Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra

The Nubians of Plutonia, linking

(their whirring can be heard at the end of “We Travel the Spaceways”). Sonny’s own costume was constantly

The Cry of Jazz—was based in part on an unpublished book by Bland entitled The Fruits of the Death of Jazz.

On “Springtime in Chicago” Sonny played a piano so out of tune it sounded “prepared,” altered for percussive effects. And the electronic delay used on this cut was so extreme that it reverberates like Jamaican dub music which would not be heard until the 1960s.

But the sources for the dreams of music he had were Fletcher Henderson’s “Soft Winds,” “Moonrise on the Lowlands,” or “Shanghai Shuffle,” or Duke Ellington’s “Dust in the Desert,” “Pyramid,” “Moon Mist,” “Perfume Suite,” or “Magenta Haze,”

“The Code of Interdependence,” on

at The Cry of Jazz and another film called Unheard Melodies, which showed how wind caused statues to

Jazz in Silhouette was a major statement by the Arkestra, helped

“Ancient Aiethopia” calls up the spirit of Ellington’s programmatic