About Ahmed
Ahmed has worked with Young Audiences, The Orchestra of Saint Luke’s, Carnegie Hall, The Brooklyn Philharmonic and he is currently a Teaching Fellow with the Department of Education teaching music to elementary school students in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant. He has a Master’s Degree in education and is also an adjunct professor at The New School, where he teaches a course on the music and philosophy of Sun Ra. In 1995, Ahmed, along with his wife, poet, and vocalist, Monique Ngozi Nri, created Melchizedek Music Productions (MMP). Ahmed is also the proud father of his three children Rashid, Shahid, and Tara. Tara is also an accomplished violinist and vocalist.
Melchizedek Music Productions produced its first recording in 2020, called Diaspora Meets AfroHorn, Jazz: A Music of the Spirit, Out of Sistas’ Place. AfroHorn is a group conceived by Fransisco Mora Catlett, a multi-percussion/composer, who Ahmed met when they were both members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, back in the 1970s. The recording provides an opportunity to document some of the works we have been performing over the last 15 years. The artwork includes a painting by the late violinist and mathematician and all-round genius, Ramsey Ameen. We hope you enjoy it.
Latest News
Ahmed Abdullah and Monique Ngozi Nri were interviewed on NTS Radio as part of a radio tribute to Sun Ra. Listen to their interview here and the full program here.
Upcoming Performances/Readings
The event is live in person and will also be live-streamed. Tickets at OneBreathRising.org or scan the QR code. Look forward to seeing you!
Kujichagulia-Self Determination/Sankofa-Looking Back to go Forward
Sistas’ Place in association with Melchizedek Music Productions (MMP) and the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium (CBJC) presents Saturdays, May 9-30th and Saturday, June 13th
Sistas’ Place, 456 Nostrand Avenue/The Word is Change 368 Tompkins Avenue
This year, for May, African Liberation Month, we pay tribute to one of the principles of the Nguzo Saba created by Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga in 1966, the principle of Self-Determination, known in Swahili as Kujichagulia. We also pay tribute to the Ghanaian principle of Sankofa as we look back to the recordings of the Wildflowers Recordings, an event that happened 50 years ago, to move forward to this century, utilizing lessons learned. The recordings were made at Studio RivBea from May 14 through May 23rd, 1976. Also, specifically, we want to acknowledge Sam Rivers and Bea Rivers, Patricia Ali and Rashied Ali for creating venues (Studio RivBea and Ali’s Alley, respectively) that allowed musicians opportunities to perform and develop their careers when there was nowhere else for them to hone their crafts.
In 1999, Sistas’ Place (Viola Plumeer) along with Jazz 966 (Torrie McCartney) and Jazz Pizzazz (Alma Carroll), became founding members of an organization called the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium which has also been continuing the effort of providing venues for artists to perform their works and enlighten audiences to the power of working together in community. The CBJC organized its first Jazz Festival in Brooklyn in the year 2000, when there were many venues producing Jazz: A Music of the Spirit in the borough and in 2026 they are still an organization providing opportunities for artists.
Throughout the month, other musicians who will be acknowledged and celebrated on Saturdays in May include multi-percussionist Andrew Cyrille, bassist Alex Blake, trumpeter Olu Dara, the late Fred Hopkins, and, saxophonist Charles Brackeen, all of whom were featured on the 5 record set Wildflowers collection. Andrew Cyrille and Olu Dara are octogenarians who deserve to be honored in the community from which they have spent a large portion of their lives giving back to those communities. Besides the Wildflower recordings, they are two surviving members of a recording done on the Silkheart record label under the leadership of Charles Brackeen titled Worshippers Come Nigh, (Worshippers Come Nigh – Wikipedia) that included the great bassist Fred Hopkins, who was also a tremendous presence on the Wildflower recordings.
In addition to the veteran musicians and in keeping with another African principle of Sankofa, we will look backwards to look ahead and feature two younger musicians. On May 30th we will feature a band led by saxophonist/composer Mike Monford, who represents the future of this music in his understanding and mentoring by Jackie McLean and Yusef Lateef. Another musician who represents the future will close out the season on June 13th, a young trumpeter in the person of Mejedi Owusu, who is currently a student at Juilliard and performs in the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra (JJO). Abdullah and Nri got to hear him perform the music of Sun Ra with the JJO and felt he should be presented to the community of Bedford Stuyvesant at Sistas’ Place. And there it is!
On May 1st, @7pm, there will be a discussion of the above events at the bookstore The Word is Change, 368 Tompkins Avenue, featuring the author of an upcoming book on Studio RivBea, Ed Hazell, and the author of A Strange Celestial Road, Ahmed Abdullah.
Showtimes at Sistas Place are at 8 and 9:30pm
Schedule at Sistas’ Place: Saturday May 9th-Ahmed Abdullah’s Diaspora, Saturday, May 16th- Multipercussionist Andrew Cyrille, Saturday, May 23rd, Bassist Alex Blake, Saturday, May 30th-African Liberation Day-Saxophonist Mike Monford, Saturday, June 13-Trumpeter Mejedi Owusu
For more information: 917-667-1246 or 917-398-1766
A Strange Celestial Road
My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra
by Ahmed Abdullah with Louis Reyes Rivera. Foreword by Salim Washington. Photographs by Marilyn Nance, Val Wilmer, Raymond Ross, Adger Cowans.
A thrilling account of life with Sun Ra’s Arkestra and New York’s avant-garde jazz scenes of the 1970s–90s
In this memoir, Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah recounts decades of national and international touring with the Sun Ra Arkestra and charts the rise of the New York loft jazz scene, offering a fascinating portrait of advanced music in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan from the 1970s through the 1990s, including thrilling stories about the politically important Bed-Stuy venue The East and the author’s tutelage under composer and long-time Archie Shepp collaborator Cal Massey. Along the way, Abdullah covers his spiritual development as a Buddhist, battles with addiction, tribulations as a father, lessons from Sun Ra and working life as an educator and cab driver.
Trumpeter and educator Ahmed Abdullah was born in Harlem in 1947. An important figure in the New York loft jazz movement, in 1972 he formed a group called Abdullah, two years before joining the Sun Ra Arkestra, with whom he played for more than 20 years. He is a founding member of the bands Melodic Art-Tet, The Group and NAM, and of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium. Abdullah is the music director at Sistas’ Place in Brooklyn, and teaches music at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan and an elementary school in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.