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.
PROLIFIC poet, novelist, playwright, songwriter (writes lyrics for In Dahomey, the very successful 1903 musical which appears in Broadway and elsewhere), essayist, whose critically acclaimed output foreshadows the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s-1930s
(John Coltrane Septet, “Dahomey dance” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Art Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: A&R Studios, New York, US, 25 May 1961])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe POET, playwright, essayist, cofounder, with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon-Gontram Damas, of the “negritude” movement in Paris in the 1930s-1940s; one of the preeminent intellectuals of African World affirmation in the wake of 500 years of pan-European enslavement of African peoples, conquest and occupation of Africa; author of classics Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, 1939 (English: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, 1956),
Discours sur le colonialisme, 1950 (English: Discourse on Colonialism, 1953), Toussaint Louverture: La Révolution française et le problème colonial, 1960 (study on Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Haitian restoration-of-independence revolutionary), Une Saison au Congo, 1966 (English: A Season in the Congo, 1968 – play on life and times of Patrice Lumumba, 1950s/early 1960s’ leader of the restoration-of-independence movement in the Congo, then occupied by Belgium where the king, Leopold II, and the Belgian state, had committed an expansive genocide against constituent African peoples therein between 1878 and 1908 murdering 13 million Africans) and Une Tempête, 1969 (English: A Tempest, 1986 – a play, African peoples-centred rereading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest); The Tragedy of King Christoph (2015) – a play on Henri Christoph, general in Toussaint’s Haitian restoration-of-independence army who later declares himself king in north Haiti and exercises an oppressive rule on the people; teacher of and major influence onFrantz Fanon, fellow Martinican and celebrated freedom scholar and author of The Wretched of the Earth.
(John Coltrane Septet, “Dahomey dance” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Art Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: A&R Studios, New York, US, 25 May 1961])
VERSATILE and celebrated bassist with an expansive collaborative recording register that includes ensembles led by John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Art Blakey,Lee Morgan, Mal Waldron, Wayne Shorter, Archie Shepp, John Tchicai, Freddie Hubbard and David Murray; band leader, composer, academic whose outstanding music education initiatives stretch beyond the confines of the academy to address varying community needs and aspirations particularly those involving the youth
(Reggie Workman Quartet, “Evolution” [personnel: Workman, bass; Sam Rivers, soprano saxophone; Geri Allen, piano; Gerry Hemingway, drums; recorded: Sound on Sound, New York, US, 27/28 April 1995])
Multiinstrumentalist genius – alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, bassoon, oboe… – whose compositions, recordings and evocative soloing with any chosen instrument in his own multicombo-led settings and across a range of collaborative ensembles (especially those led by drummers Chico Hamilton and Max Roach, alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, pianists George Russell and Andrew Hill, tenor and soprano saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Charles Mingus) have a distinctly recognisable Dolphyian signature and impacted the jazz repertoire most profoundly
(Eric Dolphy Quartet, “Red planet” [personnel: Dolphy, alto saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; JC Moses, drums; recorded: live, University of Illinoi, Champaign, Illinoi, 10 March 1963])
(Eric Dolphy Duo, “Alone together” [personnel: Dolphy, bass clarinet; Richard Davis, double bass; recorded: Fuel Records, New York, US, {May?June?July?} 1963])
IF THE executioner Fulani islamist/jihadist-led genocidist regime on the ground in Nigeria that has carried out the Igbo genocide with such fiendishness these past 52 years were of European descent (bekee, oyibo, tubaab... ) and notAfrican, there would have been a thundering outrage and expansive campaign against this perpetrator with hollering of “racist”, “fascist”, “exclusivist”, “supremacist”, “occupationist”, “b***** c******* o********”, “imperialist”… mounted across the rest of the world, particularly from the African World – continental Africans, Africans in Europe, Africans in the Americas, Africans in Asia, Africans in Australasia. Thus, as far as African critical opinion is concerned, despite its wide geographical spread, Africa’s state-organised mass murderers who slaughter an African people in Africa, it would appear from this devastating history of five decades, can literally get away with murder. YET the Igbo genocide by the Fulani & co and other Africa-based state/estate’s horrendous crimes against African peoples and nations are distinct empirical determinants of those haunting lines sketched in historian Chancellor Williams’scommanding insight of Africa’s devastating history as shown here:
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, Africawas 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. (Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: The Great Issue of a Race between 4500BC and 2000AD [Chicago: Third World, 1995], p. 218.)
(John Coltrane Sextet, “Out of this world” [personnel: Coltrane,
tenor saxophone; Donald Garrett, clarinet, bass; Pharoah
Sanders, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy
Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: live at Penthouse Jazz Club, Seattle, US, 30
September 1965])
Pianist, pianists’ pianist whose “encyclopaedic knowledge”(to quote the recurring phrase from many a critic) of the jazz piano repertoire ensures he ranges effortlessly in his solo take from the stride traditions of the 1920s-1930s (James Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Fats Waller) to the late 1940s/early 1950s revolutionary breakthroughs of Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols and the later flights of Cecil Taylor but still sounding Jaki Byard; academic, indelible footprints on the Charles Mingus jazz workshop – particularly the classic sextet: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums
(Charles Mingus Sextet –
featuring Eric Dolphy, Live in Oslo 1964, “So long Eric” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, alto saxophone; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded:
live, University Aula, 12 April 1964])
TODAY marks nine months or 270 days since the 14 September 2017 genocidist Nigeria military, led by Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadists under Muhammadu Buhari, stormed the home of Nnamdi Kanu’s parents at Afaraukwu-Ibeku, eastcentral Biafra. Consequently, the whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (constituted integrally in the Biafra freedom movement), and his parents, remain unknown. Scores of the Kanus’ relatives and friends were murdered during the assault and scores of others are still unaccounted for. Three thousand Igbo people have been murdered across Biafra since Buhari, who in March 2015 had been imposed on as Nigeria’s head of regime by ex-United States President Barack Hussein Obama, first African-descent president of the US republic in 233 years of
existence, and ex-British Prime MinisterDavid Cameron, embarked on this bloodiest track of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide (13 January 1970-present day) in November 2015. After eight
years in the White House and 18 months since he left office, Obama now presents a dreadful presidential legacy of zealously supporting
the Igbo genocide, foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa,
executed on the ground by Nigeria, an islamist-led state, and its suzerain
state Britain. (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2017/05/on-30-march-2016-i-published-essay.html) GENOCIDIST Nigeria, this haematophagous monster, this most beastly and serially kakistocratic and notoriously most vividly anti-African peoples state ever emplaced in Africa, surely knows that it will account for the safety of Nnamdi Kanu and his parents and take full responsibility for the consequences of that savage raid on a family home.
(Donald Trump ... president of the US: steadily dismantling post 1939-1945 war West leadership consensus...)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
IN THE wake
of the just concluded captivating G7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada, it is
evident that anti-establishment US President Donald Trump is steadily dismantling
that post 1939-1945 war cosily predictable West leadership consensus that has since
run most of the world including, particularly, Africa. The consequences of this
development are surely immense and varied and will be discussed and analysed
and discussed and analysed… As the cliché goes, watch this space!
(The New York Contemporary Five, “Consequences” [personnel: Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; John Tchicai, alto saxophone; Don Moore, bass; JC Moses, drums; recorded: live, Jazzhus Montmarte, Copenhagen, Denmark, 15 November 1963])
ONE of African
America’s preeminent renaissance artists: sculptor, painter, poet
(The New York Contemporary Five plays Ornette Coleman’s composition, “When will the blues leave?” [personnel: Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Tchicai, alto saxophone; Don Moore, bass; JC Moses, drums; recorded: live, Jazzhus Montmarte, Copenhagen, Denmark, 15 November 1963])
AS I show in
the essay in the following link (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2015/05/blog-post_7.html), genocidist Nigeria, in 1999, declared 29
May of the year its “democracy day” as an additional tool in its murderous arsenal
to deny and erase 29 May 1966, day it and co-genocidist state Britain launched the Igbo genocide, from history
and public consciousness. Twenty-nine years earlier, 1970, soon after its end
of phases I-III of the genocide (12 January 1970), murdering 3.1 million Igbo people, the genocidists had abolished
the teaching of history in its schools as the key feature of this denialist project.
Failed mission Two reasons
account for the génocidaires’ abandonment of their 29 May so-called democracy
day on 6 June 2018:
1. The indefatigably resilient tenor of the politics of the
Biafra freedom movement with its heightened, pinpointed focus on the dates of
29May and 30 May (Heroes Day) on the Biafra calendar, particularly
in these last three years of the jihadist Muhammadu Buhari-led regime, has so
saturated the news cycle every month of May since that it makes nonsense of the
denialist theatrics of Nigeria’s 29 May “democracy day”.
2. The génocidaires high command is currently ravaged by a
grave crisis not seen in at least 30 years, exacerbated, pointedly, by the devastatingly
parallel murder campaigns by the jihadist terrorists Fulani militia and Boko Haram (2 of the 5 deadliest terrorist organisations in the world) in Nigeria’s
northcentral, northeast and the eastcentral Benue valley regions. These terrorists are allied more ideologically to the Fulani wing of the genocidist amalgam led by
Buhari. Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba, but a very influential member of the high
command who crucially supported ex-US President Obama and ex-British Prime
Minister Cameron’s imposition of Buhari as head of regime in March 2015, has informed
Buhari that he won’t now endorse a “continuation” of the latter’s regime beyond
March 2019. It was Obasanjo, as head of regime, who had decreed 29 May as “democracy day” back in 1999. Buhari’s abrogation
of 19 years of regime status placed on this date is therefore an embittered response
to Obasanjo’s decision not to back his post-2019 leadership ambitions.
IN yet
another act in these génocidaires’ bizarre enchantment to the theatre of “democracy
day”-declarations, Buhari, just as Obasanjo, has himself decreed 12 June as the latest Nigeria’s “democracy day” – a desperate, cruedly opportunistic attempt by Buhari to appeal to the wider Yoruba population for support for 2019
as 12 June itself is a day of remembrance in Yoruba history.
(Jaki Byard Trio, “Trendsition
zildjian”[personnel: Byard,
piano; David
Izenzon, bass; Elvin
Jones, drums; recorded: Prestige, New York, US, 31 October 1967])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe ARGUABLY Russia’s most famous poet and father of modern Russian literature whose matrilineal great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, is an enslaved African who works himself through to become an engineer, regional governor, and general in the czarist army and rises to the Russian aristocracy, and whose great-granddaughter Nadejda de Torby marries Prince George of Battenburg of the British royal family, uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen ElizabethII, grandfather of Prince Harry who, on 19 May 2018, marries
Meghan Markle whose mother, Doria Ragland, is African American
(Miles Davis Quintet plays “Footprints”, a composition by Wayne Shorter [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])
ONE of the most prolific composers of his generation with music stretching in multiform genres that he collectively captions “creative music”, multiinstrumentalist, philosopher, academic, chess player
(Dave Holland Quartet, “Conference of the birds” [personnel: Holland, bass; Rivers, reeds, flute; Braxton, reeds, flute; Barry Altschul, percussion, marimba; recorded: {as above}])
(Max Roach & Anthony Braxton, “Birth” [personnel: Roach, drums; Braxton, reeds; recorded: Ricordi Studios, Milan, Italy, 7 September 1978])
BANDLEADER, prolific arranger and producer, composer, especially the classic The Blues and the Abstract Truth (February 1961), featuring multiinstrumentalist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pianist Bill Evans, baritone saxophonist George Barrow, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Roy Haynes
(Oliver Nelson Septet,
“Yearnin’” [personnel: Nelson, reeds; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; George Barrow, baritone
saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 February 1961])
(Oliver Nelson Septet,
“Cascades” [personnel and recording details as above])
(Oliver Nelson Septet,
“Stolen moments” – [personnel and recording details as above except Nelson, tenor saxophone; Dolphy, flute])
PHYSICIAN, academic, distinguished researcher in medical sciences, directing, soon after his doctorate degree in Columbia University Medical School in 1940 (first African American, had earlier on in 1933 received his MD and Master of Surgery degrees at McGill University), the special New York-based blood transfusion service for Britain, set up in response to the acute blood supply shortages in the country, for both civilian and military, during these early months of the Second World War, named after the Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science, California
(Billy Strayhorn Quintet, “Upper Manhattan Medical Group” [personnel: Strayhorn, piano; Clark Terry, trumpet; Bob Wilbur, clarinet, soprano saxophone; Wendell Marshall, bass; Dave Bailey, drums; recorded: ?, 1965])
(O Obusonjo... day of beastly
monstrosity:“[c]hallenged ... Gbadomosi King[genocidist Nigeria air force pilot] to produce results ...
He [Gbadomosi King] redeemed his promise...”)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
THERE WAS HARDLY
any day during the entire 44-month duration of phases I-III of the Igbo
genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) that the Nigerian assault on Biafra did
not register some dreadful mark of infamy, such was the sheer savagery of
this murder mission – the most gruesome in Africa since the first decade of the 1900s.
5 June 1969, exactly 49 years ago today, was not different. Genocidist
commander Olusegun Obasanjo had, on this day of beastly monstrosity ordered his
air force to shoot down an international Red Cross aircraft carrying relief
supplies to the encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo.
OLUSEGUN OBASANJO clearly, unambiguously, records this horrendous crime in his
memoirs, appropriately entitled My
Command, published in 1981 by the reputable Heinemann London publishers.
Obasanjo had “challenged”, to quote his words, Captain Gbadomosi King
(genocidist air force pilot), who he had known since 1966, to “produce results”
in stopping further international relief flight deliveries to the Igbo. Within
a week of his infamous challenge, 5 June 1969, Olusegun Obasanjo recalls, most
nostalgically, Gbadomosi King “redeemed his promise”. Gbadomosi King had
shot down a clearly marked, in coming relief-bearing International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) DC-7 plane near Eket, south Biafra,
with the loss of its 3-person crew.
(DC-7 aircraft similar to the ICRC relief-carrying plane shot down over south Biafra by genocidist Nigeria military on the orders of commander O Obusonjo)
OLUSEGUN OBASANJO’s perverse
satisfaction over the aftermath of this horrendous crime is fiendish,
chillingly revolting. He writes: “The effect of [this] singular achievement of
the Air Force especially on 3 Marine Commando Division [the notorious unit
Obasanjo, who later becomes Nigeria’s
head of regime for 11 years, commanded] was profound. It raised morale of all
service personnel, especially of the Air Force detachment concerned and the
troops they supported in [my] 3 Marine Commando Division” (Obasanjo, My
Command: 79). Caliban and his “massa” Prospero Yet despite the huffing and puffing, the raving commanding brute is essentially
a coward who lacks the courage to face up to a world totally outraged by his
gruesome crime. Instead, Obasanjo, the quintessential Caliban, cringes into a
stupor and beacons to his Prospero, British Prime Minister Harold
Wilson (as he, Obansanjo, indeed unashamedly acknowledges in his My
Command), to “sort out” the raging international outcry generated by the
destruction of the ICRC plane... This request once again underscores Harold
Wilson’s coordinating role in the prosecution of the Igbo genocide from
the comfort of his offices and residence at 10 Downing Street, London, 3000
miles away. Anglo-Nigeria duo genocidists murdered 3.1 million Igbo people
or 25 per cent of this nation’s population during this foundational
genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. OLUSEGUN OBASANJO must now make the most honourable move over
this crime and surrender himself, voluntarily, with his memoirs, at the
International Criminal Court in The Hague and
explain to the world what happened over the skies of south Biafra on
that Thursday 5 June 1969. Failing to do this, it is incumbent on the ICC
to declare this man “wanted” – to tell the world why
he had ordered the destruction of the ICRC DC-7 aircraft with the death of its
3-person crew and who else in his genocidist high command is culpable of this
crime. How/What exactly did Harold Wilson do to “sort out” this crime, as duly requested by Obasanjo, 49 years ago?
(Mal Waldron Quartet, “Hymn from the inferno” [personnel: Waldron, piano; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Cecil McBee, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: Vanguard Studios, New York, US, 15 August 1981])
PHYSICIAN, first Igbo and African graduate of University of Edinburgh Medical School(August 1859), prolific author of the sciences and history, distinguished officer of the British army medical corps, visionary of freedom and restoration-of-African-independence and transformation of African fortunes in the world after centuries of European World enslavement, conquest, occupation and expropriation; entrepreneur and banker (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe)
(Red Garland Quintet, “All mornin’ long”[personnel: Garland, piano; Donald Byrd, trumpet; John Coltrane, tenor saxophone; George Joyner, bass; Art Taylor, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 15 November 1957])
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).
