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Ahmed Abdullah Book Signing
September 12 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Free
This year’s Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium Big Ideas in Improvisation keynote is by Ahmed Abdullah and Monique Ngozi Nri, in which they discuss Abdullah’s memoir. Titled A Strange Celestial Road: My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra (published through Blank Forms Editions), the book is grounded in artists’ journals, oral histories, and embodied experiences.
On Saturday, September 12th, from 5-6:30 PM, you can meet Ahmed Abdullah at the Bookshelf (41 Quebec Street) and have him sign your own personal copy of the book! Since the Guelph Jazz Festival is mostly taking place right across the street, it should be easy enough to slip away. We’ll see you there!
Ahmed Abdullah is one of the central figures in 21st-century Brooklyn Jazz and performed with the Sun Ra Arkestra between 1975–1997. While performing at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London, he met poet, writer, and educator Monique Ngozi Nri, his wife and creative collaborator of thirty-four years. In 1995, they established Melchizedek Music Productions to help preserve and extend Sun Ra’s message. They subsequently helped build Sistas’ Place, an enduring cultural institution in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Sun Ra (1914–1993) described his music and “equations” as a way of living for the 21st century. He mentored generations of musicians to continue this work, whether through the still-thriving Arkestra or through education, writing, and community cultural practice.
