Chukwuemeka Ike’s profound contemplation…

“No sign of the Biafra Sun. Not even at noon. Hibernating, like the migratory bird? Gone with the soul of Biafra? Or just Disappeared…” – Chukwuemeka Ike, Sunset at Dawn (London: Fontana, 1976), p. 16.

Father of African Literature on “The story”

“It is only the story ... that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind. Does the blind man own his escort? No, neither do we the story; rather, it is the story that owns us” – Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah, New York: Anchor Books, 1997, p. 114.

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91st birthday of Max Roach

(Born 10 January 1924, Newland, North Carolina, US)

Drummer, one of the influential innovators of the be-bop jazz revolution of the 1940s-1950s with fellow-drummer Kenny Clarke and lead proponents Charlie Parker (alto saxophone), Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Thelonious Monk (piano) and Bud Powell (piano) and later Charles Mingus (bass) and Miles Davis (trumpet), influential band leader, composer, academic

(Max Roach Quartet, “Speak, Brother, Speak!” [personnel: Roach, drums; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Mal Waldron, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; recorded live, The Jazz Workshop, San Francisco, US, 27 October 1962])

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100th birthday of Dean Dixon

(Born 10 January 1915, Harlem, New York, US)

Versatile conductor in a career stretching for 45 years, beginning in 1931, he occupies both principal and guest orchestral conducting positions at home and abroad – Sweden, Germany, Austria, Britain, Israel, Australia, Mexico

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125th anniversary of the patenting of William B Purvis’s fountain pen

William Purvis (Philadelphia, US) patents his fountain pen invention, 7 January 1890, and reflects, quite perceptibly: “[T]he object of my invention is to provide a simple, durable and inexpensive construction of the fountain pen adapted to general use and which may be carried in the pocket”

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77th birthday of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

(Born 5 January 1938, Kamĩrĩĩthũ, Kenya)

Novelist, playwright, essayist, conscience and treasured dissident voice in these turbulent times in the African World, indefatigable promoter of publishing in African languages as he, himself, has done consistently in the Gĩkũyũ beginning in the late 1970s when he publishes Caitaani Mũtharabainĩ which he later translates into English as Devil on the Cross (1980)

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Devil on the Cross (London: Heinemann African Writers, 1987, 256pp, £9.41/US$12.20, pbk)

For a succinct insight into the expansive contributions of  Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o to the heritage of African World Letters and associated development, see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (Dakar & Reading: African Renaissance, 20111), pp. 45-50. 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

151st birthday of George Washington Carver

(B [?]Jan 1864, Diamond, Mo, US; d 5 Jan 1943, Tuskegee, US)

Botanist/multidisciplinary scientist, multifaceted inventor, educator

 Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe