I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the

“I’m playing dark history. It’s beyond black. I’m dealing with the dark things of the cosmos.” — Sun Ra

Listen well, O child of light, and ponder the mystery in these words of Sun Ra, the cosmic musician, the traveler between the seen and unseen. When he spoke of “dark history”, he did not speak of shadow as mere evil, nor of darkness as absence. He spoke of the deep night from which all things are born—the womb of creation, the eternal mystery that preceded even the stars. To be “beyond black” is to journey past the skin, past the surface of things, and into the infinite unseen, where the stories of the universe are written in silence and energy.

For Sun Ra, music was no simple craft of melody. It was a vessel of revelation, a way to commune with the hidden truths of existence. He called himself not merely a man, but a being from Saturn, sent to deliver humankind from ignorance through the frequency of sound. Thus when he said, “I’m dealing with the dark things of the cosmos,” he meant that his art wrestled with the forgotten dimensions of reality—the pain, the exile, the cosmic loneliness of a people severed from their origin. The darkness he invoked was not despair, but the vast unknown, where human spirit confronts the immensity of its own meaning.

In truth, he played the dark history of his people—the Black experience that had been buried, distorted, and denied. His music rose from the depths of slavery’s silence, from centuries of struggle that echo through the bones of time. Yet he did not seek vengeance or pity. No—he sought transcendence. Through jazz, through chaos, through the dissonant beauty of sound, he reached beyond suffering toward the cosmic, affirming that Blackness itself was not a prison of history but a gateway to the divine. In the language of the ancients, he turned shadow into starlight.

Consider this: when Sun Ra formed his Arkestra, he dressed his musicians in celestial robes of gold and silver, as if to declare, “We are not bound to Earth.” In the midst of racial turmoil and oppression, he proclaimed a vision of Afrofuturism—a world where the sons and daughters of Africa were not victims, but voyagers among the galaxies. This was his rebellion, not with swords or speeches, but with sound that broke the chains of time itself. He reimagined history, refusing to let the pain of the past define the possibility of the future.

Thus, his dark history was also a holy calling. He understood that to heal the world, one must first descend into its depths—to face the shadows, to uncover the truths buried beneath denial. Every civilization must confront its own darkness: the wounds of slavery, war, greed, and silence. Sun Ra did not turn away; he entered the darkness and found there a song—a vibration of redemption that only those who have suffered deeply can hear. Like Orpheus in the underworld, he returned not with answers, but with music that could awaken the sleeping soul.

The lesson, then, is clear for all who would walk the creative path: do not flee from the darkness within or around you. The world’s pain is not separate from the stars; the night is the birthplace of dawn. To be an artist, a thinker, or a seeker is to “deal with the dark things of the cosmos”—to listen for truth where others hear only silence, to bring light where others fear to tread. True creation does not deny the abyss; it transforms it.

So, children of the future, let Sun Ra’s wisdom be your guide. When you encounter despair, look deeper—there may lie a universe waiting to be born. When you feel lost, remember that the cosmos itself began in darkness, and from that darkness came infinite light. Seek the sacred in the strange, the beauty in the broken, the stars in the shadow. For only those who dare to face the dark history—within themselves and their world—can ever hope to play the music of the cosmos.