Juma Sultan Music & Archive
Support the work and archive of Juma Sultan
We’re raising money to support the musical work and archive of artist, educator and activist Juma Sultan. To this end, MAD has set up this campaign with a goal of $50,000.
Juma Sultan has been active as a musician, composer, organizer, educator, and activist for over 60 years. He is most well known for playing with Jimi Hendrix at the Woodstock festival and on numerous posthumous Hendrix releases.
However, Juma’s cultural significance is more notable in the context of the Loft Jazz movement in New York City during the 1960’s and ‘70’s. His non-profit organization during that time, NYMO (New York Musicians Organization) produced numerous concerts and educational functions throughout the five boroughs, with a concentration on highlighting underground and underappreciated jazz artists such as Pharoah Sanders, Milford Graves, Sam Rivers, Sonny Simmons, etc.
Juma is responsible for amassing the largest and most important archive of recordings and visual ephemera from this under-documented movement in American music. Much work has been done to digitize and catalog
approximately 1500 tape recordings of gigs and rehearsals, in addition to thousands of photographs and relevant documents, and dozens of reels of 16-mm film. But only a portion of the work has been done, and the bulk of the collection remains unprocessed.
Juma lives at the Lace Mill in midtown Kingston. He is currently working on several new creative projects, including a memoir, a documentary about the archive, and rehearsing and performing his original compositions with a new lineup of his band, The Aboriginal Music Society.