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Jazz icon, patriarch of musical family Ellis Marsalis Jr. dies of coronavirus at 85
Ellis Marsalis Jr., jazz pianist, teacher and patriarch of a New Orleans musical clan that includes famed performer sons Wynton and Branford, has died after battling pneumonia brought on by the new coronavirus, one of his sons said late Wednesday. He was 85.
Ellis Marsalis III confirmed in an Associated Press phone interview that his father’s death was sparked by the virus that is causing the global pandemic. “Pneumonia was the actual thing that caused his demise. But it was pneumonia brought on by COVID-19,” he said.
He said he drove Sunday from Baltimore to be with his father as he was hospitalized in Louisiana, which has been hit hard by the outbreak. Others in the family spent time with him, too.
Four of the jazz patriarch’s six sons are musicians: Wynton, trumpeter, is America’s most prominent jazz spokesman as artistic director of jazz at New York’s Lincoln Center. Branford, saxophonist, led The Tonight Show band and toured with Sting. Delfeayo, a trombonist, is a prominent recording producer and performer. And Jason, a percussionist, has made a name for himself with his own band and as an accompanist. Ellis III, who decided music wasn’t his gig, is a photographer-poet in Baltimore.
In a statement, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said of the man who’d continued to perform regularly in New Orleans until December: “Ellis Marsalis was a legend. He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz. He was a teacher, a father, and an icon — and words aren’t sufficient to describe the art, the joy and the wonder he showed the world.”
Because Marsalis opted to stay in New Orleans for most of his career, his reputation was limited until his sons became famous and brought him the spotlight, along with new recording contracts and headliner performances on television and tour.
“He was like the coach of jazz. He put on the sweatshirt, blew the whistle and made these guys work,” said Nick Spitzer, host of public radio’s American Routes and a Tulane University anthropology professor.
The Marsalis “family band” seldom played together when the boys were younger but in 2003 toured East in a spinoff of a family celebration that became a PBS special when the elder Marsalis retired from teaching at the University of New Orleans.
Harry Connick Jr., one of Marsalis’ students at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, was a guest. He’s one of many now-famous jazz musicians who passed through Marsalis’ classrooms. Others include trumpeters Nicholas Payton and Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Donald Harrison and Victor Goines, and bassist Reginald Veal.
Marsalis was born in New Orleans, son of the operator of a hotel where Marsalis met touring black musicians who couldn’t stay at the segregated downtown hotels where they performed. He played saxophone in high school; he also played piano by the time he went to Dillard University.
Although New Orleans was steeped in traditional jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll was the new sound in the 1950s, Marsalis preferred bebop and modern jazz.
Spitzer described Marsalis as a “modernist in a town of traditionalists.”
“His great love was jazz a la bebop — he was a lover of Thelonious Monk and the idea that bebop was a music of freedom. But when he had to feed his family, he played R&B and soul and rock ‘n’ roll on Bourbon Street,” Spitzer said.
The musician’s college quartet included drummer Ed Blackwell, clarinetist Alvin Batiste and saxophonist Harold Battiste playing modern.
Ornette Coleman was in town at the time. In 1956, when Coleman headed to California, Marsalis and the others went along, but after a few months Marsalis returned home. He told the New Orleans Times-Picayune years later, when he and Coleman were old men, that he never figured out what a pianist could do behind the free form of Coleman’s jazz.
Back in New Orleans, Marsalis joined the Marine Corps and was assigned to accompany soloists on the service’s weekly TV programs on CBS in New York. There, he said, he learned to handle all kinds of music styles.
Returning home, he worked at the Playboy Club and ventured into running his own club, which went bust. In 1967 trumpeter Al Hirt hired him. When not on Bourbon Street, Hirt’s band appeared on national TV — headline shows on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show, among others.
Marsalis got into education about the same time, teaching improvisation at Xavier University in New Orleans. In the mid-1970s, he joined the faculty at the New Orleans magnet high school and influenced a new generation of jazz musicians.
When asked how he could teach something as free-wheeling as jazz improvisation, Marsalis once said, “We don’t teach jazz, we teach students.”
In 1986 he moved to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. In 1989, the University of New Orleans lured him back to set up a jazz-studies program.
Marsalis retired from UNO in 2001 but continued performing, particularly at Snug Harbor, a small club that anchored the city’s contemporary jazz scene — frequently backing young promising musicians.
His melodic style, with running improvisations in the right hand, has been described variously as romantic, contemporary, or simply “Louisiana jazz.” He’s always on acoustic piano, never electric, and even in interpreting old standards there’s a clear link to the driving bebop chords and rhythms of his early years.
He founded a record company, ELM, but his recording was limited until his sons became famous. After that he joined them and others on mainstream labels and headlined his own releases, many full of his own compositions.
He often played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. For more than three decades he played two 75-minute sets every Friday night at Snug Harbor until he decided it was exhausting. Even then, he still performed on occasion as a special guest.
On Wednesday night, Ellis III recalled how his father taught him the meaning of integrity before he even knew the word.
He and Delfeayo, neither of them yet 10, had gone to hear their father play at a club. Only one man — sleeping and drunk — was in the audience for the second set. The boys asked why they couldn’t leave.
“He looked at us and said, ‘I can’t leave. I have a gig.’ While he’s playing, he said, ‘A gig is a deal. I’m paid to play this set. I’m going to play this set. It doesn’t matter that nobody’s here.’ ”
Marsalis’ wife, Dolores, died in 2017. He is survived by his sons Branford, Wynton, Ellis III, Delfeayo, Mboya and Jason.
(AP)
Loss of taste and smell key COVID-19 symptoms
Losing your sense of smell and taste may be the best way to tell if you have COVID-19, according to a study of data collected via a symptom tracker app developed by scientists in Britain and the United States to help monitor the coronavirus pandemic.
Almost 60 percent of patients who were subsequently confirmed as positive for COVID-19 had reported losing their sense of smell and taste, data analyzed by the researchers showed.
That compared with 18% of those who tested negative.
These results, which were posted online but not peer-reviewed, were much stronger in predicting a positive COVID-19 diagnosis than self-reported fever, researchers at King’s College London said.
The app, which the researchers say could help slow the outbreak and identify more swiftly those at risk of contracting COVID-19, can be downloaded via the URL covid.joinzoe.com.
If enough people participate in sharing their symptoms, the scientists said, the app could also provide healthcare systems with critically valuable information.
“This app-based study is a way to find out where the COVID-19 hotspots are, new symptoms to look out for, and might be used as a planning tool to target quarantines, send ventilators, and provide real-time data to plan for future outbreaks,” said Andrew Chan, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in the United States, who is co-leading the study.
Of 1.5 million app users between March 24 and March 29, 26 percent reported one or more symptoms through the app. Of these, 1,702 also reported having been tested for COVID-19, with 579 positive results and 1,123 negative results.
Mathematical model
Using all the data collected, the research team developed a mathematical model to identify which combination of symptoms — ranging from loss of smell and taste to fever, persistent cough, fatigue, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and loss of appetite — was the most accurate in predicting COVID-19 infection.
“When combined with other symptoms, people with loss of smell and taste appear to be three times more likely to have contracted COVID-19, according to our data, and should therefore self-isolate for seven days to reduce the spread of the disease,” said Tim Spector, a King’s professor who led the study.
Trish Greenhalgh, a professor of primary care health sciences at Britain’s Oxford University, who is not involved in the study, said it was the first to demonstrate scientifically and in a large population sample that loss of smell is a characteristic feature of COVID-19.
Spector’s team applied their findings to the more than 400,000 people reporting symptoms via the app who had not yet had a COVID-19 test, and found that almost 13 percent of them are likely to be infected.
This would suggest that some 50,000 people in Britain may have as yet unconfirmed COVID-19 infections, Spector said.
(Source: Reuters)
Priests arrested for public Mass celebrations during coronavirus shutdowns
Amid lockdowns responding to the coronavirus pandemic, at least three priests were arrested Sunday for celebrating Mass publicly, in alleged defiance of government orders banning religious gatherings during the pandemic.
In Uganda, Fr. Deogratius Kiibi Kateregga was arrested March 29 for celebrating Mass at St Joseph’s Catholic Parish in Mpigi, Uganda. There were reportedly at least 15 Catholics in attendance at the Mass.
The priest is well-known in Uganda, and came to national notoriety after a televised 2018 sermon at the memorial Mass for a Ugandan musician, Mowzey Radio, who died from injuries sustained in a bar fight.
Local officials said the priest was arrested along with seven other Catholics and was detained at the Mpigi police station.
“He was found preaching in the church in contravention of the presidential directives,” said Herbert Nuwagaba, the Mpigi District Police Commander.
“We want him to tell us why he is doing this,” Godfrey Matovu, the Mpigi District Internal Security Officer, told the Daily Monitor.
The priest was released after parishioners protested on his behalf at the police station, according to local media reports.
On March 18, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni suspended religious and cultural gatherings for at least 32 days in an attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19. Uganda currently has 30 cases of the coronavirus.
In India’s Kerala state, two priests, two seminarians, and three religious sisters were charged with violating government orders after a Mass celebrated in a chapel at the minor seminary of the Congregation of Missionaries of Faith in the Wayanad district of Kerala.
All seven were released after their arrest, according to UCA News, with a warning not to repeat their actions.
Father Manoj Kakkonal, a spokesman for the Mananthavady diocese, told UCA News that the arrest “seems to be a case of misunderstanding,” because the Mass in question was celebrated inside the seminary chapel. The priests and seminarians are residents of the seminary, UCA News reported.
The police were reportedly called after neighbors saw the religious sisters arrive at the chapel.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi instituted a 21-day lockdown on March 24.
Another arrest took place in Kerala on March 23, when Fr. Paul Padayatti from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Koodapuzha celebrated a requiem Mass at which more than 100 people attended. Kerala officials also said there have been two other incidents where authorities issued warning to priests conducting Mass.
As of March 29, India has reported 980 cases of COVID-19 and 24 deaths related to the outbreak, according to the New York Times.
Source: Catholic News Agency
Coronavirus: Fake manufacturers of chloroquine nabbed in Bafoussam
A group of fake chloroquine manufacturers has been caught in the West regional headquarters of Bafoussam in Cameroon by the country’s forces of law and order.
The group, which wants to cash in on the desperation of the population, got to work once there were rumors that Chloroquine could help in the curing of people affected by the deadly Coronavirus.
As Chloroquine gets tested in the Western world, Cameroon’s fake drug manufacturers have decided to make hay while the sun shines by setting up shops and establishing marketing networks for their illegally produced medications.
The Coronavirus is spreading death and destruction across the world and anything that can bring some hope and reduce fear is very much welcome, especially in a third world country like Cameroon which lacks state-of-the-art laboratories and world-class law enforcement agents who can discourage irresponsible behavior.
With the dismantling of this group of dangerous crooks who are passing off as chemists and pharmacists, ordinary citizens in Cameroon must understand that the only place wherein they can get genuine medication remains government approved pharmacies and the medication should be consumed only when prescribed by a certified medical practitioner.
Currently, the insidious Coronavirus is rolling into many Cameroonian cities and town and many Cameroonians do not know where to turn to when it comes to obtaining medication.
So far, there is no definitive cure for the Coronavirus pandemic. Preventive measures remain the only steps that can help any society to check the spread of the pandemic.
National governments and the World Health Organization have issued guidelines which must be strictly followed by every citizen if the virus has to be booted out of this beautiful planet.
Rita Akana and edited by Dr Joachim Arrey
Where is President Paul Biya? Cameroon Concord News to put up an obituary announcement on him
Cameroon’s coronavirus problem is much greater than the Biya regime is acknowledging. The true number of cases is far greater than the tally from the Minister of Public Health. Senior CPDM officials are sick not only with the coronavirus but are HIV positive. More signs of uncontrolled infection in the cities of Douala, Yaoundé and Bafoussam have emerged and there are fears things are getting out of control.
Medics in the rural areas particularly in war ravaged Southern Cameroons have been incessantly flashing out signals to the World Health Organization that Southern Cameroons may run out of cemetery space if something is not done and done in a hurry. Last week, the Ministry of Public Health announced that some of the COVID-19 patients were recovering but Cameroon Intelligence Report sources in Douala and Yaoundé have all hinted that the deaths have started coming so fast.
A senior opposition figure in Yaoundé who hails from the Far North Region contacted by this reporter recently asks, reluctantly, whether both French and British Southern Cameroonians should in fact be relieved, because apparently even when a nation faces unrelenting misery—accelerated by the politics and policies of its government—it doesn’t necessarily break down as fast as Paul Biya’s Cameroon.
Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate have turned Cameroon into a criminal wasteland, with French Cameroun political gangs in tricked-out. A nurse at the Yaoundé General hospital who spoke to our undercover reporter revealed that some senior army officials have secretly collected ventilators from the hospital citing orders from the presidency of the republic. And like the policy against the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram and Ambazonia Restoration Forces, the Biya Francophone regime is erecting roadblocks to prevent people fleeing the rural areas from bringing the coronavirus with them to Yaoundé. These efforts at containment will of course fail and coronavirus will definitely find its way to Mvomeka’a where the 87 year old President Biya is self-isolating!
Apart from Biya’s failed leadership, the CPDM government is another palaver. Many Cameroonians would celebrate its passing, and even its die-hard supporters are now seeing signs that the coronavirus is catalysing changes that Biya and his Francophone Beti-Ewondo acolytes resisted long ago.
Given how many people are dying now in Yaoundé and Douala and with Biya helpless and quarantined at his Mvomeka’a palace, it would be grotesque to think of coronavirus as a lucky break for Cameroonians in support of regime change. With COVID-19, the deep bench of the so-called CPDM Political Bureau and the House of Senate will be depleted.
National Assembly Speaker, Cavaye Djibril has blatantly refused to announce that he had contracted the coronavirus. He is 80 years old and a chief Biya acolyte to whom he speaks regularly and in person.
However, the center of all speculation is President Paul Biya himself. The dictator doesn’t appear in public often, even in the best of times, and you’d have to be fairly lucky to spot him in Yaoundé—except on a few occasions where his appearance is so customary that an absence would make Cameroonian allies and enemies, wonder if an illness must have felled him.
The world is already in the middle of the coronavirus season and Biya is yet to make a televise statement to the Cameroonian people. State radio and television recently reported that the Head of State has created a special fund to combat the virus. But rumours about Biya do not die so easily in Cameroon. Why can’t President Biya just give his speech from his sitting room at the Mvomeka’a palace? Is this not the ideal opportunity to discuss how the funds provided will be disbursed to fight the spread of COVID-19? Is this not also a good opportunity for Mr. Biya to speak of the process of renewal that Cameroon will have to undertake to Emergence 2035?
After his last meeting with the US ambassador to Cameroon, speculation has been rampant. Surely, say the rumours, Biya is dead—or he is self-isolating! These rumours aside, the perception of distance has made Mr. Biya, already a distant figure without charisma or warmth, seem superannuated and out of touch. We understand Biya is in a febrile delirium in Mvomeka’a but if he does not show up seven days after this editorial, Cameroon Concord News Group shall put up an obituary announcement on him.
What is keeping the ruling CPDM gang in power now is the simple fact that the whole Cameroonian nation French and British Southern Cameroons are suffering together and it is evidently clear that Biya deliberately weakened all state institutions and tribal zed the army making them unhealthy enough to rival his leadership, even in this diminished state. Today, police commissioners, army captains are dying of COVID-19, just as poor civilians too!
Coronavirus has exposed and confirmed the incompetence and malignance of the Biya regime, at the same time it has crippled the forces for change headed by Prof. Maurice Kamto. Popular protests in the streets of Douala and Yaounde simply cannot happen as long as the manpower for those protests remains sequestered at home, and as long as morale is utterly depleted by the task of burying one’s loved ones. Regime change in Yaoundé might have to wait. At least the coronavirus pandemic will eventually end, and with its end, change is one more thing to look forward to.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Coronavirus: Why do more men die of Covid-19 than women?
As the world faces the most serious public health crisis in a century, scientists and medical professionals are scrambling to understand who is most vulnerable to Covid-19 and why. But one clear trend is emerging: Men are much more likely to die from the disease than women.
It is a pattern occurring in almost every country as researchers frantically begin to collate data from national health authorities.
“We are seeing with every country that provides us with sex-disaggregated data that men are more likely to die from the virus, anything from 10 percent to more than twice as likely,” said professor Sarah Hawkes, the director of the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health in the UK.
The centre is home to the independent Global Health 50/50 initiative, which has embarked on a project to collate data on gender and Covid-19 – the disease caused by the novel coronavirus – from across the globe.
While much emphasis was initially placed on the elderly or those who have pre-existing health conditions as being at risk of dying from the virus, it is now becoming clear that being male is also a factor.
Data from China first revealed a gender gap in deaths, with 64 percent of male sufferers dying compared to 36 percent of women, according to the Global Health 50/50 initiative.
Figures from France, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Spain have confirmed the pattern.
In the two hardest-hit European nations, 71 percent of the Covid-19 deaths in Italy were male while in Spain almost twice as many men as women have died.
“Undoubtedly, a part of this is biology but a large part of this difference is also driven by gender behaviour, such as far higher levels of smoking and drinking among men compared to women,” professor Hawkes told FRANCE 24.
In France, figures from the Public Health institute show that, from March 1 to March 22, 57 percent of Covid-19 deaths were men with the average age being 81 years old.
But Hawkes said that when it comes to contracting the virus, the gender gap is far more less noticeable – women are at just as much risk as men of being infected.
While it is still too early to determine why the gender gap is emerging, researchers point to several possible factors.
Data has already shown that other coronaviruses, such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), tend to affect men disproportionately.
Lifestyle choices and behaviours also play a part, with men less likely to seek medical help at the first signs of disease or to follow public heath advice. Studies show that men are also less likely to wash their hands or use soap.
They are also more likely to indulge in risky lifestyle behaviours such as drinking and smoking, which means men have a higher incidence of both pulmonary and cardiovascular disease.
Then there are the biological factors, with hormones, particularly oestrogen, playing a role in increasing women’s antiviral response. Genetic structure is another important factor, with a significant number of genes that regulate the immune response encoded on the X chromosome, of which women have two while men only have one.
“We know that women’s immune systems function differently to men’s – after all, women’s bodies are designed to host a foetus for nine months at a time without it being rejected as a foreign body,” professor Hawkes said.
Dr Sabra Klein, an immunologist and a specialist in gender and infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Heath, spoke to FRANCE 24’s The 51 Percent show earlier in March about the possible reasons for men being at more risk of dying from Covid-19.
“Generally speaking, women mount greater immune responses to a variety of viruses as well as other infectious agents than do men,” Dr Klein said.
“There are biological differences in the immune systems between men and women which impact our ability to fight an infection,” she said, pointing to blood samples from China collected from Covid-19 patients.
“[Those samples] suggest our blood chemistry and immune cell counts do, in fact, differ between men and women, which could be contributing to some of the gender differences that we’re observing in the severity of the disease.”
In the meantime, researchers are pleading with countries to provide specific data on gender and age differences when it comes to recording deaths, especially in the US and Britain.
“The Covid-19 crisis reveals, in stark terms, that in most countries, the data-for-decision-making process is broken,” said Dr Kent Bush, the co-director of Global Heath 50/50.
“We have the data, but too often we fail to analyse it and we fail to act on it. While it’s great to see some countries stepping up, too many still don’t, including those with the wherewithal to do better, such as the [United] States and the UK.”
Such data should be used to shape public heath messaging, said Dr Klein.
“This pandemic may end up being the defining moment for sex and gender in the way we view infectious diseases,” she said.
“I am disappointed that many of the public health officials around the world are not speaking out that being male is indeed a risk factor for a more severe outcome and, in particular, being an older male. I do think that there could be public heath messaging [that] could occur in that context.”
She later told FRANCE 24 that such public health advice is critical when there is no drug to prevent or vaccine to help cure the virus.
“So if more older-aged men knew this, or their spouses knew this, it may mean they would be more vigilant, and also taking advantage of healthcare while also practising good hygiene.”
Culled from France 24
French Cameroun: Violating COVID-19 Restrictions Can Get You Arrested
Police in Cameroon have begun arresting people who defy measures put in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus, which has so far has infected 139 people in the central African state. Police are sealing shops that exceed maximum numbers for customers, impounding vehicles that carry too many passengers, and this week arrested more than 50 prostitutes for sneaking into hotels used to isolate suspected cases.
Jean Claude Tsila, the top government official in Mfoundi Division, the administrative unit where Yaounde is located, said he was appalled to learn that people who have been isolated in hotels on suspicion of being carriers of COVID-19 are receiving nocturnal visitors.
Tsila said he ordered the arrest of 50 prostitutes, as well as 13 women and 6 men who sneaked into hotels to meet their spouses.
“We discovered that people put in quarantine were conniving with hotel agents [workers] to smuggle women into the hotel to sleep with them. We have arrested some of them. We have to work together to stop this virus,” he said.
Tsila said he ordered all of the arrested persons to be put in isolation, while the police have been instructed to find unauthorized hotel visitors who have been on the run.
Authorities in Cameroon recently isolated more than 500 citizens and 70 foreigners in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus. All of those quarantined flew into the central African state on March 17th and 18th before the government closed the borders and suspended issuance of visas until further notice.
However, 150 of those quarantined escaped from their hotels. The government is searching for them, as well as another 186 people who returned home from France and Italy on March 17 and refused to be isolated.
Enforcing social distancing
Despite government warnings, officials say a majority of Cameroonians are not taking coronavirus seriously, and authorities are taking steps to enforce social distancing rules.
Troops have shut down stores for allowing in too many customers, closed markets for not respecting hygiene norms, and stopped buses that carried too many passengers.
Close to 400 taxis were ordered off the road in Yaounde alone for transporting more than the maximum three passengers per vehicle.
Taxi drivers union leader Ernest Verla said drivers will respect the restrictions if the government gives them subsidies, increases taxi fares or reduces fuel prices.
“They [the government] did not reduce the price of fuel, we are struggling, things are not moving and we are unable to make it. It is more than us. When you put [buy] fuel for 10 000 [francs] you are unable to work [raise] 3 000,” said Verla.
Cameroon’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on February 9. Since then, confirmed cases have increased to 139, with six deaths reported.
Source: VOA