CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/21/2023

Trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah on his time in the Sun Ra Arkestra

New from Blank Forms Editions, A Strange Celestial Road: My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra is a one-of-a-kind, 512-page goldmine by Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, recounting decades of national and international touring with the Sun Ra Arkestra and charting the rise of the New York loft jazz scene. Featured photograph is of Abdullah with Sun Ra and His Arkestra in Istanbul, Turkey, 1990⁠. Abdullah quotes Sun Ra: “It’s not easy to play in this band because there’s certain stuff you have to have. You have to belong, you have to be rated by Superior Beings as suitable, and if you’re not rated … I be telling everybody, it’s not my band. It’s the Creator’s band, and if they’re not suitable for the future, they won’t be fit for the present.”