This weblog post is being published on the fifth anniversary of the death of trumpeter Eddie Gale (1941-2020). For me, he is especially remembered for his album, Ghetto Music (1968).
Most of the time I listen to musical content on YouTube. YouTube keeps a log for me, so I do not have to record anything myself. Much of the old music I listen to is from the 1960s. Some of this music is stored digitally, on solid-state disks, only some of which are inside a computer. New music often comes from Planet ASE, with Tony M2. I describe my music consumption as sparse. During the past year, I have listed to about 100 different tracks, admittedly some up to several times.
I have re-listened to Eddie Gale’s music in the week before publication. Since about the time I turned 50, allow me to be kind to myself and say since the new millennium started, trumpet music has been problematic to listen to. It was a younger me that appreciated high-pitched sounds. Increasingly, I am choosing music at lower frequencies and lower volumes.
In these later years, I have grown to find radio and television increasingly offensive. So we do not use it. Both want to control my sensory input, by perpetually offering a momentary single choice. There may be up to several channels, but each channel behaves in precisely the same way, making choices for me. Thus, Trish and I have become very modern. We choose what we want to watch, and when we want to watch it.
I keep a record of all of the programs watched on our massive 50″ / 127 cm screen. We watched 103 programs in 2023, and 107 programs in 2024. I did some advanced mathematics, and found that this amounts to less than 0.3 programs a day. In 2025, as the end of the year approaches we have watched 9 programs together. I have watched an addition 5 programs with our son Alasdair, and 17 programs alone. In addition, Trish, Alasdair and I have watched 2 programs. Most programs are watched during the winter, not watching anything from the beginning of March to the end of September in 2023, or from the beginning of August to the end of November in 2024. The last program in 2025 was watched on April 18th. However, a peak viewing period is coming up in the coming weeks.
Sun Ra
I would never have become acquainted with Eddie Gale, if it had not been for Sun Ra (1914 – 1993). Allow me to forget most of the information about Sun Ra, that Earthlings have perpetuated. Here, I am only going to provide what Sun Ra says. In 1936/ 1937 Sun Ra claimed that a bright light appeared around him:
My whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up… I wasn’t in human form… I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn… they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools… the world was going into complete chaos… I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That’s what they told me.
Eddie Gale is heard on a track titled Space Aura, part of the Secrets of the Sun album, of Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra recorded in 1962, and released in 1965. He is also on Lanquidity album, recorded and released in 1978. However, since Michael Ray (1952 – ) also plays trumpet on the album, it is difficult to know which tracks feature which player.
The importance of Sun Ra relates to his mythical persona and an idiosyncratic credo that made him a pioneer of Afrofuturism. In the film Space Is the Place (1972) Sun Ra’s free jazz band prepares a group of young black people to colonize an outer planet. This results in a new afro-centric civilization on another planet.