We Should Talk About Meshell's Sun Ra Album

Because not enough people are.

In April 2024, the funk and soul musician Meshell Ndegeocello released the album Red Hot & Ra: The Magic City, a meditative tribute to the experimental jazz artist Sun Ra, whose music imagined space travel as a means of Black liberation. The Magic City arrived just after her 2023 LP, The Omnichord Real Book, won the first-ever Grammy award for Best Alternative Jazz album and fully absorbed the discourse surrounding Ndegeocello’s renaissance. Make no mistake: Omnichord was excellent, a robust stream of funk, soul and folk dedicated to her upbringing in Washington, D.C. and the passing of her parents. A contemplative affair, the album navigated themes of isolation and emotional breakthroughs without fastening to genre. Funk but not really, jazz kinda sorta, Omnichord deserved all the praise and conversation it received, and stood as a rightful victory lap for one of music’s best arrangers, songwriters and instrumentalists.

Ndegeocello started listening to Sun Ra more intently during the 2020 pandemic, when Covid-19 forced us all inside, and nudged us to reexamine our connection with the planet. As Ndegeocello told the writer Piotr Orlov, she read John Szwed’s Sun Ra biography during lockdown, and was fascinated by the musician’s perspective as an Afrofuturist and purveyor of free jazz. “I haven’t been the same since reading that book,” Ndegeocello told Orlov. “I think it’s what inspired The Omnichord Real Book, in the sense of, ‘What happens when you’re no longer driven by youth?’ Sun Ra’s music is a living organism, and once you immerse yourself in his work, his life, you recognize there’s a fork in the road — that you really have to make choices, because there’s so many other realms and dimensions to explore musically.”

Maybe because my ear skews left, and because I’m a Sun Ra enthusiast, I think The Magic City is equally enchanting and should get more attention than it has. Co-produced with Hector Castillo and featuring a who’s who in experimental music, including Deantoni Parks on drums, Immanuel Wilkins on alto saxophone, and original Sun Ra Arkestra member Marshall Allen (also on alto saxophone), among many other guests, the album reimagines Sun Ra’s cosmic jazz while keeping the intent of his original work intact. Ndegeocello’s goal isn’t to remake his art; instead, she creates her own blend of “space music.” But, as Allen says on the album, Sun Ra’s version of space doesn’t just refer to some vast darkness far away from Earth, it’s also about untethering from worldly challenges and possessions.

In Sun Ra’s time, space was an escape from the racism on this planet. Because, as he saw it, Black people would never find peace or equality here; true liberation resided on Saturn. “If I came from nowhere here,” went a known Sun Ra line, “why can’t I go somewhere there?” It’s a fair question, and one that not only applies to physically leaving Earth. It also speaks to the freedom of leaving people and situations no longer serving you. Since I’m nothing here, I’ll go where I’m loved and seen. And where Sun Ra’s arkestra (in its various iterations) often deployed frenetic drums, squealing horns and sharp synth chords to convey such deliverance, The Magic City takes the opposing trek, arriving there no less theatrically, although the music cruises to its destination. Sun Ra sped urgently through the universe; Ndegeocello floats within it on The Magic City, a contemplative respite from the hustle of lumbering subway cars and tall buildings with no end.

To my ear, The Magic City centers earthly despair, and is built to soothe grief and anxiety while keeping firmly affixed to this planet. Sun Ra, it seemed, wanted to collect the beleaguered souls of this world and get outta here. Ndegeocello recognizes the reality: We can’t leave, and it’s okay to not be okay. So on “The Bedlam Blues,” when the vocalist Justin Hicks sings “most of us are overwhelmed and overworked now,” it speaks directly to the angst that I and others feel as rational beings trying to maneuver irrational times. It’s hard to rest when the bills keep coming, and it’s tough to focus with so much stimuli around. The news and social media make life feel so urgent, and with that urgency comes the false sense of stagnation, that you’re not doing enough, that you’re not enough. Personally, the “overwhelmed/overworked” train has long left the station, but hearing Hicks declare the notion validates my perception — that, yes, we’re tired, so very tired. The song reminds me that the issues persist beyond my viewpoint, and that I’m not the only one feeling frazzled. The “chaos,” as Hicks repeats in the hook, consumes us all.

The song “#9 Venus The Living Myth” is closer to Sun Ra’s musical ethos. Blustery and extravagant, with big drums, wailing saxophones and vocal chants, it has a pronounced swing with grand, festive movements that stampede through the continuum. This is the band prepped for liftoff, in the fueled-up rocketship ready to roll. “Zoom, zoom, up in the air,” the ensemble chants from the flight deck, as Sun Ra’s sampled voice wafts through the mix. Elsewhere, Ndegeocello’s sound barrels through the opening cut “Solipsistic Panacea (Black Antiques),” the electric bass — her primary instrument — bolstering a palatable funk groove, on which a swarm of guitar, electric keys and synthesizers create a dark, cinematic aura. For those wanting to hear her, and not her funneled through someone else, might appreciate this song the most.

Not long after this album was released, Ndegeocello focused her energy on the third great album of her recent output: No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin. Released on what would have been the author’s 100th birthday, the album was expansive and adventurous, playful yet serious, a beautiful revival that properly recontextualized Baldwin. I had the honor of covering Ndegeocello’s Omnichord and Baldwin albums; in speaking with her about Baldwin for WNYC, she carried a copy of The Fire Next Time in her jacket pocket and quoted liberally from the text. For Omnichord, Ndegeocello spoke openly about the sense of discovery that led to that LP’s creation. I wonder if The Magic City went unnoticed because of when it was released, that maybe it would have benefitted from a later date so it had space to shine on its own. That it was sandwiched between two seismic albums perhaps led to its underrating, and because it was about Sun Ra (who was considered too “out” for some jazz listeners) made it intimidating. In an era of ambient jazz, where so many arrangements drift along without drums (or drums that, on purpose, are barely there), The Magic City hit the same mark without sacrificing the jam, proving that you can meditate and nod your head, too.