Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (review)

Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. By Graham Lock. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999. [xi, 314 p. ISBN 0-8223-2404-0 (cloth); 0-8223-2440-7 (pbk.). $54.95 (cloth); $18.95 (pbk.).]

Graham Lock's Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton is a superb work from cover to cover. From the start, the captivating title stimulates the reader's curiosity as to Lock's method in approaching three world-renowned twentieth-century musicians in a single text. Sun Ra, a master musician, poet, and philosopher; Duke Ellington, composer extraordinaire and a tremendously influential bandleader and pianist; and the multi-instrumentalist, composer, and intellectual Anthony Braxton are presented here as misunderstood, misconstrued, and often unappreciated artists who changed the face of music in the United States and abroad. Though many studies have been written on each of Lock's chosen subjects, he ventures into still-uncharted territory, presenting a text that complements--and in some cases, corrects--information in previous works by other authors.

In part 1, "Sun Ra: A Starward Eye," Lock approaches the cosmology of Sun Ra and aims to dispel the misconception of his mysterious identity. Uncovering Ra's personal ideology, he presents the artist and his music within the context of the African- to-African American cultural continuum. He also approaches Ra's "mythic identity," illuminating the enigma behind his renaming, rebirth, and representation. According to Lock, one of Ra's greatest undertakings was his attempt to revise black history from an insider standpoint. Ra's "mythic past," which he referred to as "Astro Black Mythology" (p. 14), is rooted in his study of ancient Egyptian history and is revealed through his name, record label, costumes, album designs, song titles, and other representations. Lock suggests that Ra aimed to refamiliarize blacks with their African past, an agenda that was often unpopular in the 1940s and 1950s. Lock also offers commentary on Ra's response to Christianity, his philosophical change in the 1970s, and his fascination with ideas deemed impossible; for Lock, the latter points to Ra's "mythic future."

Part 2, titled "Duke Ellington: Tone Parallels," comments on Ellington's fight against vicious stereotypes and rampant racism as he undertook "the writing, in music, of 'The History of the Negro' " in America (p. 77, quoted from The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 45). Lock presents Ellington as a compassionate and proud composer who was concerned with the issues of race and the plight of blacks in the United States. Citing numerous studies and interviews, Lock suggests that the inspiration for many of Ellington's compositions was not the continent of Africa, but the cultural legacy that links blacks in the United States to Africa. Lock's commentary on Ellington's response to the term "jungle music" and treatment of the racial statements of critic John Hammond are captivating. Lock also presents research on Ellington's feelings about racial harmony; a thesis "Ellington's music had carried, directly and indirectly, for more than forty years," according to Lock, is that "racial harmony will not be possible until whites learn to come to terms with the reality of black experience and abandon their false representations of blackness" (p. 102). Lock details Ellington's struggles to gain respect as a serious composer while confronting racism, lack of respect, disregard for artistic expression, and his internal conflict over what to call his music (jazz, Negro music, dance music, American music, good music, etc.). Like Lock's treatment of Sun Ra, the two chapters on Ellington complement the wealth of existing literature on the great...