SUN RA - Berkeley Lecture, 1971

"The beginning of the 1970s was a watershed moment in the terrestrial life of Sun Ra. With his band, the Arkestra, he began touring internationally. He and his manager Alton Abraham penned a deal with ABC-Impulse! for a series of records which introduced him to many new and distant listeners, as did his Blue Thumb LP Space is the Place. The film of the same name was under way in northern California at the time, too, and Ra accepted a lectureship at University of California, Berkeley, in 1971, teaching a class titled "The Black Man and the Cosmos." This course of study was held in some secrecy, apparently open exclusively to Black students who were strictly forbidden to record the lectures. Ra's assistants did, however, document the sessions, and some of these recordings have made their way to YouTube. The incredible half-hour of Berkeley Lecture presented here, however, is previously unknown, extracted from the Creative Audio Archive's extensive holdings. It presents Ra walking his stu