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.
DISTINGUISHED prolific poet and word-performing artist, freedom activist, publisher
(1. Mother and son: Jayne Cortez Duo, “Find your own voice” [personnel: Cortez, voice; Denardo Coleman, drums; recorded: live, The Sanctuary for Independent media, Troy, New York, US, 23 October 2010])
(2. Mother and son: Jayne Cortez Duo, “She got he got” [personnel: Cortez, voice; Coleman, drums; recordings and other details as in “1” above])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe (Review of John Coltrane Quartet, “Vigil” or “Modal excursion”, live performance, Comblain-La-Tour, Belgium, 1 August 1965 [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums])
BASSIST Jimmy Garrison (below) appears to have just walked onto the bandstand, steadying and steadying that instrument of his as he plays with deftness and assiduousness as Coltrane, on tenor, begins the timely conversation with Elvin Jones on drums. Coltrane soars and soars in this continuously creative polytonal torrent of sound that is unmistakeably his signature. His commentary on the crucial challenges of his day is profoundly honest, insistent, multilayered and optimistic, a mood shared equally by the exhilarating inventiveness of Jones’s drumming. Note the resultant sweating and sheer exhaustion of the duo even before Coltrane’s brief break!
As McCoy Tyner, on piano, joins the conversation, he takes 20-30 seconds of dizzying phrasing to restate the cardinal theme of the excursion and then essays his own contribution along a serene plateau of disarming contemplation, punctuated by Garrison’s impeccable percussive engagement and Jones’s continuing testament.
COLTRANE finally returns for the quartet to studiously sum up the goal for the vigil by declaring firmly and unreservedly: “Now’s the time!”
Today, we are most honoured and privileged to have inherited the priceless legacy of these selfless geniuses.
(Here, John Coltrane Quartet plays “Vigil”, live, Comblain-La-Tour, Belgium, 1 August 1965)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe CELEBRATED AFRICAN peoples-centred intellectual, graduate of University of Chicago, arguably the profoundest political economic thinker in the provisional restoration-of-independence government of (British occupied) east region Nigeria, home of the historic Igbo village republican democratic states that had flourished for over a millennium; minister of economic development and planning and architect of the 1947-1966 transformation of this pre-Igbo genocide political economy to Africa’s most dynamic with immense possibilities. The Ojike Plan had envisaged a 20-year timeframe, beginning in 1954, during which the east would be transformed into an advanced multifaceted industrial and agricultural economy. Such was the impressive pace of this programme that, by 1964, ten years later, the overall economic performance of the east had not only outstripped the rest of Nigeria but was in fact Africa’s fastest growing economy. The east had the best schools and the first independent university system in the country, the best humanpower development in the country across a range of fields including, crucially, engineering, medicine, the arts, and the middle-range technical cadre.
The region also had the most integrated infrastructural development in Nigeria and its manufacturing, distributive and extractive enterprises centred in the Enuugwu-Nkalagu-Emene conurbation to the north, Onicha (commercial capital and home to the future Oshimili stock exchange and index) to the west and Igwe Ocha-Aba-Calabar to the south were clearly the hubs of the making of this African industrial revolution of recent history. But for the Igbo genocide, launched by Britain and its Hausa-Fulani islamist north region-led Nigeria client state on 29 May 1966 and continuing as these lines are written, 51 years on, with the murder of 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population during the first three phases of the crime (29 May 1966-12 January 1970), the east was on course to construct the “Taiwan” or the “China” or the “South Korea” or the “India” inAfrica– 20 years before these post-World War II much-vaunted “economic transformational miracles” of the era emerged...
The main thrust of this plan is still valid and should be retrieved from the archives, reworked, and adapted by the ongoing Biafra freedom movementto 21st century priorities and the advantage of new technologies. This phase would appropriately be Ojike Plan II.
(Mbonu Ojike, My Africa, 1946)
(Sam Rivers Quintet, “Mellifluous cacaphony” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Joe Chambers, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 May 1965])
INFLUENTIAL African freedom nationalist, physician, writer, who notes, memorably, “every people should be originators of their own destiny” – the very breathtaking resilient resolve
that powers the ongoing Biafra freedom movement in southwestcentral Africa
(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])
BASSIST, cellist, composer, bandleader, academic, arguably the most recorded jazz bassist and member of Miles Davis Second Great Quintet, 1963-1968 (Davis, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums)
(Miles Davis Quintet plays Ron Carter’s composition, “RJ” [personnel: Davis, trumpet; Shorter, tenor saxophone; Hancock, piano; Carter, bass; Williams, drums; recorded: Columbia Studios, Hollywood, Los Angeles, US, 20 January 1965])
DISTINGUISHED pianist, composer, arranger and musical director of the seminal Modern Jazz Quartet (Lewis, piano; Milt Jackson, vibraphone; Percy Heath, bass; Connie Kay, drums) for over 40 years beginning in 1952
(Modern Jazz Quartet, “Django” [personnel: Lewis, piano; Jackson, vibraphone; Heath, bass; Kay, drums; recorded: Music Inn, Lenox, Mass and Capitol Studios, New York, US, 22, 25 August and 21 December 1959 and 15 January 1960)
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).
