Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Sunday 11 October 2015
96th birthday of Art Blakey
(Born 11 October 1919, Pittsburgh, US)
Prodigious drummer and bandleader whose band, The Jazz Messengers, cofounded with pianistHorace Silver in 1954, becomes a conservatory for over 30 years, developing the careers ofscores of graduates who would subsequently contribute immensely to the landscape of improvisation and composition in the jazz repertoire – Messengers’ alumni include the following, grouped by their key performing instrument: trumpet (Clifford Brown, Donald Bryd, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis, Terence Blanchard), trombone (Curtis Fuller, Julian Priester, Slide Hampton, Steve Turre, Robin Eubanks), alto saxophone (Lou Donaldson, Jackie McLean, Bobby Watson, Donald Harrison), tenor saxophone (Benny Golson, Johnny Griffin, Hank Mobley, Wayne Shorter, John Gilmore, Billy Harper, Bill Pierce, Javon Jackson, Jean Toussaint, Branford Marsalis), piano (Kenny Drew, Walter Davis, Jr., Benny Green, Wynton Kelly, Bobby Timmons, Jaki Byard, Keith Garrett, Cedar Walton, John Hicks, Mulgrew Miller, James Williams), and bass (Doug Watkins, Wilbur Ware, Spanky DeBrest, Jymie Merritt, Reggie Workman, Charles Fambrough, Lonnie Plaxico, Essiet Okon Essiet)
(Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Moanin’” [personnel: Blakey, drums; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Benny Golson, tenor saxophone; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; recorded: live, (venue ?) Brussels, Belgium, 30 November 1958])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
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