Shrink-wrapped, 304 pages, French fold cover, metallic foil blocking, on Faimei cloth hardback. 290mm x 245mm, portrait, weight approx 2kg.
Twenty years after its first publication, Art Yard present the fully revised second edition of Hartmut Geerken’s long unobtainable tome, Omniverse – Sun Ra, the definitive hitch-hiker’s guide to the Sun Ra galaxy. The new, completely revised edition features many previously unpublished photographs of Sun Ra and His Arkestra, including New York in 1966 and Germany in 1979 by Val Wilmer, and Hartmut Geerken’s previously unpublished photographs from Heliopolis, Egypt in 1971; a fully revised, annotated, chronological discography by Chris Trent (co-author of The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra) with personnel, record label, 78 rpm and 7" indexes, with jackets and labels; articles by Geerken, Amiri Baraka, Chris Cutler, Robert L. Campbell, Salah Ragab, Gabi Geist, Sigrid Hauff, Karl Heinz Kessler, Robert Lax, and more; new full colour images of hundreds of Sun Ra album covers, posters, handbills and ephemera, including reproductions of rare hand drawn and coloured LP sleeves.
For five decades, Sun Ra brightened planet Earth with his unique, provocative and esoteric musical philosophy. Touring the world with his formidable Arkestra, he represented a new vision of African history and culture, and revolutionised music with sounds from beyond the purple star zone. Ra accepted no limitation imposed on him by earthly powers: his vista was the universe, his travel was interplanetary, his music borne along the spaceways as he delivered messages of light to a sleeping world. Where Ra went, we are slowly going, and we will find his message for us waiting there.
The new edition of Omniverse – Sun Ra is a major contribution to Sun Ra studies, and a dazzling overview of its subject's astonishingly productive career on Earth - the definitive companion to the many worlds of Sun Ra.
