Sun Ra

Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.

I’m playing dark history. It’s beyond black. I’m dealing with the dark things of the cosmos.

Not too many people in America know about me, but all of Europe knows about me.

Music is a language, you see, a universal language.

I am a musician, but I’m another type of musician.

And then when I went to Chicago, that’s when I had these outer space experiences and went to the other planets.

What I’m dealing with is so vast and great that it can’t be called the truth. It’s above the truth.

A prophet is not without honor except in his own country among his own people.

I use music as a medium to talk to people.

All these other nations seem to appreciate what I’m doing and they want me to play the furthest out things.

A world is in danger, this planet is in great danger!

It’s such a tragedy that man endures in killing his brother and his own kind, putting him in jail and insane asylums, letting him lay out in the street.

I’m not a minister, I’m not a philosopher, I’m not a politician, I’m in another category.

But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn’t be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians, who are imprisoned behind these bars; music’s got these bars and measures you know.

People have set that up as a standard, not to recognize a prophet in his own country.

Today’s symphonic music is sponsored by the upper structures of society.

I see people as they really are from a pure point of view.

The world is in such a bad condition that if they don’t find what you call a redeemer, every man, woman and child on this planet will be eliminated.