Sun Ra died in 1993 (or he returned to his home plan­et of Sat­urn, one or the oth­er). Twen­ty-sev­en years lat­er his Arkestra is still going strong. “No group in jazz his­to­ry has embod­ied the com­mu­nal spir­it like the Arkestra,” writes Peter Mar­gasak at The Qui­etus. “Their hard­core fans are the clos­est thing jazz has to Dead­heads.” We could fur­ther com­pare Sun Ra and Jer­ry Gar­cia as bandleaders—their embrace of extend­ed free form play­ing against a back­ground of tra­di­tion­al­ism. Folk, and coun­try in Garcia’s case and big band swing in the work of the man born Her­man Poole Blount in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma in 1914.

But (all due respect to Jer­ry, and he earned it), Sun Ra had a vision that was wider than his ded­i­cat­ed fan­base. He har­nessed the pow­er­ful sym­bols of ancient Egypt and oth­er African king­doms to form the base of his Afro­fu­tur­ist mes­sage, a blend of “Black Nation­al­ism, ancient spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and sci­ence fic­tion” for the jazz mass­es. Ra fleshed these themes out ful­ly in his 1974 film Space is the Place, a sci-fi fan­ta­sy in which he bat­tles his adver­saries in a plan to trans­port Black Amer­i­cans to a new plan­et.

What seems like a call for sep­a­ratism is real­ly an alle­go­ry cri­tiquing what schol­ar Daniel Kreiss calls the “ter­res­tri­al com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams” of the Black Pan­thers and the ills of pover­ty, racism, and exploita­tion. “Only the band’s use of tech­nol­o­gy and music will lib­er­ate the peo­ple by chang­ing con­scious­ness” the film sug­gests. Space, and ancient Egypt, are also places in the mind. Sun Ra had his own con­scious­ness changed a cou­ple year ear­li­er when he vis­it­ed the real Egypt for the first time in 1971. The result­ing record­ings—new­ly released—stand as “one of Sun Ra’s major works” Edwin Pouncey writes at Jazz­wise, and “would lead him to oth­er worlds of inner dis­cov­ery in the future.”

Film of the 22-mem­ber col­lec­tive at the pyra­mids (top), tak­en by Arkestra mem­ber Thomas Hunter, cre­ates “an audio-visu­al tele­por­ta­tion into their inter­stel­lar uni­verse,” The Vinyl Factory’s Gabriela Helfet remarks. Pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished pho­tographs of the Cairo con­certs com­plete the image of the band as a psy­che­del­ic pan-African space­ship made of music. Where will it take you? Wher­ev­er you need to go. In a record­ed Q&A held dur­ing one show, Sun Ra tells the audi­ence that his adopt­ed name is “my nat­ur­al, vibra­tional name,” his true iden­ti­ty.

Each per­son, Sun Ra sug­gests, has to find to find their own fre­quen­cy. “Pro­gres­sive music is keep­ing ahead of the times, you might say. In Amer­i­ca they call it avant-garde music. It’s sup­posed to stim­u­late peo­ple to think for them­selves.” The mes­sage and the music res­onat­ed, and the band would return to Egypt two more times in the com­ing decade after their first vis­it, as Brad­ford Bai­ley notes:

Beyond per­son­al appeal, the trip proved cre­ative­ly fruitful—introducing the entourage to fig­ures in Cairo’s grow­ing jazz scene. The most notable was Salah Ragab—founder of the sem­i­nal out­fits, The Cairo Jazz Band and The Cairo Free Jazz Ensem­ble, with whom they would col­lab­o­rate on their sec­ond and third vis­its, record­ings of which came to light on the 1983 LP, The Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab Plus The Cairo Jazz Band ‎– In Egypt. 

Hear “Watusa” from that LP, above, lis­ten to the full Egypt 1971 ses­sions at Band­camp (or below), and see sev­er­al more new­ly pub­lished pho­tographs at the Vinyl Fac­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Col­lec­tion of Sun Ra’s Busi­ness Cards from the 1950s: They’re Out of This World

Sun Ra Applies to NASA’s Art Pro­gram: When the Inven­tor of Space Jazz Applied to Make Space Art

Stream 74 Sun Ra Albums Free Online: Decades of “Space Jazz” and Oth­er Forms of Inter­galac­tic, Afro­fu­tur­is­tic Musi­cal Cre­ativ­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Sev­er­al years back, we fea­tured an eleven-year-old Björk read­ing a nativ­i­ty sto­ry in her native Ice­landic, backed by unsmil­ing old­er kids from the Children’s Music School in Reyk­javík. In this new find, also dat­ing from 1976, you can hear that same eleven-year-old Björk singing in Eng­lish, in what marks her first record­ing. Above, she sings the Tina Charles song “I Love to Love” for a school recital. Accord­ing to Laugh­ing Squid, the “teach­ers were so impressed with her voice, they sent the record­ing to the nation­al radio sta­tion where it received a great deal of play.” Soon there­after (in 1977) came her first album, fea­tur­ing cov­er art pro­vid­ed by her mom. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly explored that here on OC.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch Björk, Age 11, Read a Christ­mas Nativ­i­ty Sto­ry on a 1976 Ice­landic TV Spe­cial

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Around the coun­try today, along with a food-coma induc­ing serv­ing of turkey, ham, stuff­ing and all the trim­mings, a great many of you will be fol­low­ing anoth­er tra­di­tion: lis­ten­ing to Arlo Guthrie’s 1968 song “Alice’s Restau­rant.” Accord­ing to one YouTu­ber, when her kids were young, she’d “sit them down togeth­er and play this/torture them with it from begin­ning to end.” The replies sug­gest she’s not alone. Some­where a child has now grown up and is pass­ing the song down to a younger gen­er­a­tion.

“Alice’s Restau­rant” is about Thanks­giv­ing in the same way that it’s about a restau­rant owned by Alice–very lit­tle. Instead, it’s a long shag­gy but true tale about Guthrie and his friend Rick Rob­bins help­ing their friends out after a Thanks­giv­ing din­ner that “couldn’t be beat”. With trash fill­ing up the gut­ted for­mer small-town Mass­a­chu­setts church where Alice and her hus­band were liv­ing, the two fill up their VW van with the refuse and ille­gal­ly dump it in the back woods. Guthrie gets arrest­ed, tak­en to court, and fined for lit­ter­ing, only to have his new crim­i­nal record lat­er dis­qual­i­fy him for the draft.

That’s the des­ti­na­tion, but it’s the jour­ney that makes the song, an 18-plus minute “talk­ing blues” that Guthrie would have learned from his dad, folk leg­end Woody Guthrie. Woody in turn learned it from a 1920s coun­try and Blues musi­cian called Chris Bouch­illon, who talked his way through songs because his singing voice wasn’t all that good. And the sim­ple pick­ing style Guthrie traces from Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt to Pete Seeger and Ram­blin’ Jack Elliot all the way back to the moth­er­land: “In its infan­cy, that’s an African style approach to a six-string gui­tar and I have always loved it,” he told Rolling Stone.

Guthrie start­ed writ­ing the song, titling it “Alice’s Restau­rant Mas­sacree,” an eso­teric word mean­ing a series of absurd events. He work­shopped it in cof­fee hous­es and live venues, adding to it, tak­ing bits out that weren’t work­ing, play­ing with the time, from 18 min­utes all the way up to 35. In Feb­ru­ary of 1967 Guthrie was invit­ed to play live on New York City’s WBAI-FM. The record­ing became a hit, and helped the non-prof­it sta­tion fund-raise, broad­cast­ing the song when a total dol­lar amount was hit. When the song got too much air­play, they also fund-raised to stop play­ing the song.

Then came the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val, where the day­time crowd of 3,500 loved it so much that Guthrie returned for the evening set to play it to 9,500, joined on stage with a who’s‑who of folk leg­ends includ­ing Pete Seeger and Oscar Brand. This was a big deal for an 18-year-old musi­cian. The album came in Octo­ber of that year, where the song took up a whole side. A movie adap­ta­tion appeared two years lat­er, with the actu­al peo­ple from the song–including police chief William Oban­hein (Offi­cer Obie in the song) and the blind Judge James Hannon–playing them­selves in the movie.

The song might not have its stay­ing pow­er if it wasn’t for its themes of resist­ing author­i­ty and bureau­cra­cy, pos­si­bly even more than the anti-war mes­sage at its end.

“I’ve remained dis­trust­ful of author­i­ty for my entire life,” Guthrie told Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine, “I believe it’s one of the great strengths of a democ­ra­cy, that we take seri­ous­ly our role as the ulti­mate author­i­ties by our inter­est and our votes. Younger peo­ple have always had a rebel­lious streak. It goes with the ter­ri­to­ry of grow­ing up.”

Guthrie retired from tour­ing, and had retired the song even ear­li­er than that. But it lives on every Thanks­giv­ing in many house­holds. As he told Rolling Stone, that’s a fine lega­cy:

“Hey if they’re gonna play one song of yours on the radio one day a year, it might as well be the longest one you wrote!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Two Leg­ends, Lead Bel­ly & Woody Guthrie, Per­form­ing on the Same Radio Show (1940)

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His Sar­cas­tic “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer” in a 1988 Film By Gus Van Sant

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.