Who: Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount)
What: Musician and Composer
Where: American (active largely in US)
When: May 22, 1914 - May 30, 1993
(Image Description: a black and white photo of Sun Ra from 1979. He is standing in front of a brick wall that has words spray painted on it, partially blocked by his body. Legible is the word "Sunshine" in huge letters, the "I" dotted with a character or starburst. It is written in such big letters the last few have to be reduced to keep them from running over onto the door. Also legible are the letters "L, A" but the rest of that word is behind Ra. Ra himself is a stern looking, dark-skinned black man, shown here from the chest up. He has a longish face, a smallish mouth and eyes, a broad nose, and a cleft chin. He has a very serious expression. He is wearing a wool cap, dark on top with a paler ring at the hem. On top of the hat is a huge 3D sun, about the size of his face. Poking out of the sun are a bunch of shiny wires ending on either small stars or pingpong ball sized planets. On his body Ra wears a cape and below that a robe. The robe is made of two distinct materials, mostly something wrinkled or rough, but in the center over his chest is smooth black fabric with white polka dots on which a sun and the planet Saturn have been painted. End ID.)Â
He said he was born on Saturn. He wore bright robes and elaborate hats. He was a creature of Ancient Egypt and the unknown future. He never wanted to sleep and never drank. He said his biography was a mystery. He was very fond of mysteries.Â
Sun Ra was also a jazz pianist, composer, and the leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, a free-jazz big-band. He is also one of the fathers of Afrofuturism, but given the themes he embraced, the outfit, and the Saturn thing you may have guessed that.Â
Ra became well known for his musical innovation and uniqueness of instrumentation as well as the drama that characterized his music and persona both on and off the stage. He was active in the jazz scene for roughly forty years from the late 1940s to the early 1990s and he always seemed to be at least a decade ahead in his trends.
Ra was always creating pieces that defied the common and brought together his many complexities of style. In the 1950s, when he first became a band leader, he began incorporating electric piano (his instrument of choice), tympani, and flute, instruments then unheard of in jazz bands. He later would be among the first, if not the first, to introduce the synthesizer. In the 1960s he began incorporating improvisation into his compositions and became well known for his strange solos. And in the 1980s he integrated earlier works into his performances.
His flair for the dramatic was at its highest on stage where combining Ancient Egyptian and sci-fi themes in sets, dance, and costumes. His performances were huge and eclectic and energetic. As much a spectacle for the eyes as the ears.Â
His best loved albums include SuperSonic Jazz (1957), Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (1963), The Magic City (1966), Atlantis (1969), Astro Black (1972), Space is the Place (1973), Lanquidity (1978), Disco 3000 (1978), Sleeping Beauty (1979), Nuclear War (1982), and The Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt (1983). There are best of albums like Sun Ra: Singles 1952-1991 (2016) and In the Orbit of Ra (2014). I don't know anything about jazz (free or otherwise) but I did like listening to his stuff, it is very cool and weird.
His personality was as exciting and strange as his music. He had an "equation" rather than a philosophy. Whatever he called it, his thinking was a very New Age, UFO Religion mindset although he was getting into these themes in the 1950s, well before those were popular. His personal equation combined many different sources with his own thoughts to find the path that, one biographer states, "leads beyond the stars." He drew heavily on Ancient Egyptian mythology and mysticism, channeling, black nationalism, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, Zen Buddhism, with a very heavy lean into Gnosticism. He frowned on most organized religions but was a highly spiritual being. He was very much pro-civil rights but became disillusioned with the movement. Perhaps the most important things to him were outer space and music. He was always looking both to the distant past and far future.
His theories and equations were his own and explanations never gave a full picture. He took the role of eccentric teacher and apparently played the part well. He had many followers, especially among musicians. Overall, it seems, he embraced the strange and unknown and wore his identity with pride. He was queer and contentedly so.
He would not have been out of place today. Maybe he was from Saturn, but he could have easily been from the future.
(Image Description: the album art for Atlantis. It is all in yellows and purples. It says "An Intergalactic Space Travel in Sound" on the top of the cover. Below that and on the left it says "Sun Ra and his Astro Infinity Arkestra". To the right it says "Atlantis". Below that is shows an amorphous blob of eyeballs and flame. End ID)Â
Probable Orientation: AroaceÂ
He is another one that aphobes say cannot be ace because they like him too much. They like and respect him so he cannot be sexually abnormal. They can accept him as queer, but aroace is too far. There are many who now accept him to be asexual, but many others who hold fast to their aphobia. Those people constantly claim that he was a sexual entity of some kind despite Ra's own profession to being "nonsexual.".
His queerness was noted before his persona was formed. In 1943 after having a nervous breakdown his doctor accused him of being "psychopathic" and "sexually perverted" because of his being queer. The same doctor also professed Ra (then Blount) was "a well-educated colored intellectual," evidence that his "psychopathy" and "perversion" were rooted in queerness, not something actually wrong with his mental health.
Over the years he had close confidants among his Arkestra musicians and other musical professionals. These were some of the people he was closest to in the world and all of these relationships were platonic, seemingly none I would classify as queerplatonic. All of these confidants noted there was never any romantic or sexual partners they knew of in his life but some have asserted either he was too busy, he just never talked about it/told them (unlikely because he was willing to discuss just about anything which will be highlighted in the quotes), or this was part of his self-denial (he never did drugs or drank and liked to Go Without). Some people in his life assumed Ra as gay (and allo). He was more interested in music than relationships and role as teacher rather than as sexual/romantic partner.
But most of his time was spent with music.  His music involved a lot of talk of love but it was always a larger concept than romantic love. Brotherhood, universal acceptance, things like that.
But this should not be debate. Again, he basically said he was asexual in that he literally said he was "nonsexual.".Â
(Image Description: a color photo of Sun Ra in his costume from Space is the Place. He stands tall with his head tipped up, again serious faced. He has his arms crossed over his chest like a mummy. He is wearing red robes with yellow sleeves that go to the floor. He wears bracelets, rings, and gold shoulder pads. On his head he wears a huge tall headdress. It looks very similar to a pharaoh's crown. Part looks like the lower part of an Egyptian headdress, like the thing the Sphinx wears, and it is striped shiny gold and black. Sitting high on his forehead is a gold and jeweled crown piece and on top of that going probably two feet or so above his head is a gold pronged structure with a gold orb in the middle of the prongs. End ID)Â
âI donât believe that something like that [asexuality] exists. Everybody has his or her sexual orientation, be it secret or open ... I donât think I ever talked about his sex life, but I am pretty sure that he knew Fernando [Vargas, a sound engineer] and I were a gay couple. It made no difference for him, so he was not like a religious fundamentalist who would object to work with people like us, you know. He was just the kind of a guy, if Fernando was drinking wine, he wouldnât have wine. I heard that none of the guys was ever using drugs. At least they didnât do it in the studio, but we did have them sleeping overnight. He seemed to be with a pretty clean group.â
-Warren Allen Smith, studio owner and friend of Sun Ra's. (Despite not believing in it Smith basically points out that Ra could have been asexual. He never talked about his sex life, spent the night in a platonic group, Smith also mentioned in the same interview that Vargas and Ra would spend long nights alone just talking about music, that seemed to be what Ra wanted to do. To talk and philosophize. It seems his sexlessness was not about being straight edge.)
"[Vargas was] a good gossip [who would] tell stories about the popeâs testicles."Â
-Warren Allen Smith (he also describes Vargas as being "outgoing" and "unreservedly gay". The point here is that these men were close friends of Ra's. And Ra was perfectly into this kind of discussion. Indeed he told Vargas and Smith about his own testicles, one of which was undescended. He was not afraid to be completely open about himself and his body. He did not shy away from sex or sexuality, he just wasn't interested in it. It would be out of character for him to avoid talk about his sex life or bring around a romantic partner.)
"Sun Ra abolished sleep from his 'so-called life,' just as he had come to do without the distractions of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, women [sex]."
-John Szwed (Ra biographer in his book Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra)Â
"I have heard from Damon Choice and others that Sun Ra used to turn to his Arkestra and declare: Leaders will ask you to give up your lives for them, I ask only if youâll give up your Death for me? Nothing that is essentially incorporated into human being â not sex, not Death, not religion, or money â nothing that we are or have been is beyond evaporation as our ontology catches up with our time."Â
-Thomas Stanley (biographer in his book The Execution of Sun Ra) (In other words Ra saw sex as inessential to human nature)
-Sun Ra on sexual intercourse
âI have never been able to think of sex as a part of my life though I have tried to but just wasnât interested.â
(Image Description: a photo of Sun Ra at his keyboard. He is wearing a beaded headdress and shiny rainbow robes. He has his eyes shut, he looks calm, and he has his keyboard at a strange angle as he plays. End ID)Â
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