In the culturally turbulent mid-1960s, the visionary, otherworldly musical being we have all come to know as Sun Ra formed a brief but tight bond with the late storyteller, activist and poet Henry Dumas. The Ark and the Ankh is a vintage 1966 document of dialogues and meditations between the poet and the musician set to the fervent musical experiments of the Arkestra recorded live at the legendary downtown New York club and haven for the insurgent black music scene, Slug's Saloon. The Ark and the Ankh offers an essential insight into the quirkily brilliant, totally controversial and completely inimitable thought of Sun Ra candidly shared with one of his most adoring disciples. Sun Ra needs little introduction to the legion of fans his great body of work continues to accumulate. Henry Dumas has gained cult-like status as one of this centuries most important black writers. His work, which has been collected in such anthologies as Goodbye Sweetwater, has been labelled genius and brilliant by the likes of Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison. On May 23, 1968, after leaving a rehearsal at Sun Ra's practice space, Henry Dumas's life was tragically cut short when he was shot to death in a Harlem Subway station by a New York City transit cop. This is the first of two intended volumes from the private tapes of Henry Dumas.