Drummers in Lagos & Joshua Redman
funmilayo
Drummers in Lagos: Part 1-3
http://www.cafeafricana.com/African%20Music.html
Joshua Redman:
http://www.cafeafricana.com/Jazz%20Legends.html
Happy Holidays!
Funmilayo
www.cafeafricana.com
“The secret of human freedom is to act well, without attachment to the
results."-Bhagavad Gita
www.indigokafe.com
Portal for African Literatures, Writers, and Films
“Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to
those who seek to suppress the truth.” -Wole Soyinka
www.csein.org
Children Services and Education in Nigeria, Inc.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Thursday evening I missed the first part of a discussion about WORLD
Music, but was there for the second part in which I had to answer from
the floor - a very confident assertion from an ostensibly well-
meaning Oyibo woman ( Kristina Aspeqvist) who had learned some
percussion in Ghana but persisted that there was next to no jazz in
West Africa – it’s matter she could have discussed more intimately
with the rascal I know as John Chernoff but I merely got to asking
her whether she knew Roy Watts who used to present Jazz programmes on
Ghana Radio and to telling her about the Black Star Line and the
movement of trumpets and saxophones, trumpeters and saxophonists to
and from West Africa, about Satchmo having his biggest live audience
ever in Ghana , about certain early jazz bands in Sierra Leone, about
E.T Mensah and Cardinal Rex Lawson, and asked her WHAT about Fela and
that was a stark reminder, because I once had a get- together party
for Harvey Cropper and Allen Polite at which jazzman and artist Harvey
who had a few years earlier had been part of the Swedish contingent to
FESTAC dismissed all the Congo soukous as "pop" and thundered”Bring on
FELA!"
Did she ever listen to Joe Mensah’s hit “Bonsue”?
I also wanted to remind the drummer-sister that Art Blakey learned
some of his drumming in Nigeria (I and a Hungarian friend spent an
evening talking to him in his hotel, after he had played in Stockholm
– he talked about Africa and about his children) and I could have
added that Charlie Byrd played in Freetown on 6th August 1969 - as did
many visiting jazz brothers and sisters before him, such as Cozy Cole
under the auspices of USIS. I could have added people like Ebenezer
Kojo Samuels an old schoolmate who I heard blow his head off with his
Kapingbdi band in the mid eighties, not to mention Dele Okonwo - one
of the best Highlife saxophonists it was possible to be. I once tried
to phone him at Surulere nightclub was with him a week before an
asthma attack took him away… we also have Fela’s guitarist Chuck
Anthony here in Stockholm.
Please supply us more Nigerian , West African, South African IAZZ
Cornelius Hamelberg
A lil moe personal point-of-view gossip, reminiscing history on the theme:
The residence of W.E. B. DuBois later on along with people like George Padmore, Maya Angelou in Ghana their Promised Land (eventually
"With a black star in the centre,
Representing the Freedom of Africa.
Even saw Arthur Ashe wallop Stan Smith at an exhibition match in Accra and this too like Kwame Toure in Conakry
had its own spectacular impact on Africa- Africa-America consciousness & Africa- America relations.
From the floor to Kristina Aspeqvist I did mention Guy Warren (and his son after him – although I don't know if his son has wholly followed his dad's footsteps into – strictly speaking JAZZ.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK257&q=Kristina+Aspeqvist
Kwatei Jones –Quartey was a friend and our occasional visitor at the Chalets, South Legon – in those days when lunch - a mountain of banku and contumly at the Workers' Canteen used to cost 50 pesewa & with a cup of palmy, would make a man feel a little drowsy by 2 O'clock in the afternoon, due to so much over-eating causing the usual little brain-drain down to the dictatorship of the stomach, to sort things out there……
Kwatei's dad was Professor of Education then - and perhaps it would tickle Professor Kwabena Akurang-Parry funny bone/sense of humour a little bit more and add a sense of where he himself is coming from to read Prof Jones –Quartey's seminal essay on the West African sense of humour – if he hasn't done so, and if he can get his fingers - or eyes on it, could he please post it to the Forum?!?..(For US)
Kwatei was a very good blues and jazz guitarist already and in those days, like the Bannerman brothers of Kingsway Hotel Kumasi he also of course played Hendrix, but also Shuggie Otis, Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield and was apparently listening to a lot of jazz
(My better half had a great jazz collection and great sound system which asserted e.g. Oliver Nelson's "Blues and the Abstract Truth ", loudly enough over the speakers, something that entranced young Kwatei. Kwatei who around that time was fluent, like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtVybch8OA
Today he plays guitar in Olu Dara's band, on guitar in "neighbourhoods" and "In The World: From Natchez To New York"
http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=1097765&cart=807846794
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=OLu+Dara&search_type=&aq=f
Irishman John Collins was also a good friend (I used to call him wah-wah Collins – because he had just discovered the wah-wah pedal. As head of the Music section in Legon he is more than qualified to write that history of Ghanaian jazz – his dad who was professor of philosophy then , was believe it or not an authentic exponent of the Amponsah guitar style of which Koo Nimo is the doyen , today.
Those were the Black Power days of an annual number of at least 600 African dashiki & Agbada clad Americans arriving annually, to look for their ROOTS and to celebrate what they called "retentions" With people like walking jazzman Lady Day's Joe Seward on campus, Adrianne Seward, Jean Love, George Crowell, another Hendrix, Cyprian Lamar Rowe, Ron Baer, Rudy and Thelma Silas, Tommy Annan, Mustapha Addy Tetteh, my immediate neighbour (Delta Blues Robert Johnson's incarnation) Terry Smutylo, Julian, Roger and Larny, Randy, Roberta Turner . I'm talking about the tip of the jazz infrastructure at Legon and such influence as their very existence exerted was bound to carry on. And then of course there was the big event : SOUL TO SOUL with cats like Les McCann and electric Saxo Eddie Harris whose "Swiss Movement " was then current) Guy Warren, Roberta Flack, Ike& Tina , Charlotte Dada, met Carlos Santana backstage immediately after his " Soul Sacrifice"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK257&q=Guy+Warren
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Hm2xXEcC4
Since all these things were so or as the Latinate say cum quae ita sint it stands to reason that we expect a fuller flowering of jazz emerging from Ghana …
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=CK+Mann&search_type=&aq=f
I should be moving on to greater expectations from Nigeria next, but right now mustn't rave too much, in such little space, so hej-doe
A Wonderful selection. Dewey's son & it's rightly said, "blood's
thicker than mud!"
Thursday evening I missed the first part of a discussion about WORLD
Music, but was there for the second part in which I had to answer from
the floor - a very confident assertion from an ostensibly well-
meaning Oyibo woman ( Kristina Aspeqvist) who had learned some
percussion in Ghana but persisted that there was next to no jazz in
West Africa – it's matter she could have discussed more intimately
with the rascal I know as John Chernoff but I merely got to asking
her whether she knew Roy Watts who used to present Jazz programmes on
Ghana Radio and to telling her about the Black Star Line and the
movement of trumpets and saxophones, trumpeters and saxophonists to
and from West Africa, about Satchmo having his biggest live audience
ever in Ghana , about certain early jazz bands in Sierra Leone, about
E.T Mensah and Cardinal Rex Lawson, and asked her WHAT about Fela and
that was a stark reminder, because I once had a get- together party
for Harvey Cropper and Allen Polite at which jazzman and artist Harvey
who a few years earlier had been part of the Swedish contingent to
FESTAC dismissed all the Congo soukous as "pop" and thundered"Bring on
FELA!"
Did she ever listen to Joe Mensah's hit "Bonsue"?
I also wanted to remind the drummer-sister that Art Blakey learned
some of his drumming in Nigeria (I and a Hungarian friend spent an
evening talking to him in his hotel, after he had played in Stockholm
– he talked about Africa and about his children) and I could have
added that Charlie Byrd played in Freetown on 6th August 1969 - as did
many visiting jazz brothers and sisters before him, such as Cozy Cole
under the auspices of USIS. I could have added people like Ebenezer
Kojo Samuels an old schoolmate who I heard blow his head off with his
Kapingbdi band in the mid eighties, not to mention Dele Okonkwo - one
of the best Highlife saxophonists it was possible to be. I once tried
to phone him at Surulere nightclub was with him a week before an
asthma attack took him away… we also have Fela's guitarist Chuck
Anthony here in Stockholm....We want to hear more Nigerian, West African and South African jazz,
please!
Dr. Valentine Ojo
Would you be familiar with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMahq_d1nl0&feature=related
A piano rendition of the same number:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgXlSe9mRcQ&feature=related
Enjoy them both!
Dr. Valentine Ojo
Tall Timbers, MD
Cornelius Hamelberg
There I sat in the Great Synagogue of Stockholm which was packed to
full capacity for that special occasion and I heard one of the wisest
of the Hebrew faith say to us all "We all came from Africa!" at which
point I tapped the pale Pole sitting beside me to bring truth to his
attention and he did whisper back with considerably suppressed
emotion," Well, you see, there's a black sheep in every family"
So my brother, ow foh do…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eeBaIUrdec
I've been viewing your photo-genic features and the out-dooring but
don't know whether you are in Seattle -Washington where my better half
went to school (birthplace of voodoo chile Jimi Hendrix) - or are you
in Maryland?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZK80Mesqq0
In case you are wondering how come etc, well, I'm going through the
archives and also starting with the poets Chidi Anthony Opara and Obi
Nwakanma, trying to get to know who is who, who is Don John Mbaku,
trying to get to know the lay of the land, who is honourable Yoruba
man like you and me, who is Honourable Igbo man like Obi, who is
Adesani, where is Cornelius Adebayo of Kwarra and the Johnson brothers
from Ondo, the senior service big shots from Ikoyi, Lagos and the
people from our White House in Owerri, where Warrior and the Oriental
Brothers used to hold house and the Kofi Sammy Okukuseku love of
highlife people of Aba & Ghana, not to mention those who think they
know everything when what they know is really not that much at all.
http://thejazznetwork.ning.com/video/the-last-poets-poem-to-jimi
Right now or God willing, as soon as things can be brought to greater
calm and quiet
we and our troubled, mournful brethren in Nigeria could be singing
from Pharaoh Sanders
'" Jewels of Thought", the song
"Hum Allah Hum Allah Hum Allah" along with Leon Thomas:
"Peace is the will of the nation:
With peace we can go ahead......
"Prince of Peace
Won't you hear my plea,
and ring your bells of peace,
let loving never cease? "
On Nov 30, 6:21 pm, "Dr. Valentine Ojo" <val...@md.metrocast.net>
wrote:
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> - Show quoted text -