The Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA) was a

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

jazz musician This is a list of jazz musicians by instrument based on existing articles on Wikipedia. Do not enter names that lack articles. Do not enter names that lack sources. Accordion * Kamil Běhounek (1916–1983) * Luciano Biondini (born 1971) * Asm ...

s formed by

Horace Tapscott Horace Elva Tapscott (April 6, 1934 – February 27, 1999) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He formed the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (also known as P.A.P.A., or The Ark) in 1961 and led the ensemble through the 1990s. Early lif ...

in the late 1960s. It was part of his work with the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (PAPA), founded in 1961, which aimed to preserve, develop and publicize African American music. UGMAA was the successor of the Underground Musicians Association (UGMA), founded in 1963, of which P.A.P.A. became a part. The collective was partly set up to find employment for African American musicians, dancers and visual artists in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. Political influences of the time included

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the Jazz#Post-war jazz, history of jazz and 20th-century musi ...

Ornette Coleman Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Ja ...

Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an African American revolutionary, Islam in the United States, Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figur ...

and H. Rap Brown. Within UGMAA, Horace Tapscott offered poor youths free music lessons, and later enlisted them into the P.A.P.A. Famous musicians involved with UGMAA included

Arthur Blythe Arthur Murray Blythe (July 5, 1940 – March 27, 2017) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer. He was described by critic Chris Kelsey as displaying "one of the most easily recognizable alto sax sounds in jazz, big and round, with a ...

Stanley Crouch Stanley Lawrence Crouch (December 14, 1945 – September 16, 2020) was an American cultural critic, poet, playwright, novelist, biographer, and syndicated columnist. He was known for his jazz criticism and his 2000 novel ''Don't the Moon Lo ...

Butch Morris Lawrence Douglas "Butch" Morris (February 10, 1947 – January 29, 2013) was an American cornetist, composer and conductor. He was known for pioneering his structural improvisation method, ''Conduction'', which he utilized on many recordings. ...

Joe Sample Joseph Leslie Sample (February 1, 1939 – September 12, 2014) was an American jazz keyboardist and composer. He was one of the founding members of The Jazz Crusaders in 1960, whose name was shortened to "The Crusaders" in 1971. He remained a p ...

Wilber Morris Wilber Morris (November 27, 1937 - August 8, 2002) was an American jazz double bass player and bandleader. He was the brother of the cornetist, composer, and conductor Butch Morris.

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

Wilber Morris recorded widely, and performed with su ...

, David Murray,

Jimmy Woods Jimmy Woods (born October 29, 1934, in St. Louis, Missouri; died March 29, 2018, in Anchorage, Alaska) was an American jazz alto saxophonist. Woods played with the R&B band of Homer Carter in 1951, and served in the U.S. Air Force, Air Force from ...

, Nate Morgan and

Guido Sinclair Sinclair Greenwell Jr. (December 1935 - July 7, 1992) was an American jazz alto saxophonist. He was also known as Guido Sinclair, Sonny Harrison, and Junnie. He performed in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Biography Sin ...

References

{{reflist African-American jazz musicians