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At the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival in Exile 1974: It Is Forbidden
Alive/Total Energy Records NER 3029
John Sinclair's new release is his production of aTotal Energy cd featuring Sun Ra's performance at the 1974 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, "It Is Forbidden." This record is the third part of the Ra/Ann Arbor Festival "trilogy." The title track is significant because the A2 festival was cancelled that year by city authorities because of problems stemming from the loss of their 1973 cleanup budget-the guy entrusted with the $20K to pay the cleanup crew spent it on a pot deal that went awry. So the festival moved across the Canadian border to Windsor, Ontario. John, however, who was accompanying the Arkestra across the border, was forbidden entrance to Canada due to his pot bust of ten years before. So he never got to hear this music live and see his opening night "dream show" featuring Ra followed by James Brown. Indeed, this recording might never have been heard at all because the master reel-to-reel tape was kept by the sound recordist who he knew he would never be paid for his services. Fortunately, a mixing-board cassette survived, and this cd was derived from that.
During the continuous 64 minute performance (11pieces, one track,) the band doesn't rest, in classic Arkestra style. Comprising reprises of some of the same compositions from the previous Ann Arbor cds, including "Space is the Place," "Discipline 27-II" and "Love in Outer Space," the record is nonetheless an experience in itself. You're not listening to a recreation of 1999's "Outer Space Employment Agency," the 1973 concert on Total Energy, or "Life is Splendid," (the 1972 show disk,) just as the audiences at the '74 Ann Arbor Festival "in exile" weren't just listening to a rehash of the previous year's programs. I can't get enough of "Watusa," here called "Watusi,"anyway.
Beginning with a full-frontal blast of space noise, weird radio-signal squeals and wails from both the reed section and Ra's synthesizer, the band barrels forward through free improvisations and Sun Ra's magnificent orchestrations. When suddenly a familiar melody breaks through the noise, it's like watching the sun come up after a long night alone: first there is darkness, and then singer June Tyson takes the lead on "Space is the Place" over a roiling sea of voices, drums, and synthesizer squawls in burly, rocking rhythm. The music of the space-ocean. Ra believed he was throwing a life-line to people-first African-Americans, and then anybody who would listen-and the classic chant, "What Planet is This" is the final call. "If this is a planet of life, why do people die here?" At that time, people were still dying in droves in Vietnam and the rebellions of the Sixties were unravelling in despair and state repression. Everyone had become, as comedian George Carlin put it, "Nixon's niggers," and the song is especially poignant in its historical moment.
Sinclair's liner notes are a treat too-a personal history of the '74 festival-in-exile. The title track is Ra's chant: "It is forbidden/strictly forbidden/to cut down the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Was Ra mocking the authorities of Ann Arbor and the Canadian police who detained Sinclair, or restating the law of Genesis? This is another reason why I love Sun Ra: he reminds me of the poet William Blake. It is forbidden to forbid.
Other Alive/Total Energy/Sun Ra releases:
Sun Ra and His Intergalactic Arkestra: Outer Space Employment Agency NER 3021 (Ann Arbor Festival 1973)
Sun Ra and His Solar Myth Arkestra: Life Is Splendid NER 3026 (Ann Arbor Festival 1972)
--Dennis Formento
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last changed on 27 July 01 by