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

64th birthday of Jean-Bertrand Aristide

 

(Born 15 July 1953, Port Salut, Haiti)

CATHOLIC priest of Salesian Order, liberation theologian and three times African peoples-centred president of Haiti (7 February 1991-29 September 1991, 12 October 1994-7 February 1996, 7 February 2001-29 February 2004) during which he carries out expansive general population-focused reforms and provisions in health care, education and agriculture and tackling/curbing/dismantling a range of murderous military/quasimilitary brigades employed by regimes in the past to terrorise the people

(Sonny Rollins at the Village Gate, 1962, “Dance of the reed pipes” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: live, Village Gate, New York, US, 27-30 July 1962])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe