Sun Ra: At the Showcase Live in chicago
Sun Ra was best experienced live, because his music was a performance in full. No video seems to exist from this pair of concerts he gave in a Chicago club during the ‘70s, but the booklet for At the Showcase has photos, including two taken by Milwaukee’s Hal Rammel.
The music performed by the venturesome keyboardist and his Arkestra was as expansive as the Afrofuturistic cosmology he expounded. The polyrhythms of West Africa are bedrock for free jazz improvisation, soul jazz, Count Basie-like swing, compositions of Duke Ellington scope and the propulsive drive of hard bop. Electronic keyboard passages on “View from Another Dimension” are material for a scarry sci-fi movie score. Ra was accompanied on those nights by an orchestra faithful to his vision—18 souls altogether forming one of the most vital big bands of the postwar era. Their music was formidable, yet often fun.
In one of the booklet’s essays, Rammel recalls the club’s long narrow room, barely able to contain the Arkestra, their dancers and the fans. “This tight configuration seemed to supercharge both the band and the audience,” he writes.
Get At the Showcase: Live in Chicago at Amazon here.
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