217th birthday of Alexandre Dumas

(Born 24 July 1802, Villiers-Cotterêts, France)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

ONE of the preeminent luminaries of French letters, prolific across genres – novels, drama, travel books, history, journalism – with classics which include The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Twenty Years Later, The Last Cavalier, Georges

(Miles Davis Quintet, Ascenseur pour l’echafaud {Lift to the scaffold} [personnel: Davis, trumpet; Barney Wilen, tenor saxophone; René Utreger,  piano; Pierre Michelot, bass; Kenny Clarke, drums; recorded: Le Poste Parisien Studio, Paris, France, 4 and 5 December 1957])

******Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe (2001) and Readings from Reading: Essays on African History, Genocide, Literature (2011)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

216th birthday of Alexandre Dumas

(Born 24 July 1802, Villiers-Cotterêts, France)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

ONE of the preeminent luminaries of French letters, prolific across genres – novels, drama, travel books, history, journalism – with classics which include The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Twenty Years Later, The Last Cavalier, Georges

(Miles Davis Quintet featuring Sonny Stitt, “Autumn leaves” [personnel: Davis, trumpet; Stitt, tenor saxophone; Wynton Kelly, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Jimmy Cobb, drums; recorded: live, L’Olympia, Paris, France, 11 October 1960])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Oxfam and the 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

OXFAM, the British-based “charity organisation”, responds to the 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake with its own earthquake unleashed most expansively in Haiti (see largely unprintable press reports on the subject that make for depressing reading, carried extensively by multimedia services)...

(Jackie McLean Quintet, “Hipnosis” [personnel: McLean, alto saxophone; Grachan Moncur III, trombone; LaMont Johnson, piano; Scott Holt, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 3 February 1967])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

117th birthday of CLR James

(Born 4 January 1901, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago)

REVOLUTIONARY marxist theorist and philosopher, author of the classic, The Black Jacobins (1938) on the historic enslaved African uprising in France’s conquered and occupied Saint Domingue, the Caribbean, in the 1790s, in which the Africans defeat the French and its pan-European naval and land forces’ allies (including, especially, British and Spanish) and proclaim the Republic of Haiti, 1804, a victory whose profound consequences are etched indelibly in the psyche of the French Establishment as it relates to African peoples and the African World subsequently

(Sonny Rollins Quartet, “St Thomas” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Tommy Flanagan, piano; Doug Watkins, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 22 June 1956])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

116th birthday of CLR James

(Born 4 January 1901, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago)

Revolutionary marxist theorist and philosopher, author of the classic, The Black Jacobins (1938) on the historic enslaved African uprising in France’s conquered and occupied Saint Domingue, the Caribbean, in the 1790s, in which the Africans defeat the French and its pan-European naval and land forces’ allies (including, especially, British and Spanish) and proclaim the Republic of Haiti, 1804, a victory whose profound consequences are etched indelibly in the psyche of the French Establishment as it relates to African peoples and the African World subsequently

(Sonny Rollins Quartet, “St Thomas” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Tommy Flanagan, piano; Doug Watkins, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 22 June 1956])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe