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.
Pianist, bandleader, prolific composer whose output, arrangements and The Arkestra’s performances are influenced profoundly by Kemetic philosophical, astronomical and aesthetic conceptions
(Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra, “Space aura” [personnel: Sun Ra, piano, George Hudson, trumpet; percussion; Marshall Allen, alto saxophone, bells; John Gilmore, tenor saxophone, percussion; Ronnie Boykins, bass, percussion; Jon Hardy, drums; recorded: Saturn, Chicago, US, [?] October 1960])
Innovative pianist, comedian, prolific composer/co-composer including such standards as “Jitterbug waltz”, “Honeysuckle rose”, “Ain’t misbehavin’”, “I can’t give you anything but love, baby”, and “Squeeze me”
(Fats Waller, “Ain’t misbehavin’” [personnel: Waller, piano, vocal; recording: Victor Machine Co’s Studio 1, Camden, NJ, US, 21 August 1929; details of rest of personnel at the date not available])
(Charles Mingus Sextet – with multiinstrmentalist Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, plays Waller’s “Jitterbug waltz” composition [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964])
(Chudi Nnamdi soon after his historic medal win
run under the Biafra flag at the Stockholm Marathon, Sweden, Saturday 20 May
2017)
To underscore, further, the historic significance
of Chudi Nnamdi’s decision to run for Biafra, not genocidist Nigeria, see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Biafra at the Rio
2016 Olympics: A retrospective”, Pambazuka
News: Voices for Freedom and Justice, 9 March 2017,
(Cecil Taylor, “Pontos cantados” [personnel: Taylor, piano; recorded: One night with Blue Note: The historic all-star reunion concert, Town Hall, New York, US, 22 February 1985])
(Born 20 May 1743, Bréda at Haut de Cap enslaved estate [probably], Saint-Domingue)
Leader of the Haitian Revolution, embarks on the armed mobilisation oftens of thousands of enslaved Africans, beginning 1789, in revolt against French-occupied Saint-Domingue, west Hispaniola, the Caribbean, wealthiest African-enslaved territory of the Americas during the epoch, with the eventual historic 1804 African military victory (against not only France but also the expanded forces of its pan-European allies who come to its aid) when they proclaim the Republic of Haiti
(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 November 1981])
(Friday 19 May 2017: Some of the delegates gather soon after the horrendous assault by Nigeria genocidist brigade of the Biafra women’s conference meeting in Abiriba, east Biafra)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
IF EVER the world requires a reminder, this assault on Igbo women conference delegates in Abiriba underscores the definitive stride of the Hausa-Fulani islamist jihadist-led Nigeria/British suzerain state genocide against Igbo people. During phases I-III (29 May 1966-12 January 1970), the genocide anthem’s lyrics in Hausa language from its ghoulish sound track, broadcast on Kaduna radio and television state-run radio and television services, are hauntingly stark:
Mu je mu kashe nyamiri Mu
kashe maza su da yan maza su Mu
chi mata su da yan mata su Mu
kwashe kaya su
English translation
Let’s go kill the damned
Igbo
Kill off their men and boys
Rape their wives and daughters
Cart off their
property
POINTEDLY, the anthem’s mission and thus the genocide strike at the very heart of Igboland gender relations for over a millennium – clearly what the Igbo sociologist Kemena Okonjo has described programmatically as Igbo dual-gender complementarity. This genocide’s annhilative goal is total: Igbo people – the Igbo female and the Igbo male.
Alas, the genocide perpetrators do not as yet recognise the current, often noisy NGO-ish, easy-money churning, pointedly grandstanding a-historical discourses in the West World that flag off “girl-child” vs “male-child” binaries in the attempt to engineer the humanity of especially African peoples for envisaged, suggestively catastrophic gender “re-ordering” schemas... For now, the duo Anglo-islamist Nigeria that has murdered Igbo people for the past 51 years, murdering 3.1 million and tens of thousands more, duly acknowledge a composite Igbo humanity and this is what they pursue and the Abiriba attack is encapsulated in that strategy...
AS USUAL, the Biafran resistance recorded comprehensively all principal Nigerian genocidist troopers (including rank details and formations) who participated in the Abiriba outrage earlier today. These genocidists and their chief, Muhammadu Buhari,do know too clearly that there are nostatute of limitations in international law in the apprehension, prosecution, conviction and punishment of anyone or institution involved in the act of committing genocide. The Igbo will seek to prosecute all these troopers in Abiriba who attacked Igbo today, Friday 19 May 2017, as well as all those who have committed similar heinous crimes against the Igbo since the genocide was launched on Sunday 29 May 1966.
(Eric Dolphy Septet plays “Naima”, John Coltrane’s classic composition [personnel: Dolphy, bass clarinet; Donald Byrd, trumpet; Nathan Davis, tenor saxophone; Jacques Dieval, piano; Jacques B Hess, bass; Franco Manzecchi, drums; Jacky Bambou, percussion; recorded: ORTF radio broadcasts, Paris, France,
11 June 1964])
One of the preeminent leaders of the African American freedom movement
(Sonny Rollins Trio, “The freedom suite” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 7 March 1958])
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).
