{"id":974241,"date":"2020-01-03T06:49:13","date_gmt":"2020-01-03T13:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=932701"},"modified":"2020-01-03T06:49:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-03T13:49:13","slug":"song-you-need-to-know-sun-ra-space-is-the-place-over-the-rainbow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/song-you-need-to-know-sun-ra-space-is-the-place-over-the-rainbow\/","title":{"rendered":"Song You Need to Know: Sun Ra, \u2018Space Is the Place \/ Over the Rainbow\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Had he lived long enough, Sun Ra<\/a>, a man equally invested in preserving history and welcoming the future, just might have been a Bandcamp fan. At this point, more than 100 albums by the late keyboardist-composer, Afrofuturist icon, and April 1969 Rolling Stone<\/em> cover star<\/a> can be found on the service<\/a>, many in expanded and remastered versions. Reissues from the Evidence label and Atavistic\u2019s Unheard Music Series helped to keep Sun Ra\u2019s music circulating in the Nineties and early 2000s, but never before has so much of his work been so readily available in one place.<\/p>\n

In mid-December, a new title quietly appeared on Sun Ra\u2019s Bandcamp page: Haverford College 1980 Solo Piano.<\/em> This isn\u2019t canonical Ra by any stretch. (If you\u2019re looking for ideal entry points into his vast catalog, check out writer Patrick Jarenwattananon\u2019s handy 2017 rundown<\/a>.) Essentially a cleaned-up live bootleg, it features the musician performing alone on Fender Rhodes, instead of at the helm of his famed \u2014 and still-thriving<\/a> \u2014 Arkestra. But there\u2019s an offhanded charm to the set that gradually draws you in, almost as though you\u2019re listening to one of the 20th century\u2019s greatest musical minds play stream-of-consciousness cocktail piano, casually joining up beloved standards with heady, extraterrestrially inspired originals.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Check out, for example, Ra\u2019s medley of his own signature tune \u201cSpace Is the Place\u201d and \u201cSomewhere Over the Rainbow.\u201d He starts out with around two minutes of gently meandering lyricism, then begins hinting at the \u201cSpace\u201d theme. Just as it seems like he\u2019s settling into the piece, he starts working in fragments of the Wizard of Oz<\/em> classic, and swirling the two songs together. Around the 4:30 mark, he embarks on an abstract excursion that reminds you of his status as a free-jazz pioneer before quickly returning to lush, melodic territory. The final two minutes of the piece play like a real-time psychedelic remix of what\u2019s come before, an eerie commingling of song and pure sound that sums up just what a radical and forward-thinking artist the keyboardist was.<\/p>\n

All in all, it\u2019s a great way to ring in 2020 \u2014 and a reminder that Sun Ra probably got here first.<\/p>\n

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Find a playlist of all of our recent Songs You Need to Know selections on Spotify<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Had he lived long enough, Sun Ra, a man equally invested in preserving history and welcoming the future, just might have been a Bandcamp fan. At this point, more than 100 albums by the late keyboardist-composer, Afrofuturist icon, and April 1969 Rolling Stone cover star can be found on the service, many in expanded and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-974241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 08:22:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}