kalamu sez        

sun ra was before p-funk BUT in an interview with george clinton, clinton told me that he was not aware of sun ra and that jimi hendrix was his inspiration. if you listen to axis bold as love there is a direct reference to space travel and that some of us came from other places to earth. what is interesting however is that i speculate that although clinton was unaware of sun ra, jimi hendrix probably was quite aware of sun ra. initially, i felt like you seem to feel: p-funk seems like a natural outgrowth of sun ra, especially with the outer space motifs and the costumes, the dancing, the large aggregations on stage, playing for hours, etc. but i have since come to believe that all of that and more of that are simply individual manifestations of a larger, shared african-diaspora heritage. sun ra used to sing: suppose we came not from africa but to africa! i’m saying p-funk, jimi hendrix, sun ra—all of that is just memories from/of home, a different way of life than what currently dominates planet earth… we now return you to…