Music / Jazz
Space is still the place
Many artistically important things happened in 1924. George Bernard Shaw premiered St Joan, Jelly Roll Morton recorded the original Jelly Roll Blues, Andre Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto and Marshall Belford Allen was born in Louisville Kentucky. Fast forward to 2019 and those first three are all remembered as revered landmarks of cultural history but, at 95 years old, Marshall Allen remains very much a vigorous part of the contemporary landscape as his impending appearance at Fiddler’s will no doubt prove.
A great inheritance
After 70 years as a jazz musician he is the bandleader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, the radical combo he joined in 1958 that is still one of the most innovative and thrilling big bands the jazz world has ever seen. Marshall assumed the leadership role shortly after the founder Sun Ra himself ‘ascended’ to another cosmic plane following heart failure in 1993. For nearly 25 years, he has ensured that the Arkestra continues to take their founder’s musical legacy forward, writing new material and arrangements that extend the repertoire and reflect the changing music scene around them.
is needed now More than ever
Marshall Allen (centre, in red) at The Lantern in 2015
Still crazy after all of these years
But, while the world has moved on, it seems that each successive generation also ‘discovers’ the Sun Ra Arkestra as a fresh challenge to the musical status quo, revelling in the sheer joyful energy of a big band that can shift from swing to free jazz via doo-wop and funk with absolute assurance and impeccable musicianship. If it was groundbreaking in the 50s it remains as influential in the 21st century, offering the kind of spine-tingling musical experiences that inspired The Specials’ Jerry Dammers to start his own Spatial AKA Orchestra as a tribute band, gloriously caped and costumed just like the original.
The Sun Ra Arkestra at The Lantern, 2015
Caped crusade
And those costumes … in these times of identity politics it is worth remembering the political message behind the Arkestra’s carnivalesque appearance. In declaring himself to be an alien from Saturn and clothing himself and his musicians in a fusion of cosmic glitter and ancient Egyptian robes Sun Ra was consciously making a statement about the way black people were ‘othered’ by white America while also evoking an older time before European colonialism impinged on African culture.
The spirit lives on
For Marshall the great man has never left the band – as he told Factmag in a 2015 interview: “I don’t miss him as I’m playing his music. What I need is the spirit of him playing in the band. He’s still here. Don’t cry and weep over him, because he’s not gone.” Given his own remarkable age, of course, there must be some deeper resonance for him in saying that but fortunately we still have the opportunity to see him in this astral plane, very much alive and sparkling.
Sun Ra Arkestra appear at Fiddler’s on Tuesday April 23
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