Today is the first UNESCO-sponsored International Jazz Day, which, according to UNESCO, "is intended to raise awareness in the international community of the virtues of jazz as an educational tool, and a force for peace, unity, dialogue and enhanced cooperation among people."And so with all the jazz of the nations covered, Motherboard can finally turn its eyes to Sun Ra, the pianist who came down from Saturn to blow our minds, most notably with his genre and decade-spanning jazz ensemble, the Sun Ra Arkestra, but also dabbling in poetry, spirituality and film. From the '30s until his death in 1993, Ra was a divisive and enigmatic figure in jazz. His music moves from early post-bop and swing records recorded in Chicago to more avant-garde and free jazz records later in his career that buzz with dissonance and shouted mantras.His personality looms just as large as his music, as he and the Arkestra veered closer to performance art in the '60s and '70s with the inclusion of costumes that look both Egyptian and futuristic and also by including dancers and poets in the Arkestra’s stage show.In 1971 Ra was teaching a course University of California Berkley, when he caught the attention of Jim Newman, a producer at San Francisco's PBS affiliate. Together they produced the bizarre 82-minute film Space Is the Place, which is viewable in its entirety on YouTube.Space Is the Place combines Ra's music, flamboyant costumes and proclivity for Zen koan-level clarity when people ask him questions. It's an incredible time capsule of early 70s Oakland and the tension which pervaded race relations much more explicitly than you could imagine now. While IMDB describes the film as "science fiction" and "blaxplotation," it also contains plenty of live music and echoes of Bergman's Seventh Seal.The plot, as much as it has one, revolves around Ra and a pimp named "The Overseer" fighting for the fate of the black race. Ra lands in California and opens an Outer Space Employment Agency, where people petition to work with him and he, in an almost Christ-like manner, generally turns them away by explaining there is no pay.If you're curious but aren't sure if you want to devote yourself to the whole 82 minutes—which is confusing and oddly paced, even if its production looks better than you'd think early '70s PBS would've able to manage—maybe try out the scene around the 22 minute mark. Ra appears (via some magical shoes?) in a youth center in Oakland and explains his mission to skeptical teenagers; the explanation is as straight-forward as I've seen Sun Ra make in the film or elsewhere.Be warned that nudity, swearing, pimps, prostitutes, slurs and harsh, harsh post-bop abound, which I'd like to think makes it a unique way to celebrate this UNESCO holiday. Happy Interstellar Jazz Day, Earthlings.
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