Sun Ra offer from Sundazed Records

[felser]

I have no stake in the game, but this looks like a great deal for those who are interested, 5 Sun Ra LP's and a Sundazed Tote bag for $60:

https://sundazed.com/five-lp-sun-ra-bundle-a-sundazed-tote-bag-for-60.aspx

[Rabshakeh]

It really interests me how Sun Ra has been defanged in the popular culture. 

Some sort of pivot happened around 2010. Where he went from being perceived as an exemplar of the avant-garde that Sonic Youth was going to tell you about, to being someone whose work you could use to sell tote bags. The focus has also shifted quite radically away from his New York era records that used to define him in wider culture. 

Edited 6 hours ago by Rabshakeh

[jazzbo]

The estate has made smart moves and marketing has been well-applied. The fact that the releases and re-releases have sounded so darned good has gotten me to buy and replace earlier copies (made a few new fans that way by giving earlier editions away). I think the fact that the Arkestra was still active and growing its own post-Sonny following helped. 

Is the avant=garde music of jazz itself more popular, slowly growing a fan base, as well? Perhaps. I am totally out of the jazz scene, I'm not young and really know no jazz fans or many jazz fans outside of forums.

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, jazzbo said:

Is the avant=garde music of jazz itself more popular, slowly growing a fan base, as well? Perhaps. I am totally out of the jazz scene, I'm not young and really know no jazz fans or many jazz fans outside of forums.

I think that what has happened is that Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp and Sun Ra how now become very mainstream as "Spiritual Jazz", along with a few other names that younger listeners regard as similar, like Dorothy Ashby. I know lots of younger people for whom those artists represent their main experience of jazz. 

It is quite specific periods for each artist, mostly corresponding to their time on Impulse! or in the case of Sun Ra, his move towards less obviously extreme music, and particularly the Languidity, Disco 3000 and Nuclear War records. So no ESP or BYG stuff.

I get the sense that these records have an aura of "conscious" afro-centric spirituality with good visuals that appeal to the Instagram and tiktok creators, but they also have a transgressive edge from the fact that they are associated with the avant-garde, without actually being difficult to listen to.

I don't get the sense that the wider avantgarde jazz is really growing at all. I don't think these people enjoying Alice Coltrane's meditation records are checking out Frank Wright or Lester Bowie, let alone more recent figures like Gustafsson etc.

The three exemplary figures of the avantgarde back when I got into the music: John Coltrane, Don Cherry, and for other listeners, John Zorn, seem to be much less famous with younger people than they were before. I am always a bit shocked at the collapse in name recognition for Cherry in particular.

More shockingly, I have come across really quite a number of people in both real life and on the internet who profess to like avantgarde jazz, who turn up their nose up at Coltrane. I think it is because the name Coltrane is too widely known and they, in their ignorance, mistakenly regard Coltrane as music for normies. The famous cover of "My Favorite Things" seems to get mentioned as an example of creative compromise or selling out, which is obviously completely bizarre. Ascension, which for anyone learned about this music retrospectively in the text based media era was the obvious example of an avantgarde jazz record, seems to be MIA in modern discourse. 

I think a lot of the reason for this is that the interest in these records is spurred by social media. I.e. the growth of interest in these artists is coming in large part from short form videos where an attractive young person shows you his or her "Five essential spiritual jazz records that just hit different" and then pulls out records whilst nodding. It is generally the same records on Impulse!. That is partly because the algorithm incentivises picking the same records (the more people that mention a specific record the more likely the video is to trend) but also partly because Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders and Sun Ra records look otherworldly and cosmic. A lot of the people making these videos appear to just be recycling the same themes, so there isn't much way to break their narratives.

That may explain why the previously talismanic records are retreating: John Coltrane records just have photographs of him looking serious, Don Cherry records look a bit messy and John Zorn is not handsome and his records are all on CD. 

As a separate phenomenon, I have also come across increasing recognition of Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann and Anthony Braxton, although typically not connected to actually listening to their music. I think that these three get held up online as "really extreme" or "really experimental", which adds up to name recognition and some curiousity. I went to see e.g. Parker or Brotzmann (RIP) recently and the gigs were full of curious younger people who hadn't actually listened to the records but we're excited, often having travelled quite far, listening in rapt attention. Again, I think that this reflects the fact that these people's records are showing up on Instagram and Tiktok as examples of the most avant-garde or experimental jazz. 

I don't think that any of this is really a sign of wider interest though, any more than the resurgence of interest in Gil Scott-Heron a few years ago heralded a growth of interest in 1970s soul and funk. It is just an intersection of politics, youth culture, nice looking covers and short form video.

Finally, I should add that these "young" people are in their 30s. In generational terms the popularity of these records is strictly a millennial thing. I have seen no sign whatsoever that listeners under 25 are getting into this music. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Rabshakeh

[jazzbo]

Thanks for that. This is a world that I have no experience with, living out in the woods in an area where country music and radio pop seem to be what younger persons are aware of, and only those genres, and being someone who has a flip phone that does not connect to the internet and zero interest in watching youtube or other videos or reading blogs etc. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 hour ago, jazzbo said:

Thanks for that. This is a world that I have no experience with, living out in the woods in an area where country music and radio pop seem to be what younger persons are aware of, and only those genres, and being someone who has a flip phone that does not connect to the internet and zero interest in watching youtube or other videos or reading blogs etc. 

Maybe partly because my eyesight is not great but I have never understood the appeal of accessing the internet on a smartphone.  I have an iphone and love it because it's a phone, an alarm clock/stop-watch, a decent camera, a compass, navigation system for car, an ok music player in a pinch with headphones, etc.  But I don't generally look at things like photos or even mail on the phone.  If I take photos I look at them on a pc.  Email - pc. Social media - pc.  You-tube and spotify - pc.  Newspapers - pc. Those phone screens are too small, the speaker sound is horrible, and it's hard to maintain good posture while using them.  If I'm gonna squint I'll squint at something bigger like a biggish monitor.     

Leaving the device aside, I agree with you about all the distraction of phone/social media etc life.  These last few years I have spent so much time doom-scrolling.  Recently I got very fed up with being over-stimulated and frustrated and have begun to go back to my old, pre-internet habits of reading books all the time.  Stories are good entertainment and they provide a comforting way for us to see a bigger picture from a lofty vantage point where the beginning, middle and end are available to us, unlike our moment to moment experience which is just now and where the endings of things are unknown.