaded
for a spiritual liberation that can only be achieved through
ascesis, discipline, study and submission to cosmic hierarchy.
'I see myself as P-H-R-E', he explained to his students, 'P-H-R-E
but not F-R-E-E. That´s the name of the sun in ancient Egypt.'
Sun
Ra's great opponent in the film, however, is not a representative
of the Black Panther Party but someone called 'The Overseer',
a name both referring to plantation foremen and the title 'The
Overseer Of Light' which in gnostic writings is assigned to
the demiurge, the evil creator of the Earth, Lucifer. Determined
to sabotage Sun Ra's mission, The Overseer employs every possible
means to drag Oakland's black population along in the approaching
destruction of his planet. Through bribery, false accusations,
collaboration with NASA, kidnapping and inciting an attempted
murder he tries to stop Sun Ra from showing the way to a new
future on another planet. The film's principal theme is the
mythological duel between Sun Ra and The Overseer, between an
angel from Saturn and a fallen angel.
The
Astro-Black Mythology, which is partly told in SPACE IS THE
PLACE, is Sun Ra's visionary view of the history and the future
of the Afro-Americans: a colourful and open concept that lies
at the base of virtually all his works. 'Astro-Black' stands
for a mixture of black Bible interpretations, gnostic texts,
modern science, Egyptology and science fiction. For that reason
Sun Ra's myth occupies a special place in the Afro-American
cultural-historical research that has been developed in North
America since the eighteenth century. In the historical part
transformed and mythologized echoes of the theories of Afrocentric
writers like Theodore P. Ford and George G.M. James ring through.
The central theme of their work is perhaps best illustrated
by the full title of James' book STOLEN LEGACY, THE GREEKS WERE
NOT THE AUTHORS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY, BUT THE PEOPLE OF NORTH
AFRICA, COMMONLY CALLED THE EGYPTIANS WERE (1954). Africa, not
Europe, is the cradle of our civilization. Everything the ancient
Greek knew, had been stolen from the Egyptians. White historians
distort the facts in order to found the supremacy of their race
on false evidence. In the Astro-Black Mythology, with its many
references to Ancient Egypt, Sun Ra rewrites history and gives
the Afro-Americans back their past.
Dressed
in an Egyptian costume Sun Ra tells a group of young Panther
followers that he hasn't come to them as a reality but as a
myth, because 'that's what black people are: myths', with which
he refers to their non-existence in official history and American
society. Black people can only free themselves from their 'inverted
position' on this planet through that same myth, through the
powers of imagination, through music that arouses
the spirit and leads it to another world. Sun Ra's message appears
to catch on in Oakland and his popularity is on the rise. But
his opponent steps in. By order of The Overseer one of his employees
offers Sun Ra his services as a manager and holds out the prospect
of a larger audience. The bandleader swallows the bait: when
the news of the deal gets out, rumours spread by The Overseer
about Sun Ra's commercial aims seem to have come true. All but
one turn their backs on Sun Ra. 'He sold out', a Panther follower
remarks with contempt.
In
reality Sun Ra's manager never succeeded in reaching a large
audience. The young mystic Alton Abraham founded El Saturn Records
in Chicago in 1956 to document Sun Ra's compositions and take
them out of the rehearsal room. The small, idealistic record
label was part of El Saturn Research, a group of intellectuals
and musicians around Abraham and Sun Ra who studied all sorts
of theosophic, scientific and prophetic texts. In El Saturn
Research reports of UFOs, speculations about extraterrestial
life, science fiction and new developments in space travel were
connected with prophesies about the end of the world. El Saturn
Research gave a new impulse to Sun Ra's music and the Astro-Black
Mythology: Afrocentrism turned into Afrofuturism. Sun Ra's outlook
became more and more fixed on the future.
In
SPACE IS THE PLACE Sun Ra's luck seems to be turning when he's
granted a concert. After all, music is the driving power of
his spacecraft. But The Overseer is aware of the danger. Shortly
before the start of the concert he has Sun Ra kidnapped by white
NASA agents, who want to discover the secret behind the spaceship
at all costs, as they suspect it's part of an African space
program. When the musician, tied to a chair with thick ropes,
refuses to cooperate, he is threatened and tortured with headphones
from which 'Yankee Doodle' sounds incessantly. 'We're gonna
get something to eat and when we come back, you'll be ready
to talk', one of the agents says smirkingly and then leaves
behind Sun Ra, powerlessly listening to music full of associations
with slavery and racial hatred. But while the agents eat their
hamburgers, three young blacks manage to liberate the bandleader
and take him, just in time, to the concert hall, where he is
welcomed by a multiracial audience. Not for nothing the building
of the Rosicrucian Order in San José is the location of the
concert.
Occult
societies played an important part in the development of Afrofuturism
and the emancipation of Afro-Americans. Partly this can be explained
from the simple fact that they are secret, that is less sensitive
to repression and censure; but more important is that via the
brotherhoods, notably through freemasons' lodges, subversive
knowledge was passed
from generation to generation and was adapted to prevailing
socio-political circumstances. Alternative bible interpretations
and the study of gnostic texts, prophesies and Ancient Egypt
have always been typical of Freemasonry. When in 1776 the first
black freemasons' lodge was founded in North America, occult
and rejected knowledge from Europe could mix freely with black
salvation theories and remnants of African religions. From that
time onward 'Black Masonry', a collective term for all sorts
of societies related to Freemasonry, developed into the pivot
of Afrocentric thought. Writers like the above George G.M. James,
activists like Marcus Garvey and organisations like the Nation
Of Islam almost without exception spring from Black Masonry.
In this respect El Saturn Research, with its influences from
Freemasonry and Rosicrucians, does not differ from other black
brotherhoods. However, the Astro-Black Mythology distinguishes
itself from other Afrofuturistic theories of those days by its
mildly ironic, spiritual and universal message. While, for example,
the Nation Of Islam developed a politicized mythology in which
racial segregation is a central issue and whites are regarded
as devils, the Astro-Black Mythology transcends race problems.
'The white man is an image of God. So he can only do what God
does. That's what images do', says Sun Ra mockingly in an interview
with Henry Dumas. Though Sun Ra's mythology first and foremost
addresses black people and is about black people, it contains
universal values. In the Astro-Black Mythology the black man
is Everyman. For that reason the devil in Sun Ra's myth is not
white. Like his opponent, The Overseer is black.
Sun
Ra starts his concert with a long complaint against life on
earth. 'I hate your positive, absolute reality', he proclaims
unusually violently, while behind the scenes The Overseer listens
in and decides to play his final card. But the shot from the
gun of one of the NASA agents misses its mark: one of Sun Ra's
liberators, an initially sceptical Panther follower, shields
Sun Ra from the bullet and in doing so sacrifices his life.
In the following commotion the bandleader and his Arkestra teleport
themselves, as in a Star Trek episode, to the spaceship. Sun
Ra's liberators, including the one that has just died, and the
black part of his manager are the only ones allowed to join
them. Planet Earth, where violence, death and realism rule,
is not ready for Sun Ra's message. 'Farewell Earthlings', he
says before the door of the spacecraft closes, 'You just want
to speak about reality. No myths. I talk to you as the Myth.
So it's farewell'. As the ship lifts off and leaves the earth
further and further behind, The Overseer realises the game is
lost. Furiously he looks on how cities collapse, dams burst
and his planet goes up in flames. After a huge explosion the
earth tears in two. For a moment the two halves remain connected,
then break off and twirl, clumsily as in a cheap science fiction
film, separately through the cosmos. From the spaceship sounds
'To another world!'
The
Astro-Black Mythology gives some grip in deciphering the complex
'blueprint for a better world' that Sun Ra has left us with
his music. But no more than that. Sun Ra's music, 'the word
of words', only comes alive by listening to it. However, titles
of compositions like 'Tiny Pyramids', 'Outer Nothingness' and
'Lights Of A Satellite' indicate how closely the Myth-Science
Music and the Astro-Black Mythology are connected. Sun Ra's
work - in fact a total revision of existing ideas about religion,
history and music - is a closely-knit entity. In everything
- his myth, his music, his film, his poetry, his costumes, even
his name - both Ancient Egypt and a cosmic future ring through.
And even further away, beyond past and future, infinity. Everything
is aimed at changing the finite, material existence on earth
for an infinite, spiritual world. Sun Ra, as he puts it himself,
is 'another order of being'. During the preparations of SPACE
IS THE PLACE Sun Ra studied THE URANTIA BOOK, which was published
by the Contact Commission in Chicago in 1955. The leader of
the semi-medical, semi-occult society was the renowned psychiatrist
William S. Sadler. Somebody he knew - probably one of his patients
- received messages from extraterrestials that Sadler could
not interpret and gradually began to take more seriously. The
Contact Commission investigated and organised the religious
messages and finally published a completely revealed history
of the universe as THE URANTIA BOOK. Sun Ra recognised himself
in a passage of the book: a prophesy that predicts the coming
to Earth of a musician whose music will change the planet for
good. 'Forever', the book says, 'music will remain the universal
language of men, angels, and spirits'. Dr Sadler was right:
who would want to separate fact from fiction in messages like
that?
The
satellites are spinning,
a
better day is breaking.
The galaxies are waiting
For planet Earth's awakening.
(Sun
Ra)
This
article was first published in the Dutch art magazine METROPOLIS
M, #1, February/March 2002.
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SUN
RA PHOTOGRAPHS
by Leni Sinclair
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Whatever
You Create By Your Thoughts Is Your Own
It’s a city of big shoulders and wind
and constantly renovating, renewing itself. Out with
the old until there are only a few left who remember
old Louis and Sullivan designed buildings and few
who remember the psychedelic enclaves on north State
Street. Even less who remember the sophisticated cigarettes
and suave neon of Rush Street in the 50’s or the soap
box pulpits of the orators of Clark Street’s Bughouse
Square or Washington Park. And the railroads clicketyclack
on tracks from east and south, migrant songs, trains
of freedom to the promised land of the north for a
race whose dreams were of a better world than the
real one that surrounded them. All the races to Chicago,
a boiling melting pot of idiosyncrasies and ideologies,
on glory trains of mystical emotions. Chicago, a segregated
city, white fearing the south side until recently
when there was nowhere else to go for the yuppies;
a south side of mysteries, of Prince Hall Lodges,
COGIC, assorted Garveyites, Moorish Science Temples,
AME, all centers of ancient records and wisdom, all
reveling in relative obscurity.
Sun Ra and Alton Abraham would meet in
this metaphysical moment of Chicago in the 1950’s.
Alton Abraham, magic man of knowledge and meanings
was already in Chicago, born there in 1937. A x-ray
technician, Abraham was known to make predictions,
a seeker of knowledge in the Bible and other arcane
sources. As Alton and Sunny grew in metaphysical strength,
new seekers came in their sphere. Luis T. Clarin,
Lawrence M. Allen and James W. Byrant formed a research
group that would be known as Saturn Research and later
a corporate entity called Ihnfinity, Inc. would arise.
Their
headquarters would be in an apartment dwelling at
4115 South Drexel, walk-up, a dwelling loaded ‘from
floor to ceilings with all kinds of books. Books such
as deLaurence’s ‘The Master Key,” perhaps. Or maybe
Manly Hall’s ‘Secret Teachings of all ages'.” And
books on Egyptian mysteries, Schopenhauer, biblical
texts, kabalistic tomes and Nosradamus were all needed.
Theirs was a research center, hidden away from prying
eyes. Vocalist Roland Williams spoke of these texts,
these meetings. “They went deep. Came back up too.
Sunny got lots of his ideas about permutations from
Alton.” By definition, metaphysics is a science that
seeks to probe the logic of thought. An attenuation
of the mind to mystical vibrations. Sun Ra and Alton
were seekers with minds fully aware. Thought dynamics
accessing new worlds.
Long before the wide world web, the streets
were the disseminators of information. Urban dwellers
would often find rising before them on readymade pulpits
or soapboxes, street corner orators of all varieties
expounding on all matter of subjects. Large cities,
such as Chicago, would have centers of these orators,
on the North side of town, Bughouse Square, on the
South side, Washington Park, between 51st
and 55th Street and South Parkway. Ed Bland,
filmmaker, knew of Sun Ra as a soap box pulpit preacher
in Washington Park on the South Side. Under trees,
on benches, Sunny and others would hold forth on the
times. Perhaps Alton knew of Elijiah Muhammed’s early
days of preaching in Washington Park. Arrested in
this park for sedition in 1942, the “minister” would
serve a 3-year jail sentence for draft resistance
when he was long past draft age. Perhaps Sunny and
Alton knew of the Moorish Science Temple and Noble
Drew Ali, the Nation of Islam’s predecessor whose
holy book, “The Seven Circle Koran” was pieced together
from writings as diverse as Christian Scientist and
Jehovah Witness texts. Perhaps Sunny and Alton knew
of the “Supreme Wisdom” of W.D. Fard. Among the texts
ascribed to W.D. Fard, the mysterious founder of the
Nation of Islam, was one entitled “Teaching for the
Lost Found Nation of Islam in the Mathematical Way,
consisting of 34 problems.” This pamphlet, referred
to in a sociology journal, is said to have been given
only to members of the Nation of Islam.
Biblical
aphorisms and apocalypses, strange mathematical equations,
indeed, Sunny would proclaim “My Omniversity is what
I want to do. I’m a natural teacher. I can outline
things and make it very simple and make it very mathematical..”
(Interview, 5-3-90, SRR #31). Many remember Sun Ra’s
oratorical prowess. A Mr. Carter, stated resident
of Chicago’s Hyde Park, told the author “Sunny wasn’t
afraid to talk about anything, to anyone. He’d get
up in front of a crowd and just go on.” Messianic
oratory had long been a part of African-American religion.
Fire-tongued speakers who spoke of redemption and
damnation to crowds seeking the promised leader be
it W.E.B. du Bois, Father Divine, Daddy Grace, Marcus
Garvey, “One God, one aim, one destiny!,” the Nation
of Islam, Malcolm X. These orators and leaders attempted
to reconcile a Christian god with substandard treatment
and humiliation. And trying to create a new belief
system, “Up you mighty race,” a belief in some magical
transubstantiation.
Alton Abraham would say Saturn Research
(Ihnfinity, Inc.) was a means to show the world of
the Black man’s contribution to civilization. Others
had also set themselves in the same direction. Writers
such as G.M. James in ‘Stolen Legacy,” declared Greek
civilization to have been stolen from Egypt and Cheikh
Anta Diop who, in ‘The African Origin of Civilization,’
stated that the civilization of ancient Egypt was
Negroid in origin. Books that the world chose to ignore,
teaching instead a white Eurocentric history of the
world in schools. The Woodlawn neighborhood in Chicago
and environs was a center of learning in the 50’s
and 60’s. Here Alton and Sunny may have learned of
white authors such as Volney and Gerald Massey who
traced European civilizations to ancient Egypt. The
Ellis Bookstore and others of its ilk were treasure
troves of books on such subjects as politics, the
occult, ancient histories, scientific texts and volumes
by Black authors and volumes on Black topics.
Alton Abraham and Sun Ra spoke of space
travel, journeys stars beyond, long before such feats
were reality. Roland Williams recalled many times
Sunny spoke of astral traveling to doubting listeners.
Like tenor saxist Johnny Griffin, who stated, “I‘m
not from this planet. I did something wrong on my
home planet and I was sent here as punishment,” Sun
Ra also believed himself to be of alien origin, proclaiming
the planet Saturn as his home. The phrase ‘Black
Science Fiction’ is in vogue these days; Sunny and
Alton were well in the midst of such matters back
in the day. For outer space and space travel has long
been a part of Afro-American religion, music, and
life: Ezikeal and the flying chariot. Such themes
resonant in Black churches, themes that are a part
of Alton Abraham and Sun Ra’s heritage. And Sun Ra
and Alton Abraham were part of the tradition. And
long before George Clinton’s Mothership Connection,
before Sun Ra’s Omniverse, Elijiah Muhammed spoke
of the “mother Plane,” a flying vessel of destruction
which would herald the final war, showing the ”power
and wisdom of Allah.”
In the pursuit of secrets, when does secrecy
begin? The gradual seclusionary efforts of groups,
members only, for your eyes only, may have hastened
their demise from existence, or view, or importance.
Sun Ra and Alton Abraham parted; a gig
in Montreal led to a trip to New York for the fledging
Arkestra. A car breakdown left Sun Ra and the band
stranded, two spheres now, New York and Chicago. Alton
Abraham would continue to run Ihnfinity, Inc. Saturn
records came from Chicago, as did books of ‘Immeasurable
Equation.’ And Sun Ra’s proclamations came from the
East now. And the circles widened and closed, again.
Leonard
J. Bukowski, May, 2002
(this
photo not by Leni Sinclair)
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