Café Mouffe Presents: Sun Ra and His Intergalactic Arkestra

You don’t have to go to New Orleans to second-line. As Sun Ra reveals, you can do it on Saturn. You can do it in Café Mouffe. In fact, we encourage it. At a predetermined point in this YouTube clip you’re going to want to get up from the computer and march around the room. Go ahead, it’s OK. Dance. Salute the universe.

David Sanborn introduces Sun Ra here. Sanborn almost trumps The Master when it comes to cosmic headgear -- and that’s his hair, circa 1990 when this version of Retrospect was recorded for the MTV show Night Music. He asks Sun Ra about his creative influences. Answer: “The planets.” Also featured here are solos by longtime Arkestra sidemen Marshall Allen (alto)), Michael Ray (trumpet), and John Gilmore (tenor). Allen leads the Arkestra now after The Master returned to Saturn in 1993. You get a glimpse of vocalist June Tyson but don’t hear her. This may be free jazz, but the parade finale takes me straight back to second-line dancing down Bourbon Street.

Sun Ra was “an intergalactic tone research scientist,” according to Michael Ray. That’s my kind of career aspiration. “Sun Ra said he would always hide his treasures in chaos… he told us to play the unrepeatable,” Ray adds. “If you can walk with Sun Ra on your shoulders, at least you’re walking in the right spot.”

Next week at Café Mouffe: Charles MIngus Jazz Workshop at Antibe