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Sun Ra - a/k/a Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount - was born in Alabama on May 22, 1914. But like Father Divine and Elijah Muhammad, he made a lifelong effort to obscure many of the facts of his early life.
After years as a rehearsal pianist for nightclub revues and in blues and swing bands, including Wynonie Harris's and Fletcher Henderson's, Sun Ra set out in the 1950s to find a way to impart his views about the galaxy, black people, and spiritual matters through the various incarnations of the Intergalactic Arkestra.
His repertoire ranging from boogie-woogie, swing, and bebop to free form, fusion, and whatever, Sun Ra was above all a paragon of contradictions: profundity and vaudeville; technical pianistic virtuosity and irony; assiduous attention to arrangements and encouragement of collective improvisation; respect for tradition and celebration of the fresh.
Some might have been bemused by his Afro-Platonic neo-hermeticism; others might have laughed at his egregious excesses. But Sun Ra was at once the last of the great romantic composers, one of the premier avant-gardists of the latter half of the twentieth century, and a black cultural nationalist who extended Afrocentrism from ancient Egypt to the heavens.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Biography, Jazz musicians, Biographies, Musiciens de jazz, Sun Ra, Sun Ra, 1914-1993, New York Times reviewedPeople
Sun RaPlaces
United StatesShowing 3 featured editions. View all 3 editions?
Edition | Availability |
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1
Space is the place: the lives and times of Sun Ra
1998, Da Capo Press
in English
- 1st Da Capo Press ed.
0306808552 9780306808555
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2
Space is the place: the lives and times of Sun Ra
1997, Pantheon Books
in English
- 1st ed.
0679435891 9780679435891
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WorldCat
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3 |
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 409-425) and index.
Discography: p. 427-448.
Previously published: New York : Pantheon Books, 1997.
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- Created April 1, 2008
- 12 revisions
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January 28, 2022 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
November 28, 2020 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
November 18, 2011 | Edited by ImportBot | import new book |
October 8, 2011 | Edited by ImportBot | import new book |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |