Sun Ra travels the jazz spaceways again at Nottingham Contemporary

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Mark Sheerin travels the spaceways to find jazz in outer space courtesy of Nottingham Contemporary's Sun Ra tribute

How can someone so prolific remain so enigmatic? The number of his releases is in the 100s. There must be 50 album sleeves here alone. And the listening opportunities, represented by headphones strung up from the ceiling, are at least three dozen. You need to be in several places at once to get a grip on the genius of Sun Ra.

Sun Ra was a musician, a bandleader, a filmmaker, a businessman, a sleeve artist and a self-published poet. By way of acknowledging his overwhelming presence in the gallery here in Nottingham, the floor and all four walls have been painted bright yellow. An infinity curve merges the vertical with the horizontal. This is a show without limits, which you may well take to your stereo at home.

Indeed, it is the perfect place to hang out and study Ra’s many tunes and many moods. Pick up a set of cans for something ecstatic and declamatory, pick up another for some well orchestrated swing, or move on and get pensive to the sound of some broiling tribal drums.

Whatever he plays, however he plays it, Ra points towards infinity. He promises a visit to space.

If ever there was a reason to suspend disbelief, it can be found in this show. Sun Ra claimed to be from the planet Saturn. The vibes in his music purport to come from the cosmos. And in an offbeat, low budget feature film on show here, he proposes a return trip to outer space. And I thought a return trip to Nottingham was the height of adventure. The film, Space is the Place, is naturally on a loop.

You know what you’re in for the moment you step into this yellow airlock. A vintage cymbal on display is etched with numerological code. An antique flyer for a 1973 show with another gentle cosmonaut, Alice Coltrane, could make you depressed not to be a 1970s resident of NYC. Mystic graphics on fading album sleeves promise sounds from dimensions measureless to man. 

Meanwhile, an open book lets you read the artiste’s own poetry, which is at once exactly how you might imagine it and better than you would expect: ‘Everyday you’ve desired/Upon this plane/And not received/All be yours in outer space’.

Sun Ra’s promise to his fans is diametrically opposed to that of conspiracy theorists who will tell you the moon landing was faked. But rather than rocket or shuttle, he proposes we get there through free jazz, alternative musical scales and radical harmonics.

This reviewer might not have made it to the solar system, but from now on, when I hear Sun Ra part of me will always be transported to this extra-terrestrial exhibition.


Sun Ra, The Cosmo Man, is at Nottingham Contemporary as part of their Autumn Season: Alien Encounters until December 31 2015

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Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/art541394-sun-ra-travels-the-jazz-spaceways-once-again-at-nottingham-contemporary