75th birthday of McCoy Tyner

(Born 11 December 1938, Philadelphia, United States)

One of the most influential pianists since the 1960s, occupies the piano chair of the classic John Coltrane Quartet (full personnel: Coltrane, tenor and soprano saxophones; Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums), 1960-1965, and subsequently records own key signature albums (Real McCoy, Time for Tyner, Extensions, Tender Moments, Sahara, Blues for Coltrane, plays John Coltrane at The Village Vanguard, Remembering John, Revelations, Infinity, 44th Street Suite, Illuminations, Expansions, Live in Warsaw, Round Midnight, Soliloquy, plays Duke Ellington, Today and Tomorrow, Nights of Ballads and Blues, Love and Peace, Land of the Giants) in varying group contexts such as trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, nonets, big band, solo

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

FWD: John Coltrane Quintet, “To be”

– personnel: Coltrane, flute; Pharaoh Sanders, flute, piccolo, tambourine; Alice Coltrane, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums (recorded: Van Geldar Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 15 February 1967 and 7 March 1967)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Who will be French president in 2023?

Last weekend France’s François Hollande summoned 40 African “leaders” to Paris for a so-called Franco-African summit. Ten years ago, almost to the day, Jacques Chirac did the same thing! Who will be French president in 2023? Is he/she already preparing the agenda for their own signed summons? O di egwu!

http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2010/12/bogey-of-african-french-relations.html

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

France and Africa – the impunity goes on…

France does in Central African Republic, its 52nd invasion of “francophonie” Africa since 1960, what it has always done here (last invaded CAR in 2003!) and in others of its “Berlin-states” in Africa with staggering impunity. For France, CAR and the rest are France’s in perpetuity – since German chancellor von Bismarck-chaired 1884-1885 pan-European Berlin conference on the conquest and occupation of Africa. Keeping a stranglehold on these countries enables France, with a struggling economy, to scoop gargantuan levels of capital, mineralogical and agricultural resources that it couldn’t ever generate in its own homeland.* Furthermore, so brutally a double-jeopardy, Africans, themselves, pay for these invasions of Africa by France.**  Prime questions of the age: When will Africans stop this charade? Isn’t it now obvious that the “Berlin-states” of CAR, Niger, Congo Democratic Republic, Congo Republic, Burundi, Mali, Nigeria, the Sudan, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, whatever, “cannot hold”? Enough!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25268100

Such as it was in Côte d’Ivoire, France’s invasion no. 49 of Africa (since 1960), so it is in CAR, no. 52, and so it will be for the future targets of Paris’s choosing until Africans say, “No!” “No more!” And that day will surely come:

http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2011/05/france-must-now-leave-cote-divoire_5571.html

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe


*http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/john-coltrane-quartet-plays-one.html

**http://www.afrohistorama.info/article-africans-pay-for-the-bullets-the-french-use-to-kill-them-82337836.html

Nelson Mandela

Father of the successful African struggle for the restoration-of-independence in South Africa after centuries of the European conquest and occupation. This resistance is surely one of the momentous liberation upheavals of recent human history. At its apogee, we mustn’t forget, quite a few seemingly influential global public figures and intellectuals had variously dismissed eventual African victory as “impossible”, “couldn’t achieve such a feat”, “[European rule] here to stay”… What a year, this 2013 – Africa and the world have bidden farewell to the dual-colossi of 20th/21st centuries’ African renaissance: Nelson Mandela and Chinua Achebe, Father of African Literature.

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Chinua Achebe’s twin-portals of engaging historic witness

Portal-I: Aftermath of pan-European conquest and occupation of the African World

[The European conquest of Africa] may indeed be a complex affair, but one thing is certain: You do not walk in, seize the land, the person, the history of another, and then sit back and compose hymns of praise in his honour. To do that would amount to calling yourself a bandit; and you won’t to do that. So what do you do? You construct very elaborate excuses for your action. You say, for instance, that the man in question is worthless and quite unfit to manage himself or his affairs. If there are valuable things like gold and diamonds which you are carting away from his territory, you proceed to prove that he doesn’t own them in the right sense of the word – that he and they had just happened to be lying around the same place when you arrived. Finally if the worse comes to the worse, you may even be prepared to question whether such as he can be, like you, fully human. From denying the presence of a man standing there before you, you end up questioning his very humanity …[I]n the [European conquest] situation presence was the critical question, the crucial word. Its denial was the keynote of [this conquest’s] ideology. (Chinua Achebe, “African Literature as Restoration of Celebration”, Kunapipi, 12, 2, 1990: 4; emphasis added) 

Portal-II: Aftermath of Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 

[Nigeria’s] wartime cabinet, it should also be remembered, was full of intellectuals like Obafemi Awolowo and Anthony Enaharo and super-permanent secretaries such as Allison Akene Ayida among others who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable policies. A statement credited to … Obafemi Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and unfortunate: ‘All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder’. It is my impression that … Obafemi Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition of power, for himself in particular and for the advancement of his Yoruba people in general. And let it be said that there is, on the surface, at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations. However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbo … at the time as the obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose – the Nigeria-Biafra War – his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to any length to achieve his dreams. In the Biafran case it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation – eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations. (Chinua Achebe, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra [New York: The Penguin, 2012], p. 233; emphasis added)

 

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Now published! Journal of Asian and African Studies, Special Issue on Chinua Achebe: The Igbo, Pogrom, Biafra War and Genocide in Nigeria

Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol 48, 6, December 2013

Guest editor: EC Ejiogu

Contributors: EC Ejiogu, VY Mudimbe, Biodun Jeyifo, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Carol Ijeoma Njoku, Chima J Korieh, Douglas B Chambers, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

http://jas.sagepub.com/content/current

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe