Music

Performance Review: Sun Ra at the Savoy

John Gilmore stood up amidst a dangerously varied array of musical instruments and played a stunning, stately solo fanfare on oboe arresting enough to charm a snake from a basket. Moments later several dancers glided up like solicitous tugboats and ushered in the starship's captain himself. They were all pleased to announce that they were "opening up the doors to the outerspace employment agency." Could there be any doubt that Sun Ra and his Solar-Myth-Science Astro-Infinity Arkestra had landed in Detroit?

We had the opportunity to dig Friday night. January 10, during a six-day engagement at the recently opened Savoy which has replaced the Rainbow Room in Detroit 's Shelby Hotel. Various entrepreneurs representative of the Detroit/Ann Arbor cultural axis arrange Ra and his Arkestra to grace this area with their presence twice or more each year. During the last three years. I've seen them five or six times and have always come away inspired. And yet in certain situations there's been a sameness about lite material the band has performed (if Sun Ra's Greatest Hits is ever collected you'll be sure to find "Space Is The Place" side I cut I.) Sun Ra n 1975. however, has come around.

It's never easy to describe an Arkestra performance. it is a disciplined, total sensory assault conducted by close to 20 musicians and dancers and singers and is best experienced (like anything else) first-hand. but...years before San Francisco 's mixed media rock shows, Sun Ra had incorporated light shows into his constructions. He's always been a pioneer in electronic musical effects, too, and as early as 1953 had invented an electronic keyboard instrument. During the Sixties, Ra became the first "jazz" musician to master the Moog synthesizer and to integrate it into a band with traditional horns and rhythms.

We were told from the stage that "it's a planetary music" and that's true enough. Listen and you can hear Africa and Harlem, be-bop and rhythm and blues. Egypt and Ellington, and sounds that are decidedly extra-terrestrial in origin.

What's new these days is the fact that Ra has I) augmented the band with two, count 'em, great electric guitarist, one of whom is simply the first post-Hendrix guitar feedback master I've heard and 2) added a new male vocalist who is closer in voice and manner to Sly Stone than to Ra's avant-garde tradition. Also, the Arkestra plays, for the first time l've heard, clearly defined, beginning and end, tunes. Leaving places to clap and catch one's breath. It doesn't effectively after what is essentially an unbroken 4-hour performance - there are no glossy rockstar raps to listen to but the idea of a break indicates that Ra might just be interested in packaging his message in a slightly more accessible way. There were, in Fact, 3 or 4 very hummable, funky tunes that with a little editing one could hear very easily on CKLW.

FOR all that the high (really!) point of the evening was when, one after another, each of about 8 musicians got to solo. Really solo. The great John Gilmore played his tenor directly into God's ear, and proved that he continues to be one of the few remaining giants still concentration on what John Coltrane called "the power horn". Although there wasn't a solo that wasn't utterly unearthly. I just have to mention the sweet obscenities Akh Tal Ebah wreaked upon his French Horn, of all things, and the thunder plucked by Detroit's own Shoo-be-doo from his big bass. Shoo-bee was sitiing in with the Arkestia and was powerfuly, inventive and humorous all evening long.

I suppose l'm very naive but l'm always amazed and disappointed when I go to see Ra and don't find folks lined up around the block waiting to get in and hanging from the rafters inside. If you contend the music, or theater, or dance, or astrology is an irreplaceable part of your life then you mustn't ever deny yourself the chance to dig Sun Ra and his Arkestia live. In the meantime, remember to support those clubs, like the Savoy, that book Ra and other unnatural acts and request the Arkestra's music of your favorite disc jockey so that you'll be ready the next time these humble, happy shamans are around.