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Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, said he died on Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

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“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones was arguably the most versatile pop cultural figure of the 20th century, perhaps best known for producing the albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad for Michael Jackson in the 1980s, which made the singer the biggest pop star of all time. Jones also produced music for Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and many others.

He was also a successful composer of dozens of film scores, and had numerous chart hits under his own name. Jones was a bandleader in big band jazz, an arranger for jazz stars including Count Basie, and a multi-instrumentalist, most proficiently on trumpet and piano. His TV and film production company, founded in 1990, had major success with the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and other shows, and he continued to innovate well into his 80s, launching Qwest TV in 2017, an on-demand music TV service. Jones is third only to Beyoncé and Jay-Z for having the most Grammy award nominations of all time – 80 to their 88 each – and is the awards’ third most-garlanded winner, with 28.

Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones at the 1984 Grammy awards
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Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones at the 1984 Grammy awards. Photograph: Doug Pizac/AP
Jones was born in Chicago in 1933. His half-white father had been born to a Welsh slave owner and one of his female slaves, while his mother’s family were also descended from slave owners. His introduction to music came through the walls of his childhood home from a piano played by a neighbour, which he started learning aged seven, and via his mother’s singing.

His parents divorced and he moved with his father to Washington state, where Jones learned drums and a host of brass instruments in his high-school band. At 14, he started playing in a band with a 16-year-old Ray Charles in Seattle clubs, once, in 1948, backing Billie Holiday. He studied music at Seattle University, transferring east to continue in Boston, and then moved to New York after being rehired by the jazz bandleader Lionel Hampton, with whom he had toured as a high-schooler (a band for which Malcolm X was a heroin dealer when they played in Detroit).

In New York, one early gig was playing trumpet in Elvis Presley’s band for his first TV appearances, and he met the stars of the flourishing bebop movement including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. (Years later, in 1991, Jones conducted Davis’s last performance, two months before he died.)

Jones toured Europe with Hampton, and spent much time there in the 1950s, including a period furthering his studies in Paris, where he met luminaries including Pablo Picasso, James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. At the age of 23, he also toured South America and the Middle East as Dizzy Gillespie’s musical director and arranger. He convened a crack team for his own big band, touring Europe as a way to test Free and Easy, a jazz musical, but the disastrous run left Jones, by his own admission, close to suicide and with $100,000 of debt.

He secured a job at Mercury Records and slowly paid off the debt with plenty of work as a producer and arranger for artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan and Sammy Davis Jr. He also began scoring films, his credits eventually including The Italian Job, In the Heat of the Night, The Getaway and The Color Purple. (He produced the last of these, which was nominated for 11 Oscars, three for Jones himself.) In 1968, he became the first African American to be nominated for best original song at the Oscars, for The Eyes of Love from the film Banning (alongside songwriter Bob Russell); he had seven nominations in total. For TV, he scored programmes such as The Bill Cosby Show, Ironside and Roots.

His work with Sinatra began in 1958 when he was hired to conduct and arrange for Sinatra and his band by Grace Kelly, princess consort of Monaco, for a charity event. Jones and Sinatra continued working on projects until Sinatra’s final album, LA Is My Lady, in 1984. Jones’s solo musical career took off in the late 1950s, recording albums under his own name as bandleader for jazz ensembles that included luminaries such as Charles Mingus, Art Pepper and Freddie Hubbard.

Jones with the singer Lesley Gore.
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Jones with the singer Lesley Gore. Photograph: Keystone Press/Alamy
Jones once said of his time in Seattle: “When people write about the music, jazz is in this box, R&B is in this box, pop is in this box, but we did everything,” and his catholic tastes served him well as modern pop mutated out of the swing era. He produced four million-selling hits for the New York singer Lesley Gore in the mid-60s, including the US No 1 It’s My Party, and later embraced funk and disco, producing hit singles including George Benson’s Give Me the Night and Patti Austin and James Ingram’s Baby Come to Me, along with records by the band Rufus and Chaka Khan, and the Brothers Johnson. Jones also released his own funk material, scoring US Top 10 albums with Body Heat (1974) and The Dude (1981).

His biggest success in this style was his work with Michael Jackson: Thriller remains the biggest selling album of all time, while Jones’s versatility between Off the Wall and Bad allowed Jackson to metamorphose from lithe disco to ultra-synthetic funk-rock. He and Jackson (along with Lionel Richie and producer Michael Omartian) also helmed We Are the World, a successful charity single that raised funds for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1985. “I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him,” Jones said when Jackson died in 2009. In 2017, Jones’s legal team successfully argued that he was owed $9.4m in unpaid Jackson royalties, though he lost on appeal in 2020 and had to return $6.8m.

After the success of The Color Purple in 1985, he formed the film and TV production company Quincy Jones Entertainment in 1990. His biggest screen hit was the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for 148 episodes and launched the career of Will Smith; other shows included the LL Cool J sitcom In the House and the long-running sketch comedy show MadTV.

He also created the media company Qwest Broadcasting and in 1993, the Black music magazine Vibe in partnership with Time Inc. Throughout his career he supported numerous charities and causes, including the , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Jazz Foundation of America and others, and mentored young musicians including the British multiple Grammy winner Jacob Collier.

Jones’ illustrious career was twice nearly cut short: he narrowly avoided being killed by Charles Manson’s cult in 1969, having planned to go to Sharon Tate’s house on the night of the murders there, but Jones forgot the appointment. He also survived a brain aneurysm in 1974 that prevented him from playing the trumpet again in case the exertion caused further harm.

Quincy Jones with daughter Rashida
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Quincy Jones with daughter Rashida. Photograph: Lester Cohen/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Jones was married three times, first to his high-school girlfriend Jeri Caldwell, for nine years until 1966, fathering his daughter Jolie. In 1967, he married Ulla Andersson and had a son and daughter, divorcing in 1974 to marry actor Peggy Lipton, best known for roles in The Mod Squad and Twin Peaks. They had two daughters, including the actor Rashida Jones, before divorcing in 1989. He had two further children: Rachel, with a dancer, Carol Reynolds, and Kenya, his daughter with actor Nastassja Kinski.

He never remarried, but continued to date a string of younger women, raising eyebrows with his year-long partnership with 19-year-old Egyptian designer Heba Elawadi when he was 73. He has also claimed to have dated Ivanka Trump and Juliette Gréco. He is survived by his seven children.
Source: theguardian.com

Politics

FCT: Wike notifies Apo Mechanic Village traders on imminent relocation

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FCT: Wike notifies Apo Mechanic Village traders on imminent relocation
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The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike, has said that traders at the Apo Mechanic Village will have no choice but to relocate for the interests of the public.

Wike made the declaration during the inspection of the ongoing construction of the left-hand service carriageway of the OSEX from Ring Road 1 (Nnamdi Azikiwe Expressway) to Wasa Junction on Tuesday.

The Apo Mechanic Village is located along the road corridor of the OSEX.

The minister assured that the committee on the relocation of the traders was doing its job to relocate them to a permanent site in Wasa in the overriding interest of the public.

He said the traders were already aware that the road project will pass through the area, adding that the FCTA was not envisaging any problem on the issue of relocating the traders.

“The committee is doing their work. You know that the road is going to pass through that area. So, that is not going to be a problem.

“We have told them that when we get to that point, they have no choice but to leave for the interest of everybody. It’s not for anybody’s particular interest. It’s for the public.

“It is the directive of Mr. President to see that all areas, not only the city but also in the satellite towns are all opened up with road infrastructure.

“You will not believe it now that all the roads we are doing in the satellite towns are going to be provided with solar street lights, which has never happened.

“So, it is wonderful, we are happy with what we are seeing and we are happy with what the contractors are doing. Indeed, the Renewed Hope Agenda is working, it’s a reality. People can see with their eyes. It’s not that you are told.”

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US elections 2024: What Kamala Harris win means for Kenya, Africa

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US vice president Kamala Harris smiling during a campaign rally (l) and William Ruto during an X space with Gen Zs (r). Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/William Ruto. Source: Getty Images
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  • US vice president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are poised to learn their fates in the presidential race as the elections begin
  • Harris’s victory or her ability to succeed Joe Biden as president of the United States could have an impact on Kenya and Africa
  • In an exclusive interview with TUKO.co.ke, lawyer and political analyst Philip Mwangale discussed what Harris’s victory would mean for Kenya

 

Faith Chandianya, a journalist at TUKO.co.ke, brings over three years of experience covering politics and Current Affairs in Kenya

US vice president Kamala Harris is competing against former president Donald Trump in the race for the presidency.

This comes as the 2024 US presidential election is shaping up to be one of the most competitive, with the strongest candidates leading the race.

However, this article will focus on the implications of Harris winning the election and how her victory could impact Kenya as a nation.

What does Kamala Harris win mean for Kenya?

Political analyst and lawyer Philip Mwangale told TUKO.co.ke that Harris’ victory would maintain the status quo.

Since Joe Biden is a member of the Democratic Party, Harris winning the election would ensure the Democrats remain the ruling party in the United States.

Mwangale asserted that this could mean that the bilateral agreements between Kenya and the US established by Harris’s predecessor and President William Ruto will remain intact.

“A Democrat win means maintenance of the status quo. The bilateral agreements signed between Kenya and the US remain,” Mwangale asserted.

The political analysts affirmed that maintaining bilateral agreements between Kenya and the US means the country will continue to be alienated from its neighbouring African countries due to Ruto’s ties with the West.

Mwangale also remarked that Harris lacks defined foreign policy perspectives, allowing certain state actors and US interests abroad, especially in Africa and the Middle East, to act without restriction.

“The interference in affairs of states, especially Africa and the Middle East, will be more prominent. She has not concrete foreign policy views of her own,” he affirmed.

The political analyst stated that this will have a ripple effect, as further incursions in the Middle East could restrict Kenya’s fuel channels.

Who is likely to win US presidential election 2024?

Renowned historian and election forecaster Allan Lichtman stirred attention with his latest prediction, forecasting a victory for Democratic nominee, Harris.

Lichtman, whose prediction record includes nine correct forecasts from the last ten elections, is confident that Trump will lose the 2024 United States presidential race.

Lichtman expressed certainty that Harris would prevail on election day.

He acknowledged that although Harris’s lead in battleground states has fluctuated, this has not changed his forecast.

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Belarus’ Lukashenko to face only pre-approved challengers in presidential election

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In this photo released by Belarusian Presidential Press Service on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko speaks in Minsk. © AP Photo
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Belarus’ election commission on Monday allowed only seven politicians loyal to leader Alexander Lukashenko to start collecting signatures to oppose him in upcoming presidential elections.

Lukashenko, who has led the country for over 30 years, is set to seek a seventh term in January.

The authoritarian ruler faced criticism after he was elected in 2020 in a vote that was rejected by the country’s opposition and the West as rigged with fraud.

The election results triggered nationwide protests and resulted in the arrest of around 65,000 people — many of them opposition figures.

Human rights groups say Belarus holds around 1,300 political prisoners who are denied adequate healthcare and are often forbidden from contacting their families while in prison.

Last week, the country’s election commission registered an initiative group for Lukashenko to prepare for the upcoming election.

Sergei Syrankov of the Communist Party, Oleg Gaidukevich, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, and former Interior Ministry spokeswoman Olga Chеmоdanova are three of the seven candidates chosen to start collecting signatures.

The candidates are each required to collect at least 100,000 signatures by 6 December in order to qualify to run in the race.

“Those are alternative candidates, and I believe they just want to safeguard the incumbent,” Lukashenko said of his challengers.

The commission rejected two opposition politicians who requested to register initiative groups.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a key figure of the Belarusian opposition who is currently living in exile, has denounced the upcoming elections as a farce.

“This is not an election but an imitation of an electoral process held amid terror when alternative candidates and observers aren’t allowed,” Tsikhanouskaya said.

In February, when the country held parliamentary and local elections, independent Western observers were not invited to monitor the vote for the first time since the country’s independence in 1991.

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