Conversation can be dangerous. Maybe it should be. A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism originated in a long, vexed conversation with my friend and colleague Billy Joe Harris. Our talk, about black music that makes for hard listening, led to team-teaching a course on free jazz, and that experience piqued a passion for Sun Ra’s music that refuses to abate. I can’t thank Sun Ra enough. He revealed a pathway to unknown worlds. Still, I have had a lot of help and guidance traveling it. Some gifted young researchers lent a hand when the going got rough: Jason Shafer, Alexandra Newsome, and Misho Ishakawa. This book is better for their suggestions, particularly regarding Sun Ra’s influence on contemporary music. Connie Fasshauer proofed and polished the manuscript, and it shows—or rather doesn’t. She saved me from many a howler. My colleague Adam Bradley pointed the way to publication, and I deeply appreciate it.
Anyone interested in studying Sun Ra with the seriousness his amazing body of work deserves will sooner or later find a way to the Alton Abraham Collection of Sun Ra held at the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago Library, an indispensable archive for solaristic research. Its staff is without equal. I am especially grateful for the assistance of Diana Harper, Oscar Chavez, and Barbara Gilbert. Judith Dartt handled image requests with grace and patience. Several small but generous gestures lifted my spirits during long hours of research: a cup of coffee with John Corbett, an e-mail from John Szwed, a midnight tour of the Loop with Marta Ruiz Galbete. Tom Choate let me crash at his house and again at his condominium, cutting research costs. I appreciate the kindness. I am grateful, too, to the bartenders and servers in Chicago who made my several visits all the more pleasant for their anonymous company. It’s an affable city. Generous support for research came from the Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Colorado. The staff at the University of Texas Press (Robert Devens, Sarah McGavick, and Nancy Lavender Bryan especially) provided inspiration when I needed it most.
More personal thanks are harder to put into words. I wrote the early chapters of this book in Kingston, Jamaica. My friend and collaborator Fran Botkin provided thoughtful support—intellectual and medical—during several hot, languid weeks; I owe her my undying thanks. I am grateful to the staff members of St. Andrews Hospital for their dispassionate attention, particularly nurse Doily. Ossie Osman and Shaneka Johnson kept me in food, drink, and good vibes. Evan Williams of Red Bones recalled hiring Sun Ra in the early sixties to play a club he ran in Brooklyn. All this hospitality has been a blessing. Some thanks seem beyond expression, and those go to Arlene Passley.
Closer to home are the friends and family whose company, not to put too fine a point on it, keeps me breathing: Caitlin Rose, Cecil Giscombe, Jeff Cox, Tom Daly, Thora Brylowe, Kieran Murphy, Erika Polson, and Talissa Ford. I wanted to write a book my mother, Joanne, would enjoy. She’s no longer around to read this one, but maybe her friend Thelma Bivens will.