Five musicians who claim to have come from other planets
It’s not unusual for people to describe music as “otherworldly”. Some styles of music and specific songs are so perfect in their execution that people find them transportive, whether it’s an experimental artist that nobody has heard of or someone as popular as The Beatles. That feeling can often remove you from the physical; as you close your eyes and enjoy simply being lost in the sound. It can be enough to make you feel like you’re no longer on Earth.
Of course, we all know that even if music might feel like it comes from another planet, it’s very much the product of our big ball of blue and green. That doesn’t stop some musicians from claiming their music belongs in the cosmos, though. In fact, some artists are so ambitious in their sound that they believe they themselves came from another planet.
The idea doesn’t seem that wild when you analyse it. Music is a massive part of our lives; it blends into the background of all we do, is a common form of communication and forms the foundation of multiple religious practices. As such, if people were ever sent from other planets to communicate with us, it would make sense for them to be musicians.
Trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah agreed. “It makes sense to me that if the Creator sent anyone here, it would be a person who had mastered music, the planet’s universal language,” he said, “Sound is the beginning of all creation, the Nomma, the Om, and the Nam that direct our lives, the basis for what Sun Ra called a Sound Government.”
Here, we will look at musicians who believe they were sent to Earth to bring their sound to the masses, sent from another planet entirely.
Musicians who came from another planet:
Sun Ra
The trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah played in the Arkestra, and they all performed with Sun Ra. The idea of having someone sent from another planet to make music was instilled in him through Sun Ra, who said that he was of another world and came to Earth to preach and open the minds of us, earthlings, through sound. He was open to playing out of tune and in a strange way, as he believed if you weren’t challenging the human ear, then you would be confined to just playing Earth music.
“You got to be ready when you play with this band… when the harmonies move in a direction that they seemingly are not supposed to move in and still fit, you got another message from another realm from somebody else, and Superior Beings would definitely speak in other harmonic ways because they’re talking to something different,” said Sun Ra, “You have to have chord against chord, melody against melody, and rhythm against rhythm. When you have that, you’re experiencing something else.”
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Stockhausen was an excellent composer. He is often cited as one of the most important musicians in electronic music and has been cited as an inspiration for various artists, including Björk and Brian Eno. His compositions were experimental and fascinating, focusing on days of the week and sometimes taking over 24 hours to perform.
Stockhausen is not just a great composer; he is also an artist who finds himself draped in myth. Even though his birth certificate said he came from Burg Mödrath, near Cologne, Stockhausen was convinced he was from a planet orbiting a star called Sirius. He was obsessed with space and incorporated it into his music immensely.
Klaus Nomi
Klaus Nomi was one of the more flamboyant figures on this list, but he remains one of the most humble. He would sing haphazardly and wear exciting outfits; however, when a reporter on Belgian TV asked him if he was a mutant or a CIA agent, Nomi simply replied, “I’m just a regular person, I suppose, and I’m an artist.”
It’s unsurprising why people might have mistaken Nomi for a mutant. His bizarre concepts were high art and extremely before their time. Artists today who are renowned for being “out there” often cite him as an influence. He played into this look once in a song where he sang that he had “Come from outer space to save the human race.”
Lucia Pamela
Lucia Pamela is a bit different from other artists on this list. It’s less that she believed she was from another planet and more that she thought she had built a rocket ship and could travel to other planets. She told everybody that she had been to the Milky Way, travelled the cosmos, and recorded an album on the moon.
Her record, Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela, begins with her announcing, “We’re taking off for the moon,” before shortly after confirming, “Oh, we have landed on the moon.” She continued to attest that her album was recorded on the moon and said it came out well because the atmosphere is better for recording music.
George Clinton
One of the most exciting and fun bands of the 1970s was Parliament-Funkadelic. They were responsible for getting people up out of their seats and dancing to the funk-infused music that they made so famous. A big part of their show was the mothership, a giant light-up spaceship that played into lead singer George Clinton’s view of the world.
It wasn’t enough for their music to be out of this world, but Clinton believed he was not one of Earth. He thought every Earth citizen was actually a citizen of the universe, and what we call our home planet is often not where we were born.
