Craig Harris, the proudly uncategorizable trombonist and bandleader, served a brief but formative stint in the ranks of the Sun Ra Arkestra. That was some 45 years ago, when Harris was an up-and-comer in his early 20s. He racked up his earliest recording credits on the Sun Ra albums Cosmos and Live in Montreux, learning valuable lessons not only from Ra himself but also from faithful acolytes like saxophonist Marshall Allen.
Harris went on to a rich and peripatetic musical career — recording and touring with pianists Randy Weston and Muhal Richard Abrams, saxophonists Henry Threadgill and David Murray, and many more besides. If you saw Judas and the Black Messiah, you surely noticed the jazz flourishes in the soundtrack, which were partly Harris' doing.
He released his own debut, Aboriginal Affairs, in 1983, drawing from his deep study of the didgeridoo and its place in indigenous Australian culture. A later band of his, Cold Sweat, was a downtown tribute to the funk and fire of James Brown. The scope captured in those two reference points is true to form for Harris, and a defining feature of "Nocturnal Nubian Ball for Conscientious Ballers and Cultural Shot Callers." Commissioned by Harlem Stage for an Afrofuturism series in 2019, that piece had its world premiere this summer as part of Bryant Park Picnic Performances.
Craig Harris's Nocturnal Nubian Ball
Featuring a dozen collaborators — including an illustrious cohort of vocalists like Helga Davis and Carla Cook, and a front line with saxophonist Jay Rodriguez and trumpeter Eddie Allen — this iteration of the Nocturnal Nubian Ball was organized as a boisterous tribute to Sun Ra. It also bears a special dedication to Marshall Allen, who has continued to be an energetic ringleader of the Arkestra well into his 90s. (He is now 97, and performed with the band as recently as last weekend, for BRIC Jazzfest.)
The performance is a whirling dervish of funk throw-downs, soul ballads, swinging interludes and spoken word; there's even an element of dance, on the lawn in front of the stage. About an hour in, Harris recalls his first night with the Arkestra, when he was assigned a place to sleep on the third floor of the band's row house in Philadelphia — in a room with Allen, who kept him up practicing the kora all night.
"This man helped me. He never preached or nothing, just by example," Harris says of Allen, urging the crowd to its feet. And then, at 1:07, Allen walks onstage, EWI in hand. A few minutes later he switches to alto saxophone, with an undiminished scorch in his sound. It's a beautiful cameo, and a natural highlight in this sprawling, heartfelt show.
(Harlem Stage is creating a forthcoming film that will document the Nocturnal Nubian Ball across several performances, including this one; it is scheduled to premiere early in the new year.)
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Watch a Bryant Park concert of Craig Harris' Nocturnal Nubian Ball, which toasts the Afrofuturist legacy of Sun Ra - wbgo.org
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