The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets

The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets
by Sun Ra

The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets
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Book Summary Information

Author: Sun Ra
Editor: Anthony Elms
Editor: John Corbett
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-01
ISBN: 0945323077
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: WhiteWalls
Product features:

Book Reviews of The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets

Book Review: The Reach For A Better World
Summary: 4 Stars

Being that he was a freejazz pioneer, Sun Ra was also naturally a deepspace thinker. This book collects a bunch of early dispatches directly from the uniquely racially and numerically-obsessed mind of one of the true greats of modern music. This is a dimension only hinted at in his song lyrics. It is full-on cosmic weirdness to the highest degree. The book is equally as "unreadable" as his music is "unlistenable". It taps a vein that, thank god, very few of us have access to and it shines a bright light on some of what made this complex man tick. Up until now, his primarily white audiences probably have had no clue what he was really about, unless they happened to catch his low-budge cultfilm "Space is the Place". Here, his apparent frustrations about being black in America are turned into kooky political/religious ranting prose and his fascination with numbers is woven in as if it were just part of the same sort of cosmic conversation. Madness or genius? You decide. Bonus: the book features nice scans of the original, typed papers, plus much more legible transcriptions. It's a lot to ask of a reader, but also a cool supplement to the available music. It is a very short read, thus the less-than-best rating.

Summary of The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets

From the Arkestra to his experiments with synthesizers, Sun Ra was one of the most inventive jazz musicians in history. Yet until now, there has not been a collection of his earliest writings that reveal the beginnings of his work as philosopher, mystic, and Afro-Futurist. This new volume unveils over forty newly discovered typewritten broadsheets on which Sun Ra expounded his wholly unique philosophical message.?

While in Chicago during the mid-1950s, Sun Ra preached on street corners and occasionally created scripts to accompany his lectures-intricate texts that invoke science fiction, Biblical prophecy, etymology, and black nationalism. Until this point, the only broadsheet known to exist was one given to John Coltrane in 1956. These newly unearthed writings attest to the provocative brilliance that inspired Coltrane. Sun Ra annotated many of them by hand, and together the sheets reveal fascinating new aspects of his worldview.

The Wisdom of Sun Ra is an invaluable compendium of writings by one of the most intriguing and influential jazz figures of the century.
(20060828)

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