|
| Home |
| About Us |
| Radio Programmes |
| Nubiart Profile |
| Nubiart Diary |
| Listen on Demand |
| Productions |
| Mediawatch |
| Feedback |
| Lyrics |
| Your Support |
| Contact |
 |
 |
|
Home
Sitemap
Help
Media Library
Find a Partner
|
|
 |
|
|
AFRIKAN QUEST |
| Welcome to the home page of Afrikan Quest audio-visual production team. NUBIART EDITORIAL “NUBIART - A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON THE AFRIKAN WORLD” NUBIART EDITORIALS Nubiart Editorials from 2005-9 are available as annual reviews in MS Word. To receive them free e-mail us stating which year you would like to receive. ARTS OBITUARIES = AMINATA MOSEKA - FREEDOM FIGHTER JOINS THE ANCESTORS Submitted By: Norman (Otis) Richmond Date: Thu 26 August 2010 The Girl Can’t Help It: She was a Freedom Fighter - Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali writes about Aminata Moseka (aka Abbey Lincoln) who joined the Ancestors on 14 August 2010 “We have inherited a great music. This music is a holdover. It comes with us like the skin, the texture of our hair. It’s our memory banks.” - Abbey Lincoln. I have been blessed in many ways to have crossed paths with some of the giants of African history. Singer / Actress Abbey Lincoln (Aminata Moseka) and drummer Max Roach are two that I have met. Roach, I came to know quite well, and Lincoln to a lesser extent. Lincoln has now joined the ancestors. It is significant that she passed during the month of August which has come to be known as Black August in many circles. She was born on August 6, 1930 and died on August 14th at the age of 80. The Chicago-born Lincoln had many names. She was born Anna Marie Wooldridge and was strongly influenced by famed jazz singer Billie Holiday. She began her singing career in the mid-1950s with “Abbey Lincoln’s Affair - A Story of a Girl in Love” and performed until shortly before her death. Her last album, “Abbey Sings Abbey”, was released in 2007 and featured her own compositions. Lincoln’s career spanned six decades during which time she recorded more than 20 albums, wrote her own songs, acted in films and television shows and was a pioneering voice in the Black Power and African Liberation movements. In the 1970s, Lincoln appeared on several hit television shows, including “All in the Family” and “Marcus Welby, M.D.” She also appeared in several films, including “Nothing But A Man “, an independent film with Ivan Dixon; “For Love of Ivy” opposite Sidney Poitier in 1968, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe; and Spike Lee’s ‘Mo’ Better Blues’. She sang in the film “The Girl Can’t Help It,” a 1956 Jayne Mansfield vehicle about rock ‘n’ roll. She once joked about how Max Roach had rescued her from the supper club set. In ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ she wears Marilyn Monroe dress. She took off Monroe’s dress, put on traditional African clothes, and let her natural, nappy hair grow for the world to see. About her African name, she explained to me that Guinea’s former President Ahmed Sekou Toure gave her the name Aminata. The Minister of Information of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) named her Moseka. She had traveled to Africa as a guest of Miriam Makeba. Renowned record executive Nat Hentoff saw Lincoln as the one most passionately committed to African liberation. He said, “She was very outspoken, very much in front. She had integrity that could cut your head off.” Lincoln, Roach and Oscar Brown Jr., out of Chicago, collaborated on the groundbreaking album, “We Insist: Freedom Now Suite”. South Africa’s apartheid government banned this album along with “Uhuru Afrika” by Randy Weston and Lena Horne’s song, “Now”. The prohibition had made international headlines and was covered in a September 1964 issue of Downbeat magazine. The recording became a landmark musical statement of the African liberation movement. Lincoln later said that the political nature of the recording might have hurt her career. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2007, she said, “We all paid a price, but it was important to say something. It still is.” Revolutionary Heavyweights of Jazz Lincoln not only talked the talk, she walked the walk. She, Maya Angelou and a Trinidadian-American named Rosa Guy formed the Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage. These women took heroic stands on African issues in the United States and aboard. When Patrice Lumumba, the democratically elected president of the Congo, was assassinated on January 17, 1961, this group went into action. These women, along with men like Max Roach disrupted a United Nations meeting after learning that Lumumba had been murdered by Belgian imperialist and their Congolese stooges. This action took place on February 14, 1961. The Afro-wearing Lincoln also paid tribute to the giant African Nationalist Marcus Mosiah Garvey, on a piece called “Garvey’s Ghost”. Max Stanford (today Muhammad Ahmad) who was a leading member of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) painted a picture of Garvey’s Ghost that appeared on the cover of RAM’s theoretical journal, “Black America”. Ahmad was influenced by Lincoln and Roach. The Philadelphia-born Ahmad pointed out in his volume, We Will Return In The Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations 1960-1975: “The Freedom Now Suite immediately raised my political / cultural consciousness.” He saw the revolutionary couple perform The Freedom Now Suite at a National Association of Colored Peoples convention. Lincoln worked with a who’s who of the giants of the music. Coleman Hopkins, Eric Dolphy, Sonny Rollins, Wynton Kelly, Kenny Dorham, Booker Little, Archie Shepp, Rodney Kendrick and many of the heavyweights of the music that has come to be called jazz. Lincoln and Roach fed off each other, creatively. They were married in 1962 and divorced in 1972. When they both looked back on it, each remembered the other as representing salvation. Roach said that Lincoln appeared “When I was drinking myself into oblivion”. Lincoln, on Roach: “My consciousness was opened. Max introduced me to museums and things, because I wasn’t that kind. I didn’t know anything about culture. I was really a simple country girl.” Toronto’s own Sharron Mcleod, Liz Wright and Cassandra Wilson, were significantly impacted by Lincoln. The great, Cassandra Wilson, said: “I learned a lot about taking a different path from Abbey. Investing your lyrics with what your life is about in the moment.” Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali is the producer / host of Saturday Morning Live (SML), Diasporic Music on CKLN-FM and Diasporic Music on Uhuru Radio. SML can be heard every Saturday from 10am to 1pm. www.ckln.fm, Diasporic Music on CKLN every last Thursday 8pm to 10pm www.ckln.fm and Diasporic Music on Uhuru Radio can be heard every two weeks on Uhuru Radio © Ligali. This obituary first appeared on the Ligali website: www.ligali.org = SYD BURKE (1938 – 30 July 2010) Edmund ‘Syd’ Burke passed away at the Charing Cross Hospital in London following a long battle colon cancer. The eldest of six children, Jamaican-born Burke was a graduate of Cornwall College, in Montego Bay, and the Excelsior High School in Kingston, where he was Head Boy. He trained as an Engineer in Jamaica, before coming to the UK in 1960 to study Photography at North London Polytechnic. He rose to prominence as a broadcaster through his radio talk show, ‘Rice ‘n’ Peas’ on London Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) in the 1970s and 80s. After leaving LBC, he ran a training programme for young broadcasters all over the country. Burke was predeceased by his wife Veronica in 2002. He leaves behind three sons. Syd’s brother, Dr Aggrey Burke, said: "(Syd) was a celebrity photographer, providing photographs for several newspapers. And then he turned to radio broadcasting and became a pioneer. He used his programme to promote good racial relationships between different groups of people. He was one for bringing people together. He then went into training and influenced a lot of broadcasters." = MAC TONTOH (25 Dec 1940 – 16 Aug 2010) Mac Tontoh, the trumpet player and one of the founders of Afro-Rock band, Osibisa, has passed away at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra. He had suffered a stroke and diabetes and earlier this year was flown to London for treatment. However, he relapsed due to complications of the stroke. While in London Mac had been able to attend an Osibisa conference right to the end promoting the legacy of Osibisa’s huge influence on the music industry. Mac Tontoh was born in Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti region of Ghana. His first band, 'The Comets', was led by his elder brother, Teddy Osei. They were popular in Ghana and Nigeria during the early 1960s for highlife and jazz, and Mac soon emerged as one of the leading and most progressive Ghanaian hornsmen, fusing the modern jazz styles of trumpeters such as Miles Davis and Clifford Brown with West African highlife. Following his move to Accra, Mac spent a brief period with the Brigade Band of Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, which played mainly at state functions, before joining the now legendary Uhuru Band which played its own brand of highlife as well as hits from Afrikan-American composers such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie. During his time with Uhuru Mac also ran a smaller jazz combo, the Bogart Sounds Sextet, made up of the cream of Uhuru's sidemen. Mac left Ghana for Hamburg, Germany, in 1968 playing in various jazz clubs in the St. Pauli area. After meeting up with his brother, Teddy, and drummer, Sol Amarfio, in Tunisia, the trio traveled to London to form Osibisa. The band were famous for fusing West Afrikan highlife, calypso, funk, and rock elements. Mac co-wrote all of Osibisa's major hits, including ‘Music for Gong Gong’, ‘Welcome Home’ and the anthemic worldwide classic ‘Sunshine Day’, as well as the soundtrack for Sig Shore's 1973 movie ‘Superfly TNT’. He also put in horn duties for the Rolling Stones, Peter Green and Elton John. In 1992, after more than twenty years of living in London or on the road, Mac returned home to Ghana and, with producer-engineer Mike Swai, set up his own recording studio in Accra. The first product of this new phase was Mac's first solo album, ‘Rhythms and Sounds’ (1994), which featured a jazz-tinged contemporary take on some classic Ghanaian highlife styles together with hard-hitting African funk whose energy and punch recalled Mac's early days with Osibisa. Several tracks from the album were used by GBCTV. Mac then decided to look deeper into the musical traditions of the Ashanti forming a new band in Kumasi with drummers and singers versed in the Kete and Adowa styles of the region. Mac toured the UK with the Kete Warriors in 2000 and 2001 to a rapturous reception from British audiences. Mac was working with the Ghana National Commission on Culture, until his untimely death. His passing follows closely on that of Spartacus R, Osibisa’s founding bass player, in July, at the age of 61. EDITORIAL = DR CONGO Three issues ago we expressed concern at the lack of coverage of the situation across the DR Congo in any way that can provide solutions to the myriad problems plaguing the country. In the intervening six weeks there have been two civilian plane crashes and allegations of a decade-long genocide perpetrated by Rwandan RPF soldiers and their allies against the civilian population in eastern DR Congo. Meanwhile, Russian Viktor Bout has been fighting extradition from Thailand to the US on arms smuggling, fraud and money laundering charges. Bout’s Antonov and Ilyushin planes were used by Britain, the US and UN to fly ‘relief supplies’ at the same time as they were used to smuggle arms into conflict zones such as Angola, Central African Republic, DR Congo, Liberia, Libya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Afghanistan, Colombia and Kosovo. Then there has been the mass rape of 154 females of all ages and young boys over a three-week period in eastern DR Congo at a time when UN soldiers had passed through the area at least twice without noticing (or caring?) that anything was untoward. In the last case the UN said nobody told them about the situation even though they knew roadblocks had been set up. Perhaps people were ashamed or frightened of what would happen if they reported the atrocities. Or perhaps given the UN’s own past history of gross sexual exploitation across Afrika’s war zones they were concerned the blue berets would join in the rapes. We end with the same two paragraphs from the previous editorial: “DR Congo is on paper the richest country in the world given its minerals, agriculture and natural resources and is well-positioned at the heart of Afrika to power the continent to prosperity. While not underestimating the political obstacles and historical trauma facing it we must accept it as a collective pan-Afrikan failure that despite all our efforts, talk and knowledge we have not been able to implement a solution that will allow the country as a sole nation-state or confederation to attain its role as a regional powerhouse.” |
|
| FORTHCOMING NUBIART PROFILES NUBIART: Focus on arts, business, education, health, political developments and the media. SEP PROMOS ~ ‘Eritrea’s Got Soul’ - Asmara All Stars’ [Out Here Records – Out Oct 2010] This multi-generational project highlights the Eri-jazz, krar, gwaila, soul, reggae and rap music of Asmara. The album opens with the veteran Kunama singer Dahab Faytinga’s ‘Amajo’ and brings back memories from the last decade when we have trawled record shops snapping up anything that might have been even tangentially linked to Eritrea’s top female singer. Other stand out tracks alongside Faytinga’s second contribution, ‘Gwaila International’, are ‘Wushati’ with Brkti Weldeslassie, the Afar ‘Anisako’ with Mohammed Ahmed Shaabi and Bilen Sara Teklesenbet’s ‘Fhensela’ majestically riding the bassline from Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’. As the project came out of a government-sanctioned visit there are songs in all the languages of Eritrea. The fulsome sleevenotes give the background to some of the issues Bruno Blum and the Asmara All-Stars faced as the project developed. NUBIART LIBRARY – SEP MEDIA We will only review books we have read and DVDs we have seen and that are available at reasonable prices online or in shops or libraries. However, given the nature and current state of Afrikan publishing and production there may be books and films on this list that are worth the extra effort to track down. ~ ‘Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War: Facing the Future’ – Raph Uwechue [Jeune Afrique] With Nigerians at home and abroad saddling up to mark 50 years of flag-and-anthem independence in October we took at look at what was called ‘Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War: A Call For Realism’ when it was first published in 1969. This revised and expanded version was published the following year (after the collapse of Biafra) with forewords by Nnamdi Azikiwe and Leopold Sedar Senghor. Raph Uwechue was an Igbo born in Edo State, in the Midwest Region of Nigeria. Having gone to Paris as Nigeria’s Charge d’Affaires he became Biafra’s representative in France but quit in Sep 1968 after deciding that what Nigeria needed instead of secession was the creation of more states to ensure none of Nigeria’s ethnic groups was in a position to dominate the whole country while still being able to practise their culture and engage in economic and social development at the state level. ‘Reflections’ is a discussion document that highlights the problems Nigerians faced in the 1960s and which they have collectively as a nation been unable to resolve in the intervening four decades. Today 80% of Nigerians live in abject poverty and electricity power cuts are endemic despite the massive oil wealth which supplanted an economically viable agricultural industry. ~ ‘Desert Dawn’ – Waris Dirie and Jeanne D’Hoem [Virago Press ISBN: 978-1-84408-008-3] This is the updated edition of the second part of fashion model and UN Ambassador Waris Dirie’s autobiography. Following on from ‘Desert Flower’ which focused on her early life as a desert nomad, leaving Somalia and becoming a fashion model, ‘Desert Dawn’ is about Waris’s homecoming to her family in a Somalia with no central government riven by clan fighting and internal and external migration. “I wanted to return to the place where I was born and see it with new eyes. I had no idea where my family was in Somalia. At first it seemed impossible…almost as impossible as a camel girl becoming a fashion model”. Waris is now a campaigner against forced female circumcision and you can get more info at: www.desertdawn.org ~ ‘Masai: The Rain Warriors’ – Dir. Pascal Plisson [Optimum Releasing Ltd ISBN: 5-060034-572047] ‘Masai’ is filmed with documentary-like authenticity in an awe-inspiring landscape. The main characters in this film are warriors from Masai Mara and the story is based on a Masai legend about warriors who have to kill a mythical lion and offer its mane as a sacrifice to the Red God, in order for the rain to return. As the young men travel across the plains, they must face treachery, fear and rivalry in order to become true rain warriors. |