Appears to be an amazing collection for Sun Ra lovers. We hope that
this collection stays intact and travels to other cities. We will keep you
posted on that...from the website:
Curated by John Corbett, Anthony Elms, and Terri Kapsalis
This unique exhibition will showcase a diverse, brilliant, provocative and by-
and-large never seen range of materials related to pianist, bandleader, mystic,
philosopher and Afro-Futurist Sun Ra.
Most of these materials come from Ra's tenure in Chicago (and the period
directly thereafter, where from New York he maintained close contact with his
Chicago colleagues), especially during mid-50s when he and his business partner
and fellow mystic Alton Abraham - together with a small secret fraternal
organization that has remained heretofore but a shadowy part of Ra's early
years - built a network of cryptic associations, amassed a huge library of
books on the occult, magic, Egyptology, race studies, Theosophy, philosophy and
religion, and began constructing the mythology and public persona that was
presented to a crossover audience later in the '60s in the form of Sun Ra's
Myth-Science Arkestra.
In the same period, Ra and Abraham began assembling an increasingly large jazz
ensemble (first called 8 Rays of Jazz, later known as the Arkestra), and in
1957 they began releasing LPs and singles on their own label, Saturn Records,
which was, along with Charles Mingus and Max Roach's Debut label and Harry
Partch's Gate 5 label, one of the very first and most active artist-owned
record labels.
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