{"product_id":"space-is-the-place-the-lives-and-times-of-sun-ra","title":"Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra","description":"\u003cp\u003eSun Ra--a\/k\/a Herman Poole \"Sonny\" Blount--was born in Alabama on May 22, 1914. But like Father Divine and Elijah Muhammad, he made a lifelong effort to obscure many of the facts of his early life. After years as a rehearsal pianist for nightclub revues and in blues and swing bands, including Wynonie Harris's and Fletcher Henderson's, Sun Ra set out in the 1950s to find a way to impart his views about the galaxy, black people, and spiritual matters through the various incarnations of the Intergalactic Arkestra. His repertoire ranging from boogie-woogie, swing, and bebop to free form, fusion, and whatever, Sun Ra was above all a paragon of contradictions: profundity and vaudeville; technical pianistic virtuosity and irony; assiduous attention to arrangements and encouragement of collective improvisation; respect for tradition and celebration of the fresh. Some might have been bemused by his Afro-Platonic neo-hermeticism; others might have laughed at his egregious excesses. But Sun Ra was at once the last of the great romantic composers, one of the premier avant-gardists of the latter half of the twentieth century, and a black cultural nationalist who extended Afrocentrism from ancient Egypt to the heavens.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"sb-details\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2000\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 476\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Mojo\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9781841950556\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Mojo","offers":[{"title":"Standard Secondhand — £8.08","offer_id":47917540802737,"sku":"SB-1841950556-C3","price":8.08,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/2669\/5345\/files\/1841950556.jpg?v=1789709162","url":"https:\/\/sellbooks.co.uk\/products\/space-is-the-place-the-lives-and-times-of-sun-ra","provider":"Sell Books .co.uk","version":"1.0","type":"link"}