pepsi, cola, water?

This video is about Afro-futurism, Black Power, revolutions, expectations and disappointments.

Very little has been documented about Sun Ra’s visit to Egypt, but it is often described as a synthesis of ideas years before its time, a self-fulfilling prophesy of Afro-futurism which married activism with science fiction and ancient spirituality.

The video draws on my research in Egypt, Italy, and Germany in 2013 and 2014, in the course of which I attended an Arkestra concert and had multiple interviews and conversations with Hartmut Geerken, a free jazz artist who had originally invited Sun Ra to come to Egypt, Marshall Allen, the longtime Arkestra bandleader, and Ahmed Aladdin the grandson of Egyptian drummer and jazz musician Salah Ragab, who collaborated with Sun Ra in several performances in Egypt.

Ra’s deep passion for the history of Africa was demonstrated in his excavation of Egypt as the root of modern civilization asserting that much of the Grecian influences from the great philosophical thinkers to their artistic achievements were derived and stolen from black Egyptians. His journey would not be complete before reaching the source itself—Africa.

Sun Ra, I think, traveled to Africa in 1971 with the expectation of some sort of 'homecoming' experience. It seems however that his expectations were not entirely fulfilled and Sun Ra left Egypt angry and disappointed. “pepsi, cola, water?” opens up these overlooked moments in Sun Ra’s history and, in the absence of substantial documentation of this period, approaches them with a speculative and imaginative spirit akin to Sun Ra’s own.

Tom Bogaert
Cairo 2015