MIKE SMITH:
Alright — we are Trail 103.3. I’m Mike Smith, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Let’s see… this will be day number five — the fifth full day at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. We are featuring directors and filmmakers. I welcome Peter Nauffts into the Trail studio.
You were saying you’re an archivist — you’re an archivist.
PETER NAUFFTS:
Yeah. I do archival research and production for films, which is sourcing audio-visual material to make documentaries happen.
MIKE:
Wow. That sounds like a lot of fun. It sounds also like there’s a bit of a — it’s probably a bit tedious because of the amount of film that’s shot and whatnot.
PETER:
Yeah, there’s a lot of sifting. There’s a lot of sifting through material looking for the right shot. A lot of, you know… which train shot is going to work for this scene, which piece of B-roll is going to fit the director’s vision. Then, you know, there’s also some great treasure hunting, and it feels like you’re being a sleuth or something at times.
MIKE:
I imagine there’s a lot of stashing things away for later — “Oh, this is a great shot for what I’m looking for, but this will be used at some point for sure.”
PETER:
Oh, for sure. Yeah, we all have our favorite shots that we… yeah, you know, you need.
MIKE:
I imagine the business of that has changed in a digital world. Do you work from home, or do you go to a central area?
PETER:
Yeah, I work from home. And I think, especially pre-pandemic, there was a lot more traveling to archives and digging through boxes. But with the pandemic, a lot of these archives and libraries became digital, and they can, you know, make reference scans for you — or snap it on their phone and send you a picture. So it has changed for sure.
MIKE:
Where are we in terms of all the film that’s out there getting it all put over into a digital form… just in a… I know that’s a bigger question than we’re talking about here today with the doc film.
PETER:
Yeah. I would be hard-pressed to say, but it is funny — there’s a lot of media that’s been transferred to digital form, you know, starting from the ’90s, and some of those digital formats themselves are going extinct. So you have these multiple generations of digital, and they’re not all compatible with the formats we use today. So it’s a hard thing to wrap your head around.
MIKE:
And one thing with music — and as far as a digital footprint — is I love, especially on a radio station, playing something that Shazam doesn’t know. So we’re like, “No — that’s a bootleg. That’s a file that is kind of out there just on this radio station.”
PETER:
Yeah. Totally.
MIKE:
That’s a… Sun Ra.
PETER:
Sun Ra is a big bootleg guy too.
MIKE:
Well, let’s turn to that — Sun Ra, born Herman Poole Blount.
PETER:
That’s right.
MIKE:
He went by the name Sun Ra. Where do we start? Poet, philosopher, Egyptologist, band leader, jazz visionary — but also the… I’m just kind of learning about him this morning, but the idea of a singular individual.
PETER:
Yeah. Singular is a good word for it. I would say there’s no one quite like Sun Ra in music history — but in history, period. I mean, he was born in Birmingham in 1914, and he just knew he was a creative force from an early age. He just knew he had to make music. That was his calling.
But it was bigger than music for him. I think music was a force to change the world, and to change the world for the better. And that became his mission: to change the world and to show people another world was possible through the power of his musical vision.
MIKE:
And so a lot of that is futurism — what we’re talking about, futurism.
PETER:
Exactly.
MIKE:
Of which the idea is… is it creating something for the future? Is it a prediction of the future? What was he playing around with?
PETER:
Yeah. And the incredible thing is Sun Ra sort of created, almost out of nothing, this idea of Afrofuturism. I mean, there were definitely predecessors to him, but he is one of the fathers of this idea of Afrofuturism.
And I think the idea, really simply, is: especially if you’re a Black person born in the 1910s South — this country, this world is not hospitable to you. And so we don’t need to live in this world. Let’s go create a better world. Let’s go create our own world.
And for him, that existed in space, and that existed in the future. So he claimed he was from Saturn — and there’s no ambiguity to him about that. You know, he said he was from Saturn. So that wasn’t a joke. It’s not — you know — he wears these incredible costumes. It wasn’t put-on. That’s who he was, and that’s who he believed he was.
It wasn’t like a David Bowie or Peter Gabriel or any number of musicians that kind of do a concept album and step into an identity. No — he kept that identity on stage. Off stage, it was who he was.
And you’ll hear it in the film, but for a long time, no one really knew where he was from or where he was born. And we have interviews and archives where people will say, you know, “Oh, Sun Ra — he’s from South Carolina, he’s born in the ’20s,” like — totally wrong. And throughout most of his career, his backstory was a state secret. He lived by this persona, Sun Ra, and we knew nothing about his younger years.
MIKE:
I bet pre-internet it was awesome to end up with a Sun Ra recording and just be like, “I have no idea where this person’s from.”
PETER:
Yeah.
MIKE:
What they’re about — all I have is the music that was created.
PETER:
Yeah, yeah. You had to take him at his word, you know. You had his music, and you had what he had to talk about.
MIKE:
We’re talking about American Masters, the series. And you were saying something before we got on the airwaves here about how they do a really good job… putting more folks like Sun Ra on the map. And that would be these singular folks who — you know — you end up saying, “Well, I think I’m fairly learned,” but you come back and you say, “How did I not know about Sun Ra? How did I not know more about this?” And these documentaries show up — and that’s kind of what American Masters is about.
PETER:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s sort of giving credit where credit is due to people who might have been overlooked by history. And I think Sun Ra is a perfect candidate for that.
I mean, it’s amazing to think — his contemporaries, his peers, looked up to him and learned from him. John Coltrane came to visit him in Chicago and talked about how Sun Ra’s ideas and music changed his life and helped him get on the right track. And, you know, Miles Davis didn’t necessarily love what Sun Ra was doing, but he felt the power of it.
These legends of jazz knew Sun Ra, knew ideas about him — but a lot of the wider audience didn’t. And I think that’s largely because Sun Ra was unambiguously making music for music’s sake. He had his own record label, and he was not really concerned with mainstream success. And that means a lot of people don’t know him. So that’s the whole idea.
MIKE:
Yeah. Let’s give the people some sound. This is the trailer to Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, showing at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival tonight at the Zootown Arts Community Center — 8:30. Here we go with that trailer. Sun Ra on the Trail.
[TRAILER AUDIO / MUSIC]
“I believe that it is genuinely a mischaracterization to speak of one Sun Ra, right? At any given time, there was a whole bunch more.”
[MUSIC]
“Sun Ra — the virtuoso, teacher, band leader, the poet, the cosmologist, historian, the Egyptologist, the community leader, the patriarch, the mother — and that’s just scratching the surface.”
[MUSIC]
“He was pretty fearless. And it would take a lot as a Black man to do all the things he did with so much sovereignty — with no examples of anyone like him in existence at all.”
“I think that Sun Ra is one of the great visionaries of the 20th century. He’s someone who made his life into a work of art. Every moment of his life feels like a performance and a provocation and a prophetic statement.”
“You think you know where things stand. You think you know what the issues are. And then someone comes in who changes the frame of reference entirely.”
“Sun Ra is a pioneer in Afrofuturism. He influenced mainstream cats, he influenced underground cats — everybody. His influence is just that vast. And he was making music for the future.”
[MUSIC]
“Sun Ra thought that if he could reorder our way of thinking through sound, he could prepare us for a different world. That was his goal, right? A different world.”
[MUSIC]
MIKE:
I’m totally sold. I’m sold. That’s what the trailer is all about — and that’s just the sound. It’s a cool-looking trailer as well.
We are Trail 103.3, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Peter Nauffts is in for the film Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, showing tonight at the Zootown Arts Community Center. You’re going to be there — that’s why you’re here in Missoula.
PETER:
That’s right.
MIKE:
Last time — it’s Big Sky. It’s your first time in the festival.
PETER:
It’s my first time in the festival. Not my first time in Missoula, but my first time in the festival.
MIKE:
And as you were telling me earlier, you live out in New York.
PETER:
I do. New York City.
MIKE:
What part of the New York deal?
PETER:
I live in Brooklyn now, but I grew up there on the Upper West Side.
MIKE:
Oh, cool. New Yorker born and raised. And being an archivist — has film always been your thing?
PETER:
You know, not exactly. I sort of stumbled into documentary film after college, and I just loved it. I loved the small teams and the community and the great stories. So yeah — it kind of found me.
MIKE:
How many projects do you have going at any given time?
PETER:
A lot. Too many. Yeah — that’s the life of a freelancer. But I’ve got probably four right now. And I actually have a little hand in four different projects here at Big Sky. So that’s cool.
MIKE:
Yeah. So Sun Ra: Do the Impossible — under director Christine Turner, director and producer. And I was looking her up earlier… boy, she’s got a — she’s got a presence out there in the world.
PETER:
Yeah. Christine’s incredible. Yeah, she’s made a lot of great films. Was recently nominated for an Oscar for her short, The Barber of Little Rock. Great films.
MIKE:
Did she — is she the type of director who kind of focuses on one thing? Or does she jump around to different topics and different ideas and different lengths of films?
PETER:
Yeah. I mean, I would say Christine is generally interested in telling stories about Black artists. And she’s made a lot of great films in that vein. She’s working on some cool stuff coming up — which I can’t say too much about — but she’s got a lot of cool stuff. So, really.
MIKE:
So, Sun Ra: Do the Impossible is the film — and a singular person that I’m just learning more about now. But you were talking about 127 albums.
PETER:
Yeah. Sun Ra was prolific. He never stopped making music. And that’s just what he released. But yeah — you’ll see there’s a little moment in the film where someone says, “How do you decide what to release on your own record?” And he says, “Whatever I think that no one else will want to release — that’s what I release.” He released everything.
And I think a lot of the music he released — it wasn’t necessarily expecting it to be understood in that time — but he wanted to put it out there for people to find when they needed it.
MIKE:
I love the idea of artists not really — and it’ll sound arrogant coming from my mouth — but just the idea of them not really worried about the fans. Trying to create something so precious or work on it till it’s exactly what people are going to want. Just be like, “This is me. Here’s my music. Do with it what you will.”
PETER:
Yeah, completely. It’s admirable. I feel like we can be so precious about our art and not want it to be seen until it’s perfect. And Sun Ra wasn’t that way.
In fact, our EP told me: even if your screening is empty tonight, don’t worry about it, because Sun Ra played for a lot of empty rooms — and it didn’t bother him.
MIKE:
We’ve had some really great turnouts this year, which — if you are interested in going to this or any of the other films at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival — I am encouraging you to get over to the website and get your ticket for the screening covered, get it all into your account, and get ready to roll.
Now, I do want to tell you: a lot of folks run around with a lanyard so that they can get into any film and any event — but also, you can just buy a one-off. You can say, “You know what, I don’t need the pass. Don’t necessarily want the pass. But I just want to go see Sun Ra: Do the Impossible.” You can just go buy a ticket.
But do buy that ticket right now — because especially with a little… a little bump from Trail 103.3 — folks, you’re going to be interested in this one. Sun Ra: Do the Impossible.
Do you have Sun Ra on your playlist?
PETER:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
MIKE:
When do you put them on — anytime?
PETER:
Oh, man. It’s definitely different Sun Ras for different moods.
MIKE:
Yeah.
PETER:
Yeah — I was listening to his cover of “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins. He has a whole Disney album. I mean, there’s something for everyone and every time of day.
MIKE:
And again, this idea of Afrofuturism — along with just being a visionary jazz musician, band leader, Egyptologist, philosopher, poet. Maybe we all should know Sun Ra — and the documentary film Sun Ra: Do the Impossible.
My guest is Peter Nauffts. I’ll give you the parting thought here.
PETER:
Sure. Yeah. I was just going to say — I mean, even if you come out of the movie not liking his music, and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, you will have some food for thought and something to chew on with his worldview and his way of being in the world and his music. It’s thought-provoking stuff.
So I think you’ll be entertained even if you don’t go out and buy all 127 of his records.
MIKE:
Yeah. Well, you can just start with a handful of songs — just download those.
Is there somebody kind of in control of the discography, the music? Is there a Sun Ra descendant?
PETER:
There are some descendants, but they’ve put the estate in the hands of a music whiz named Irwin Chusid, who’s based in New Jersey. So he handles all the reissues, the remastering — and so there’s new music coming out all the time from his catalog.
MIKE:
Yeah. Well, if you’re digging into some music today, check out Sun Ra. And again: Sun Ra: Do the Impossible — documentary film — 84 minutes. Boy, that’s a big life to cram into 84 minutes, but that’s a perfect length documentary.
PETER:
Good.
MIKE:
Yeah. Showing tonight — Zootown Arts Community Center — 8:30. And again, thank you, Peter.
PETER:
Thank you.
MIKE:
And for everybody else — check out the Big Sky Doc Fest. Tommy’s going to have another interview coming up just about 12 noon on the Trail.
Alright — we are Trail 103.3. I’m Mike Smith, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Let’s see… this will be day number five — the fifth full day at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. We are featuring directors and filmmakers. I welcome Peter Nauffts into the Trail studio.
You were saying you’re an archivist — you’re an archivist.
PETER NAUFFTS:
Yeah. I do archival research and production for films, which is sourcing audio-visual material to make documentaries happen.
MIKE:
Wow. That sounds like a lot of fun. It sounds also like there’s a bit of a — it’s probably a bit tedious because of the amount of film that’s shot and whatnot.
PETER:
Yeah, there’s a lot of sifting. There’s a lot of sifting through material looking for the right shot. A lot of, you know… which train shot is going to work for this scene, which piece of B-roll is going to fit the director’s vision. Then, you know, there’s also some great treasure hunting, and it feels like you’re being a sleuth or something at times.
MIKE:
I imagine there’s a lot of stashing things away for later — “Oh, this is a great shot for what I’m looking for, but this will be used at some point for sure.”
PETER:
Oh, for sure. Yeah, we all have our favorite shots that we… yeah, you know, you need.
MIKE:
I imagine the business of that has changed in a digital world. Do you work from home, or do you go to a central area?
PETER:
Yeah, I work from home. And I think, especially pre-pandemic, there was a lot more traveling to archives and digging through boxes. But with the pandemic, a lot of these archives and libraries became digital, and they can, you know, make reference scans for you — or snap it on their phone and send you a picture. So it has changed for sure.
MIKE:
Where are we in terms of all the film that’s out there getting it all put over into a digital form… just in a… I know that’s a bigger question than we’re talking about here today with the doc film.
PETER:
Yeah. I would be hard-pressed to say, but it is funny — there’s a lot of media that’s been transferred to digital form, you know, starting from the ’90s, and some of those digital formats themselves are going extinct. So you have these multiple generations of digital, and they’re not all compatible with the formats we use today. So it’s a hard thing to wrap your head around.
MIKE:
And one thing with music — and as far as a digital footprint — is I love, especially on a radio station, playing something that Shazam doesn’t know. So we’re like, “No — that’s a bootleg. That’s a file that is kind of out there just on this radio station.”
PETER:
Yeah. Totally.
MIKE:
That’s a… Sun Ra.
PETER:
Sun Ra is a big bootleg guy too.
MIKE:
Well, let’s turn to that — Sun Ra, born Herman Poole Blount.
PETER:
That’s right.
MIKE:
He went by the name Sun Ra. Where do we start? Poet, philosopher, Egyptologist, band leader, jazz visionary — but also the… I’m just kind of learning about him this morning, but the idea of a singular individual.
PETER:
Yeah. Singular is a good word for it. I would say there’s no one quite like Sun Ra in music history — but in history, period. I mean, he was born in Birmingham in 1914, and he just knew he was a creative force from an early age. He just knew he had to make music. That was his calling.
But it was bigger than music for him. I think music was a force to change the world, and to change the world for the better. And that became his mission: to change the world and to show people another world was possible through the power of his musical vision.
MIKE:
And so a lot of that is futurism — what we’re talking about, futurism.
PETER:
Exactly.
MIKE:
Of which the idea is… is it creating something for the future? Is it a prediction of the future? What was he playing around with?
PETER:
Yeah. And the incredible thing is Sun Ra sort of created, almost out of nothing, this idea of Afrofuturism. I mean, there were definitely predecessors to him, but he is one of the fathers of this idea of Afrofuturism.
And I think the idea, really simply, is: especially if you’re a Black person born in the 1910s South — this country, this world is not hospitable to you. And so we don’t need to live in this world. Let’s go create a better world. Let’s go create our own world.
And for him, that existed in space, and that existed in the future. So he claimed he was from Saturn — and there’s no ambiguity to him about that. You know, he said he was from Saturn. So that wasn’t a joke. It’s not — you know — he wears these incredible costumes. It wasn’t put-on. That’s who he was, and that’s who he believed he was.
It wasn’t like a David Bowie or Peter Gabriel or any number of musicians that kind of do a concept album and step into an identity. No — he kept that identity on stage. Off stage, it was who he was.
And you’ll hear it in the film, but for a long time, no one really knew where he was from or where he was born. And we have interviews and archives where people will say, you know, “Oh, Sun Ra — he’s from South Carolina, he’s born in the ’20s,” like — totally wrong. And throughout most of his career, his backstory was a state secret. He lived by this persona, Sun Ra, and we knew nothing about his younger years.
MIKE:
I bet pre-internet it was awesome to end up with a Sun Ra recording and just be like, “I have no idea where this person’s from.”
PETER:
Yeah.
MIKE:
What they’re about — all I have is the music that was created.
PETER:
Yeah, yeah. You had to take him at his word, you know. You had his music, and you had what he had to talk about.
MIKE:
We’re talking about American Masters, the series. And you were saying something before we got on the airwaves here about how they do a really good job… putting more folks like Sun Ra on the map. And that would be these singular folks who — you know — you end up saying, “Well, I think I’m fairly learned,” but you come back and you say, “How did I not know about Sun Ra? How did I not know more about this?” And these documentaries show up — and that’s kind of what American Masters is about.
PETER:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s sort of giving credit where credit is due to people who might have been overlooked by history. And I think Sun Ra is a perfect candidate for that.
I mean, it’s amazing to think — his contemporaries, his peers, looked up to him and learned from him. John Coltrane came to visit him in Chicago and talked about how Sun Ra’s ideas and music changed his life and helped him get on the right track. And, you know, Miles Davis didn’t necessarily love what Sun Ra was doing, but he felt the power of it.
These legends of jazz knew Sun Ra, knew ideas about him — but a lot of the wider audience didn’t. And I think that’s largely because Sun Ra was unambiguously making music for music’s sake. He had his own record label, and he was not really concerned with mainstream success. And that means a lot of people don’t know him. So that’s the whole idea.
MIKE:
Yeah. Let’s give the people some sound. This is the trailer to Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, showing at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival tonight at the Zootown Arts Community Center — 8:30. Here we go with that trailer. Sun Ra on the Trail.
[TRAILER AUDIO / MUSIC]
“I believe that it is genuinely a mischaracterization to speak of one Sun Ra, right? At any given time, there was a whole bunch more.”
[MUSIC]
“Sun Ra — the virtuoso, teacher, band leader, the poet, the cosmologist, historian, the Egyptologist, the community leader, the patriarch, the mother — and that’s just scratching the surface.”
[MUSIC]
“He was pretty fearless. And it would take a lot as a Black man to do all the things he did with so much sovereignty — with no examples of anyone like him in existence at all.”
“I think that Sun Ra is one of the great visionaries of the 20th century. He’s someone who made his life into a work of art. Every moment of his life feels like a performance and a provocation and a prophetic statement.”
“You think you know where things stand. You think you know what the issues are. And then someone comes in who changes the frame of reference entirely.”
“Sun Ra is a pioneer in Afrofuturism. He influenced mainstream cats, he influenced underground cats — everybody. His influence is just that vast. And he was making music for the future.”
[MUSIC]
“Sun Ra thought that if he could reorder our way of thinking through sound, he could prepare us for a different world. That was his goal, right? A different world.”
[MUSIC]
MIKE:
I’m totally sold. I’m sold. That’s what the trailer is all about — and that’s just the sound. It’s a cool-looking trailer as well.
We are Trail 103.3, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Peter Nauffts is in for the film Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, showing tonight at the Zootown Arts Community Center. You’re going to be there — that’s why you’re here in Missoula.
PETER:
That’s right.
MIKE:
Last time — it’s Big Sky. It’s your first time in the festival.
PETER:
It’s my first time in the festival. Not my first time in Missoula, but my first time in the festival.
MIKE:
And as you were telling me earlier, you live out in New York.
PETER:
I do. New York City.
MIKE:
What part of the New York deal?
PETER:
I live in Brooklyn now, but I grew up there on the Upper West Side.
MIKE:
Oh, cool. New Yorker born and raised. And being an archivist — has film always been your thing?
PETER:
You know, not exactly. I sort of stumbled into documentary film after college, and I just loved it. I loved the small teams and the community and the great stories. So yeah — it kind of found me.
MIKE:
How many projects do you have going at any given time?
PETER:
A lot. Too many. Yeah — that’s the life of a freelancer. But I’ve got probably four right now. And I actually have a little hand in four different projects here at Big Sky. So that’s cool.
MIKE:
Yeah. So Sun Ra: Do the Impossible — under director Christine Turner, director and producer. And I was looking her up earlier… boy, she’s got a — she’s got a presence out there in the world.
PETER:
Yeah. Christine’s incredible. Yeah, she’s made a lot of great films. Was recently nominated for an Oscar for her short, The Barber of Little Rock. Great films.
MIKE:
Did she — is she the type of director who kind of focuses on one thing? Or does she jump around to different topics and different ideas and different lengths of films?
PETER:
Yeah. I mean, I would say Christine is generally interested in telling stories about Black artists. And she’s made a lot of great films in that vein. She’s working on some cool stuff coming up — which I can’t say too much about — but she’s got a lot of cool stuff. So, really.
MIKE:
So, Sun Ra: Do the Impossible is the film — and a singular person that I’m just learning more about now. But you were talking about 127 albums.
PETER:
Yeah. Sun Ra was prolific. He never stopped making music. And that’s just what he released. But yeah — you’ll see there’s a little moment in the film where someone says, “How do you decide what to release on your own record?” And he says, “Whatever I think that no one else will want to release — that’s what I release.” He released everything.
And I think a lot of the music he released — it wasn’t necessarily expecting it to be understood in that time — but he wanted to put it out there for people to find when they needed it.
MIKE:
I love the idea of artists not really — and it’ll sound arrogant coming from my mouth — but just the idea of them not really worried about the fans. Trying to create something so precious or work on it till it’s exactly what people are going to want. Just be like, “This is me. Here’s my music. Do with it what you will.”
PETER:
Yeah, completely. It’s admirable. I feel like we can be so precious about our art and not want it to be seen until it’s perfect. And Sun Ra wasn’t that way.
In fact, our EP told me: even if your screening is empty tonight, don’t worry about it, because Sun Ra played for a lot of empty rooms — and it didn’t bother him.
MIKE:
We’ve had some really great turnouts this year, which — if you are interested in going to this or any of the other films at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival — I am encouraging you to get over to the website and get your ticket for the screening covered, get it all into your account, and get ready to roll.
Now, I do want to tell you: a lot of folks run around with a lanyard so that they can get into any film and any event — but also, you can just buy a one-off. You can say, “You know what, I don’t need the pass. Don’t necessarily want the pass. But I just want to go see Sun Ra: Do the Impossible.” You can just go buy a ticket.
But do buy that ticket right now — because especially with a little… a little bump from Trail 103.3 — folks, you’re going to be interested in this one. Sun Ra: Do the Impossible.
Do you have Sun Ra on your playlist?
PETER:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
MIKE:
When do you put them on — anytime?
PETER:
Oh, man. It’s definitely different Sun Ras for different moods.
MIKE:
Yeah.
PETER:
Yeah — I was listening to his cover of “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins. He has a whole Disney album. I mean, there’s something for everyone and every time of day.
MIKE:
And again, this idea of Afrofuturism — along with just being a visionary jazz musician, band leader, Egyptologist, philosopher, poet. Maybe we all should know Sun Ra — and the documentary film Sun Ra: Do the Impossible.
My guest is Peter Nauffts. I’ll give you the parting thought here.
PETER:
Sure. Yeah. I was just going to say — I mean, even if you come out of the movie not liking his music, and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, you will have some food for thought and something to chew on with his worldview and his way of being in the world and his music. It’s thought-provoking stuff.
So I think you’ll be entertained even if you don’t go out and buy all 127 of his records.
MIKE:
Yeah. Well, you can just start with a handful of songs — just download those.
Is there somebody kind of in control of the discography, the music? Is there a Sun Ra descendant?
PETER:
There are some descendants, but they’ve put the estate in the hands of a music whiz named Irwin Chusid, who’s based in New Jersey. So he handles all the reissues, the remastering — and so there’s new music coming out all the time from his catalog.
MIKE:
Yeah. Well, if you’re digging into some music today, check out Sun Ra. And again: Sun Ra: Do the Impossible — documentary film — 84 minutes. Boy, that’s a big life to cram into 84 minutes, but that’s a perfect length documentary.
PETER:
Good.
MIKE:
Yeah. Showing tonight — Zootown Arts Community Center — 8:30. And again, thank you, Peter.
PETER:
Thank you.
MIKE:
And for everybody else — check out the Big Sky Doc Fest. Tommy’s going to have another interview coming up just about 12 noon on the Trail.
