Ramadan in Space Time: Sonic Infrastructures of Afro-Arab Solidarity

• In Event: Sounds of Dissent and Solidarity in Africa and the Americas

Abstract

Throughout the Bandung era Arab nationalism, pan-Islamism, and Black radicalism attracted intellectuals and artists to Egypt, which became an epicenter of religious, political, and nationalist awakenings. Although much has been written about Egypt’s influence on the formation of Afro-Arab political sensibilities during the era of decolonization, much of this work remains focused on the history of political meetings and organizations, such as the Organization of African Unity or the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference, or on the history of famous intellectuals who transited through Cairo to attend these conferences, including Shirley Graham Du Bois, Maya Angelou, Malcolm X, and David Graham Du Bois. While we know that Arab nationalism and Black radicalism converged as political movements, we have not fully mapped the structures – or infrastructures – of feeling (cf Ruth Wilson Gilmore) upon which solidarity was formed.

In this paper I focus on the sonic infrastructures of Afro-Arab solidarity as it formed in the Black radical undercommons that brought African American “free” jazz together with Arab nationalist and “oriental” music. This paper focuses on a musical collaboration that emerged from Egypt’s context of nationalist and religious awakenings. African American saxophonist, Max Spears, followed many Black intellectuals and artists to Cairo, to study orthodox Islam at Al Azhar University. While in Cairo, Spears began teaching jazz piano and saxophone and formed Cairo’s first jazz band. The drummer in Spears’ band with a proficient drummer from Abdel Gamel Nasser’s military band, Salah Ragab. Ragab and Spears blended the political aesthetics of Black Islam and Arab nationalism to produce a new sound – a sonic infrastructure – that sutured the Afro-Arab decades in Cairo.

This paper tells the story of the Spears-Ragab collaboration, culminating in an album featuring the composition, “Ramadan in Space Time.” Moreover, the paper traces the influences of Afro-Oriental jazz on the formation of free jazz and a form of Afro-futurism that would be carried forward by Sun Ra (who studied with Spears and Ragab while in Egypt), as well as by Max Roach, Abdallah Ibrahim, and others.

Author

• Alex Lubin, University of New Mexico