SUN RA RA
Sun Ra Ra (2021)
Installation view at bb15 Space for Contemporary Art in Linz, Austria.
Sun Ra Ra (2022)Installing at documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany.
On his first visit to the Ghetto Biennale in Haiti, Tom Bogaert heard something familiar in the rara marching music that was being played in the streets of Port-au-Prince. Already doing work on the interplanetary jazz legend Sun Ra’s visit to Egypt in the early 1970s, Bogaert read in the dog-eared pages of an old copy of the Lonely Planet that Sun Ra was also rumoured to have visited Haiti, perhaps ten years earlier, during his so-called ‘lost years.’
It was even said that Sun Ra might have composed his masterpiece ‘Rocket Number Nine’ in Port-au-Prince. What Bogaert heard in the streets made him believe this could be true and, even more so, he found out that ‘Rocket Number Nine’ has its roots in the traditional rara song ‘Fize Nimewo Nèf’.
In November 2015, Lafleur & Bogaert invited Arnaud Lauture and his rara band “Kod Kreyòl” to study and rehearse the somewhat forgotten “Fize nimewo nèf” in preparation for a concert later that year. Richard Fleming of Clocktower Radio in NYC – who was in town for the 4th Ghetto Biennale – recorded some of the practice sessions that took place in the garden of the Oloffson Hotel in Port-au-Prince.
A while later, Kod Kreyòl performed Fize Nimewo Nèf at a now legendary concert in downtown Port-au-Prince.
Sun Ra Ra (2015)
Concert and installation view at Jean-Claude Saintilus’ (†) Vodou temple.