“... This instruction guided Ra for the rest of his life as a musician and a thinker. By the fifties, the signs of hopelessness were everywhere: racism, the threat of nuclear war, social movements that sought political freedom but not cosmic enlightenment. In response, during the next four decades—until his death, in 1993—Ra released more than a hundred albums of visionary jazz. Some consisted of anarchic, noisy ‘space music.’ Others featured lush, whimsical takes on Gershwin or Disney classics. All were intended as dance music, even if few people knew the steps. Ra was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1914, to a supportive, religious family. He was named after Black Herman, a magician who claimed to be from the ‘dark jungles of Africa’ and who infused his death-defying escape acts with hoodoo mysticism. ...”
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