Space Is the Place

Sun Ra, who had been reported missing since his European tour in June 1969, lands on a distant planet with his crew, the Arkestra, and declares a plan to settle African Americans there, with music serving as the primary vehicle for relocation. He travels back in time to a Chicago strip club where he once played the piano under the name “Sonny Ray” in 1943, and there he faces the Overseer Raymond Johnson, a pimp-overlord, until they strike a high-stakes card deal that will decide the fate of the Black race.

In the present-day early 1970s, Ra returns to Earth and touches down in Oakland, where he seeks to spread his audacious vision. He connects with young African Americans at a local youth center and inaugurates an Outer Space Employment Agency to recruit willing colonists for his planet. He partners with Jimmy Fey Christopher Brooks — an employee of the Overseer — to arrange radio interviews, a record album, and an upcoming concert that will help broadcast his message.

As the card game unfolds, the Overseer begins to appear poised to win, casting a shadow over Ra’s outreach and raising doubts among Oakland’s Black youth who fear the venture is a gimmick to boost Ra’s record sales. Ra is kidnapped by a team of white NASA scientists who threaten him to extract the secrets of his space-travel technology, increasing the tension as the concert draws closer. Three local teenagers intervene and rescue him, guiding him to the music hall at the last possible moment.

At the concert, the Arkestra performs their signature free jazz, a pivotal moment that anchors the film’s mood. The NASA scientists crash the event and shoot at Ra; a teenager sacrifices themselves to shield him, and as Ra bleeds on stage, he waves his hand, and Ra, the teenager, and the others vanish from the hall. One by one, Black people across Oakland vanish and reappear aboard Ra’s spaceship, as if drawn into a collective odyssey.

Jimmy Fey resists leaving Earth on the spacecraft, but Ra does not permit him to stay; Fey’s “black parts” depart with him, while his “white parts” remain behind on Earth. The spaceship lifts off to the cosmos with music guiding its course, and a closing montage suggests Earth’s destruction in the process.

The journey unfolds through the voices and rhythms of the Arkestra, whose members include John Gilmore, Danny Davis, Danny Thompson, June Tyson, Marshall Allen, Eloe Omoe, Kwame Hadi, Tommy Hunter, and Larry Northington, each contributing to a sonic panorama that mirrors the film’s broader themes: utopian longing, Black identity, and the costs that accompany radical change. The story weaves together moments of resilience, conflict, and spectacle, presenting a thoughtful, dream-like meditation on music as power and the peril and promise of imagining a new world.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 12:32