{"id":12452,"date":"2023-03-22T15:23:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-22T14:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/?p=12452"},"modified":"2023-03-23T09:14:52","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T08:14:52","slug":"hartmut-geerkens-sun-ra-archive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/hartmut-geerkens-sun-ra-archive\/","title":{"rendered":"Hartmut Geerken\u2019s Sun Ra Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Im Mai 2021 \u00fcbernahmen wir die das Sun Ra Archive des\u00a0 Schriftstellers, Kulturkoordinators und Forschers Hartmut Geerken. Es handelt sich um das weltweit umfassendste Privatarchiv zu Leben und Werk des US-amerikanischen Free-Jazz-Pioniers und Vordenkers des Afrofuturismus. Die Sammlung umfasst Bandmitschnitte von knapp 500 bislang unver\u00f6ffentlichten Konzerten, Interviews und Proben des Sun Ra Arkestra, Filmaufnahmen auf \u00fcber 70 Videob\u00e4ndern bzw. DVDs, das gesamte dichterische \u0152uvre Sun Ras, zum Teil mit eigenh\u00e4ndigen Korrekturen, 1.200 Fotos, ein umfassendes Archiv an Sekund\u00e4rliteratur, Korrespondenz mit f\u00fchrenden Sun Ra-Forschern sowie mit Sun Ra selbst, die Geerken f\u00fcr seine umfangreichen B\u00fccher „Omniverse Sun Ra“ und „The Immeasurable Equation“ verwandte, und vieles mehr.<\/p>\n

„Hartmut Geerkens Sun Ra-Archiv ist eine gro\u00dfartige und wichtige Erg\u00e4nzung der Sammlung des Jazzinstituts“, erkl\u00e4rte damals unser Oberb\u00fcrgermeister und Kulturdezernent Jochen Partsch. „Sun Ra war ein Vorreiter des Black Power-Movement der 1960er Jahre und damit auch der Black Lives Matter-Bewegung unserer Zeit. Die Sammlung Geerkens, der Sun Ra pers\u00f6nlich kannte und mit vielen Musikern seines Arkestra befreundet war, dokumentiert, wie Sun Ra den Afrofuturismus vorausgedacht hat, der in den 1970er Jahren in der Musik George Clintons nachhallte und ab den 1980er Jahren Teil des internationalen kulturkritischen Diskurses wurde.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we have digitized far more than half of the huge collection; written documents as well as film or audio recordings of his concerts. And the archive is already attracting researchers from all over the world - in March 2023, for example, we hosted a researcher for a documentary planned on Sun Ra by renowned U.S. director Stanley Nelson (cf. Hollywood Reporter<\/a>). Geerken himself was happy that his collection found a home in Darmstadt, of all places. A radio broadcast by jazz expert Joachim Ernst Berendts, whose estate forms the basis of the archive at the Jazzinstitut, had brought Sun Ra to his attention in the early 1960s, he told us in one of the last telephone conversations we had with him. Only a week later, Geerken died completely unexpectedly in October 2021 at the age of 82 in his home on the Ammersee.<\/p>\n

Sun Ra is not only of interest to music historians, but also and particularly to young musicians, who are fascinated by the visions of the bandleader and composer. As early as in the 1950s he succeeded in combining tradition and avant-garde. Ra had his roots in the big band music of the swing era, but quickly became one of the pioneers of freer paths in jazz. The concerts of his Arkestra, some of which lasted for hours, and the contemplation of old African rituals came alive with the colorful costumes, the performance, which always included the audience, and with the rousing hymns that sounded between free improvisations and swinging arrangements. Last but not least, Ra was also a pioneer of electronic music, one of the first musicians to use the Moog synthesizer for live concerts. And in 1986 - another Darmstadt reference - he met the mastermind of new music John Cage at a joint concert in New York.<\/p>\n

Sun Ras Musik begleitet uns seither, und auch inhaltlich erahnen wir, wie weitsichtig der Pianist, Komponist und Bandleader war: Wir haben nicht ohne Grund dem 18. Darmst\u00e4dter Jazzforum, bei dem wir im September 2023 „die Zukunft des Jazz“ einen Titel aus Sun Ras Diskographie gegeben: „Destination Unknown“.<\/p>\n

„Space is the Place“ hie\u00df eine der nachhallenden Hymnen, die das Arkestra in seinen Konzerten sang. Das Darmst\u00e4dter Jazzinstitut hat gen\u00fcgend „space“ freiger\u00e4umt in seinen Regalen, um Platz zu schaffen f\u00fcr die Dokumente \u00fcber eine der schillerndsten und herausragendsten Figuren afro-amerikanischer Musik.<\/p>\n

Here are a few examples from the collection:<\/p>\n

\n

Prison correspondence<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Herman Poole Blount, as he was then known, spent the first 30 years of his life in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was born in 1914. In 1942, he was drafted into military service, which he refused for religious reasons, among others. He served several months first in an Alabama prison, then in a Pennsylvania camp, where he was diagnosed as suicidal as well as \"homosexual\". Geerken collected copies of Blount's correspondence from those years, in which he speaks candidly about his health problems, but also his sexuality.<\/p>\n

\n

The Sun Harp<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Geerken's words (Giza, Egypt, December 1971, from: Omniverse Sun Ra):<\/p>\n

the night they were to leave i watched sonny, the chief, sitting behind a little table in the hotel hall. a lit candle in front of him illuminated rows of numbers on a piece of paper. my first thought; magic nurnbers, astrology. but then i heard that there wasn’t enough money to pay the hotel bill. the telephone bill was immense, too. his 21 musicians had made lots of phone calls, like they always did when they were on tour. i know for a fact that once sonny paid the telepone bill amounting to over 1000 dollars with a professional tape, including the rights. – even though it was late at night, i tried to get arabian & german friends to participate in the bill so that sonny & his crew could leave for the airport. they had to pay to be able to leave the building. my friends were reluctant, so i chipped in as much as i could, but it wasn’t enough. one of them kept sneaking outside with something & returning without whatever it was & then handing a few money bills to sonny. sonny would then start adding again. i think june even sold some of her jewelry. she kept laughing & saying: ‚that’s too much! that’s too much!‘ sonny didn’t seem too upset about the precarious situation. how often had he gone through this before? the intergalactic constellation cannot be measured by the standards of earthly time… at some point patrick arrived with a large string instrument, a ukrainian bandura & extra strings to replace the lower strings, handed them to sonny & sonny handed them to me, sort of as a security for the rnoney i had given to him. some tirne when he had rnoney, he said, he would ask me to return the instrument, it was his famous sun harp („STRANGE STRINGS“).<\/p>\n

Die Sun Harp ist auf zahlreichen Aufnahmen zu h\u00f6ren, beispielsweise in „Solar Symbols<\/a>„. Geerken spielt sie 1996 auf seinem „Sun Ra Tribute“ Album; „Sunny’s Sun Harp<\/a>„.<\/p>\n

\n

Sun Ra Hot Dog Sauce<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris Trent, der erheblich an der zweiten Auflage von „Omniverse – Sun Ra“ mitgearbeitet hatte, schickte Geerken eines Tages diese Flasche. Sie hat nichts mit „unserem“ Sun Ra zu tun, war in den 1940er Jahren eine beliebte Zutat zu … „Hot Dogs.<\/p>\n

\n

Maqsud Schukurwali<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Geerken's encounter with Sun Ra radiated to everyone he dealt with. Maqsud Shukurwali played guitar in Geerkens Rock and Free Jazz Group<\/a>, als dieser 1976 f\u00fcr das Goethe-Institut in Afghanistan arbeitete. Schukurwali arbeitet ansonsten als Grafiker und Bildender K\u00fcnstler; von 1977 stammt seine Maske mit dem Namen „Sun Ra“.<\/p>\n

\n

Discographies<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

„Omniverse – Sun Ra“ ist ja alles: Biographie, Diskographie, Gedichtesammlung, musikalische Einordnung, Reflexion \u00fcber… Die Grundlagenforschung f\u00fcr all das aber war endlose Korrespondenz, die Geerken mit anderen Sun Ra-Sammlern aus aller Welt f\u00fchrte, die aktive Beteiligung an Mailinglisten, die Veranstaltung regelm\u00e4\u00dfiger Sun-Ra-Konferenzen. Robert Campbells „The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra“ (zweite Ausgabe: 2001) ist die „Bibel“ f\u00fcr Sun Ra-Sammler, aber in Geerkens Sammlung finden sich auch alle Vorg\u00e4nger bis zur\u00fcck zu Otto Fl\u00fcckigers Diskographie in der Zeitschrift „jazz-statistics<\/a>“ von 1961. Ein besonders sch\u00f6n gestaltetes Werk ist Tilman Stahls privat ver\u00f6ffentlichte Publikation „Sun Ra Materialien \/ Sun Ra Materials“ aus dem Jahr 1983.<\/p>\n

\n

The Sun Ra collection comprises much more - we will come back to this and describe further individual folders and boxes when the opportunity arises, for example the bundle of sheet music or tape cassettes.\u00a0 Oh, one more thing: Even the material that has already been digitized is not available online, but can only be used for research purposes at the Jazzinstitut itself.<\/p>\n

(Wolfram Knauer, M\u00e4rz 2023)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Im Mai 2021 \u00fcbernahmen wir die das Sun Ra Archive des\u00a0 Schriftstellers, Kulturkoordinators und Forschers Hartmut Geerken. Es handelt sich um das weltweit umfassendste Privatarchiv zu Leben und Werk des … Continue reading Hartmut Geerken\u2019s Sun Ra Archive<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12452"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12470,"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12452\/revisions\/12470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jazzinstitut.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}