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S40E2: Sun Ra: Do The Impossible | Clip

Sun Ra’s concept of “alter destiny” was his way of changing humanity

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Sun Ra wanted to change humanity with his concept of the “alter destiny,” or using music to access the unknown and move people to another state of awareness.

TRANSCRIPT

- My music is actually reaching outwards, not being a part of the past, or the present or the future, (mellow music) but rather, what I call an alter destiny.

- Sun Ra came with a mission to get us out of history, somebody else's story, and to move us into our alter destiny.

He told us all the time, your survival depends on the unknown, so stop trying to remix what you have.

It won't work!

(saxophone music) (ethereal music) - Alter destiny.

It's a negation.

It's the thing you haven't thought of yet.

It's a placeholder for an idea about utopia that is not connected to ideology.

- The alter destiny is a very early articulation of the notion that the future is not only unfixed, but that we are trapped in notions of time that force us in places that we don't actually have to go.

We can step out of time and create another trajectory.

(dramatic music) - Sun Ra understood that sound could be used to jolt people out of their complacency, move people to another state of awareness.

He had a device that he called the space chord, and the space chord was a seemingly random set of notes that he would call at particular points.

(dramatic music) - He brings you to these moments where things just seem to just lose themselves.

That, for him, are these moments where you get to see and experience, in his view, a kind of liberating possibility.

(dramatic jazz music)