Sun Ra: Medicine for a Nightmare

During a mid-1950s concert for mental patients at a Chicago hospital, a chronic catatonic rose from the floor, made her way to the piano player and uttered her first words in years. "Do you call that music?" It was a fair question. No stranger to disbelief, pianist Sun Ra had visited Saturn as a teenager, and later renamed himself after the Egyptian sun-god, Ra of Heliopolis. (Well, why not aim high?) With a keyboard technique reminiscent of Imhotep wielding mummified fingers, Sun Ra doesnt tickle the ivories so much as scuffle with them. His sidemen are fine, but Sun Ra is more nightmarish than medicinal.