Studio Sula ☆

Scan from an Azymuth biography insert found inside a record picked up at Human Head, New York. Flame (1984) - their ninth LP and sixth release on Milestone Records. José Roberto Bertrami, Alex Malheiros, and Ivan Conti (Mamão), joined on this record by Flora Purim, Márcio Montarroyos, and Luiz Octávio Burnier. The album opens with The Prisoner, a Bertrami original named for Flora Purim. “In the best of possible worlds, Azymuth would love to record with Wayne Shorter, have their songs covered by Quincy Jones, and devote more and more time to their own samba doido.” In the Studio Sula collection.

Scans from DJ Screw: A Life In Slow Revolution - Lance Scott Walker The story of Robert Earl Davis Jr. - the Houston producer who, from a spare room in his home in the 1990s, developed the chopped and screwed technique that changed hip-hop forever. Spinning two copies of a record, Screw would ‘chop’ in new rhythms, bring in local MCs to freestyle and slow the recording down on tape. Houstonians would line up to buy his cassettes ~ he could sell thousands of cassettes in a single day(!) June 27 is now an unofficial Houston holiday, inspired by a legendary mix he made on that date. Walker interviews childhood friends, collaborators and New York figures who recognised what Screw built. In the Studio Sula collection.

Scans from Black Music (December 1977) ‘It is Thursday, May 13, 1971. Stevie Wonder is 21 today and is at last legally responsible for his own career decisions. His most recent Motown album, ‘Where I’m Coming From’, has suggested a new direction, a spreading of artistic wings. But for his fast-maturing ideas to actually take fight he must have complete control over what he records and how he records it. Few, if any, at Berry Gordy’s Motown Corporation have that right. Only Marvin Gaye, who married in to the Gordy family, Diana Ross, who is Gordy’s “special protégé”, and Smokey Robinson, who has been with Gordy since before Motown was formed and is a vice-president of the company, have any effective power over their careers. Apart from those three artists Berry Gordy, in Constanze Elsner’s words, “had never shown the slightest interest in even discussing contracts with his artists ... he would rather drop the artist than agree to a compromise”. But Stevie Wonder is a very, very special talent. Anyone can see-or hear-that. His talent is so great, his value to Motown, to any label, virtually priceless.“ This issue features a four page spread on Stevie Wonder and more on Marvin Gaye, Dennis Brown, Fela Kuti, Eddie Henderson & more.. In the Studio Sula Collection.

Scans from Carrie Mae Weems - Reflections For Now (2023) Widely considered to be one of the most influential American living artists, Carrie Mae Weems has developed a practice celebrated for her exploration of cultural identity, power dynamics, desire, intimacy and social justice through a body of work that challenges the prevailing representations of race, gender, and class. Published in the context of her solo exhibitions at Barbican Art Gallery London and Kunstmuseum Basel, this book brings together a selection of Weems’ own writings, lectures and conversations for the first time, providing personal insights into themes such as the consequences of power, artistic appropriation and music as inspiration. In the Studio Sula Collection.

Scans from A Strange Celestial Road (My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra) Written by Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, this is the first full-length memoir by any member of the Arkestra - covering two decades of travelling with Sun Ra, from the legendary Bed-Stuy venue the East to the National Stadium in Lagos. Abdullah traces the rise of loft jazz and the influence of Pan-Africanism on creative music, alongside the radical artistic and political shifts across Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan in the 1970s and ‘80s. Originally written in the 1990s with Nuyorican poet Louis Reyes Rivera and published in recent years for the first time. Slide 1 - The Sun Ra Arkestra at The Bottom Line, NY 1976-77 Slide 2 - Ahmed Abdullah FESTAC ’77 Slide 4 - Ahmed Abdullah, Danny “Pico” Thompson and Jack Jackson at FESTAC ‘77 Slide 6 - June Tyson, Wisteria el Moondew & Cheryl Banks at The Sun Ra Arkestra Rehearsal, FESTAC ‘77 Slide 8 - Ahmed’s father, sister & Lyabode 60s - 80s

Scans from Roots of Black Music (1982) Written by Ethiopian-born ethnomusicologist Dr. Ashenafi Kebede. This book reflects on the authors own life experiences growing up in Ethiopia and first hard knowledge acquired through ethnographic fieldwork in Africa and a wealth of research findings in the United States. Tracing the development of songs, instrumental music, dance, blues, jazz and also mythology & symbolism - Professor Kebede discusses the impact of the communications media on traditional forms of black music. In the Studio Sula Collection (I love this book so much it’s falling apart, still preserving it..)

Scans from Soul of a Nation - The Black Photographers Annual Running from 1973 to 1980, The Black Photographers Annual set out to show the other side of Black life - not the gaze of others but people, neighbourhoods, intimacy and abstraction. Joe Crawford enlisted literary greats to pen introductions for the annuals. In the foreword to the first volume, Toni Morrison declared that the Annual ‘is a true book. It hovers over the matrix of black life, takes accurate aim and explodes our sensibilities. Telling us what we had forgotten we knew, showing us new things about ancient lives, and old truths in new phenomena.’ She also noted the independence of the photographers: ‘Not only is it a true book, it is a free one. It is beholden to no elaborate Madison Avenue force. It is solely the product of its creators.’ Gordon Parks wrote a short preface to volume 3: ‘It is the image of black truth. It is a testament to my fellow artists that sings with black strength.’” Photographs by William J. Cottmann & Anthony Barboza in Vol 3, 1975. In the Studio Sula Collection.

Scans from Straight No Chaser (1995) Including a Mo’Wax feature on Attica Blues (D’Afro - Charlie Dark, Tony Nwachukwu, Roba El-Essawy) “I never meant to do music,” D’Afro insists. For him, forming Attica Blues was a direct response to the lack of music that he wanted to hear. But Afro found both Tony and James Lavelle who helped him forge a new path through the hip hop scene.’ “There are boundaries to be pushed,” he says. “The influence of jazz and African music seems to be neglected when people write hip hop.” More features inside on Marvin Gaye, 4hero, Ivan O’Martin, Southport Weekender & more.. #straightnochaser #atticablues

Scans from Apartamento - Issue #30 (A/W 2022) If there has been one constant in Solange’s multidisciplinary practice, it has been a deep, personal investment in world-making, in creating spaces both interior and exterior where aesthetics and affect, the seen and the felt, collide and form architecture. These are sometimes built out in the world at the scale of a territory; she has designs only capable of being surveyed from the sweep of an aerial shot, like a rodeo arena or a beached spaceship. Other times she works at the scale of a sofa in the round or a glass vase; a melody or an intonation. Featuring Solange Knowles, B+, Avani & Raghu Rai & more In the Studio Sula Collection.

Scans from The Wire Magazine (Issue 103, September 1992) Features on Larry Heard ‘The Godfather of House, out of Chicago into everything’, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ali Farka Touré & more. “These tracks - ‘Mysteries of Love, ‘Can You Feel It, ‘Washing Machine’ - were impromptu. There was no real formula to them. I don’t subscribe to [the idea that] music is supposed to be this, and supposed to be that, and produced like that and all.” - @larryheard4 #studiosula #musicarchive

Scans from Aperture #223 - Vision & Justice (2016) This is a special issue addressing the role of photography in the African American experience, guest edited by Sarah Lewis, the distinguished author and art historian. “When I was asked to guest edit this special issue devoted to photography of the black experience—the first of its kind for Aperture—I could think of no other theme,” notes Sarah Lewis. “No matter the topic—beauty, family, politics, power—the quest for a legacy of photographic representation of African Americans has been about these two things: vision and justice. The centuries-long effort to craft an image to pay honor to the full humanity of black life is, in and of itself, a corrective task for which photography and cinema have been central, even indispensable.” The issue was inspired by Frederick Douglass’s 1864 speech “Pictures and Progress,” a call to consider the transformative power of pictures in affecting change in the United States “Vision & Justice” includes photographic projects by Lyle Ashton Harris, Ken Beckles, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Deborah Willis, as well as Devin Allen, Awol Erizku, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Deana Lawson, and Hank Willis Thomas, among many others. These portfolios are complemented by essays from some of the most influential voices in Black American culture. In the Studio Sula Collection.

Scans from Reggae Record Label Logos (Left Crooked/Klasse Wrecks) A small but mighty archive. This zine documents early reggae record labels, over 150 in total. Pulled from 7” releases ranging from deeply obscure to major presses. Labels include Tuff Scout, Temper Rose, Music Hawk, Fusion, Coxsone, Gemini, Upsetter, Bun Gem & many more. Now part of the studio sula collection.