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 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)
Pianist, organist, composer, arranger, his salutary majesty of the big band and swing whose orchestra for 50 years, beginning in 1935, becomes a conservatoire for the distinguished graduating array of instrumentalists and singers of the age including, particularly, tenor saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry Edison and singers Billie Holiday, Helen Humes, Big Joe Turner, Joe Williams and Jimmy Rushing
(Count Basie and Orchestra, “One O’clock jump” [Reveille with Beverley film, 1943])
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).
