Space is only noise
Not noise per se, but an amazing combination of song and dance and trance and cosmic feeling. The Arkestra came to Portugal for a couple of gigs, the second of which #TeamBolachas had the chance to experience in a nice club near the Lisbon harbor, watching the river come and go and paying 2,5€ for a small bottle of water.
But money is of no importance when discussing the Arkestra, the amazing band of musicians who are currently celebrating their mentor, Sun Ra, the alien who fell to earth in the fifties and left behind some of the best music this planet - and the whole universe, mind you - has ever heard. Over more than an hour and a half they presented us with jazz in its purest form: free, wild, joyful, mouth-opening. People headbanging, dancing, singing along sometimes, waving hips and arms and tongues. Music for music lovers. Close your eyes and travel the spaceways…
Fronting the band was the incredible Marshall Allen, playing the alto saxophone and giving orders around so no sound would be lost; this is not improvisation music, but music from the mind and soul, perfect and untainted; this is “Rocket Number Nine” taking us all to Venus and leaving us wondering if Sun Ra, or the atoms which were one his, are still floating around and listening, controlling, all of this.
The Arkestra is still one of the most amazing live experiences one can see. Just ask the elderly couple giving it their all at the front. Ask the dudes wearing Sun Ra t-shirts and looking for some hash (you don’t need drugs to be fun, though). Ask the Filho Único fellows, who organized the gig and when it all ended were standing with huge smiles on their faces. Ask Kndel Scott, also on alto saxophone, who afterwards was seen selling homemade CDs so he could pay his trip back to England (maybe a different England thousands of light-years away). Ask everyone who came in touch with them when at the end, during “We Travel The Spaceways”, they ran through the crowd, still playing at an amazing intensity. Ask God himself. Maybe he can answer. But remember than God is music.
Text by PAC
Pics by AR
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