97th birthday of Cyprian Ekwensi

(Born 26 September 1921, Minna, Nigeria)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

PHARMACIST and one of Africa’s most prolific writers with particular interest in the exploration of urban life and its immense challenges – may have inaugurated the Onicha (Biafra Oshimili Delta) market literary genre with his 1947-published Ikolo the Wrestler and other Igbo Tales and When Love Whispers (see Emmanuel Obiechina, An African Popular Literature, 1973: 3), subsequently publishing over 20 novels (including People of the City [1954], The Drummer Boy [1960], Jagua Nana [1961], Burning Grass [1961], Beautiful Feathers [1963], Iska [1966], Jagua Nana’s Daughter [1993]), innumerable short stories (including several adapted for radio and television), and children’s books

(Lee Morgan Quartet, “Gary’s notebook” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Barry Harris, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 December 1963])

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96th birthday of Cyprian Ekwensi

(Born 26 September 1921, Minna, Nigeria)

Pharmacist and one of Africa’s most prolific writers with particular interest in the exploration of urban life and its immense challenges – may have inaugurated the Onicha (Biafra Oshimili Delta) market literary genre with his 1947-published Ikolo the Wrestler and other Igbo Tales and When Love Whispers (see Emmanuel Obiechina, An African Popular Literature, 1973: 3), subsequently publishing over 20 novels (including People of the City [1954], The Drummer Boy [1960], Jagua Nana [1961], Burning Grass [1961], Beautiful Feathers [1963], Iska [1966], Jagua Nana’s Daughter [1993]), innumerable short stories (including several adapted for radio and television), and children’s books

(Bobby Hutcherson Sextet, “Dialogue” [personnel: Hutcherson, vibraphone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Sam Rivers, bass clarinet; Andrew Hill, piano; Richard Davis, bass; Joe Chambers, drums; recorded:  Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, Cliffs, NJ, US, 3 April 1965])

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84th birthday of Emmanuel Obiechina

(Born 20 September 1933, Nkpo, Biafra)

Pioneering and distinguished scholar of the historic *Onicha market literature genre and versatile literary critic and one of the leading Igbo intellectuals who defends Igbo people resolutely during the Igbo genocide (phases I-III, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970) by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain in which 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the population are murdered by the genocidists; this is the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa
*(river port city in Biafra Oshimiri Delta)

(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]) 

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Archival treat for scholars and students – University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library houses Onicha market literature collection

(University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

AS DETAILS below show (see link), this collection was initially made in 1966 by Thomas Buckman, a former Kansas University director of libraries, before the Onicha market (Biafra’s Oshimiri Delta) main repository of this historic literature was destroyed by the Nigerian vandal military during the Igbo genocide. This Kansas archive is the “first full-text digitization of the [Onicha] pamphlets”. “Just as eager readers purchased [Onicha] market literature 40-50 years ago”, the Kansas University Library aptly recalls, “this initiative makes [the] pamphlets accessible once again to a wide-ranging readership on the Internet”. 

Emmanuel Obiechina, the esteemed literary scholar and critic, researched expansively on the Onicha market literature, a focus on his doctoral thesis at Cambridge University later published as the classic, An African Popular Literature, 1973 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/blog-post_51.html).

*****University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s link to the Onicha market literature collection:(http://exhibits.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/show/onitsha),
accessed 17 November 2016.

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