In the past year, the once-outre Arkestra has enjoyed institutional recognition that would boggle the mind of its prescient founder.
Patrons of South Side jazz clubs in the 1950s might have noticed something a bit different about pianist Sun Ra’s big band — slowly at first, then all at once. Their sounds became more far-out, the synthy buzz of claviolines
But just as subtly as they touched down on the South Side, the Arkestra disappeared. In 1961, the band left town to play in Montreal. They never returned to Chicago. The Arkestra settled in New York, then Philadelphia, where they’ve been ever since, in a rowhouse once owned by bandleader Marshall Allen’s father.
One gets the sense Allen doesn’t mean it colloquially, either. Today, the Sun Ra Arkestra’s influence on avant-garde American music and Afrofuturist thought is incontestable. However, while the Arkestra has always drawn a cult following, institutions were slow to recognize their eminence. In the 1990s, Ra’s former business manager Alton Abraham tried to donate his collection of thousands of manuscripts, writings, photos and ephemera belonging to Ra to Chicago-area archives. He had no takers.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Allen came to Chicago by way of Europe, where he studied music for a few years after World War II. He joined the army as a fresh-faced 18-year-old in 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; a couple of years and a whole lot of life later, Allen was among the troops to liberate concentration camps along the Eastern Front.
“I was coming into work kind of late, so when they laid everybody off, I was one of the first ones out,” he remembers with a snort. “So, I said, ‘That’s it,’ and went all the way with Sun Ra.”The Arkestra held extended engagements at the South Side’s premier ballrooms, all now long gone: Vincennes Lounge , Budland , Casino Moderne , Queen’s Mansion and Wonder Inn . Listeners took note of the far-out sounds.
“Sun Ra and his Outer Space Arkestra featured at Budland Sunday,” read a notice in a 1957 Defender issue. “Of course, the affair featured Outer Space dancing.”
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