Amiri Baraka on Sun Ra - When Angels Speak of Love

SUN RA IS SPIRITUALLY ORIENTED

"HE UNDERSATNDS THE FUTURE AS AN EVER WIDENING COMPREHENSION OF WHAT SPACE IS, EVEN TO “THE PHYSICAL” TRAVEL BETWEEN THE PLANETS AS WE DO ANYWAY IN THE LONG HUMAN CHAIN OF PROGRESS, WE TRAVEL THE SPACEWAYS, FROM PLANET TO PLANET. IT IS SCIENCE-FACT THAT SUN RA IS INTERSTED NOT SCIENCE FICTION. IT IS EVOLUTION ITSELF AND ITS FRUITS. GOD AS EVOLUTION, THE FLOW OF IS” 

So the future revealed is man explained to himself. The travel through inner space as well as outer. Sun Ra is a new content for jazz, for Black music, but it is merely, again, the spiritual defining itself. (“Love in Outer Space”, “Ankh”, “Outer Nothingness”, “The Heliocentric World”, When Angels Speak of Love” (1963 - album), Of Heavenly Things”…etc..

“But the content of The New Music, or The New Black Music, is toward change. It is change. It wants to change forms. From physical to physical (social to social) or from physical to mental, or from physical- mental to spiritual. Albert Ayler no longer wants notes, he wants sounds, The total articulation. Ra’s music change places.”  Amiri Baraka, in Black Music."