JUMA SULTAN
July 8, 1973: This day should be dedicated to all of the musicians who dedicated their lives to music. This includes all of the greatly known and unknown innovators of the past, the present, and the future.
All should come together and make a joyous sound of love and peace…
Juma Sultan’s planning notebook for the 1973 New York Musicians Jazz Festival.
The sounds–joyous and otherwise–that Juma Sultan called for on that summer day in ’73 arose during one of the least documented and most misunderstood eras of 20th Century progressive music: the so-called “Loft Era” of American Jazz. With its roots in the 1960′s avant garde, the Loft Era emerged during the early 1970′s in venues such as Studio We, Studio Rivbea, Artist’s House, The Ladies Fort, Ali’s Alley , and Studio WIS.
This website begins to open a new window on the era by providing a small set of samples from a large unpublished cache of audio recordings, film, and photos produced and recorded by musician, social activist, and documentarian, Juma Sultan. This collection was stored privately in an old barn for years and is only now being uncovered byΒ Juma Sultan with the support of theΒ National Endowment for the Arts and theΒ Communication & Media Department of Clarkson University.ο»Ώ
…to capture that particular spirit was something that I just innately felt responsible to do.
Since I had ears, I could hear the music.
And so many young musicians knew that I had this equipment, and they asked me to come and record…
An interview with Juma Sultan, Summer 2006
We invite you to explore this website to discover some of the music, images, and history that emanated from New York City and from Woodstock, NY in the late 1960′s and 1970′s – captured in a collection of recordings, films, and photographs that few knew still existed. Herein lies a small sampler ofΒ Juma Sultan’s Archive.