While I have been developing a healthy taste for jazz over the
\nlast few years, I freely admit that some artists’ work continues to
\nconfound and frustrate me – John Coltrane being a prime example.
\nWhile I’ve made sincere efforts to discover the magic that so many
\nothers have seen in his music, I haven’t seen that magical spark
\nyet, though I keep trying.<\/p>\n
In a way, the same could be said for Sun Ra, an artist whose
\nwork I admit I am mostly unfamiliar with. To be fair, though, his
\nstyle of music is very much an acquired taste; refusing to accept
\neven the most basic rules of music, Ra constantly pushed the
\nenvelope of both modern music and free-form jazz by pushing his
\nmusic far past any established limits, taking the listener on an
\noften extremely bumpy ride. As Ra says in “Statement,” one of the
\naudio tracks included on the recently-released DVD
\nThe Magic Sun<\/i>, his audience is taken on a trip with his
\nmusic, whether they want to go or not.<\/p>\n
The crux of this DVD is a 17-minute film by Phill Niblock, which
\nwas shot in the mid-’60s, a period when Ra and his Arkestra were
\ncentralized in New York. Music as extreme as Ra’s called for as
\nextreme of a film style; Niblock shoots this as a negative,
\nfocusing on close-ups of the musicians’ faces and hands as the
\nmusic unfolds.<\/p>\n
When I first heard of this disc, I e-mailed my friend at MVD and
\nsaid, “This has to be a typo, right? A 17-minute film?” I was
\nassured that the timing was correct – and, I’ll be honest, the
\nmusic and visuals are so extreme that the first time I tried to
\nwatch this DVD, I didn’t make it through even three minutes’
\nworth.<\/p>\n
Make no doubt about it: the music featured on
\nThe Magic Sun<\/i> starts out seeming like so much atonal noise
\ncorresponding to some bizarre visuals. Yet, as the music dissolves
\ninto a percussive rhythm that the other instruments seem to envelop
\nwhile following their own unique beats, the visuals tend to explode
\ninto their own cataclymic take on what is happening musically. In a
\nsense, it is as if the music represents the solar flares and
\neruptions that occur, while the visuals suggest there is some order
\nbehind the confusion. After a while, Niblock’s movie becomes less
\nabout the actions and views of the musicians, but more becoming
\nalmost visual portraits of the music. And, while I admit this isn’t
\na disc I’m going to be putting into the DVD player for repeated
\nviewings, it does deliver the message fairly well.<\/p>\n
Of course, this is assuming one is able to get through the early
\ncacophony of
\nThe Magic Sun<\/i>. I freely admit this will be challenging for
\neven the most devout free-form jazz fan – but, in a sense, I felt
\nthat what I was listening to was akin to the birth cry of the style
\nof music that Miles Davis would find himself exploring in a few
\nshort years. It’s almost as if
\nThe Magic Sun<\/i> and its lesser-known composer was the
\nprecursor to Davis and
\nBitches Brew<\/i>. Think about it: both feature styles of music
\nthat seem like they’re on the verge of implosion, yet they somehow
\ncome together and form a sphere of music that, while very much
\nchallenging the listener and their views of just what jazz is, are
\nable to convege into something both unique and recognizable, albeit
\na little uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
By no means is
\nThe Magic Sun<\/i> a DVD that all jazz fans will enjoy, and even
\nthe die-hards will find themselves perplexed at times. Yet
\nsomething about this disc feels right, despite the near anarchy
\nthat it seems to threaten to spawn. Ra may never have become as
\nfamous as Davis, but I’d venture to say that without Ra, Davis’s
\nmusic might not have developed in the manner it did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7142],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-38319","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sun-ra","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38319"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}