Sun Ra, "Dancing in the Sun"

With the anticipation of the 100th anniversary of Sun Ra’s appearance on Earth from his home on Saturn on May 29, we have inexplicably been called toward his music in the stacks, most recently to The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, SFC call number FC21135, a seminal 1965 release from legendary free-jazz and out music label ESP-Disk . Equal parts “unfree free jazz“, afrofuturist storytelling, and detours into pop music (e.g. the gorgeous doo-wop track “Somebody’s in Love” or the very-NSFW anti-war lament “Nuclear War“), Sun Ra’s oeuvre defies easy summation. With that said, Heliocentric Worlds is about as good a place to dive into it any. Posted here is the final track from the record, “Dancing in the Sun.” As an added bonus, this particular rip of the record comes from an original (and rare) ESP-Disk pressing–check out those scans of this particularly well-worn copy below the track.
“Dancing in the Sun”