Oldest Primary School Student, 90, Dies in Kenya

Al Jazeera English - Africa - World's oldest pupil dies at 90

Kimani Nganga Maruge, the world's oldest student, has died in Kenya at the age of 90 from stomach cancer, an official at a pensioners' home where he was living said.

Donatila Ekuyi from Cheshire Home for the Aged, announced his death on Friday, saying: "He has been sick and his condition had deteriorated lately."

Maruge made history at the age of 84 when he earned an entry in the Guinness book of records as the oldest man ever to start primary school.

As a veteran of Kenya's 1950's anti-colonial Mau Mau revolt, Maruge once said that he was inspired to start learning when he suspected a preacher was misinterpreting the Bible.

Technorati Tags: education, Kenya, obituary

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RIP Rashied Ali

Rashied Ali, 1935–2009

feuilleton writes:

The death this week of guitar pioneer Les Paul is already receiving considerable attention; less will be given to the passing of drummer Rashied Ali. The latter means more for me as a musician since I’m listening to his work all the time. Ali famously (and to some, controversially) replaced drummer Elvin Jones as John Coltrane’s drummer of choice from 1966 onwards, and Ali’s revolutionary free style enabled Coltrane to voyage even further out with his stream-of-consciousness sax playing. Ali’s playing supports all of Coltrane’s later recordings, including their extraordinary duet album Interstellar Space (recorded in the ’60s but not released until 1974). Following Coltrane’s death in 1967, Ali played on a number of albums by the fantastic Alice Coltrane, and while this period inevitably overshadows any appraisal of his work, his career continued to develop to the present day.

If you’re unused to the “formlessness” of free jazz, Interstellar Space can be a forbidding region until you attune yourself to its rarefied atmospheres. Alice Coltrane’s A Monastic Trio, recorded shortly after her husband’s death, is less challenging and a beautiful tribute to John Coltrane from his wife, friends and collaborators. With Jimmy Garrison on bass, Pharoah Sanders on sax, Alice playing harp and piano, and Ali drumming on five of its six tracks, its a perfect introduction to Ali’s work, and, by extension, to some of the finest music of the last century.

Technorati Tags: obituary, Rashied Ali, jazz, drums

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RIP Stanley Robertson, Human Archive

Stanley Robertson: storyteller, singer and writer | Times Online Obituary

When Stanley Robertson appeared in the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival in Washington in 2004, it was a meeting between a bricks-andmortar cultural repository and its flesh-and-blood equivalent.

Robertson had hundreds of hours of folk tales and a vast repertoire of traditional ballads and songs committed to memory. Regarded as a national treasure in Scottish traditional music circles and revered in storytelling circles as far afield as Denmark and the US, where storytelling events attract audiences in their thousands, Robertson could hold schoolchildren, pensioners, folk clubs and university conference delegates alike in thrall.

Technorati Tags: folklore, archive, orality, Scotland, Stanley Robertson, obituary

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RIP Hanne Hiob, Daughter of Brecht

Hanne Hiob, a German actress who was a daughter of the playwright Bertolt Brecht, died on Tuesday in Munich. She was 86.

Her death was announced by the Berlin office that represents Brecht’s descendants. No cause was given.

Ms. Hiob was the daughter of Brecht and his first wife, the opera singer Marianne Zoff. She was born in Munich on March 12, 1923. She grew up with her mother and trained as a dancer and actress, later performing at theaters in West and East Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

link: Hanne Hiob Actress and Brecht’s Daughter, Dies at 86 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com