George Brizan
Grenadian prime minister
(AFP/GETTY IMAGES) - An undated family handout picture shows Sudanese musical icon and former exile Mohammed Wardi in Khartoum. Wardi died on Sunday.
George Brizan, a former prime minister who was a founder of Grenada’s ruling party, died Feb. 18 at a hospital in the capital, St. George’s. He was 69.
The death was confirmed by Prime Minister Tillman Thomas. He said Mr. Brizan died of complications from diabetes.
Mr. Brizan became prime minister of his Caribbean homeland in February 1995 after the resignation of Prime Minister Nicholas Braithwaite. But his National Democratic Congress party was swept from power four months later.
The party, which was elected on a no-tax platform in 1990, had angered voters by bringing back personal income taxes and imposing tight economic measures to offset huge foreign debts, cuts in U.S. aid and reduced agriculture income.
In elections in 1999, Mr. Brizan’s party lost all its parliamentary seats. Mr. Brizan, who was the opposition leader at the time, said dissent within the party had hurt its image. The National Democratic Congress returned to power in 2008.
Mr. Brizan helped start at least three parties during more than a quarter-century in politics. He also was a member of the radical New Jewel Movement in the mid-1970s and returned to that party as a government education administrator before the New Jewel government was toppled in a coup by Marxist hard-liners that triggered a U.S. invasion.
Mr. Brizan also worked as a professor of history and economics, author, trade union leader and consultant.
Damien Bona
Oscar historian
Damien Bona, co-author of the 1986 book “Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards” and sole author of a 2002 sequel, died Jan. 29 at a hospital in New York of complications from cardiac arrest. He was 56.
The death was confirmed by Neil Cohen, his brother-in-law.
Mr. Bona was raised in New Milford, Conn., received a bachelor’s degree in 1977 from Columbia University, where he served as film critic on the campus newspaper, and earned a law degree from New York University in 1980. He spent only two years practicing law; his obsession was the Academy Awards.
In 1982, Mr. Bona and former Columbia University classmate Mason Wiley began doing their extensive research for “Inside Oscar,” an encyclopedic reference book that New York Times film critic Vincent Canby called “a giddy social history of our place and time.”
Mr. Bona and Wiley did much of their digging at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library in Beverly Hills, where they uncovered a treasure trove of Oscar facts.
When director Alfred Hitchcock stepped to the microphone to receive the 1968 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award — “the only Oscar he’d ever get,” the authors noted — his acceptance speech was brief: “Thank you . . . very much.”
To which emcee Bob Hope quipped, “He ad-libs a lot, doesn’t he?”
Wiley died in 1994, but Mr. Bona went on to write “Inside Oscar 2,” which covered the awards from 1995 through 2000. Mr. Bona wrote two other books: “Opening Shots: The Unusual, Unexpected, Potentially Career Threatening First Roles That Launched the Careers of 70 Hollywood Stars” (1994) and “Starring John Wayne as Genghis Kahn: Hollywood’s All-Time Worst Casting Blunders” (1996).
Michael Davis
rock bassist
Michael Davis, bassist of the influential late 1960s rock band MC5, died Feb. 17 at a hospital in Chico, Calif., of liver failure. He was 68.
The death was confirmed by his wife, Angela Davis.
The bassist gained attention in the revolutionary Detroit band MC5 and later played in a version of the group called DKT-MC5 with former MC5 members Wayne Kramer on guitar and Dennis Thompson on drums.
The original MC5, together from 1964 to 1972, made waves with incendiary anti-establishment lyrics and a blistering early punk sound, starting with their first album “Kick Out the Jams,” released in 1969.
A sought-after bassist and also a producer, Mr. Davis was planning to be in Belgium this week recording with punk rock musician Sonny Vincent, Mr. Davis’s wife said.
Mr. Davis co-founded the nonprofit Music Is Revolution Foundation, dedicated to supporting music education programs in public schools.
Mohammed Wardi
Sudanese singer
Mohammed Osman Wardi, a Sudanese singer who popularized the music of his native Nubia, died Feb. 18 at a hospital in Khartoum of a kidney ailment, the state news media reported. He was 80.
Mr. Wardi, who hailed from Sudan’s northern region of Nubia, played traditional instruments, including the stringed oud and the tambour drums, but also sang to more modern instrumental arrangements. He is credited with pioneering a focus on the musical accompaniment of his pieces, as opposed to earlier generations of singers who concentrated on vocals and lyrics.
His repertoire included love songs but also more politicized pieces favoring Sudanese independence and uprisings against military regimes in 1964 and 1986.
He was associated with Sudan’s political left. He went into exile after the 1983 imposition of Islamic law codes by then-President Jaafar Nimeri. He returned to Sudan in the past decade but kept his distance from the government.
— From news services
Loading...
Comments