Sun Ra & Salah Ragab - Sun Rise in Egypt Vols. 1 - 3 (1984)

A really rare slice of work from Sun Ra's 80s output. A live set that reunites the Arkestra with drummer Salah Ragab, one of the group's key supporters in Egypt.  These CDs are all previously unreleased recordings, sourced from Salah Ragab's master tapes. It was previously only available for sale by contacting Salah Ragab personally and ordering it through the mail. Very interesting recordings that could originally be purchased directly from Salah Ragab at the email address salahragabjazz@yahoo.com.  I don't know if they are still currently available via Ragab's estate.

Following are the only entries in Campbell/Trent The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra 2nd ed. regarding the Arkestra's 1984 visit to Egypt.  Sun Rise in Egypt was not available when 'The Earthly Recordings' was published.


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)

fragment:
unidentified blues [SR voc]

an incomplete set [60 min.]:
Pleiades (Ra) [Allen and Thompson, fl]
unidentified title [perc; kora]
unidentified title [perc; tp; Allen, ob; ens]
Discipline 27-II (Ra) [Sr declamation] /
Tomorrow Never Comes (Ra) [SR, ens voc]
Honeysuckle Rose (Waller-Razaf)
Deep Purple (DeRose-Parish)
Street of Dreams (Young-Lewis)

…
unidentified blues (Ra)
Days of Wine and Roses (Mancini)
Happy as the Day Is Long (Arlen-Koehler)
Stardust (Carmichael-Parish)

A 110-minute edited audience tape is in circulation.  Tunes and personnel from ct, who has reassigned some of the items to January 19/29 since that tape surfaced.  Some pieces are incomplete and there are breaks in the recording.  The tape in circulation has only 7 minutes of "Watusi" (from the end of a set) but the full 18-minute performance was recorded and was included in 1999 on Golden Years CD GYI, Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt.  "Pleiades" is the second version of that tune from the 110-minute tape.  The blues features Sun Ra calling out, "Is there a trumpet player in this house?" etc., as various Arkestrans take solos.

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, an Italian restaurant with an adjoining "show-bistro" area called Il Buco.

408. [304a]  Sun Ra Arkestra

Sun Ra (p, ep, 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 19 and 29, 1984

incomplete set [45 min]:
Pleiades (Ra) [Allen and Thompson, fl duet]
When There Is No Sun (Ra) [SR, ens voc]
unidentified title [Allen, ob]
Discipline 27 (Ra)
I Have Many Names (Ra); /
I'll Wait for You (Ra) [SR, ens voc]
Blue Lou (Sampson)
Day Dream (Strayhorn)
Strange Mathematics, Rhythmic Equations (Ra)
[SR, ens voc]

incomplete set [25 min.]:
untitled improvisation [kora]
untitled improvisation [Ragab, cga; EVIs; d; cond ens]
Discipline 27-II (Ra) /
This World Is Supposed to Be Heaven (Ra) [SR voc]
Bad Truth (Ra) /
I, Pharaoh (Ra) [SR, ens voc]
The Golden Lady (Ra)
…
Interplanetary Music (Ra) [SR, ens voc; inc]

incomplete set opening [10 min.]:
untitled improvisation [Thompson, bars with d, c/a; Allen, picc; Jacson, fl]
Greetings from the 21st Century (Ra) [SR, ens voc]

fragment:
Love in Outer Space (Ra) [inc]

I collected these rips/scans from the 'Contributions' section of the wonderful and amazing 

CALL IT ANYTHING 

jazz blog.

Many (many) thanks to the original uploader.

Sunrise in Egypt Vol. 1
01. Watusa - The Egyptian March   13:05
02. Solo Organ   2:43
03. Speech (Sun Ra)   2:38
04. Shadow World   8:13
05. Happy As The Day Is Long   3:30
06. Day Dream   4:40
07. Blues House   9:39
08. Take The A Train   5:03
09. West Of The Moon   4:33

-FLAC-
RS
HF

or

-320-
RS

HF

Sunrise in Egypt Vol. 2
01. Opening   15:37
02. Unidentified Standard   4:50
03. Opening   11:52
04. Speech (Sun Ra)   1:29
05. Opening - Love In Outer Space - Nuclear War   18:14
06. Blue Lou   3:00

-FLAC-
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HF

or


-320-

RS

HF

Sunrise in Egypt Vol. 3
01. Round About Midnight   6:55
02. School You, About Jazz   6:05
03. Opening   10:48
04. Speech (Sun Ra)   1:58
05. Opening   18:00
06. Fate In A Pleasant Mood   17:06

-FLAC-
RS
HF

or


-320-
RS

HF

Salah Ragab’s Egyptian Jazz

The stories of music visionaries are very rarely in our culture the product of rigid government directives, but in the case of the rise of Jazz music in Egypt, the greatest pioneer was also a political dignitary who made it part of the national agenda. Salah Ragab was born in Egypt in 1936. By the 1960s, the multi-instrumentalist would be responsible for introducing jazz music to the Afro-Arab world, aligning himself with the compelling currents of American jazz music and to later be revered as the Godfather and pioneer of Egyptian jazz music. Strangely, very little has been written about his upbringing and the factors leading to this very important historical phenomenon.

The 1960s was a dynamic decade in the world of artistic innovations and social movements. In the height of bebop, American jazz artists like John Coltrane and Yusef Lateef were increasingly drawn to the world of Islam and the Arab-African nations. This was the time of social unrest in Africa stemming from the mass rejection of European colonization, leading to bloody revolutions everywhere in the global South throughout Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

Egypt’s second president Gamal Abdel Nasser led Egypt through a victorious revolution in 1952.  Nasser was a proponent of cultural nationalism as a means to political independence.   His strong stance against European imperialism appealed to marginalized Blacks in the U.S. who looked to social movements abroad to fuel their own fight for gaining civil rights at home. Similarly in Algeria, another North African country in political turmoil, the FLN (National Liberation Front) brought Algeria to independence against its former French colonizers a decade later in 1962.

One of the reasons that Salah Ragab is still little known is due to the fact that the first introduction of Egyptian jazz to American listeners was not until the beginning of the 21^st century, about four decades after the initial recordings of Ragab’s original ensemble. Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band Presents Egyptian Jazz was released on Art Yard in 2006, as one of the largest collections of Ragab’s work made available to the public outside of Egypt. The album carefully blends the usage of traditional North African instruments, including a Ramadan drum, the Baza, a bamboo flute also known as the Nay, with an amazing orchestration of piano, bass, drums, percussions, four trumpets, four trombones, and five saxophones. Though it is clear on the recording that the compositions and arrangements on the album were greatly informed by American jazz, a reverse phenomenon was evident in The States. Indigenous African instrumentation in general was also increasingly heard on American jazz recordings as spiritual jazz and free jazz innovators started diverging from the bop. Sun Ra of course was one of the biggest proponents of this.

Ragab’s most notable collaboration was with Sun Ra, an American keyboardist/synthesizer player/composer/band leader. Hartmut Geerkan invited Sun Ra and his Arkestra to Egypt in 1971 (Read more in Sun Ra in Egypt). They returned twice more in ’83 and ’84. The collaboration between Ra and Ragab are some of the only documented examples of this unique cultural exchange at the time. Ra sought the knowledge of ancient Egypt, as his spiritual identity was tied in with the mysticism surrounding esoteric Egyptian teachings. Ra is therefore imprinted in history as one of the legendary figures responsible for the development of Egyptian jazz. Of the three albums available to the West of Ragab’s discography, Salah Ragab Meets Sun Ra in Egypt was a compilation of music from a studio session at Geerkan’s home and a live recording with Ragab playing with the Arkestra. Another reissue after the 2006 Cairo Jazz Band Presents Egyptian Jazz was A Tribute to Sun Ra/Latino in Cairo that was released in 2007.
(Read the entire article at The Revivalist)

Sun Ra - Egypt Strut (1983, 1984)

"In 1983 Sun Ra travelled to Egypt, a kind of spiritual homeland for Ra, to record two compositions by the godfather of Egyptian jazz, percussionist Salah Ragab.

Side A: Recorded at El Nahar Studio, Cairo/Heliopolis, May 1983
Side B: Recorded at Il Capo Jazz Club, Cairo/Zamalek, January 13, 1984

"In June 1971, I sent an invitation to Sun Ra from Cairo and six months later the Arkestra came to the land of the pharaohs in order to play for the first time at the foot of the pyramids. When Sun Ra and his Arkestra played in my living room in Heliopolis on December 12, 1971, Salah Ragab was one of my guests. It was their first personal contact.

Sun Ra set out again 12 years later to gaze into the eyes of Sphinx. In May 1983 he went into El Nahar Studio in Heliopolis with Salah Ragab in order to record side one of this record, two compositions of Salah Ragab. To my knowledge it had never happened before that Sun Ra and his Arkestra played compositions of a contemporary musician from outside. 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. To my knowledge, Salah was the only non Afro- American, apart from Leah Ananda from Kashmir and Roger Aralamon Hazoumè from Dahomey, to be documented on record with Sun Ra.

In 1984 Sun Ra came to Egypt for the third time. Also for this last visit Salah played the drums in the Arkestra when the band played at the small Jazz club Il Capo (later renamed as Il Boko) in Zamalek.

DAWN is based on an Islamic hymn people sing after leaving their houses at exactly 4:51 in the morning, the beginning of the Arabic month "Shawall". Sun Ra plays the main voice on a Hohner melodica.

WATUSA, recorded in 1984 in the intimate atmosphere of the El Capo Club in Cairo, is a composition for bigband, large percussion ensemble and dancers from the year 1967. During the long middle section all musicians of the Arkestra play percussion instruments. After Jacson's solo on the big "infinity drum" and Matthew Brown's conga-break, Salah Ragab takes an extensive drum solo.

The second drum solo is by Clifford Jarvis. The screams of the dancers Myriam Broche and Gregory Pratt can only give a vague impression of the visual aspects of this Egyptian March."

(Hartmut Geerken)
from Discogs

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

Click to enlarge

Egypt Strut

1. Egypt Strut   6:41

2. Dawn   12:10

3. Watusa   18:50
 

FLAC

or

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These tracks are also available on the CD

Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt

Sun Ra in Egypt (article from The Revivalist)

Sun Ra in Egypt

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.

(continue reading - lots of interesting info at The Revivalist)

 Thanks to Charles Blass of Saturn for bringing this article to my attention.

And by way of example:

Sun Ra and his Astro Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra
Live in Egypt 1
Dark Myth Equation Visitation
Nature's God
Saturn 1272 Thoth Intergalactic KH-1272 (1972)