The real gems of this prized reissue from Leo Records's Golden Years vault imprint are two previously unreleased tracks. The first features Sun Ra and his Arkestra on an 18-minute "Watusa" from 1984, and the second features a 13-minute piece by Saleh Ragab's Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble, "Music for Angela Davis," from 1971. It's no surprise Sun Ra loved going to Egypt, what with all the astro-mythology he used in the Arkestra. This love shows brightly on "Egypt Strut" and "Dawn," two Ragab tunes played by Ra's band with the Egyptian percussionist sitting in. The early 1980s were a creatively thriving time for Sun Ra, and the band sounds tight, with a weave of percussion backing their every move. "Watusa" sounds like a bootleg, thin in audio but thrilling in execution. It's an unvarnished beauty. As for "Music for Angela Davis," it departs from the other Ragab pieces (there are three others on the CD) in that it's furiously triggered, full of heavy percussion, voices rambling over the top in spots, and tearing horns. For Sun Ra fans, this is a must.
Amazon Review--Andrew Bartlett
This important reissue should be greeted joyfully by Sun Ra aficionados, as it fills a hole in his discography, but it is neither stellar Ra nor great jazz. The beautifully packaged CD collects less than forty minutes of the Archestra performing in Egypt with legendary percussionist Salah Ragab, and adds two selections from The Cairo Jazz Band, a short piece by an Egyptian sextet, and an interesting track from The Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble. The music from the Egyptians offers a fascinating peek at an attempt to integrate jazz improvisation with Arab culture. The CD leaflet documents some of the difficulties in bringing the concerts to fruition. On its own, the music should have relatively limited appeal, but as a novelty item, it should whet some appetites. The sound quality is slightly sub-par.
AMG Review by Steve Leowy
386. [286] Sun Ra Arkestra
Sun Ra (syn, Ondioline); Tyrone Hill (tb); Marshall Allen (as); John Gilmore (ts); Danny Ray Thompson (bars); Leroy Taylor [Eloe Omoe] (bcl); James Jacson (bsn); Chris Henderson (d); Claude Broche (d); Samarai Celestial (d); Salah Ragab (cga).
El Nahar Studio, Heliopolis,
Cairo, May 1983
Egypt Strut (Ragab)
Dawn (Ragab)
Praxis CM 106, Sun Ra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt, was issued in Greece in 1983. Side A features the Arkestra playing two Salah Ragab compositions. Side B is Ragab with the Cairo Jazz Band (recorded back in the 1970s, according to Hartmut Geerken). Information from the album jacket, except that Samarai Celestial says he was also present, and various sources indicate that Sun Ra was playing the Ondioline (a small portable keyboard of French manufacture, with dynamics alterable by blowing into a tube). This was the Arkestra's second tour of Egypt.
The Praxis LP was reissued in 1999 on CD on the "Golden Years of Free Jazz" label, an offshoot of Leo Records. The CD includes all the previously issued music from the LP, plus an 18-minute Watusi, and other material not featuring Sun Ra.
407. [304] Sun Ra Arkestra
Sun Ra (p, org, syn, voc); Ronnie Brown (tp, flg, tambourine); Marshall Allen (as, cl, fl, ob, kora, EVI); Eloe Omoe (as, bcl, cacl, fl, EVI); John Gilmore (ts, cl, timb, EVI, voc); Danny Ray Thompson (bars, as, fl, bgo, EVI); James Jacson (bsn, fl, ob, Inf-d, EVI, voc); James Glass (eg); Rollo Radford (standup eb); Matthew Brown (cga); Clifford Jarvis (d); Salah Ragab (cga, perc); Myriam Broche (dance); Greg Pratt (dance).
Il Capo / Il Buco, Cairo, Egypt,
January 13, 1984
Watusi (Pitts-Sherrill)
According to Danny Ray Thompson, this was the Arkestra's third and last trip to Egypt. Like the other two, it was "unannounced" and only the "hard core" of the Arkestra went. Personnel ct and rlc, with help from Thompson. Thanks to Samarai for a program from Il Capo, and Italian restaurant with an adjoining "show-bistro" area called Il Buco.
from The Earthly Recordings 2nd ed. Campbell/Trent
Salah Ragab
Salah Ragab was an Egyptian drummer and musician credited with founding Egyptian jazz.
Early life
A Major in the Egyptian Army through the 1960s, he first attempted to form a jazz band in 1964, with American saxophonist Mac X. Spears. Together with Hartmut Geerken and Edu Vizvari, he founded one of the first Egyptian jazz big bands.
Salah Ragab formed the first jazz big band in Egypt The Cairo Jazz Band in 1968, he was also the leader of the Military Music Departments in Heliopolis, some of the best musicians in Egypt of that time were members of the band, such as Zaki Osman (Trumpet), Saied Salama (Tenor Sax) - Khamis El -Kholy (Piano) and Ala Mostafa (Piano). On this recording the band consists of five saxophones, four trumpets, four trombones, piano, bass, drums and percussion and various other oriental instruments. The opening concert of The Cairo Jazz Band was in Ewart Memorial Hall at The American University 23 February 1969. There were many other concerts in various prestigious places such as the Old Opera House, The University of Alexandria and appearances on Egyptian TV Jazz Club Weekly. Salah Ragab accompanied the great band leader and composer Sun Ra on a Tour in Egypt, Greece, France and Spain in 1984. He also studied jazz theory and improvisation with the jazz musician and composer Osman Kareem, with whom he formed the first jazz quintet in Cairo in 1963, recording with the Radio Service of Cairo. He gave a series of educational lectures about Jazz History at the German Culture 'Goethe Institute'.
Career
His group's first performance occurred at Ewart Memorial Hall of American University in February, 1969, and included compositions by all of the group's founders, as well as arrangements of works by Dizzy Gillespie, Nat Adderley and Count Basie. Ragab is perhaps best known outside Egypt for two collaborative concerts he performed with Sun Ra, in 1971 and 1983.
He died in July 2008 in Cairo at age 72.
-Wikipedia
Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt
1. The Sun Ra Arkestra / Egypt Strut 6:42
2. The Sun Ra Arkestra / Dawn 12:15
3. The Sun Ra Arkestra / Watusa 18:52
4. The Cairo Jazz Band / Ramadan 4:19
5. Sala Ragab / Oriental Mood 4:48
6. The Cairo Jazz Band / A Farewell Theme 10:02
7. The Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble /
Music For Angela Davis 13:01
or
Sun Ra in Egypt
(visit The Revivalist to view videos included with this fine article)
The story of Sun Ra in Egypt begins with the journeys of three men from three geographical origins and three disparate cultures. Their first unification in Egypt in 1971 carries a level of mystery four decades later that still holds significance in the world history and power of jazz music’s transnational exchange. Very little has been documented about it, but it demonstrates a synthesis of ideas years before its time, a self-fulfilling prophesy of Sun Ra’s Afrofuturism movement, which married Afrocentrism with science fiction and ancient spirituality.
The mysticism and obscurity of Sun Ra has reemerged over the years with increasing intrigue. Ra was always eccentric and his creative and political development was eons ahead of his contemporaries. He developed his own unique world philosophies, yet vehemently defended that he was a creator of equations rather than a philosopher of amorphous theories. His distinction was that equations were exact and precise, whereas theories lacked certitude. He was also the ultimate springboard for the merging of space-age mysticism in American fringe music. His equations stemmed from astronomy, numerology, Egyptology, Freemasonry, Black Nationalism, and various other spiritual belief systems that were beyond obscure at the time, and many of which were derived from ancient Egypt. Ra’s deep passion for the history of Egypt was demonstrated in his excavation of Egypt as the root of modern civilization asserting that much of the Grecian influences from the great philosophical thinkers to their artistic achievements were derived and stolen from black Egyptians. His journey would not be complete before reaching the source itself—Egypt.
German literati and avant-garde artist/musician Hartmut Geerken paralleled Sun Ra’s eccentrism in the American jazz world by living on the margins of his own culture’s mainstream. He had relocated to Egypt for some years on assignment by the Goethe Institute, a non-profit organization promoting the widespread studies of arts, culture, and politics of Germany. Geerken was also a free jazz percussionist. Geerken extended out an invitation for Sun Ra to come to Egypt in 1971, and six months later Ra accepted the gesture and brought the Arkestra on their first journey to the land of the Pharaohs.
The Sun Ra Arkestra arranged numerous performances around the major metropolitan areas, including what would be a very important (and very impromptu) intimate session in Geerken’s home in Heliopolis, a place that held a special significance because Heliopolis translates in Greek to “City of the Sun” and in Arabic as “Eye of the Sun.” Despite a rather unfortunate mishap of their instruments being held up in customs when they arrived, an important loaner was at hand, and an interesting series of events would transpire. That special guest of Geerken’s was Salah Ragab, a drummer and percussionist who would later to be known as the pioneer and father of Egyptian Jazz. Ragab was a jazz fanatic. Incidentally, he was also the General of the Egyptian’s military department of music. Ragab had thousands of military trained musicians at his disposal, as well as an endless access to the instruments that he needed.
Ragab met Geerken a few years earlier after a Randy Westen Sextet show in 1966. The two soon developed an affinity for each other, and along with Eduard Vizvari, founded the Cairo Jazz Band marking the beginning of the Egyptian jazz movement. Ragab’s obsession with jazz music, and his venerable position in the military appointed to him in 1968, afforded him the ability to enact a sweeping educational jazz agenda in Egypt. His hand-selected musicians, who were all extremely experienced and technically trained in military marching bands, were given intensive lessons in jazz music and history. About 25 were selected for the Cairo Jazz Band, with Vizvari and Geerken and Ragab composing and arranging the music.
Ragab’s first attempt to develop a jazz band in Egypt was in 1964, and proved to be a failure. He first teamed up with Mac X Spears, an American saxophonist, who shortly after returned to the States. It wasn’t until Ragab’s meeting with Geerken and Vizvari that his aspirations of developing a local jazz movement came to fruition.
Sun Ra’s visit in 1971 undoubtedly left an impression on Ragab. Sun Ra’s persona, politics, and lifestyle were extremely controversial back in the states. Ra had been arrested as a conscientious objector of World War II; he studied the “occult,” and had claimed to have communications with beings from his birth land of the planet Saturn. He believed that he was not of this world, but was sent to earth to help people discover the truth of the universe. Similarly Sun Ra felt a deep bond to Ragab. In the liner notes of “Egypt Strut,” Hartmut Geerken wrote “Maybe he was taken with the initials of Salah Ragab, which were the same as in his own name, or he was fascinated with the fact that his own name was part of Ragab’s name,” a belief that the divine synchronization of creative forces was at hand.
Sun Ra returned to Egypt for the second and third time in 1983 and 1984 consecutively. Reunited with Salah Ragab, the Arkestra collaborated with Ragab on a few sessions that would amount years later to the timeless recording known as Sun Ra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt: Plus the Cairo Jazz Band and the Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble (which were both co-founded by Hartmut Geerken). A collection of recordings were done in the Heliopolis and Zamalek districts of Cairo. The music compiled for this album merged the influences of Islam with Ra’s American transmutation of Afrocentrism and American Jazz with North African indigenous instrumentation. Examples of this are seen in the Ragab composition “Dawn”. Recorded in 1983, it bears the influence of the Islamic hymn that is chanted at the beginning of each Arabic month. These influences are also seen in the Ragab original “Egyptian Strut” and in the live recording of “Music for Angela Davis”, which was conducted by Geerken in 1984 (only released on the reissued version of the album). The two sides of the album — the first in 1983, when The Arkestra recorded two original Ragab compositions and the the second in 1984, when Ragab sat in on a live performance — captured the pinnacle of this cultural synthesis.
Ragab would continue his development of Egyptian jazz by expanding his collaborations, such as playing in the German jazz band Embryo with South African great Abdullah Ibrahim. Ra’s collaboration with Ragab and Geerken undoubtedly influenced musicians such as Yusef Lateef and Pharoah Sanders back in the States. Geerken continued his work through various artistic mediums and would continue to collaborate with both on various projects over the years. However, the moments of 1971, ’83 and ’84 were a slice of mystique that were, unfortunately, only vaguely captured through these recordings. Yet it leaves an entire universe of musical, spiritual, political synchronicity that is just beginning to be unearthed along with our excavation of the Pharaonic tombs.
Words by Boyuan Gao and Malik Abdul-Rahmaan
My sincere apologies and a very belated THANK YOU to Malik Abdul-Rahmaan
article back in June. I was flattered (and therefore a bit embarrassed) by
his remarks and should have immediately acknowledged his visit.
