It's not worth it.
All right.
We'll call it.
Yes.
All right.
Yes.
Green and black youth.
Planetary.
What it is what it is.
I am Sunday.
Yeah.
I'm Sunday.
Yeah, right?
I'm Sunday.
Yes.
I am Sunra, ambassador from the intergalactic regions of the Council of Outer Space.
Why are your shoes so big?
I don't mind shoes.
How do we know you for real?
Yeah, how do we know you ain't somebody off telegraphs?
You're some old hippie or something.
Why are you? I mean, we don't know that.
Is she for real?
He might have something going for him.
What kind of shoes is that you got on your feet?
Yeah, walking around all these funny clothes.
I'll probably take off and run.
I see somebody walking down the street, talking all that mess.
And me talking about going to Outer Space.
How do you know I'm real?
Yeah.
I'm not real. I'm just like you.
You don't exist in this society.
If you did, your people wouldn't be seeking equal rights.
You're not real.
If you were, you'd have some status among the nations of the world.
So we're both myths.
I do not come to you as a reality.
I come to you as the myth.
Because that's what black people are.
Myths.
I came from a dream that the black man dreams long ago.
I'm actually a present sent to you by your ancestors.
The sun in the moon.
That's the sound in the background.
Well, first of all, I just say that it's a great honor to represent him.
Because he passed away in 93.
And I was at that same time operating as a volunteer at the end of the planetarium.
Because of his influence.
I started in astronomy the year that I left this band in 61.
So they asked me to write the music for African skies.
And that was my inspiration for the sun.
He influenced the whole planetarium.
When I performed with him from the fall of 58 up to spring 61,
I was aware of his impact on society, on music and mathematics,
knowledge, all of that.
Because I came here to study that.
And I thought I would study it in some institution that I was in.
In Sunraw's band.
Well, at the time, he was rehearsing six hours a day.
He would start at noon and rehearse at 6 p.m.
So I got in the flow of Sunraw's energy.
And the next thing I knew, I had lost everything.
I lost my wife, my house, my job.
Because I knew he had what I was looking for.
I was looking for a way to open myself up.
And as I studied with him and performed his music,
then I saw the reality of what I was searching for myself.
So I left his band in 61 to pursue my own energy.
And Sunraw left town to go to Montreal.
And he said, you know, come on and go with us.
Because we had, oh, maybe 150 numbers.
We had memorized, you know, by heart.
And so we could just, he didn't even have to call number.
He could just play a few notes on the piano and he could play his composition.
So with that type of connection that I had with him,
seven days a week, 12 hours a day,
we played six hours a night after one day in.
So that's 12 hours a day my instrument opened up.
So when he left, I saw his impact on New York
because I wasn't with him.
I was here.
And so I saw how New York began to change.
The rock changed, the portrait changed, the music, everything.
He was like a secret force.
In the midst of it, most people weren't aware of it
because they look back in that day, they weren't too hip to culture.
And he was like a catalyst.
He stimulated everything to open up in the arts,
open up the sculpture, open up the paintings, open up the portrait.
The prose, everything changed from his energy.
And I could see it and identify it as being his energy.
And as he progressed through the years, the whole world began to accept him.
Of course it was Europe that better accepted him
because the people here are not enlightening us.
Actually when we were playing here in Chicago,
you can walk all over Chicago and probably find a lot of people,
most of the people didn't even know who he was because the people here
did not understand who he was or what a person of art is.
So the main thing I wanted, the reason I wanted to pay tribute to him
was to bring out the facts of his impact on society.
Most people really aren't advanced in thinking things like that.
But in Europe, right away, he had a big, big impact.
See, I came here looking for that.
I came here, I attended the music school and the naval school of music
in Anacostia, Washington, D.C.
and they had me to take music history for the first time.
I had never had music history in college.
Although I played it in the symphony, I took math and chemistry with my major.
And so when I got to deal with Sunrise,
I found things that I was looking for all the time.
Now, Sonny came out of Birmingham and that was a great center of our music.
There were maybe three really important centers where the music was incubated.
That's New Orleans and that's what everybody talks about.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Birmingham.
Now in Birmingham, you had what you call the, what was Fletcher's?
The Balmain State, the Balmain State Collegians.
Very skinned Hawkins.
You had a whole bunch of people growing out of this one egg.
And Sonny was the most prominent of those.
There was another, his practice mate was Avery Parrish
who wrote the Black Anthem after hours.
And that after hours was a long out blood line.
It was a song that everybody heard in love.
I mean it was no such thing as having a party without after hours.
And so I'm trying to point that out that there was a great body of music
from the churches, from the joints, and the school,
a triumvirate of black energy in the music form.
And you know I teach that we have always been musicians.
We have always been singers.
That our languages and all of our culture developed out of music.
And so we always hold music as the pinnacle of where we want to go
and the energy that we want to live in.
So Birmingham was a great center that Sonny came out of.
They told me that when he was around 15 or 16 that he could play so good
that they took him in white places that wouldn't allow blacks to play.
And they would bring him in and then other black musicians could follow him.
So he was like an elevator for them down there
because of in the time of his ascendancy that you know in the 40s, the 30s, and the 20s,
he wanted to help to play music that reflect what he believed in
rather than playing other people's music as a professional.
And he had a very difficult time because people don't like music.
It's different.
And I go through the same thing.
A lot of people consider me, when I brought the francophone out, they said it was a toy.
Yeah, I can play more than any violinist.
Is there anything that's unique about Chicago in particular
or that contributes to the influence that the artists have?
This is the meeting place.
See, this is the place where Kansas City come together,
where Tulsa, Oklahoma, where New Orleans, Mississippi,
all of these energy fields came here.
No matter where the people came from, they all brought their music with them.
And so Sonny was, I guess, the personification of the whole.
But I want to explain that he had difficulty with musicians
because they didn't want to play something different.
You know, he would play dissonances.
You know, old musicians didn't like that.
I didn't like it either.
But when I got with him, I played with him every day
and I began to realize it was his language, it was his voice.
And so he had to stop using professionals
and get some young guys that he trained.
There was Marshall Allen, Friess, Ronald Barkins on bass.
It was John Gilmore who was in army when he came out.
He got there and John was responsible for me being in the band.
So I was much older than those guys.
But we were all looking for the same thing, a voice and music.
And Sonny showed us the way through that voice.
And this is how I lost all of my possessions in everything,
pursuing this music.
Now when he got it together and they moved out to other cities,
I mean to New York and Philly, and then eventually to Europe and the world,
everyone was astounded by it because it was developed.
But it never would have been developed with professionals
because all the professionals think they know enough.
I run into the same thing now.
I want someone to play my music and I tell them it's not chords.
We can't use chords, we use melodies.
And they can't do that.
So Sonny had the greatest impact on American music
because he forced us to expand our thinking,
our whole basis for playing music.
See we were all taught by the European system.
And by me being involved in research and history and musicology,
I began to strip down their participation
because I found out where all of that music was originated
and where it was borrowed from and all of that.
This is how I started out in the sixties giving lectures
on how European music developed.
And at the same time Sonny wrote music and included all of that
and beyond that.
But even added onto that was this cosmic collection.
He understood that all things were one
and all of his songs reflected some type of cosmic knowledge.
He forced us to think of ourselves as living in the cosmos
rather than living on planet Earth.
And even today I point out that the Earth is only a speck in the cosmos.
Hardly identified.
Now where I received the energy from him to respect the cosmos,
I went into the Adler Planetarium and started studying astronomy in 61,
the year that I left him.
And as I walked the streets of Chicago and studied,
my whole world opened up because of him.
I mean he cut the borders away.
So I began to study the flora and fauna.
I became an herbalist.
I studied the heavens.
I watched them every night for three and a half years.
I took a job with the police department so that I could go on lunch
on my midnight shift and study the heavens.
So when other guys would shift,
if that shift would become a midnight shift,
then I would take that place so I could stay on midnight all the time.
And for my three years there,
I studied the heavens every night it was available.
And this is my expertise just from work.
Like he taught me how to rehearse every day.
That's the way I approach everything.
I give you everything I got.
And I came up with a decent approach to astronomy.
And just like Sonny and my approach grew into archaeoastronomy.
And therefore I went back into ancient concepts.
And this is the root of all knowledge on earth.
The ancient African people knew this stuff and forgot more than they know today.
But that's hidden in all histories and all subject matter that you could suit.
You can only find it by studying the sky.
So he gave me the emphasis to open up the true knowledge
and to relate all of my music to that.
So I don't have a single song that's not related to our cosmic reality.
This is the driving force in all music as it progresses.
We are coming from ignorance into enlightenment
and we get in closer and closer to cosmic relationships.
That's right.
I understand in terms of the way that he and you and have changed
the way music was approached and played.
Now, what can be done to change the way that music is processed in the world?
In other words, listen to and receive and use.
Is there anything that can be done to change the way that people or the public
use this music to make it more beneficial?
It's already changing.
In fact, you know everything must change anyway.
But we have moved from one cosmic era to another.
And now in an era that focuses on spirit.
And so all of the spiritual things that have been hidden and suppressed now are coming out.
And that's the key to music because music is an extension.
Just like I mentioned the tree earlier.
The pattern of the tree is something very profound in the cosmos
and you can take that same pattern and produce that energy all over the cosmos.
So the music of spirit now is upon us.
We're no longer in the music of making money or trying to make hit records and things like that.
That era is dying.
As we go into economic depression, as we go into another shift in our value system,
the spirit is the thing that is emerging in us all.
And so the music is the hit of spirit.
The music is the voice of spirit.
So people will come back to all of those people who are involved in spiritual music.
And that's what Sun Ra was and that's what I am.
So you think that the shift is going to cause or is causing people to receive music
and change their value system.
So does the music change the value system or will the value system change?
No, the music changes the value system.
Music is first in all things and culture.
Culture is the diagram upon which people exist.
So you go back and it is civilization and people are extolling ancient Asia
as I have the uncle, my father.
The beginning of it is from the music.
The music was constructed in a way to allow them to expand
and that's what allowed me to expand.
That's what allowed Sonnet to expand.
He was a pianist but as he kept food with music,
something down in the music ground just like with me.
In your view, what's the value of archiving the materials such as yours
that we're doing and other people are doing?
It's very important for future generations.
It's very important.
I don't think they can be focused unless they get what was before.
See that a lot of people jump up nowadays and try to create something different.
That's not what you want to do.
You want to become a channel for what was already messed.
You see, we come from an ancient line of melodies
that before language was even thought of,
we sang and communicated with each other through music.
And so that music is still a vibrant part of everything in existence.
And that's what we have to get back on the main line.
You understand that?
And that your work of cataloging and keeping the records and filming it
will give people who are serious an opportunity to cover a lot of ground
without, you know, that's already here.
We have to learn to respect our ancestors first of all.
And that's where the thing begins.
See, they destroyed, someone destroyed our respect for our ancestors
and we wouldn't look back in our past.
We wouldn't look at the sky.
When they brought the slaves here, all of them mastered the sky.
Even the little children knew the phases of the moon
and they knew the important stars that were out there.
One star would appear like now you have Mars in a position
because it's been closer to Earth and that's why they have the space probe up there.
But the little children of the slaves knew the sky.
And naturally when you go into the psalms, all of the slave psalms had references to the cosmos.
And this is what I pointed out in my lecture near Heather Panetek,
that I was shocked, you know, because no one ever mentioned.
And so it's being in line, in harmony with all things, not just some things,
but coming on that main line.
And when the music is in that vein, then it's nourishing.
It's inspirational.
It's life-giving to people.
And so I've always pursued medicine in music.
You know, I'm a healer and when I play, I play to heal.
And people get it, they don't know what it is, they just feel good, you know.
So when you play on, what's it, August 12th, is it?
Yeah, 14th.
14th?
Yeah, 6th, 7 p.m. in the Prisqa Praveen at the Millennium Park.
Right.
And now it's, have you done your research on where the stars will be on that evening?
Yes, I looked at it basically, but not to discuss it.
I looked at it because all important dates I referred to to see if there's any.
I understand.
But see, that date was selected by circumstances.
I understand.
And I always check that out to see what my lot is going to be personal.
Right.
Right.
Well, the reason I asked that is that we are under a special energy of Saturn and Mars.
This has been causing all disruptions and also outstanding events, such as Obama is
under Mars.
And I am also under Saturn and Mars energy.
The Katrina and the tsunami have something to do in that energy.
We're in an age that's vastly opened up by Saturn being in Leo, you see.
And so this is a very great time for all of us, a great time of change and stability
to be established on a long-term basis.
So we're entering a new world.
So just going back to the performance and closing, maybe you could give us a description
of who the personality will be and things like that.
Well, we have a lot of outstanding people, but it wasn't my objective to go and get well-known
people.
Because I've been in Chicago since 1953, and I've come in contact with all types of outstanding
artists who never received Just Do.
Right.
And we are in a period of decline now.
There's only one or two people coming up.
I played in Chicago when there were at least 2,000 musicians playing out of the Black Union
on State Street.
There were bands all over the south side.
We didn't go north side, west side places.
We stayed in our own community because it was heaven.
Everything we needed was there.
But that situation has changed now.
And we find that the musicians, which are the lifeblood of our whole process, are thinning
out.
When I stop and think about it, now I can only think of a couple of outstanding new musicians.
All of the outstanding musicians are old guys who have been here a long time, like
Bonn, Freeman, you know, and people like that and myself.
That's a few coming up, but you have quite a big group performing with you.
Yeah, this is what I wanted to get to, is that it wasn't my objective to get those
outstanding people, because they have demands, some of them are prima donnas and the whole
other stuff like that.
But I've got people that I've known along the way who are very serious about spiritual
endeavors.
And this is going to be primarily a spiritual experience.
Basically, all of us are working to present a spiritual experience that will last people
all their lives.
And we have maybe 50 performers, or maybe 10 or 12 singers, seven dancers, we've got
maybe seven or eight, 10 musicians, and then we have hypnotic, it's nine of them, and
it's going to be a boom.
So I've designed the program to take the audience through various colors that come out of our
ancestors.
We're designing our program to follow ancient laws.
For instance, we'll use discs.
The dancers are going to use discs that are a qubit in diameter.
The qubit that Noah's Ark was made out of, and the qubit that the pyramids were made
out of.
These are the, this is the attitude that we take in presenting something spiritual.
Reaching back in our ancestors and getting those devices along with what we are familiar
with today, and using these things as a part of our presentation.
And that's where wealth comes from.
It comes from artisans.
It comes from sculptors.
It comes from painters, musicians, dancers, singers, actors.
That is the wealth of any people.
I love to play the harp, because this is what David played.
See, and the classical people train folks to play the harp in a different manner.
They try to play piano music on the harp, so they put pedals on it, so they can accommodate
the listeners.
What the age of harp was based on strings that are related, like a family.
And David, one of his four-holds proponents, played the harp in his favor by God, because
he played these family melodies for existence.
And that's what you hear, family relationships.
You hear melodies that are ancient, and it's time itself.
I've known rivers.
They're ancient as the world, and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep, like the rivers.
I've been doing youth breakings with God since we were young.
I feel my heart begins to come on and love me to sleep.
I'm looking for the time to raise a beer, raise a mug, and I'm ready to sing it for the Mississippi
when the evening rip down to a new audience.
And I've seen this muddy bosom turn all cold in the sunset.
I've known rivers.
Ancient, just keep it.
My soul has grown deep, like the rivers.
Thank you for watching.
