In 1987, The King of Afrobeat, Fela Kuti, was invited to Burkina Faso by Marxist revolutionary and fellow Pan Africanist Thomas Sankara, a longtime fan of Fela’s music and a jazz musician himself.

A thread 🧵 Dubbed “Africa’s Che Guevara”, Sankara was an army man and a Marxist revolutionary who became president in 1983 after a people’s uprising. He launched an ambitious social and economic reform programme and became an icon of pan-Africanism with his anti-imperialist rhetoric. Sankara was also a fine jazz guitarist who founded several bands.

Afro-French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer Frantz Fanon addresses the reasons of gatekeeping in jazz.

A thread 🧵 As an intellectual, Fanon was a political radical, and an existentialist humanist concerning the psychopathology of colonization, and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization.

Sixty-three years ago today, freelance photographer Art Kane called together as many jazz soloists as he could for a photograph which has come to be known as "A Great Day in Harlem."

A thread 🧵 In all, 57 musicians duly assembled in Harlem between Fifth and Madison Avenues. The group included Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Thelonius Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan and Count Basie.