Thomas Stanley’s new book ‘The Execution of Sun Ra’ Reviewed

From citypaper.com:

Stanley, who teaches at George Mason University, takes the title of the book from the futuro-Egyptian free-jazz big-band icon himself who liked to riff on the double sense of the word execute to mean both to kill and to accomplish, set in motion, or perform. In executing Sun Ra, the book performs a kind of posthumous Sun Ra, taking his claims about an alter destiny for earth and specifically for African-Americans seriously, but not so seriously as to destroy them by nailing them down with logic. Instead, Stanley allows the various significances to skronk around like the lines of melody bombarding traditional jazz in any Sun Ra song like a solar storm.