What's Up?
"Echezonachukwu Nduka mixes western classical music with African influences to produce a unique audio fusion."
- BBC World Service, Newsday.
Life & Work
Bio:
Echezonachukwu Nduka, poet and pianist, is the author of two poetry collections Chrysanthemums for Wide-eyed Ghosts (Griots Lounge, 2018), and Waterman (Griots Lounge, 2020). He holds degrees in Music from both the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Kingston University London, UK. In 2016, he was awarded the Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize on World Poetry Day. Hailed by Guardian Life Magazine as Artist Extraordinaire, Nduka’s literary works have been published in The Indianapolis Review, Transition, Bombay Review, Kissing Dynamite, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry Vol. II, and A Thousand Voices Rising: An Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, among others.
A specialist in piano music by African composers, Nduka has performed at the National Opera Centre in New York, Gateway Playhouse (New Jersey), IMI Concert (St. Louis, Missouri), as well as numerous other venues. His work has been featured on BBC Newsday, Radio France International, Classical Journey Ep. 134, and Radio Nacional Clasica de Argentina.
from www.worldartsagency.co.za/echezonachukwu-nduka
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Waterman affirms Echezonachukwu Nduka’s stature as an experienced poet. The poems are carefully crafted, highly descriptive, and flow rhythmically. Through the collection, the poet’s experiences of navigating through urban society come alive through images of music, water, and Catholicism. There are keen observations, witty and memorable images, and beautiful philosophical statements that make the poetry reading experience exhilarating. Nduka’s Waterman is versatile and uplifting.”
- TANURE OJAIDE
“A wonderfully winding work of a voice matured. Echezonachukwu Nduka’s work is lyrical and the words jump to life on the page.”
- ERIN CASTALDI
“As a poet, Echezonachukwu Nduka brings his classical musician’s light and swift hands to the page. In an even, sober voice, these mostly narrative poems open like nocturnes—in slow, deliberate, contemplative, and measured prose until their accents quicken and the reader is caught in a surprising orchestra of metaphors.”
- AMATORITSERO EDE
“In Waterman the vibrant poetry of Echezonachukwu Nduka takes imaginative leaps and turns, finds meanings in kindred places, from the streets of Margate to the currents of the Niger; and in people, from the old teacher to the sole artist. Speaking sometimes as the young philosopher, Nduka spins an entrancing web of imagery and mesmerizing vortex of ideas. His passion for music runs like a leitmotif throughout his poems, striking notes that illuminate our humanity and spirituality. In his masterful poem “Transition” he speaks of “harmonic resonance of all unguarded hours….” Here the old teacher asks, “Who owns language?” In this transcendent poem we can safely say Nduka owns the language, fills it with wonder, and makes it new again.”
- ANTOINETTE LIBRO
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).