59th birthday of Esiaba Irobi

(Born 1 October 1960, Aba, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe 

DISTINGUISHED Biafra restoration-of-independence centred scholar:  poet, essayist, dramatist – Cotyledons (1988), Inflorescence: Selected Poems, 1977-1988 (1989), Hangmen Also Die (1989), Gold, frankincense, and myrrh: A play (1989), The other side of the mask: a play (1999), The fronded circle: a play (1999), Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin and Other Poems (2005)

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Untitled original 90314” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

106th birthday of Aimé Césaire

(Born 26 June 1913, Basse-Pointe, Martinique)

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; of Igbo descent,***** 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 on Frantz Fanon, fellow Martinican and celebrated freedom scholar and author of The Wretched of the Earth.

(*****Chukwuma Azuonye, “Igbo Names in the Nominal Roll of Amelié, An Early 19th Century Slave Ship from Martinique: Reconstructions, Interpretations and Inferences”, Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series, Paper 8, 1990, p. 1. {Thanks to Chidi Osuagwu for kindly citing this reference in his communication with me, Wednesday 26 June 2019 [HE-E].})

(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 is the author of The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

107th birthday of Léon-Gontram Damas

(Born 28 March 1912, Cayenne, French-occupied Guiana, east of Suriname, S America)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

POET, editor, philosopher, academic, co-founder, with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire, of the 1930s-1940s “negritude” intellectual movement of African-peoples affirmation in Paris, France, and whose demonstrable volume of poetry, Pigments (1937), gives notice of the engaging trajectory of the movement:

… my hatred thrived on the margins of culture

the margin of theories the margin of idle talk

with which they stuffed me since birth

even though all in me aspired to be [African]

while they ransacked my Africa

(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Spectrum” [personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone;  Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author,

with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

77th birthday of Ama Ata Aidoo

(Born 23 March 1942, Saltpond, Ghana)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe 

DISTINGUISHED poet, playwright, novelist, academic

(Alice Coltrane Trio, “Oceanic beloved” [personnel: Coltrane, harp;  Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 6 June 1968]) 

*****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

82nd birthday of Michael Echeruo

(Born 14 March 1937, Umunumo, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

POET, literary critic, academic, university vice chancellor (president/rector),  offers selfless and distinguished service as head of the Biafra resistance government’s communication directorate during phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, carried out by Fulani islamist/jihadist-led Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain who murder 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation’s population; in phase-IV of the genocide, 13 January 1970-present day, the dual genocidists have murdered an additional tally of tens of thousands of Igbo people – including the 3000 murdered by the Muhammadu Buhari regime and its adjunct Fulani militia since November 2015, following Buhari’s imposition in power in March 2015 by ex-US President Barack Obama and ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron

(Booker Little Sextet, “We speak” [personnel: Little, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Don Friedman, piano; Art Davis, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Nola’s Penthouse Studios, New York, US, 17 March 1961])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

84th birthday of Kofi Awoonor

(Born 13 March 1935, Wheta, Ghana)

POET, linguist, academic, diplomat

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

58th birthday of Esiaba Irobi

(Born 1 October 1960, Aba, Biafra)

DISTINGUISHED dramatist (“Nwokedi”, “Hangmen also Die”, “Cemetery Road”), poet, essayist, Biafra freedom-centred scholar

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Living space” [personnel: Coltrane, soprano saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

105th birthday of Aimé Césaire

(Born 26 June 1913, Basse-Pointe, Martinique)

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 on Frantz 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])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

141st birthday of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller

(Born 9 June 1877, Philadelphia, US)

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])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

219th birthday of Alexander Pushkin

(Born 6 June 1799, Moscow, Russia)

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 Elizabeth II, 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]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

106th birthday of Léon-Gontram Damas

(B 28Mar1912, Cayenne, French-occupied Guiana, S America)

POET, editor, philosopher, academic, co-founder with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire of the 1930s-1940s “negritude” intellectual movement of African affirmation in Paris, France, and whose demonstrable volume of poetry, Pigments (1937), gives notice of the engaging trajectory of the movement:

… my hatred thrived on the margins of culture

the margin of theories the margin of idle talk

with which they stuffed me since birth

even though all in me aspired to be [African]

while they ransacked my Africa

(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Spectrum” [personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone;  Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

89th birthday of Cecil Taylor

(Born 25 March 1929, New York, US)

VIRTUOSO pianist and one of the preeminent leaders of the free-jazz movement beginning in the mid-1950s, prolific composer, poet, academic

(TWO masters’ rare and perhaps only known recording session together: John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor play Coltrane Time, featuring the following four compositions: “Shifting down”, “Just friends”, “Like someone in love”, “Double clutching” [full personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Taylor, piano; Chuck Israels, bass; Louis Hayes, drums; recorded: United Artists Records, New York, US, 13 October 1958])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

76th birthday of Ama Ata Aidoo

(Born 23 March 1942, Saltpond, Ghana)

 Distinguished poet, novelist, playwright, academic

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

81st birthday of Michael Echeruo

(Born 14 March 1937, Umunumo, Biafra)

POET, literary critic, academic, university president (vice-chancellor/rector),  offers selfless and distinguished service as head of the crucial Biafran resistance government communication directorate during phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, carried out by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain who murder 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation’s population; in phase-IV of the genocide, 13 January 1970-present day, the dual genocidists have murdered an additional tally of tens of thousands of Igbo people

(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]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

83rd birthday of Kofi Awoonor

(Born 13 March 1935, Wheta, Ghana)

Poet, linguist, academic, diplomat

 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe