Saturday 31 December 2016

Grazing land for Fulani militia terrorism in Biafra under the cover of planned occupying genocidist Nigeria military-run “cattle ranches” must be blocked by the Biafran resistance


Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

IT IS INDEED hilarious how awfully predictable the islamist genocidist Nigeria regime has become of late.

Throughout most of the summer, it unleashed its Fulani militia group (often misclassified in the media in Nigeria and elsewhere as “herdsmen”), cousin of its other created terrorist grouping, Boko Haram (the latter are part of the five deadliest terrorist organisations in the world currently according to the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peacehttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-17/global-terrorism-index-increase/6947200, accessed 17 November 2015), to ravage swathes of territory across Biafra, murdering and maiming hundreds of people and destroying their property worth millions of US dollars.  It was in one of such campaigns that the militia murdered some seminary students near Nsukka, northcentral Biafra, and abducted and murdered Akaeze Ofulue III, the highly respected obi or king of Ubulu-Ukwu, west Biafra. These attacks are part of the intensification of the current phase-IV of the Igbo genocide.

NEITHER the regime in Nigeria nor of course the occupying genocidist military on the ground in Biafra ever condemned these atrocities. As I also stressed during the period, neither former British Prime Minister David Cameron nor in fact US President Barack Obama (first African-descent president in 233 years of the US republic) who both installed Muhammadu Buhari as new head of the Nigeria regime in March 2015 for once condemned these outrages (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/select-terroristoutrages-across-world.html).

Besides the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law and other Biafra-based tireless human rights organisations which have meticulously reported these murders as well as others carried out directly by the genocidist military since the Buhari imposition, Amnesty International in London, England, has also elaborately informed the world of the slaughter in two widely-publicised studies it published in November 2016 
(https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 23 November 2016)
and earlier on in June 2016 (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/06/nigeria-killing-of-unarmed-pro-biafra-supporters-by-military-must-be-urgently-investigated/, accessed 10 June 2016).

Corner shop vs “cattle ranch”

SIX MONTHS later, the regime has just made the trite announcement that some of its military operatives would be sent to Argentina to “learn how cattle [are] reared” so that “cattle ranches [are set up] in almost all [military] divisions … and brigades” (Vanguard, Lagos, 20 December 2016).  For a particularly degenerate genocidist military that has spent 50 years in a desperate campaign to destroy Igbo people and which has itself been riven internally by coups and coups and countercoups and variations on coups, this haematophagous monster surely has no conceivably creative enterprising characteristics in its DNA. The Nigeria military cannot run the most rudimentary of a corner-shop; it surely wouldn’t understand what it entails to run an infinitely more complex organisation as a cattle ranch. Definitely not.


Dreadful legacy

ON the face of it, Nigeria’s “cattle ranch” initiative is therefore phony but nonetheless a venture, as will be elaborated shortly, that serves as cover for the concrete, underlying ominous policy calculation which keys into the overarching strategic architecture of what it considers the “final stretch” of this phase of its genocidist drive against the Igbo – currently being played out in this people’s Biafran homeland. 

Thanks to the seeming carte blanche to murder as many Igbo as he thought fit without the possibilities of US/international criticism or sanctions that regime chief Buhari received right from the outset (in 2015) particularly from Barack Obama, Nigeria has by and large been “shielded” from consequential international revulsion in response to this crime against humanity perpetrated on Igbo people. Thus the US government under Obama – the White House, the state department, the US embassy in Abuja, Nigeria – has remained morbidly silent throughout the October 2015-December 2016 raging slaughter of hundreds of Igbo carried out by the Buhari dual force-operational genocidist machine deployed in Biafra: the military, Fulani militia. For Obama, first African-descent US president, it is indeed a dreadful legacy to support this full blown islamist-led genocide in contemporary Africa, this continent of his fathers (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html).

Shattering the silence

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’s latest report on the genocide, already referred to, coming literally on the eve of the end of Obama’s 2-term presidency, shatters this orchestrated international silence over the Igbo genocide. The import of Amnesty’s study is a comprehensively graphic reminder to the world on what the survivors of the stretch of the one-year’s murders have been reporting all along, what the Biafra human rights organisations have been publishing during the period, what updated situation report of the genocide on the ground since its own June 2015’s study, what heinous crimes have been committed against a peaceful and industrious people by the reprobate genocidist installed in office by Obama (and ex-British Premier Cameron) without the appropriate response from the “international community”. 

At once, for the first time in 13 months, Amnesty’s report projected the grim news of this phase of the Igbo genocide onto the transmitting wires of the world’s leading news agencies and coverage by television and radio broadcasters and newspapers: Reuters, PA, AFP, AP, CNN, MSN, BBC, France24, Newsweek, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, Fox News, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Die Welt, Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Le Figaro, Hindustan Times…

“Cattle ranch” ploy: annexation & islamisation

PREDICTABLY, the genocidist regime was riled up by the Amnesty International report. Suddenly, its grave atrocities in Biafra, so zealously but cowardly covered up until then by its masters in Washington and London was broadcast and rebroadcast worldwide. The regime’s feverish response was threefold and aimed principally to reinforce its 47 years of occupation of Biafra. First, it launched a major travel clampdown across Biafra to disrupt the journey plans of hundreds of thousands of Biafran families travelling home from Nigeria to celebrate Christmas, one of the most important holidays of the Biafra calendar for a country that is 98.5% Christian. Second, the regime declared that Buhari would visit Enuugwu, the Biafran capital, just before Christmas, in what was seen by the Biafran resistance as a “desperate provocation” by the genocidist. The regime called off the visit at the last minute on the uncompromising insistance by the resistance that Biafrans couldn’t “tolerate such a visit” and would oppose it forthwith. 

Third, its most strategically intuned, the regime announced its “cattle ranch” project which is essentially a ploy to deploy its terrorist Fulani militia with their cows across the valleys and farmlands of Biafra on a permanent basis by expelling millions of Biafran farmers and back up this (fresh) invading Fulani presence with added protection from its already occupying military formations. Here in Biafra, the Fulani are indeed desperate to adapt a strategy of “cow swamping-and-occupy” which they had employed in their conquest and islamisation of parts of Yorubaland and multiple nations and peoples in the Niger and Benue valleys of northwestcentral Africa in the 19th century/early decades of the 20th century, just before the subsequent conquests and occupations of these states and peoples by Britain.

Essentially, there are five words to describe this particularly sinister so-called cattle-ranch genocidist Nigeria programme: annexation and islamisation of Biafra.

Biafran resistance 2017

IN JULY 2010, a group of leading Igbo human rights scholars (including respected literary critic Ben Obumselu) and activists (including influential lawyer Olisa Agbakoba) met in the Ofuobi African Centre, Enuugwu, in a conference and called formally for the termination of the Nigerian occupation of Biafra (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/in-wake-of-murder-of-three-possibly.html). They had stated a preamble to their 10-point call for this termination which we need re-stating here:
[Biafra] has become militarized with a vast deployment of expeditionary and predatory police and army personnel who are from outside the region. For instance, there are 61 Police check-points between Abakal[e]k[e] … to Nsukka … (a distance of about 130km). In [contrast] between Obolo-Afo [Biafra] and Lokoja [Nigeria] (a distance of nearly 400 km) no checkpoints exist. This state of siege is exemplified by the current [situation] of … [Biafran] cities [including] Aba, [Enuugwu, Abakaleke, Onicha, Owere] and Nnewi – hitherto the fastest growing and thriving industrial cum commercial cities in the African continent now being turned into refuse dumps and ghettos. Businesses that would have provided jobs to engage our youths have been strangulated by incompetent and criminal leadership.

I had indicated soon after the Ofuobi conference that the Igbo should stop paying the millions and millions of US dollars worth of expropriation tax that sustains the genocidist occupation and their subjugation and this call must be reiterated once again. One must never, ever, be a participant in their incarceration, their deindividuation. Nigeria must unconditionally cease its occupation of Biafra. A general, indefinite strike across Biafra should be called forthwith, demanding the unconditional dismantling of Nigeria’s barriers of extortion and expropriation, and the evacuation of its military/police/customs bases/Fulani cattle herds from their land. An extensive and continuing-evolving organisation is required as this march of freedom develops.  The Biafra resistance has its work cut out. It is unstoppable and the “cattle ranch” ploy is understood clearly for what it is: stark desperation.

Genocidist Nigeria does know that the Igbo are not Nigerian. The Igbo are from Biafra. The Igbo are Biafran. Whilst the Igbo worked extraordinarily hard by playing the vanguard role in the liberation of Nigeria from the British conquest (beginning from the 1930s), the Igbo ceased to be Nigerian on Sunday 29 May 1966. This is the day Nigeria launched the Igbo genocide. The Igbo renouncement of their Nigerian citizenship is the irrevocable Igbo indictment on a state that embarked on the destruction of 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population at the time. The only future a genocide-state has is that those murdered by it or others apprehensive that it could extend its murderous heritage on them abandon it – nothing else.

BIAFRANS have since abandoned genocidist Nigeria and are on their way to restore their sovereignty in their Biafran homeland. There can never be a reversal. This will be one of the most outstanding breakthroughs of the freedom movement of the age.
(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be” [personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone;  Jimmy Garrison, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 29 January 1968]) 
Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe







Thursday 29 December 2016

Oh, here we go again! “Barack Obama: I am ‘confident’ I could have won a third term as president”, The Guardian, London, Monday 26 December 2016

(Barack Obama... : “I’m confident that if I had run again...”)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

The extended/indefinite-stay-syndrome? 

HEREWITH is the dreadful roll call of a history in Africa, 1956-2016:  Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria), Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir (the Sudan), Sani Abacha (Nigeria),Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea),  Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Abdoulaye Wade (Sénégal), Ahmadou Ahidjo (Cameroon), Isaias Afwerki (Eritrea),  Dawda Jawara (the Gambia), Idriss Deby (Chad), Idi Amin Dada (Uganda), Mengistu Haile Mariam (Ethiopia),  Jean-Bédel Bokassa (Central African Republic/Central African Empire/Central African Republic), Hourai Boumedienne (Algeria), Hissène Habré (Chad),  Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Algeria), Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Tunisia), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Mobutu Sese Seko (Congo Leopoldville/Congo Kinshasa/Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo), Paul Biya (Cameroon), Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (Egypt), Mohamed Siad Barre (Somalia), Yahya Jammeh (the Gambia)…
(extended-stay-syndrome pursued so ritualistically, so ruthlesslyObusonjo)
 
(syndrome legacyMobutu)
(syndrome legacy… Mubarak)
(syndrome legacy… Mengistu)
(syndrome legacy… Mbasogo)
(syndrome legacy… Jawara)
(syndrome legacy… Mugabe)
(syndrome legacy… Boumedienne)
(syndrome legacy… Idi Amin)
(syndrome legacy… Deby)
(syndrome legacy… Barre)
(syndrome legacy… Ahidjo)
(syndrome legacy… Wade)
(syndrome legacy… Abacha)
(syndrome legacy… Museveni)
(syndrome legacy… Bouteflika)
(syndrome legacy… Bokassa)
(syndrome legacy… Biya)
(syndrome legacy… al-Bashir)
(syndrome legacy… Habré)
(syndrome legacy… Ben Ali)
(syndrome legacy… Afwerki)
(syndrome legacy… Jammeh)
(John Coltrane Duo, “Jupiter” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, bells; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, Cliff, NJ, US, 22 February 1967])
Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe



93rd birthday of Cheikh Anta Diop

(Born 29 December 1923, Caytou, Sénégal)
Mathematician, physicist, linguist, anthropologist, philosopher, historian and Egyptologist, demonstrates, most copiously in his near-40 years of research (beginning in the 1940s) and publication of papers and books, especially Nations Nègres et Culture, 1955 (English translation: African Origin of Civilization, 1974), L’unité culturelle de l’Afrique noire, 1959 (English: The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Matriarchy & Patriarchy in Classical Antiquity, 1989)  and Civilisation ou barbarie, 1981 (English: Civilization or Barbarism, 1991), that Kemet, “ancient Egypt”, is an African civilisation and that African peoples are the indisputable heirs to its heritage
Cheikh Anta Diop,  African Origin of Civilization (Chicago: Chicago Review, 1989), 336 pp, US$11.30/£10.73 pbk
Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1991), 464 pp, US$15.64/£15.49 pbk

For an assessment of Cheikh Anta Diop’s  salient contribution to the scholarship of the African World, see, for instant, Herbert Ekwe-EkweReadings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (Dakar & Reading: African Renaissance, 2011), pp.7-11. 
(Alice Coltrane Quintet, “Blue Nile” [personnel: Coltrane, harp; Joe Henderson, alto flute, Pharoah Sanders, alto flute; Ron Carter, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studios, Dix Hills, New York, US, 26 January 1970])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Wednesday 28 December 2016

56th anniversary of French nuclear bomb “test” in Sahara Desert

(27 December 1960, explodes bomb at Regganne, west Algeria)

IN FLAGRANT disregard for the lives of African peoples and their environment and those of future generations, France carries out an atomic bomb “test” over the Sahara Desert, the third in the year (earlier explosions had been conducted in February and April) – exploded bomb has plutonium with yield of 10,000-14,000 TNT, equivalent to one-half power of atomic bomb the United States air force dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945; instructively, at no occasion during this entire grim epoch does the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, which has authorised these bomb blasts, consider carrying out the “tests” in any provinces or regions of France or indeed Europe
(Charles de Gaulle: ... his presidency couldn’t consider carrying out these bomb “tests” anywhere in France...)
(Andrew Hill Septet, “Premonition” [personnel: Hill, piano; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; John Gilmore, bass clarinet; Richard Davis, bass; Joe Chambers, drums; Renaud Simmons, conga, percussion; Nadi Qamar, percussion, African drums, thumb piano; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 8 October 1965])
Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe



74th birthday of Stanley Macebuh

(Born 28 December 1942, Aba, Biafra)
Celebrated cultural and literary critic and executive editor of The Guardian, Lagos, Nigeria, beginning February 1983, when he embarks on the  radical transformation of the focus and scope and qualitative threshold of journalism practice not seen in Africa’s southwestcentral region in 50 years
(Miles Davis Quintet plays Wayne Shorter’s composition, “Footprints” [personnel: Davis, trumpet; Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York, US, 24/25 October 1966])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Sunday 25 December 2016

85th birthday of Uzo Egonu

(Born 25 December 1931, Onicha, Biafra)
One of the African World’s multifaceted and most distinguished painters, his evocative landmark Exodus (1970) captures the devastating aftermath of phase-I of the Igbo genocide, perpetrated by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain, 29 May 1966-4 January 1967, as nearly 2 million Igbo who survive this initial slaughter in the north region and elsewhere in Nigeria stream home before the subsequent phases (II & III: 5 January 1967-5 July 1967, 6 July 1967-12 January 1970, respectively) when the genocidists effect a comprehensive range of land, aerial and naval blockade of Biafra, unprecedented in Africa, and murdering a total of 3 million people therein by 12 January 1970
(For Biafra: ... Uzo EgonuExodus [1970])
(Don Cherry Quartet, “Art deco” [personnel: Cherry, pocket trumpet; James Clay, tenor saxophone; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 27/28/30 August 1988])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

96th birthday of Michael Okpara

(Born 25 December 1920, Umuahia, Biafra)
Physician and irrepressible advocate of harnessing Africa’s vast agricultural resource potential as launch base to embark on far-reaching societal transformation, head of pre-military junta 15 January 1966 east region Nigeria government, then home to Africa’s most resourceful and dynamic economy en route to emerging as a major manufacturing and industrial power, in its own right, but for the catastrophe of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January, when Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain murdered 3.1 million Igbo people in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa; 50 years on, the Biafra freedom movement, on the cusp of the restoration of Biafra sovereignty, can’t wait to resume the construction of the state and societal transformative project of the Michael Okpara legacy and its consequential impact on the African World and the rest of the globe
(Booker Little Sextet, “We speak” [personnel: Little, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Don Friedman, piano; Art Davis, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Nola’s Penthouse Studios, New York, 17 March 1961])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Saturday 24 December 2016

72nd birthday of Woody Shaw

(Born 24 December 1944, Laurinburg, North Carolina, US)
Astoundingly innovative trumpeter, fluguelhornist, clarinettist and composer, collaborates expansively in groundbreaking recordings with fellow leading innovative musicians of the age including multiinstrumentalist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, vibists Bobby Hutcherfield and Lionel Hampton, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, tenor saxophonists Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon, Hank Mobley, Charlie Rouse and Pharoah Sanders, pianists Andrew Hill, Mal Waldron and Horace Silver and drummers Max Roach, Art Blakey  and Louis Hayes
(Mal Waldron Quintet, “The seagulls of  Kristiansund” [personnel: Waldron, piano; Woody Shaw, trumpet;  Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;  Reggie Workman, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: live, Village Vanguard, New York,  US, 16 September 1986])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Thursday 22 December 2016

FWD: “Buhari, we don’t want you here – here in Enuugwu, the Biafra capital”, the Biafran resistance insists

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Reports from Enuugwu (1814 Hours Biafran Time, 1714GMT) have shown, conclusively, that Muhammadu Buhari, head of the islamist Nigeria genocidist regime and state was forced by the people of Biafra to abandon his much-orchestrated planned visit to Enuugwu today (Thursday the 22nd).

Biafrans have insisted throughout the week, via their resistance spokespersons and media, that this genocidist trooper who has been actively involved in the Igbo genocide since its outbreak on Sunday 29 May 1966 must not visit Biafra. In this foundational genocide of post(European)conquest Africa, Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain jointly murdered 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, during phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970). Phase-IV of the genocide continues unabated.

Ascent

Biafrans have been in full force in solidarity rallies in Enuugwu throughout the day to enforce this non-negotiable “Don’t-come-here” demand. Despite the usual, essentially cowardly swagger associated with genocidist operatives, Buhari, surely, couldn’t ignore this people’s resolve... The rising sun is ever on the ascent.

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

123rd birthday of Chancellor Williams

(Born 22 December 1893, Bennettsville, South Carolina, US)
Distinguished historian and sociologist, prolific author including the authoritative tome, The Destruction of Black Civilization: The Great Issue of a Race between 4500BC and 2000AD (1974)
Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: The Great Issue of a Race between 4500BC and 2000AD (Chicago: Third World, new edition, 1995), 345pp, pbk, US$12.43/£12.99:
Now the shadows lengthened. The Europeans had also been busily building up and training strong African armies. Africans trained to hate, kill and conquer Africans. Blood of Africans was to sprinkle and further darken the pages of their history … Indeed, Africa was conquered for the Europeans by the Africans [themselves], and thereafter kept under [conquest] control by African police and African soldiers. Very little European blood was ever spilled. (The Destruction of Black Civilization, p. 218)
 Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Wednesday 21 December 2016

67th birthday of Thomas Sankara

(Born 21 December 1949, Yako, Burkina Faso)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Military commander, historian, and head of state of Burkina Faso, 4 August 1983-15 October 1987, when he leads a transformative government in “post”-(European)conquest Africa which demonstrates, overwhelmingly with indelible successes, just as the resourceful Biafran resistance had breathtakingly inaugurated this breakthrough on the Africa continental scene during the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, phases I-III, that the engine of societal development is located internally, in the people, themselves – not the prevailing and pervasive fraudulent developmentalism unleashed on Africa in the 1960s by the same France, Britain/other lead European World conqueror-states that had for 400 years enslaved, dispersed, occupied and immiserised Africa and its peoples; thus, Thomas Sankara’s and Biafra’s historic liberatory legacies of transformative outreaches emanating internally, not externally, forged so tenaciously, constitute contemporary Africa’s freedom path to the restoration of unfettered independence from continuing European World seizure via the latter’s imposition of local client states and overseers, enhanced expropriation, and hardly disguised impunity
(Sam Rivers Trio, “Afflatus” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Cecil McBee, bass; Steve Ellington, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 March 1967])
 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Monday 19 December 2016

Nigeria – failed state on all scores…


Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Nigeria’s countrywide 2016 WASSCE certificate (school certificate/WASC/WAEC/high school/GCE “O” Level/GCSE “O” Level equivalent) results have just been released (Vanguard, Lagos, Friday 16 December 2016). They show that 106,222 students or  61.5% of the total 172,719 candidates who sat for this examination failed their Mathematics and English Language two mandatory subjects required for post-secondary/pre-college/pre-university education in Nigeria.

In many countries of the world, the secretary of education would resign immediately in response to these appalling results; in some countries, governments could fall if such results ever occurred. But not in genocidist Nigeria would either of these consequences happen.

Does one really expect a Nigeria, which appears to spend most of its time planning the next murdering escapade in its expansive genocide field of operation against Igbo people of Biafra, has the mindset and resource to build a world-class education for its own children? 

Primer

Perhaps the following primer underscores the extent of this Nigerian tragedy: a crucial component of the country’s electoral law states, categorically, that the minimum educational qualification for an aspiring/occupier of the position of head of regime or the state’s highest “elected” office is the school certificate equivalent; Muhammadu Buhari, the current head of regime, does not have this qualification but insisted he would run, regardless, in March 2015 for the post, and was robustly endorsed and his quest enforced by the then British Prime Minister Cameron and US President Obama, expectedly, two well educated persons in their respective publics, and Buhari of Nigeria was “duly elected”...
(Sam Rivers Sextet, “Effusive melange” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Donald Bryd, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; James Spaulding, alto saxophone; Cecil McBee, bass; Steve Ellington, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 March 1967])
 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

141st birthday of Carter G Woodson

(Born 19 December 1875, New Canton, Va, United States)
Historian, journalist, versatile educator and inaugurator of the “African World History Month”, now a very important fixture in the annual calendar in several regions of the African World, outside Africa, and who, whilst researching the nature of the education of African Americans in the 1930s, concludes on the following consequences on someone, anyone, being controlled and defined by an agency outside their own centre of being, an observation as salient as ever, 80 years on (Woodson, 2010: 48):
If you can control a [person’s] thinking, you don’t have to worry about [their] action. If you can determine what a [person] thinks you do not have to worry about what [they] will do. If you can make a [person] believe that [they are] inferior, you don’t have to compel [them] to seek an inferior status [for they] will do so without being told and if you can make a [person] believe that [they are] justly an outcast, you don’t have to order [them] to the back door. [They] will go to the back door on [their] own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the [person] will demand that you build one [for them]. (added emphasis)
(Charles Mingus Sextet – with Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, “Meditations” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964]) 
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Sunday 18 December 2016

116th birthday of Ras T Makonnen

(Born [?][?]1900, Buxton, Guyana; dies 18 Dec 1983, Nairobi, Kenya)

Geologist, historian and influential Africa World intellectual, co-organiser, with Kwame Nkrumah and others, of the landmark 1945 Manchester (England) conference of leading African-descent intellectuals on African World affirmation and the future and contributes to the work on the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, 1963 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Saturday 17 December 2016

71st birthday of Tony Williams

(Born 12 December 1945, Chicago,US)
BRILLIANT DRUMMER, composer and bandleader, child prodigy who, in 1963, just 17, joins the Miles Davis Second Great Quintet (full personnel: Davis, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Williams, drums)
(1. Tony Williams Quartet, “Extras” [personnel: Williams, drums; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone {takes first tenor solo}; Sam Rivers, tenor saxophone {takes second tenor solo}; Gary Peacock, bass; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 12 August 1965])
(2. Tony Williams Quartet, “Tee” [personnel and recording details as in 1 above with tenor solo: Wayne Shorter])
(3. Tony Williams Quartet, “Love song” [personnel and recording details as in 1 above with tenor solo by Sam Rivers; piano solos in all selected compositions are of course by Herbie Hancock and the bass’s is by Gary Peacock])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe