Caribbean Beat — July/August 2017 (#146)

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Contents
No. 146 July/August 2017
42
64
EMBARK
19 Datebook
Events around the Caribbean in July
and August, from the Caribbean
Premier League to Carifesta XIII in
Barbados
26 Word of Mouth
The charms of “August holidays”
by the beach, a new film from T&T
goes international, and Grenada’s
Spicemas keeps the spirit of the Jab
Jab alive
32 The game
As the 2017 Caribbean Premier
League T20 cricket tournament
opens, Garry Steckles reports on
some interesting moves by star
players
34 Bookshelf, playlist, and
screenshots
This month’s reading, listening, and
film-watching picks, to keep you
culturally up-to-date
38 Cookup
The truth about superfoods
Nutritionists dismiss the ”superfood”
trend, promoting obscure ingredients
as dietary wonders. Nonetheless,
there are Caribbean plants packed
with nutrients which ought to be
better known. Franka Philip learns
about a few of them
IMMERSE
42 closeup
A head for jazz and a creole
soul
From his jaunty fedora to his bespoke
suits, Trinidadian Etienne Charles
looks like a jazzman — and he has
the musical chops to back it up. A
phenomenal talent with the trumpet,
he’s also earned a reputation as a
composer with a gift for merging
traditional Caribbean genres with
jazz, Nigel Campbell reports
50 Own Words
“The poems must have
decided on me”
Poet Shivanee Ramlochan on her
debut book Everyone Knows I
Am a Haunting, and why she’s so
powerfully drawn to difficult subjects
— as told to Nicholas Laughlin
52 Backstory
It starts with the drum
As the Antigua Dance Academy
celebrates its twenty-fifth
anniversary, it can boast of keeping
traditional Afro-Caribbean dance and
music alive, writes Joanne C. Hillhouse
60 showcase
Hadriana’s wedding
An excerpt from the classic Haitian
novel Hadriana in All My Dreams, by
René Depestre, newly translated
ARRIVE
64 Escape
Land we love
Jamaica’s beaches are as famous as
its reggae and dancehall. But turn
from the coast into the lush, hilly
interior and you discover why the
island’s name means “land of wood
and water.” And there’s no better
way to experience that wild beauty
than to hike up Blue Mountain Peak,
as Nazma Muller did
80 neighbourhood
Santiago de cuba
Cuba’s onetime capital, sheltered by
the Sierra Maestra, is a living history
museum and a cultural epicentre,
especially during the July Carnival
84 Destination
Clockwise Barbados
You can explore your way entirely
around the island of Barbados in a
single day, enjoying extraordinary
beaches, historic architecture, and
landscapes varying from gently
rolling to dramatically rugged — as in
our “clockwise” itinerary
96 layover
Paramaribo, Suriname
Newcomers to Suriname’s capital are
often surprised by its cosmopolitan
charms — which you can enjoy on
even a brief visit
10 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

CaribbeanBeat
An MEP publication
84
Editor Nicholas Laughlin
General manager Halcyon Salazar
Online marketing Caroline Taylor
Design artists Kevon Webster & Bridget van Dongen
Editorial assistant Shelly-Ann Inniss
Business Development Manager
Trinidad & Tobago
Yuri Chin Choy
T: (868) 460 0068, 622 3821
F: (868) 628 0639
E: yuri@meppublishers.com
Business Development Manager
Caribbean & International
Denise Chin
T: (868) 683 0832
F: (868) 628 0639
E: dchin@meppublishers.com
ENGAGE
98 Green
The energy of the future
Year-round sunshine, endless breezes,
gushing rivers: most Caribbean
countries have ample natural resources
to harness renewable energy. So why
is the region so dependent on fossil
fuels? Erline Andrews investigates
100 Inspire
Standing up for rights
In the field of Caribbean human
rights law, few have done more
on behalf of the vulnerable than
Guyanese Arif Bulkan. Raymond
Ramcharitar learns about his work in
indigenous and LGBT rights
Media & Editorial Projects Ltd.
6 Prospect Avenue, Maraval, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
T: (868) 622 3821/5813/6138
F: (868) 628 0639
E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com
Website: www.meppublishers.com
Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone,
tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices!
102On this day
Twisting Rhodes
It’s an irony of history that the
legacy of arch-imperialist Cecil
Rhodes includes the education of
many Caribbean intellectuals — like
Jamaican Rex Nettleford, who arrived
in Oxford sixty years ago, writes James
Ferguson
Printed by Solo Printing Inc., Miami, Florida
Caribbean Beat is published six times a year for Caribbean Airlines by Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. It is also available on
subscription. Copyright © Caribbean Airlines 2017. All rights reserved. ISSN 1680–6158. No part of this magazine may be
reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. MEP accepts no responsibility for
content supplied by our advertisers. The views of the advertisers are theirs and do not represent MEP in any way.
Website: www.caribbean-airlines.com
110 Onboard entertainment
Keep yourself entertained in the air!
112 parting shot
Martinique’s Bibliothèque Schoelcher
is a storehouse of history in more
ways than one
The Caribbean Airlines logo shows a hummingbird in flight. Native to the Caribbean, the hummingbird represents
flight, travel, vibrancy, and colour. It encompasses the spirit of both the region and Caribbean Airlines.
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 11

Cover Trinidadian jazz
musician and composer
Etienne Charles
Photo Maria Nunes
This issue’s contributors include:
Erline Andrews (“The energy of the future”, page
98) is an award-winning journalist with almost two
decades of experience in the field. Her work has
appeared in publications in Trinidad and Tobago
and the US, including the Chicago Tribune and the
Christian Science Monitor magazine.
Nigel Campbell (“A head for jazz and a creole soul”,
page 42) is an entertainment writer, reviewer, and
music businessman based in Trinidad and Tobago,
focused on expanding the appeal of island music
globally. He also publishes Jazz in the Islands
magazine, www.jazz.tt.
Andre Donawa (“Clockwise Barbados”, page 84) is
a photographer and musician based in Barbados.
He recently published his first book of photos,
Edge of Bim. He’s also recorded five albums, mostly
in the funk jazz genre. See more of his images at
andredonawaphotography.com.
Joanne C. Hillhouse (“It starts with the drum”, page
52) freelances from Antigua and Barbuda. She’s
published five books: The Boy from Willow Bend,
Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Fish
Outta Water, and Burt Award finalist Musical Youth.
Visit her at jhohadli.wordpress.com.
Nazma Muller (“To the most high”, page 74) is a
Trinidad-born, Jamaica-obsessed writer who has
worked in newsrooms in T&T, Jamaica, and the UK.
Born in the UK, Garry Steckles (“Don’t stop the
cricket”, page 32) is a widely travelled journalist and
editor, now based in St Kitts. He is the author of a
biography of Bob Marley, and a longtime Caribbean
Beat contributor.
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 13

A MESSAGE From THE CARIBBEAN AIRLINES TEAM
It is our pleasure to welcome you and your families
on board. The July/August vacation period is a
special time for families to enjoy much-needed relaxation,
and with nineteen Caribbean Airlines destinations
to choose from, there is something for everyone.
With warm weather in the USA and Canada,
and endless sunshine throughout the Caribbean,
summer is a time for fun and adventures. Our teams
have planned carefully to ensure that you and your
families have a memorable experience when travelling
with us over the vacation period.
For the fourth consecutive year, Caribbean
Airlines is thrilled to be the Official Airline sponsor for
the Caribbean Premier League Twenty20 (CPLT20)
Series. In the coming months, we will connect
cricket fans and teams throughout the Caribbean
and North America to enjoy the excitement of this
premier cricket league.
In addition to CPL cricket, there are plenty other
activities throughout the Caribbean Airlines network. For the
revellers among us, you can experience Carnival in July and
August from as far north as Toronto, where Caribana celebrations
start on 11 July and culminate in the street parade on 5
August, and if you want to feel the energy of the Caribbean
further south, you can fly with us to enjoy Carnivals throughout
the region:
• Vincy Mas, St Vincent and the Grenadines: 11 July
• St Lucia: 18 and 19 July
• Crop Over, Barbados: 7 August
• Antigua and Barbuda: 8 August
• Spicemas, Grenada: 14 and 15 August
And for those of you looking for a different experience,
there is:
• Reggae Sumfest in Jamaica in July
• Tobago Heritage Festival: 14 July to 1 August
• a range of music festivals and other events in bustling
New York City
our “Going Beyond For You” campaign. In “Going Beyond”,
we deliver added value, as along with our retail partners,
our customers enjoy special discounts and exclusive offers.
Encourage your family and friends to travel with us to make
full use of these exciting promotions.
Caribbean Airlines also offers Cargo services to over one
hundred countries worldwide, at very competitive rates. Our
extensive route structure and dedicated freighters can easily
move perishables and live cargo to your desired destination.
We also have a small package service, JETPAK, which caters
for parcels of less than fifty pounds.
Remember when travelling: Demand Value. Choose
Caribbean.
Please visit our website at www.caribbean-airlines.
com. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram
@iflycaribbean
Thank you for choosing Caribbean Airlines — we are
grateful for your business and look forward to serving you
throughout our network.
Yours in service,
The Employees of Caribbean Airlines
courtesy CPL T20 Ltd 2017
You can get to all these destinations and more, as Caribbean
Airlines offers multiple daily services out of our North
American gateways in Toronto and New York, and is also the
regionally based air carrier with the most coverage of south
Florida, with services out of Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and
Miami to the Caribbean.
Whatever your interest, there is something for everyone,
and Caribbean Airlines is happy to help you spread your
wings and explore, with our affordable, value-added travel
options.
As part of our tenth anniversary celebrations, we offer
14 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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datebook
Your guide to Caribbean events in July and August, from Carifesta in
Barbados to the Commonwealth Youth Games in the Bahamas
courtesy CPL T20 Ltd 2017
Don’t miss . . .
Caribbean Premier League (CPL) T20 Tournament
4 August to 9 September
Venues across the Caribbean and Florida
cplt20.com
There’s regular cricket, and then there’s CPL T20. This August and September,
the best West Indies cricketers are joining forces with their international
counterparts and cranking up the action at the regional tournament. Five
teams — the St Kitts and Nevis Patriots, Guyana Amazon Warriors, Barbados
Tridents, Trinbago Knight Riders, and St Lucia Stars — will battle to defeat
reigning champions the Jamaica Tallawahs. Celebrating its fourth year, CPL
promises riveting on-field play and the usual accompaniment of exuberant
dance moves in the stands. Some even consider it second best to Carnival!
How to get there? Caribbean
Airlines is an official sponsor
of CPL 2017, operating
flights to most of the venue
countries
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 19

datebook
If you’re in . . .
New York City
Trinidad and Tobago
Barbados
Altin Osmanaj/shutterstock.com
Jerk Festival NY
23 July
Roy Wilkins Park, Queens
jerkfestivalny.com
Ever felt that in order to get authentic
Jamaican jerk, you’d have to hop
on a plane to Kingston? Maybe the
“Jamaican jerk” in your country isn’t
quite right? Rest assured, you will get
jerk and so much more at New York’s
seventh annual Jerk Festival.
The age-old method of cooking
spicy cuts of meat attracts over
twenty thousand people from all
walks of life to celebrate with sizzling
entertainment, fashion shows, cultural
presentations, and competitions.
Winners receive cash prizes and the
coveted Dutch Pot Trophy for the Jerk
Cook-Off champion — not to mention
at least one year’s worth of bragging
rights. Check out the kid zone and
arts and craft village, too.
Other kinds of food are available,
and if you’re going hardcore, here
are some tips to help you survive.
Start with small servings of spicier
dishes and savour them slowly so you
don’t overwhelm your taste buds. If
you need relief, grab a milkshake,
ice cream, chocolate, or something
sweet. And don’t stop there: go back
to another food station and let your
senses lead as you eventually move up
the spiciness scale. Be advised, plain
water isn’t going to save you. Now, go
forth and conquer!
edison boodoosingh
Emancipation Day
1 August
Venues around T&T
Before the dew dries on the grass, a
drum call and tribute to the ancestors
commence Emancipation Day at All
Stars Pan Yard in downtown Port of
Spain. “Freedom Morning Come”,
a re-enactment of the reading of
the Emancipation Proclamation,
follows at the old Treasury Building.
Afterwards, the footsteps of the
procession continue to trail through
the city, stopping at historically
significant sites including Hell Yard,
the site of the Kambulé riots of 1881.
The final destination is the Mecca of
the Emancipation festivities: the Lidj
Yasu Omawale Emancipation Village
at the Queen’s Park Savannah, for a
full day of activities.
Each year, many thousands across
the Caribbean participate in events
commemorating the anniversary
of the end of slavery in the British
West Indies. Heroes and elders are
honoured, and generations of African
descendents are uplifted. In T&T, the
annual commemoration begins with
the observance of African Liberation
Day (25 May) and runs until August.
Awesome entertainment from Africa
and its diaspora usually features
alongside local acts. But Emancipation
is not simply an entertaining festival
— it is a living link to those who
paved the way.
Carifesta XIII
17 to 27 August
Venues around the island
carifesta.net
Just days after Barbados’s signature
Crop Over festival, the island is
hosting the Caribbean Festival of
Arts (Carifesta) for the second time
in its history. Approximately twentythree
Caribbean and Latin American
delegations will marvel in the spirit
of the nations through expressions
of visual art, music, food, literature,
folklore, theatre, and dance. Now in
its forty-fifth year, Carifesta continues
to be instrumental in fostering the
Caribbean’s pride in its capabilities
and identities.
And this year, Carifesta is reaching
new levels in taking creativity to
the market. The traditional Grand
Market is being expanded with
the introduction of a “mega mall”
featuring a wide assortment of the
region’s products and attracting retail
buyers of creative goods, services,
and experiences. The marketplace
also includes a music and film hub
— and of course it’ll be packed with
live performances. Symposiums
and two super concerts are also on
the programme. “Our artistes have
given us this chance, and it is now
ours to collectively grab with both
hands,” says Barbados culture minister
Stephen Lashley.
Event previews by Shelly-Ann Inniss
photosounds/shutterstock.com
20 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

@eldoradorums
eldorado_rum
@eldoradorums

datebook
Jump into July
Taste of Sint Maarten
Topper’s Restaurant and Bar,
Sint Maarten
Calling all foodies: scrumptious
cuisine is being served up in
one location by thirty-eight
restaurants, with loads of
entertainment for the family
[2]
Pack-Shot/shutterstock.com
Cultural Festival of Fort-de-France
Various venues around Martinique
The hilly French isle rounds up local and foreign chefs,
performers, and artists to showcase their talents
[4-24]
30
01
30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 1
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
22 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

photosounds/shutterstock.com
Calabash Festival
Montserrat
facebook.com/Montserrat-Calabash-Festival
Boat tours, concerts, and fashion shows
stem from an item traditionally used
to make household wares, musical
instruments, and fashion accessories
[16-23]
Commonwealth Youth
Games
Thomas A. Robinson Stadium,
Nassau
bahamas2017cyg.org
Back in the Caribbean after
fifty years, the largest-ever
edition of the Youth Games
introduces judo, beach soccer,
and beach volleyball to the
sporting action. Athletes from
over seventy nations will vie
for medals
[19-23]
JIANG HONGYAN/shutterstock.com
Mango Festival
Antigua
Twenty-five elite varieties of
one of nature’s most succulent,
refreshing, and delicious fruits
star in this culinary festival
[30 & 31]
30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 23

datebook
Already August
Deer Dance Festival
San Antonio, Toledo District,
Belize
Dance to the sound of
homemade harps and violins, and
scale the greasy pole as rituals
and stories of the relationship
between the Mayan people and
their land are re-enacted
[1]
Nikolay Litov/shutterstock.com
Chocolate Heritage Month
St Lucia
Taste inventive “choc-tails,” bask in chocolateinfused
spa treatments, and experience behindthe-scenes
tours in chocolate production
[1-31]
Summer Festival
Anguilla
In the midst of the Carnival
atmosphere and pageantry,
take a breather at the boat
races on the high seas
[3-13]
30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
24 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Great Race
Trinidad and Tobago
The annual speedboat race
between the sister isles is
not for people who take
their time! Get the best
vantage point for the action
[19]
courtesy carib beer
30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 25

word of mouth
Dispatches from our correspondents around the Caribbean and further afield
Long
days by
the beach
Suzanne Bhagan
remembes the lazy charms
of “August holidays”
in Mayaro
sarita rampersad
Mayaro Beach: a swathe of brown sand that
stretches eleven miles along Trinidad’s
southeastern coast. When I was in
primary school, Mayaro was specifically reserved for
the languid July-August holidays. My family would
pile into my father’s Toyota Corolla, the black rexine
seats sticking to the backs of our legs. We would drive
past Manzanilla and through the Cocal, under the
shade of numerous coconut trees bending towards
the Atlantic Ocean. I loved how the light filtering
through the coconut leaves would dance across my
closed eyelids.
To get to the sleepy fishing village, we had to
cross the old wooden bridge over the Ortoire River.
Just before we got there, my parents would start
talking about children thrown into the black water
below. As the Corolla trundled across the bridge, I
would start praying, shutting my eyes tight, hoping
the wooden planks would not give way.
School holidays spent at Mayaro meant paddling
in brackish streams that emptied into the
ocean, or in freshwater pools teeming with tiny,
translucent fish. The sea breeze felt sticky and
tasted salty. Sometimes the skies were blue.
It also meant digging for chip-chip or pacro,
tiny molluscs that Trinis boil then douse in a cocktail
sauce of ketchup, salt, garlic, chadon beni, and
chillies. While digging for these morsels, we would
often encounter sea cockroaches. The more we
dug, the more they scurried away from our fingers and deep into the wet sand.
On mornings, we would watch the fishermen pull in their nets from the
rough seas. Sunlight dappled the ripples on their sinewy backs as they pulled
the heavy nets to shore. After they sorted through the catch, a few dead fish
would remain strewn on the beach, attracting beady-eyed vultures who
roosted in the nearby coconut trees. When the fishermen left the scene, these
birds would swoop down in a flash of black, peck at the dead fish eyes, and
squabble over spilled fish guts.
After watching the fishermen, we would enter the clear, cold sea. We could
see straight to the sandy bottom where chip-chip and bone-white sand dollars
quickly burrowed to avoid our prying eyes.
At night, we would go for long walks, strolling under a pitch-black sky.
Crabs would leave their holes and scuttle across the damp sand. Without
flashlights, we would step gingerly, for fear of falling into tiny streams washing
out to sea. The waves glittered and purred, beckoning us to plunge into the
warm, dark water under the milky moonlight.
As I got older, the Mayaro beach house became a refuge against the world.
Inside, we drank, swilling beer, vodka, and rum into the early morning hours,
laughing loudly as we listened to soca, chutney, and dancehall music. When
the self-appointed DJ started playing drowsy ballads from the 1980s, it turned
into karaoke.
But early mornings at Mayaro retained their charm. Around 5 am, the sea
would rumble as the sky gradually lightened to a soft blue. Dawn would break,
a gentle washing of light, a slight gilding of the white, foam-crested waves.
The sea would feel cold and clean. The sand would be washed clear of debris.
It would be smooth, save for scattered, pearlescent chip-chip or translucent
man-o’-war jellyfish. The waves would softly roar, pulling a stray branch into
the sea or pushing a coconut further along the beach. It was a time of day when
anything seemed possible.
26 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

H E L P P R O T E C T T H E F O O D S U P P L Y A N D
N A T U R A L B E A U T Y O F T H E C A R I B B E A N
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Items

word of mouth
courtesy the cutlass
Cutting through
barriers
As the T&T feature film The Cutlass prepares
for its international release, Caroline Taylor
talks to the filmmakers about the challenges
of Caribbean cinema
If making films in countries with
established industries is gruelling,
imagine trying to make them in the
Caribbean — where, more often than
not, the infrastructure doesn’t exist. Still,
auteurs eager to tell Caribbean stories on
screen soldier on, often getting boosts
from regional festivals like the Trinidad
and Tobago Film Festival (TTFF), where
stronger local features reliably sell out —
as was the case with Trinidadian film The
Cutlass.
Based on a harrowing true story of
a young Trinidadian woman fighting
for survival after being kidnapped, The
Cutlass delivered audiences compelling
performances and stunning cinematography
in an impressive feature debut for
screenwriter Teneille Newallo and director
Darisha Beresford (who both, with
editor Drew Umland, served as executive
producers). It ultimately copped the 2016
TTFF’s Best Trinidad and Tobago Feature
Film and People’s Choice awards — after
also winning the Best Film in Development
award at the 2012 Festival.
It was nothing less than a labour of
love for Newallo, who — having lost her
best friend to violence — wanted to find
a way to empower women through film.
“When I first heard this story, directly
from the mouth of the victim, only days
after it occurred, I was blown away by
her courage and modesty. Most people
that knew her and knew of what she went
through never really got the details or
understanding of what she truly experienced,”
she explains. “I wanted everyone
to understand.” Beresford was similarly
passionate about the film’s power to raise
pressing local issues — the lack of support
for victims of abuse or those suffering
from mental illness, and the connections
between poverty and violence. Their
commitment to the story buoyed the three
producers through years of script development,
fundraising, and finally making the
film in the remote forested mountains of
Trinidad — on a tight budget and production
timeline. And once it had finally made
its regional premiere, could the film’s local
success translate internationally?
The producers have signed with Los
Angeles-based Leomark Studios, and The
Cutlass had its international market premiere
at the Marché du Film (the business
counterpart of the Cannes Film Festival)
last May, as part of Leomark’s new market
line-up. “Many buyers and distributors
that have seen our film are impressed, but
they are not exactly sure what to do with it
. . . yet,” says Umland. The biggest question
for this and other Caribbean films appears
to be who the market is, and whether the
films will translate — sometimes, literally.
“We have been told by some that our
dialects are challenging, and then by others
that the dialects are attractive,” says
Newallo, “so I think there is still a bit of
reservation about whether or not the world
is ready for Caribbean film.”
Wild Eye Releasing has bought the
(non-theatrical) North American distribution
rights to The Cutlass, and Leomark
will distribute around the rest of the
world. But the producers have retained
the theatrical distribution rights to the
Caribbean, Canada, and the United
States, managing cinematic releases
in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and
other Caribbean territories this August,
followed by Miami and Toronto and
other select North American cities. Once
successful, it’s a business and distribution
model they hope other Caribbean films
can successfully emulate.
“There is no real market yet for Caribbean
film, [which] means that Caribbean
filmmakers today have the opportunity to
consciously create our own market,” says
Newallo. The three producers are confident
regional filmmakers can carve out
a niche in the international marketplace.
“As long as the stories are universal and
the target audience can emotionally connect
with the characters,” adds Beresford,
“there is no reason why Caribbean films
can’t be showcased internationally.”
28 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

word of mouth
joshua yetman
When
Jabs rule
The spirit of the Jab Jab,
with its roots in Grenada’s
history, makes Spicemas
unique. Laura Dowrich
explains
The scene from atop the Guinness truck was a sight to behold. Thousands
of people adorned with glowing bracelets, neon necklaces, flashing hats,
and glow sticks, waving their hands in unison from left to right, creating
a sea of twinkling lights and revealing a beauty to Grenada’s Carnival that only
added to its uniqueness.
Known as Spicemas, Grenada’s Carnival (falling on 14 and 15 August this
year) has long held the traditional Jab Jab figure as its visual representation.
Grenada is, after all, considered the Jab Jab capital of the world, and in recent
years has successfully exported the Jab Jab culture through its music and
marketing.
But on this Carnival Monday night, in the heart of St George’s, the capital,
along the wharf in an area known as the Carenage, the oil of the dutty mas
gave way to lights. One of the island’s best-kept secrets, this Monday Nite Mas
was perhaps the largest gathering of the entire Carnival, with bands assigned
to corporate entities with deep enough pockets to cater to the thousands.
In 2016, the rules changed, allowing individuals to stage their own bands
alongside the corporate heavies.
Earlier that morning, along the same route, throngs of men and women
gathered for J’Ouvert celebrations. As in Trinidad’s Carnival, J’Ouvert in
Grenada signals the official start of the festivities — but unlike its southern
neighbour, where masqueraders in old costumes, mud, cocoa, and blue
30 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

devil paint create a kaleidoscope of colour on the streets,
Grenada’s J’Ouvert is the sole domain of the Jab Jabs. Masqueraders
proudly daub their bodies with black oil, faces stoic
as they engage in their annual ritual, ignoring curious tourists
who flit in and out of their groupings, cameras and phones
recording everything.
With a French patois name meaning “devil,” the Jab Jab or
Jab Molassie originated on sugar plantations during the era
of slavery. One story says the Jab Jab portrays the spirit of
a slave who fell into a vat of molasses and comes back every
year to torment his master. Another suggests that in the days
of slavery, whenever fire broke out on an estate, enslaved
labourers were immediately mustered and marched to the
spot. Horns and shells were blown to collect them and the
gangs were followed by the drivers cracking their whips.
Whatever the origins, after Emancipation the formerly
enslaved commemorated their experiences by taking the Jab
Jab to the streets, wearing horns and chains and blowing the
conch shell. Today Grenadians maintain the tradition, parading
with snakes, pig entrails, pig heads, and buckets of slimy
worms, all in an attempt to intimidate as they personify the
devil.
J’Ouvert goes on all day, and gives way to pretty mas in
St George’s on Carnival Tuesday, but Jab Jab mas continues
in other areas of the island over the full two days. In
St David, where I visited last year, scores of people from
nearby villages trekked by foot to line the streets to see the
Jabs on Carnival Tuesday.
The soundtrack to the festivities, as in other islands, is
soca. But in Grenada there is a distinct Jab Jab sound that
has been created to boost the Jab Jab culture. Tallpree is
perhaps the most famous proponent of Jab Jab music, since
he released his mega hit “Old Woman Alone” in 1999. In
the last ten years, artistes such as Lava Man, Mr Killa, and
Shortpree have also taken up the mantle to make Jab Jab
music global.
It’s been described as a distinctly percussive sound with
a three-beat repeated refrain. The lyrics often talk about
the pride Grenadians feel in their historic tradition and the
practice that goes into being a “wicked Jab.”
Like other Carnivals in the region, Grenada’s boasts
its share of competitions. There’s a highly anticipated and
fiercely contested soca monarch competition, a calypso competition,
steelband Panorama, Band of the Year, and a Queen
pageant, among others. Then there are the fetes. Tallpree’s
Preeday is one of the most anticipated, along with the “white”
parties, White in Moonlight and Pure White, and a number of
imports from Trinidad. The fetes feature performances from
a slew of Grenadian acts and top regional soca stars.
Like its famous spices, Grenada’s Spicemas has something
for everyone to enjoy — and, coming latest in the regional
“summer” Carnival schedule, it ensures you close off your
fun with a bang. n
miles of unspoilt rainforest | kayaking, paddling, canoeing | horseback riding | safari
wildlife watching | birdwatching | sports fishing | community tourism | trekking
August 1 Emancipation Day, National Park
August 3-6 Bartica Regatta, Bartica Region 7
August 13 Lake Mainstay Regatta, Essequibo
August 17 - 18 CPL Cricket, National Stadium
August 18 - 21 Berbice Expo & Trade Fair, Berbice
Auguts 20 - 22 CPL Cricket, National Stadium
August 26 Naya Zamana, G\Town
Sept 1 - 30 Indigenous Month, Countrywide
Sept 16 Nereid’s Yacht Rally, Essequibo River
Oct 19 Diwali Motorcade, Georgetown
Oct 29 Rockstone Fish Festival, Rockstone
Nov 12 Motor Racing Championships, Timehri
Nov 17-26 Guyana Restaurant Week, Georgetown
Nov 21-26 South Rupununi Safari, Rupununi
Nov 25-26 Rupununi Expo, Lethem
Dec 31 Horse Racing, Rising Sun Turf, Berbice
For more information on Grenada Spicemas, visit
www.spicemasgrenada.com
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 31

THE GAME
Don’t
stop the
cricket
“The biggest party in sport” —
that’s right, the Caribbean Premier
League T20 cricket tournament —
is back, and Garry Steckles has
been keeping up with the headline
players’ surprise moves
Photography by Mark Nolan IDI/IDI via Getty Images
Six highly competitive teams,
non-stop bacchanal, and some
of the biggest names in world
cricket are heading our way
again, as the Caribbean poises
to host the fifth edition of “the
biggest party in sport.” The occasion, of
course, is the annual campaign of the Hero
Caribbean Premier League, one of the
venerable game’s most eagerly anticipated
Twenty20 tournaments, and one of the most
positive and popular additions to the region’s
sporting calendar in recent decades.
And as usual we can expect the
unexpected from the CPL, with a number
of its star players making surprise moves
to rival teams, and two new names on
the rosters from a part of the world not
widely associated with top-class league
cricket — Afghanistan. This year’s CPL
will be launched later than usual, too,
with the thirty-four-match tournament
starting on 4 August in St Lucia and the
final scheduled for 9 September.
There’ll be the usual blend of day and
night games, and the St Lucia opener will
lead into two double-headers in Central
Broward Stadium in Lauderhill, Florida,
on the weekend of 5 and 6 August, as the
CPL continues its quest to sell its unique
brand of party-hearty cricket to an American
audience.
Looking ahead to the 2017 campaign,
CPL CEO Damien O’Donohoe says, “Last
year was the tournament’s biggest, with a
global TV and online audience of almost
150 million and in the region of 250,000
fans attending our games. We are determined
to enhance the fan participation
across each venue, ensuring an even
better experience for the many thousands
of fans who will descend on each of our
seven host countries.” He adds: “Once
more, we have the best talent in world
cricket across our six teams, and there
have been a lot of eye-catching transfers.”
There have indeed, and none of the
big-name player shuffles has made bigger
headlines than the move of Chris Gayle,
who holds just about every batting record
in Twenty20 cricket, to the St Kitts and
Nevis Patriots. Gayle, the biggest single
box-office attraction in cricket, led his
home island’s Jamaica Tallawahs in the
first four CPL campaigns, winning the
championship title in two of them.
Another eye-catcher is the acquisition
of last year’s ICC World T20 batting hero
Marlon Samuels by the St Lucia Stars,
while the Tallawahs moved to fill the gap
left by Gayle’s departure with the signing
of prolific Windies opening batsman
Lendl Simmonds and the retention of the
Sri Lankan legend Kumar Sangakkara.
For the first time ever, there will be
an Afghanistan presence in the Hero
CPL: all-rounder Mohammad Nabi was
snapped up by the Patriots at the player
draft, while googly specialist Rashid Khan
was signed up by the Guyana Amazon
Warriors. In addition to the high-profile
acquisition of New Zealand batsman
Kane Williamson, coupled with the return
of Dwayne Smith from the Amazon Warriors,
the Barbados Tridents have retained
Pakistan’s Shaoib Malik and South African
all-rounder Wayne Parnell as they bid
to regain the title they won in 2014.
The Amazon Warriors have been one
of the most consistent sides since the
tournament’s inception in 2013, and that
is reflected in the retention of a number
of stalwarts, including New Zealand
opener Martin Guptill, in-form Australian
32 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Jamaican Marlon Samuels joins the
St Lucia Stars for CPL 2017
batsman Chris Lynn, and
Pakistan’s always dangerous
paceman Sohail Tanvir.
In addition to the big-hitting
Gayle, the ambitious Patriots’ string
of Caribbean talent includes legspinner
Samuel Badree, batsmen
Jonathan Carter and Kieran Powell, and
promising fast bowler Alzarri Joseph, for
what will be the 2016 World T20-winning
coach Phil Simmons’s first season in
charge of the team.
As usual, we can expect
the unexpected fom
the CPL, with star
players making moves
to rival teams
The St Lucia Stars will once again be
led by the charismatic Darren Sammy
and they will welcome back South African
batsman David Miller and Australian
all-rounder Shane Watson. Recently
re-named and under new ownership, the
Stars will also feature Sri Lanka’s great
Lasith Malinga, the speed ace with the
round-arm “slingshot” action.
The 2015 champions Trinbago Knight
Riders have opted to retain all but three of
last year’s squad, and will once more be
led by Dwayne Bravo. The Knight Riders
will look to the guile of Sunil Narine, while
Darren Bravo will be part of a batting
line-up that includes big-hitting New
Zealanders Brendon McCullum and Colin
Munro and South Africa’s run machine
Hashim Amla. n
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 33

Bookshelf
River Dancer, by Ian McDonald (Hansib Publications, 112 pp, ISBN 9781910553268)
“I have the feeling jaguars are nearby,”
declares one of the poems in River
Dancer. The line is powerful not because
it is delivered on the edge of a narrative
cutlass, but with the watchful quiet of
decades of observing life move, both slow
and teeming. Claiming Antigua, Trinidad,
and Guyana in his Caribbean passport, Ian
McDonald’s poems show the long span of
a life braided into others — a beloved,
beautiful wife steadfast in her attentions;
a host of fast friends, now either deceased
or demented; “boys in a football game /
boisterous and golden in the setting sun.”
Expect no abstruse flourishes in the
verse, no ornate literary calisthenics
to showcase proof of talent. The work
proves itself, steadily and with careful,
clean-polished imageries held up to
reflect the self-lit brightness of thousands of night orchids
at the edge of the Essequibo. In every visual dispatch,
McDonald takes the reader by the hand, firm but gentle,
and leads her through eighty years of
journeys: some indistinct, yellowing with
the sweet efflorescence of age, some
as vivid as if the poet’s youth were still
firmly clutched in his grasp.
It is the lodestone of gratitude that
eases these poems into the minds of
those who read them. In this way, the
poems become as friends, neither dead
nor demented: alive and present, listening
to the heartbeats of hummingbirds;
awaiting a new book of Walcott’s in the
post; ascending El Tucuche amid “huge
crapauds hopping in the muddy pools
/ wild orchids leaping in the branches
/ a rotten stump of tree pouring out
/ red bajack ants in angry hunting
streams / everything seemed good and
memorable.”
The goodness of that memory is the inner illumination
of River Dancer, a book deeply concerned with what lies
beyond the next turn in the oxbow lake.
Cannibal, by Safiya Sinclair (University of
Nebraska Press, 126 pp, ISBN 9780803290631)
These poems announce
themselves in cauldrons,
coastlines, and calamities.
Winner of the 2017 OCM
Bocas Poetry Prize and
the 2017 Addison Metcalf
Award from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters,
Cannibal comes not
with faint praise, but on
rapturous report — and
with galvanising reason.
Taking the maligned colonial
subject of Caliban,
Sinclair pirouettes his possibilities
in our literary vaults, affording him his own
language, and the power to curse, cavort, and carry on in
it. The narrator of “Home” reflects the restless certainty
of voyage contained at the core of Cannibal: “I’d open
my ear for sugar cane / and long stalks of gungo peas /
to climb in. I’d swim the sea / still lapsing in a soldered
frame, / the sea that again and again / calls out my
name.” When these poems arrive on your doorstep, be
unsurprised if they claim the blood of a glorious and
certain homecoming.
Curfew Chronicles, by Jennifer Rahim (Peepal
Tree Press, 208 pp, ISBN 9781845233624)
In an ideal world, a state
of emergency might bring
the armistice it intends.
In Trinidad and Tobago
in 2011, the official state
of emergency that lasted
four months uncovered
more crises than comforts.
Jennifer Rahim’s Curfew
Chronicles draws together
politicians in low places
with streetwise scholars,
bringing accounts of the
extraordinary and the
everyday together in prose
that presents us to ourselves: as incandescent, dramatic
residents of the 868. This novel in episodic chapters
reveals that the nation’s metaphoric state of emergency
didn’t begin in 2011; its roots remain sunk in something
far more insidious: “The real disease, brother, is when a
people lose sight of who they are. They think is a race,
a faith, a flag, a surname, a title, a bank account, a law,
even a hurt that make them who they are. A person, even
a people, could fall into that trap.”
34 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Side by Side We Stand, by Nathalie
Taghaboni (Commess University, 384 pp, ISBN
9780692694015)
In novels that trace their percussion
lines to the riffs of steelpan,
and soak themselves deep
in local-distillery rum, Nathalie
Taghaboni makes Caribbean
romance writing come alive.
Side by Side We Stand is the
Trinidad-born author’s third
and final installment in The
Savanoy Series, which chronicles
the grand stage revels of a T&T
Carnival masmaking family.
Banishing the supposition that
romances cannot deal in piercing loss, Taghaboni visits
immeasurable grief on her characters, prompting deeper
catharses through the healing of a full-body immersion
in the mas. We are not here only to dance, this novel and
its predecessors Across From Lapeyrouse and Santimanitay
say: but while we are here, love, levity, and the las’
lap of every Carnival Tuesday will sustain us.
Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought:
Genealogies, Theories, Enactments, edited by
Gabrielle Jamela Hosein and Lisa Outar (Palgrave
Macmillan, 349 pp, ISBN 9781137570796)
What have the lives of Indian
women in the Caribbean
brought forth, and what
transformative seeds do they
continue to sow? To answer
this question among several,
editors Gabrielle Hosein and
Lisa Outar train their attentions
not only on curating
the canon of scholarship on
Indo-Caribbean feminisms, but
on throwing the gates — real
or imagined — wide open. This
anthology meanders wilfully away from insularity: some
of its most promising engagements tackle the shapeshifting
power of Nicki Minaj, the erotic and emotional lives
of same-sex-loving Indo-Trinidadian women, the direct
devastations of indentureship. With an entire section of
this academic text devoted to the experiences of dougla
women — those of mixed African and Indian ancestry
— the editors of Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought
have pointed their rudders forwards: away from the
affirmations of the subcontinent, and deeper into the
Caribbean’s own expressive, tenacious heart.
Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor
www.marionetteschorale.com
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WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 35

playlist
Shades of Life Marvin Dolly (self-released)
New York–based Trinidadian
guitarist Marvin Dolly
surprises on this debut
album, Shades of Life, with
a quiet contemplation of
trio-playing featuring just
guitar, bass, and trumpet.
In an intimate setting
devoid of the thump of
the drum, the soloists each
have room to speak clearly and emotively in this conversation
among acoustic instruments. Dolly, along with J.S.
Williams on trumpet and John Gray on double bass,
mainly, cruises through this set of subdued jazz tunes
that harken back to the cool jazz ambience of 1950s West
Coast America, contrasting with the bebop bombast of
New York of the same era. The music, thankfully, does
not wallow in the excess of a similar-sounding ambient
lounge or minimalist new-age aesthetic. Dolly’s guitar
finds its full voice on the tracks “Calypsonian Dream” and
“Short Letters to Mother”, solo and duet guitar pieces,
respectively, that make a solid opening gambit for a
Caribbean instrumentalist’s voice in the diaspora.
Sabiduría/Wisdom Eddie Palmieri (Ropeadope
Records)
The Caribbean is a transnation
of expanded and
connected diasporas. Puerto
Rican heritage extends
beyond its island space to
include its famous diaspora
citizens. Bronx-born Eddie
Palmieri is a legendary Latin
jazz pianist, who at the age
of eighty may have delivered
one of the most sonically and musically endearing albums
in his career. Not that he “finally got the formula right,”
but with those years of experience as a bandleader,
composer, and arranger, and the “wisdom” — sabiduría in
Spanish — that comes with that experience, Palmieri can
pull together some of the finest talent, young and old, in
jazz and salsa/Latin music to successfully and pleasingly
blend the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of his Puerto Rican
island “home” with the harmonically complex sounds of
mainland jazz and bebop. The album also extends the
fusion to include bossa nova on “Samba Do Suenho” and
Cuban son on “Coast to Coast”.
Single Spotlight
Climb Queen Ifrica (VP Records)
Jamaican singer and social
activist Queen Ifrica has
finally released a follow-up
to her last full-length album,
made in 2009. A compilation
of some singles released in
the interim and more than
a dozen brand-new songs,
this seventeen-track album
is worth the wait. On Climb,
we the listeners are blessed with the fervent messages
of the Queen of the past, as she identifies with and
illustrates the lives and times of the marginalised,
hard-pressed and world-weary average Jamaicans “inna
de yard.” “These songs come to me as I am watching
the world,” she says. “I see myself as a social worker
that uses music as my tool, because music is the greatest
weapon to impact societal change, to help young people
to understand themselves more.” With music that covers
a number of reggae sub-genres — ska, lovers rock and
dancehall, among others — the focus on the lyric is made
easier here.
Jump in da Line [DJ Buddha Remix] Sammi Starr
(Sony Entertainment US Latin)
Bahamian Junkanoo Carnival
is described as a collection of
events, parades, and concerts
that pull from every aspect of
Bahamian culture; an amalgam
of native and regional
Carnival celebrations. The
music inspired by the celebration
is a catch-all of festive
rhythms that one can’t help
but dance to. Sammi Starr, born Sammie Poitier, has made
a remix of his Junkanoo Carnival hit of a couple years ago
with Latin Grammy winner DJ Buddha, this time to act
as a sonic accompaniment for a new tourism campaign.
The result is an automatic invitation to jam. “I’m on my
feet ’cause I can’t sit down / Don’t worry ’bout the heat
cause tonight it’s going down / Popping bottles, raising
cups, jump in da line and take over the dance floor.”
Pop sensibilities and tempos in this remix have replaced
the modern rake-and-scrape Junkanoo rhythms of the
original for a hoped-for crossover to the world.
Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell
36 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

SCREENSHOTS
Sharing Stella
Directed by Kiki Álvarez, 2016, 87 minutes
Back in December 2014, when Barack Obama and Raúl
Castro announced the resumption of normal relations
between the United States and Cuba, it was anyone’s guess
what the practical implications of that decision would be
for the communist island. Would
Cubanos start mixing their rum
with Coca-Cola? Not yet, though
with Vin Diesel racing a hot rod
through Havana’s streets in the
latest installment of The Fast and
the Furious franchise, times are
changing.
Kiki Álvarez’s Sharing Stella,
a Cuban film, attempts to make
some sense of the crossroads at
which the country finds itself. Head of the fiction filmmaking
department at Cuba’s International Film and Television
School, Álvarez has a particular concern for the status of his
nation’s young people, as seen in his earlier indie-inflected
dramas Giraffes and Venice.
Set in Havana during that momentous month of
December 2014, Sharing Stella follows a film director —
named Kiki Álvarez, and played by Álvarez himself — as he
seeks to cast the part of Stella, who he sees as a metaphor
for contemporary Cuba, in a stage production of A Streetcar
Named Desire. Several young actors, women and men,
including some who have starred in Álvarez’s previous films,
and who all appear here as themselves, are considered.
As they speak with the director
and among themselves, the actors
talk candidly about their lives, their
hopes, and their desires. News and
radio coverage of Obama and
Castro provide a counterpointing
background commentary. It
gives nothing away to say that
at the end the casting remains
undecided, the play unperformed.
To call Sharing Stella fiction
feels inadequate; but it’s plainly no documentary. Selfreflexive
and digressive, playful and contingent, it’s best
seen as an essay, a modest, open-ended inquiry. It’s also as
appropriate and laudable a response as any other to these
uncertain times in Cuba’s history.
For more information, visit habanerofilmsales.com
Death by a Thousand Cuts
Directed by Juan Mejira Botero and Jake Kheel,
2016, 74 minutes
Recent years have seen
an increasing number
of films about the relationship
between Haiti
and its neighbour the
Dominican Republic —
specifically, about the
treatment of Haitians and people of Haitian descent in
the DR. One can now add Death by a Thousand Cuts to
that number.
This US documentary approaches its subject via the
issue of deforestation through illegal charcoal burning
by Haitians in the DR, which turned fatal in 2012 with
the machete murder of a Dominican park ranger. The
filmmakers methodically investigate the crime, revealing
through observation and interviews a network of corruption
and exploitation (human and environmental).
The film might have been better served, however, by a
deeper understanding of Haitian history, and the factors
that have led to the destruction of virtually all of the
country’s forests.
For more information, visit deathbyathousandcutsfilm.com
A Caribbean Dream
Directed by Shakirah Bourne, 2017, 82 minutes
In her previous features
as a writer or director
— the two Payday
comedies and the Alison
Hinds-starring suspense
thriller Two Smart —
Shakirah Bourne established
herself as a purveyor of cheap-and-cheerful
cinematic entertainment. So it comes as little surprise
that in deciding on a Shakespeare adaptation for her
next film, she should choose not merely a comedy but
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its “weak and idle
theme,” its young lovers and fairies.
A Caribbean Dream is Bourne’s most assured work to
date. Colourfully mounted, and set within what looks
like the grounds of an old plantation, the film breezily
mixes Barbadian English with the Bard’s, and substitutes
the story of the Barbados-exiled King Ja Ja of Nigeria
for the play within the play, The Tragedy of Pyramus
and Thisbe. Where the film may be said to be most
noteworthy, however, is in its casting, with all the couples
pointedly interracial ones.
For more information, visit caribbeanfilmproductions.
com
Reviews by Jonathan Ali
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 37

cookup
The
truth
about
SUPERFOODS
The “superfood” trend, promoting exotic foodstuffs
as dietary essentials, has long gone mainstream, even
though most nutritionists dismiss the term. But that
doesn’t mean there aren’t Caribbean food plants high
in beneficial nutrients which ought to be better known.
Franka Philip learns more
There was a time about a decade ago when you
couldn’t escape from headlines like “Superfoods
everyone should live by”, “Top ten superfoods
for better health”, “The superfoods that can turn
around your life”.
Somehow, the world had gone “superfood”
mad. We were told by supposed health gurus that we were
doomed if we didn’t eat beans, blueberries, soy, walnuts, and
yogurt, and drink lots of green tea. The lists grew to include
more and more exotic things, like açaí berries and chia seeds.
But if you speak to dieticians and nutrition experts, you find
most of them don’t like the term “superfood,” and some outright
dismiss it. “It’s highly exaggerated”, says Francis Morean, one of
Trinidad and Tobago’s leading authorities on indigenous plants
and herbs. “Having a balanced diet is more important than all
this superfood stuff.”
A superfood is supposed to be one that provides superior
benefits both in health and taste. Like other experts, Morean
thinks the term is a marketing cliché. “I think it is something
that shows the frivolity of the American market. They always
need something new, and you know what gets popular in the US
usually also gets popular here.”
38 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Often dismissed as a weed,
purslane is rich in vitamin E
The noni craze, which lasted for about
two years at the turn of the century,
illustrates this fickleness. Noni (Morinda
citrifolia) is a small, green, prickly fruit that
smells bad and tastes bitter, but somehow
it became known as a panacea for a range
of ailments. I remember visiting friends and
seeing these ugly fruit soaking in water in
large jugs. People swore by the cleansing
properties of the water. On television
and in magazines, there was a swathe
of advertorials extolling the virtues of
the smelly little fruit.
“The noni craze was quite amazing”
Morean says. “It’s widely available throughout
the Caribbean and known by many names. People used to be
afraid to go near it because of the smell. But in 1999 you couldn’t
find a ripe noni tree anywhere in the Caribbean — everywhere
If you speak to dieticians and nutrition
experts, you find most of them
don’t like the term “superfood,”
and some outright dismiss it
you went, people were like hawks for noni,” he adds with a
laugh. He recalls going to a conference in St Croix where he met
a woman who had basically converted her home into a factory
for noni products. “She had everything — even cigarettes made
from the noni leaf.”
Morean believes that the huge marketing drive that made
noni so popular was a precursor to the superfoods era. Now, in
the wake of the long-dead noni craze, the trees are ignored and
fruit rot in their shade.
In the Caribbean, a common plant, fruit, or vegetable often
graduates to “superfood” status when people realise it’s being
heavily touted internationally as a remedy for damaging
lifestyle diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, or obesity.
Today’s superfood du jour is moringa (Moringa oleifera). It’s
not native to the Caribbean, but was brought here from India in
the nineteenth century. It’s sometimes called “the miracle tree,”
and is said to alleviate diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma,
cardiac disorders, and kidney disease, among other ailments.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, all parts
of the moringa tree are beneficial. The leaves are rich in protein,
vitamins A, B, C, and minerals. In Trinidad, the fruit — known
as saijan or drumsticks (because of the long and pointy shape)
— are cooked and eaten. I first saw saijan for sale at a market
in south Trinidad, and when I asked my Indian friend Natasha
about it, she said her grandmother used to chop it up and cook
it in curries. Interestingly, for all its benefits, I’ve never heard
anyone make claims about its taste. In fact, the powder derived
wasanajai/shutterstock.com
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 39

Given the explosion in lifestyle
diseases, it makes sense for
the Caribbean food industry to
work more closely with those
exploring our local food
plants to give chefs
and consumers
greater choice
Soursop, popular in ice
cream, is also high in fibre
PHAKAWADEE TOWIYANON/shutterstock.com
from ground moringa leaves
is bitter, but that is usually
masked by other ingredients
when it’s added to smoothies
and juices.
Morean dislikes the term
superfoods, but he does say that in
the case of moringa most of the touted
benefits are indeed real. But when it
comes to other local foods that have a similarly
large number of health benefits, Morean says many of these are
not widely known.
One of those plants is pursley, or nuniya bhaji. It is a variety
of purslane (Portulaca oleracea), and is known for being rich in
vitamin E and omega-3 fatty acids. It grows wild and is often
dismissed as a weed.
The website Mother Earth News describes purslane as
“somewhat crunchy [with] a slight lemony taste. Some people
liken it to watercress or spinach, and it can substitute for spinach
in many recipes. Young, raw leaves and stems are tender and
are good in salads and sandwiches. They can also be lightly
steamed or stir-fried. Purslane’s high level of pectin (known to
Almost every part of
the moringa tree can be
consumed
lower cholesterol)
thickens soups and
stews.” Morean says it is
particularly beneficial to women. “I
tell women it is a plant they should use more regularly because
it can slow down the development of fibroids,” he explains.
Morean is keen to stress that many of the Caribbean foods
now regarded as superfoods have been a part of our lives for
many years — but now, because of scientific research, their
importance is being recognised.
Look at the soursop or guanabana fruit (Annona muricata),
which is most commonly consumed in ice cream and punches.
It is now being used for treating cancer and tumours in South
America. “Soursop is something I always recommend to people,”
says Morean. “It’s high in fibre, which helps remove waste
without purging, and it plays a great part in a balanced diet.”
In the Caribbean, there’s a growing interest in wild indigenous
plants. And it seems we’re on the right track, because a
similar movement is taking place in Kenya, where scientists are
exploring wild plants eaten by local communities and believed
to have health benefits, such as potent antioxidant qualities.
“These plants are thought of as poor people’s food,” says Morean,
“but [by doing this work] what we’re doing is giving new life
to plants that have always been here.”
It will take some effort, but given the explosion in lifestyle
diseases, it makes sense for the Caribbean food industry to work
more closely with those exploring our local food plants to give
chefs and consumers greater choice. “We need to revisit our
traditional food styles,” Morean says. “I guess we’re waiting for
a foreigner to come and tell us that our stuff is great.” n
COLOA Studio/shutterstock.com
40 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Immerse
Maria Nunes
42 Closeup
A head for jazz and a creole soul
50
Own Words
“The poems must have decided on me”
52 Backstory
It starts with the drum
60 Showcase
Hadriana’s wedding
Jazz musician Etienne Charles

closeup
For generations, musicians with
Caribbean roots have contributed their
rhythms and melodies to international
jazz. But few have done it with the
confidence and style of Etienne Charles.
At the age of thirty-three he’s already
recognised as a phenomenal talent
— not just as a musician, but as a
composer with a gift for reinventing
traditional forms. Nigel A. Campbell
explains
Photography by Maria Nunes
42 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 43

There’s a photograph floating around the Internet from
about a year ago, of a dapper Etienne Charles, Trinidadian
jazz trumpeter, warming up with soca superstar Machel
Montano before performing a short impromptu set at
the White House. President Obama could not attend the
event — his loss — where the recognition of Caribbean people
and their contributions to the United States reached an apotheosis.
Charles and Montano embody the high pinnacle of Trinidad and
Tobago’s music success in the US — and both belong to a new
wave of Caribbean musicians who have honed their craft within
an environment of learning and high standards.
The trumpet’s evolution and positioning as the symbol of jazz
has a heritage marked by iconic figures throughout its history.
Icons like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and Wynton Marsalis
represent a linear history. They also represent a shift from the
working-class unschooled genius to the middle-class educated
musician, who have paid their dues by apprenticeship. Charles,
in this pantheon in the Caribbean context, represents the modern
incarnation of the jazz musician taking his craft and skill to
the world.
In the Caribbean, jazz does not have as high a profile as reggae,
dancehall, calypso, or soca. Despite the region’s reputation
for the once ubiquitous “jazz festival” — writer B.C. Pires noted
back in 1993 that there were “more than thirty jazz festivals
every year in the Caribbean, and most Caribbean people have
never been to one” — these islands have not offered up many
global stars in the modern jazz industry. Still, the most prolific
modern recording artist in the Caribbean is Jamaican jazz pianist
Monty Alexander, with over fifty albums released around
the world. It’s also noteworthy that Caribbean music and musicians
figure prominently in the genesis of jazz music in America.
Charles carries on the tradition of regional jazz musicians who
have fused their native cultural influences, rhythms, and melodies
with aspects of jazz harmony and improvisation to create
something new.
Jazz biographies love to dwell on the environment of upbringing
of their subjects. Our cultural heroes have often been lauded for
rising up and overcoming their hardscrabble ghetto existence.
The Independence generation, certainly in Trinidad and Tobago,
heard that education was key to the future: “you carry the future
of Trinidad and Tobago in your school bags,” said Prime Minister
Eric Williams in 1962. A middle-class lifestyle and existence were
the goals of nation-builders. But our ongoing fascination with
innate talent sometimes obviates intelligent endeavour.
Etienne Charles was born “early in the morning” in July 1983
into a middle-class family in Port of Spain, who later moved
to a well-to-do neighbourhood in the west of the island. He
excelled academically, sequentially graduating from the high
school Fatima College, then with undergraduate and graduate
degrees in music from Florida State University (FSU) and the
Juilliard School in New York City — epitomising the intelligence
and excellence needed by Caribbean people to compete in the
modern global creative industries.
The attitude was there, as was the bespoke wardrobe. The
stingy-brim fedora on Charles’s head, like the porkpie hat of
Lester Young or the Sinatra fedora in the 1950s, acts as a crown,
a signpost, and symbol of differing superiority, a trademark.
44 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Charles is jazz with a West Indian accent. To reiterate the axiom
about education and a successful future is redundant, but worth
reinforcing as we celebrate excellence, and as Caribbean people
look for exemplars outside the shady world of island politics and
the brute-force theatre of sports.
Currently, Charles serves as associate professor of jazz trumpet
at highly ranked Michigan State University (MSU), where
he just completed his eighth year, and where he was awarded
tenure in 2016. “I’ve definitely taken to academia,” he says, “and
teaching is one of the most crucial professions in our society,
with respect to inspiring as well as leading students through
their exploration of idioms, styles, and techniques. It’s also
something I find great joy in doing.” Charles is obviously well
respected at MSU — he was awarded the 2016 Teacher-Student
Award, which recognises some of the best teachers at the university.
In the words of James Forger, dean of the College of Music,
Charles is “one of the brightest minds in jazz performance and
artistic creativity today.”
All this academic brilliance works in tandem with the other
side of Etienne Charles. He is a professional musician whose
profile has grown from its commercial beginnings as a teenager
arranging horns for tropical rockers Orange Sky on their album
Of Birds and Bees in 2002, through his debut album Culture Shock
in 2006 and subsequent five albums, to his work as an arranger
on two Grammy-nominated albums by René Marie, I Wanna Be
Evil: With Love to Eartha Kitt and Sound of Red.
Redon, Lloyd ‘Bre’ Foster, Tony Woodroffe at the Brass Institute,
Major Edouard Wade, who started me on trumpet lessons,
Errol Ince, Kerry Roebuck, and Francis Pau at the National
Youth Orchestra of T&T, percussionist Ernesto Garcia — those
were my main mentors when I was growing up with a keen
interest.” All these “heroes” figured in Charles’s intellectual
engagement with the traditions of jazz in his undergraduate
years, as he was always aware of the responsibility to be true
to his Caribbean roots.
Charles was confidently stepping out of his Caribbean comfort
zone at twenty-three years old, just four years removed from
his Trinidad existence, to explore both commercially and
artistically the possibilities of jazz with his unique West Indian
accent. The milestones were beginning to accumulate: he was
already a National Trumpet Competition winner, and he had
performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival as part of the FSU Jazz
Combo in 2005.
As he was graduating from Florida State University in 2006,
he was charting a career as a recording artist with the help of
his teacher and mentor, renowned jazz pianist Marcus Roberts,
widely known as one of the pre-eminent American jazz pianists
of his generation. The resulting album, aptly titled Culture Shock,
transcribed the musical diary of a newly minted artist and music
immigrant in his New World of the United States. Jeremy Taylor,
reviewing the album in Caribbean Beat, wrote that “Charles’s
Etienne Charles represents the
modern incarnation of the jazz
musician taking his craft and skill
to the world
Opposite page Etienne Charles with parang legend Clarita Rivas at
her home in St Joseph, Trinidad
Left With young members of the Speechettes Tobago speech band
Recently, he’s been working as composer and arranger for
modern jazz singers Somi and Joanna Pascale. “I enjoy writing
and arranging for singers,” he says, “as there’s more to tap into
for the arrangement: lyrical content, the tone of the vocalist’s
instrument, phrasing, style, etc. It’s one of my secret passions.
I’m a student of local and foreign arrangers Frankie Francis,
Rupert Nurse, Earl Rodney, Johnny Mandel, Quincy Jones, Nelson
Riddle, Frank Foster, Oliver Nelson, Leston Paul, Pelham
Goddard, Art DeCoteau.” Calypso, jazz, and soca are all genres
that feed his learning, and so inform his music.
This spirit of subliminal mentorship and apprenticeship was
present from the beginnings of Charles’s recording career. The
important Caribbean connections were not lost on him. “I had a
bunch of heroes coming up, basically anyone who was playing
music and took time to show me a line or tune. The Phase II
Pan Groove crew, ‘Boogsie’, Annise ‘Halfers’ Hadeed, Dougie
Caribbean roots show mainly in the opening and closing tracks
. . . [and the] five central tracks wander rewardingly through
blues and gospel and swing.” An audacious yet tentative debut,
and a lesson learned; he needed more. There was no time to
rest on his laurels.
“You carry the future of Trinidad and Tobago in your school
bags.” The awe of learning in the capital of music, the Big Apple,
beckoned. Charles enrolled in the Juilliard School in New York
in the fall of 2006. “I think what might have been overwhelming
to me when I got to Juilliard was the level of seriousness around
me,” he recalls. “I’d never been in a place where everyone was not
just talented, but so devoted to complete mastery of their craft.”
An attitude adjustment and a maturing in the world marked his
graduation from Juilliard. An old Caribbean saying suggests that
“common sense invent before book sense.” Charles, in America,
recognised conveniently that the music business is a grand hustle.
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 45

Field recording in Arouca, Trinidad, with kalinda
drummers Desmond Noel, his son Peter, and his
grandson in January 2016, during research for
Carnival: The Sound of a People
The hard-luck stories of chicanery and deceit suffered by
musicians, a significant number being black and immigrant,
are numerous and tragic — Bob Marley’s estate losing their
case against Universal Music Group in 2010 over ownership
of copyrights for his 1970s hit albums stands as a hallmark of
exploitation — and Charles would not number in that league.
“Know the business, study it, get a mentor who knows the
business,” is how he describes his modus operandi. “Own your
work, copyright your work, own the publishing, and own the
masters. These were the words told to me by my mentors Ralph
MacDonald and Marcus Roberts.
Read contracts inside out
and call a lawyer if you need. I
have my lawyer on speed dial.
Know that sacrifices must be
made and investments must
be made. What takes time normally
costs money, and vice
versa. Rome wasn’t built in a
day, a talent isn’t honed in a week, and a brand isn’t built in
a year. Be patient, humble, and persistent. Consistency beats
intensity, always.”
The creative process hardened by his years of collaboration
and study at university resulted in a string of heralded albums
from 2009 going forward, highlighting an evolved understanding
of the place of the West Indian in the world. Charles befriended
and was inspired by pioneering Trinidadian artist, dancer, and
choreographer Geoffrey Holder and his larger-than-life oeuvre —
“he proved before most others that we have something great in our
“Know the business, study it,
get a mentor who knows the
business . . .”
islands” — so much so that Charles would not wince at the notion
of tackling Caribbean music with an ear towards intellectual yet
accessible enlightenment.
He organised his compositions and successive album productions
around increasingly complex themes that unravel with
maturing clarity. “I’ve been focusing on writing within themes,
as that’s how we shape the direction of our albums . . . I enjoy
writing in this style because it allows me the process of research
followed by synthesis and analysis, and subsequently composition.
It gets me deep into the subject and out comes a longer
piece. It also works well for thematic
concert presentations.”
Folklore (2009) — described
as “using the thematic structure
of a suite of original compositions
all based upon the
mythologies and mythological
characters of Charles’s
Trinidadian/Afro-Caribbean
heritage” — gives musical validation to the douen, la diablesse,
soucouyant, and other characters in the lore of Caribbean slave
narrative. Kaiso (2011) reinterprets the songs of three legends of
recorded calypso, the Roaring Lion, the Mighty Sparrow, and
Lord Kitchener, as a testament to the idea that calypso music
and the chantuelle’s canon are ripe for reinterpretation by jazz
musicians worldwide. Thom Jurek of AllMusic wrote that Kaiso
“examined calypso . . . through the lens of twenty-first-century
post-bop. The end result expanded the reach of both musics
without watering down either.”
46 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

These two have been described as his “Trinidad” albums,
because on his next project he widened his vision. The chart-topping
Creole Soul (2013) bristled with a kind of energy that comes
from realising that one has gone beyond the usual expectations of
a Caribbean existence. Haitian kongo, mascaron, and bomba, and
Martiniquan belair rhythms are explored in the context of a wider
pan-Caribbean jazz. Covers of Bob Marley’s “Turn Your Lights
Down Low” and Dawn Penn’s dancehall classic “You Don’t Love
Me (No No No)” may suggest a fawning for popular uptake, but as
Ben Ratliff of the New York Times put it, the music on Creole Soul
is also “intellectually sound, going deeper into Mr Charles’s basic
interest, which is the affinities between Caribbean music and
music from the American South, New Orleans jazz in particular. It
doesn’t feel too academic or too grasping, overscripted or shallow.
He’s got it about as right as he can.”
Critics were seeing parallels between Charles’s work and
writer V.S. Naipaul’s early oeuvre. After Naipaul’s four “Trinidad”
novels, he began to travel much like Charles did for Creole
Soul, and again for his highly rated San José Suite in 2016. The
possibilities for high accolades were obvious and forthcoming.
Charles was invited to perform at high-calibre jazz festivals in
the US (such as Newport, Monterey, and Atlanta) and internationally.
He released the popular Creole Christmas album in 2015,
transforming holiday classics and local favourites into a new
creole jazz form.
Works Grant, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation,
Charles was able to explore the broader traditions of creole cultural
persistence in San José Suite. This ambitious work, based
on research trips to three different New World places named
San José — in California, Costa Rica, and St Joseph, Trinidad
— dares to magnify the idea of the wider Americas as a crucible
for the continuing assimilation and transformation of disparate
musical influences. Taking in the stories and ideas of Native
American heritage and the later African interlude, it presents the
modern listener with an intelligent yet accessible understanding
of who we are in the Americas.
More recently, the forthcoming Carnival suite — debuted
live in Trinidad in 2017 and to be released on disc in 2018 — is
the result of the award of a 2015 Guggenheim fellowship, which
allowed Charles to research and explore the music of Trinidad
and Tobago’s Carnivalesque processions, the Canboulay and
J’Ouvert and other elements, to locate the musical response of
Afro-Caribbean people to the circumstances of slavery, colonialism,
and freedom.
Allied with this Carnival suite project was a new venture for
re-introducing live brass band music on the road for Trinidad’s
2017 Carnival: We the People. “I have been studying this calypso/
soca music for almost fifteen years steadily,” Charles says. “We
the People was also a way to push the reset button with respect
to how Carnival had been taken over by the pretty mas, and
“Live music is a crucial
element of real
Carnival,” says Charles.
“Those who know,
know!”
Calypso superstar David Rudder
performing with Charles as We
the People takes to the road for
Carnival 2017
But Etienne Charles the successful working musician and
recording artist still has to balance his career with Etienne
Charles the professor at MSU. “All in all, both teaching
and scholarship are very important at MSU,” he explains. “So in
addition to my teaching responsibilities in the College of Music,
there’s also a significant research/composition/performance/
grant-writing mandate to my appointment at the university.” That
research and composition have yielded his most significant works
to date, the aforementioned San José Suite and the forthcoming
Carnival: The Sound of a People.
With the support of the Chamber Music America New Jazz
how most brass bands had been taken out of the equation.
The fact remains that live music is a crucial element of real
Carnival. Those who know, know! If we want our cultural and
artistic aesthetics to survive and be passed on from generation
to generation, they must not be viewed as ancient, outdated, or
too expensive,” he goes on. “The ‘modern vs traditional’ debate
must be addressed.”
Intelligent, shrewd, and influential are words to describe
our greatest creative artists. Add to that list young, proud, and
successful — and add Etienne Charles’s name to the growing
pantheon. n
48 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Own words
“The
poems
must
have
decided
on me”
Trinidadian Shivanee
Ramlochan, Caribbean
Beat’s book reviewer,
poet, and now author of
the debut book Everyone
Knows I Am a Haunting, on
writing about what’s most
terrifying, her discomfort
with genealogy, and
“suffering well” — as told
to Nicholas Laughlin
Photography by Marlon James
My mother is an English literature teacher, and when I was
growing up books were more my friends than human
friends were. There was always an abundance of books,
including books I probably shouldn’t have read at the
time. I remember at seven or eight getting hold of the
unabridged Canterbury Tales. It never occurred to me that
I shouldn’t be reading it, or that I shouldn’t have been looking at the Kama Sutra
a couple years later.
That’s the kind of person my mother is — open-minded and thankfully
tolerant of the person I have become. It started then, when I was young and
precocious and too curious about way too many things for my own good.
Writing started helplessly and instinctively, like a rash. It didn’t seem like a
big leap to think that I could try to do some of what I saw happening in books.
I filled countless school copybooks with stories and illustrations. I still have
them, and they’re full of florid and sexually suggestive fan-fiction. I never, ever
let anyone read them. They were confessional and exploratory and a whole
private world of daring and intrigue and experimentation.
So there was the secret writing I was doing, fiendishly and happily, but there
was also the public perception by my schoolmates and educators, based on the
essays I had to write for Common Entrance first of all, and then through all my
English classes, that I was someone who might one day be taken seriously as a
writer. But I don’t think I ever saw the streams crossing between writing in my
private life and the school-sanctioned writing that I was committing.
The writers who did the most for me in poetic terms in my youth were not
poets. Like Arundhati Roy, whose novel The God of Small Things I read when
I was twelve — and then read and reread. The very first poet who sparked
something similar was Federico García Lorca,
when I was studying Spanish and French in form
six. I had a clear sense that there were things that
could be said in Spanish and French, and by the
same logic in anyone’s native tongue, that could
never be approximated in any other language,
perhaps especially English. Lorca’s poems I would
transcribe by hand in Spanish — I wanted my
hand to ache with it. I thought, here was somebody
whose work was full of desperation and melancholy
and ugly, excessive, nasty emotions, and I
could not read anything else.
In 2010, when I was twenty-three, I did the
Cropper Foundation’s residential writing
workshop with Merle Hodge and Funso
Aiyejina. Oddly enough, I was accepted for the
workshop on the strength of my short fiction
— which, seven years later, seems alien to me.
I met writers who have remained creatively and
personally important to me, like Danielle Boodoo-
Fortuné and Andre Bagoo and Alake Pilgrim and
Colin Robinson. I thought if I was in community
with them, the idea of seeing my work in print
might not be such a far stretch.
I always say the poems must have decided on
50 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

“Poems are probably the
place where I tell the most
truth for any given and
sustained stretch of time”
me. I wasn’t actively writing them in 2010, but perhaps a couple years later —
certainly seriously from 2012, 2013, and since then poems have dominated the
way I think about making evident things I might not otherwise ever say about
myself, and what surrounds me, and what won’t let me sleep.
I think I am writing a poem actively for sometimes weeks and sometimes
months and sometimes longer before committing anything to paper — which
amounts to walking around with it, living with it, living with what it is trying
to contain or not contain. It then becomes, at some point, usually a wildly
inconvenient one, the thing that I have to do above all else.
Clarity, honesty, and truth are things I’m almost obsessed with, and I think
that is because poems are probably the place where I tell the most truth for any
given and sustained stretch of time. What are the things in the poem that would
otherwise absolutely never be said? Whatever those are become mandatory.
The tattoo on my forearm is a line from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It’s in Latin,
but in translation it says, Be patient and tough, someday this pain will be useful to
you. I’ve always been very concerned with suffering well, which I hope has
become less colour-by-numbers angsty over the years and taken on a definite
work ethic and discipline. I write principally from pain and dislocation and
loss — mine, and then pain that does not belong to me. And I’ve found that the
best way to be on speaking terms with all of that
awfulness is to just get really cosy with it — treat
it like an old friend, because that’s what it is. Over
time, when you work hard and listen closely, and
smile through the suffering — sometimes you get a
halfway decent poem.
For so long I’d been concerned with where these
poems — which were so strange and so savage and
so lacking in any apology for what they are — would
find a home. I don’t often talk about mangoes and
mermaids and men in straw hats, things that are
typically seen as reductive images of the Caribbean.
Only, they aren’t to me. I think every image has the
power to be transformational — it’s all about how
it’s wrestled into a body on the page. All the same,
since my work lacks so many traditional elements,
I was prepared to do the hard and lonely work of
finding a home for the poems that was further away
than I imagined.
The Indo-Caribbean community, I’ve often felt,
is a place I don’t belong, for many reasons. I think
people will claim you whether or not you want to
be claimed. But I do think there are things I care
about writing that have more than a toe in spaces
like that, and I have to accept that some of the work
will move and some will draw intense censure —
it’s down to what you read on which night in front
of which people. I don’t feel responsible, but I feel
that poems will carry that kind of responsibility.
Ultimately I might not get to decide. I think it’s
more liberating than anything else.
Now, people who I had no idea were paying
attention to the work are soliciting poems. That
makes me make work useful to me, because it fights
my procrastination. Ironically, the first place I feel
compelled to go is into that troubling and perplexing
and labyrinthine vat of Indianness. I’m scared about
that, because I’ve never done concerted and specific
work about my genealogy. But I figure it if makes me
nauseous, there’s probably a good poem in there.
I’m always most interested in any version of the
question, what am I most scared to write about? I
try to answer it as honestly as I can every single
time, and I often discover it’s something I did not
know about myself, which is thrilling. I think that’s
the direction I need to run to. n
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 51

BACKSTORY
It starts
with the
drum
Photography courtesy
Zahra Airall
Celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary
in 2017, the Antigua Dance Academy is a
powerhouse of Afro-Caribbean dance and
music. Founded by Veronica Yearwood, and
with a cast of passionate alumni, the ADA
keeps traditional culture alive — and clears
the way for new generations of talent.
Joanne C. Hillhouse finds out more
52 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

The Antigua Dance Academy is the
kind of company that brings a full
musical theatre production to the
streets of St John’s — “disturbing
St John’s City because we can,” as
founder Veronica Yearwood once
said. It’s also connected and confident enough to
recruit visiting dancers — Nevis’s Rhythmz Dance
Theatre and Trinidad’s Shashamane — to recreate,
respectively, plantation fieldwork and African stick
fighting as a part of an overall production, with next
to no rehearsal time. It’s the kind of company that
under moonlight, drizzle rain, and uncertainty, still
manages to put on a showcase marked by the kind
of professional, exuberant, and culturally-relevant
execution they’ve become known for — whether
at home in Antigua and Barbuda, at Carifesta, the
regional arts showcase, or in the United States and
Europe, which the ADA typically tours during the
summer.
ADA is Antigua and Barbuda’s premier dance
company, marking its twenty-fifth anniversary
in 2017. The open-air scripted musical theatre
I mentioned above — an extrapolation of the
life and martyrdom of rebel leader and national
hero King Court — happened in 2008, during the
third installment of the biennial Out of the Drum
Afro-Caribbean folk dance and drumming festival.
Antiguan and Barbudan artist and former Culture
Director Heather Doram says that ADA, as a
preserver of “the African influences on Antiguan
and Caribbean dance forms . . . has really played a
huge role in the preservation of our culture through
dance.”
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 53

That’s not by accident. As Nneka Hull-James,
ADA media liaison — a mid-twenties veterinarian
who started dancing with ADA at age five —
explains, “When we do a performance, we do it
because we have an understanding of where the
particular style of dance comes from.” And for
founder Veronica Yearwood, everything the ADA
has done and continues to do, leading up to the
yearlong celebration of the company’s milestone
quarter-century anniversary, has meaning. Of
Afro-Caribbean dance, she says, “I think because
Veronica Yearwood’s mission is to continue
elevating Afro-Caribbean dance so that
those who experience it understand not
only the joy, but the substance
we grow in this, we think it’s less than it is.” Her
mission is to continue elevating the artform so that
those who experience it understand not only the
joy, but the substance.
In fact, it was this search for meaningful
engagement with dance that led Yearwood to start
her own company in 1991. Kai Davis, Ms Antigua
Universe 2003, a principal dancer with ADA until
2004, was there from the beginning, when it was
still called the Little Dancers School of Dance. “I
can remember when we first started out,” Davis
says, “and it used to be just a few of us in a little
building performing for our parents.” The ADA has
bounced around quite a bit: a dedicated home is
a future fundraising goal. But this infrastructural
deficit has not been used as a crutch. “We’re
known to be a group that’s going to bring it professionally
and keep it cultural,” Davis says.
Veronica Yearwood was already an adult
when she accompanied her big sister to a
dance class in 1981. She took to it, but what
she couldn’t take was the “bad discipline and erratic
behaviour” even at the level of the since-stalled
National Dance Theatre. “When I came back from
studying, I was not satisfied,” Yearwood explains.
Her journey wouldn’t have happened without her
mother Mignon Yearwood, the lady they all call
“gran-gran,” who died in the past year. “She was
the one that said to me, go for it,” Yearwood recalls.
Over time, Yearwood — also trained and
employed in the field of hydrology — took up
opportunities to study with some of the best in Afro-
Caribbean dance, like Danny Hinds of Barbados,
Guadeloupe’s Jacqueline Thôle, and Emelda Griffith
of Trinidad. “I positioned myself so I could learn
from them,” she says. And she continues to pass on
everything she has learned. That includes an appreciation
for the meaning behind every toe point and
hip shake — from congo belé to grand belé — and
every move the ADA has made as a group.
54 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Antigua Dance Academy founder
Veronica Yearwood
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 55

“When we started our folk dance festival,
all of what we had witnessed was now in our
hands, it was a tremendous responsibility,”
Kai Davis says. Out of the Drum has called to
Antigua the diaspora of Afro-Caribbean folk
dance — and not just from the English-speaking
part of the region, or even, strictly speaking, the
Caribbean. Canada’s Collective of Black Artists,
Guadeloupe’s Kamojaka, Haiti’s Tchaka Danse,
Jamaica’s Dance Works of Edna Manley College,
Montserrat’s Hybred Masqueraders, Raices Culturales
out of Puerto Rico, St Croix’s Caribbean
Dance Company, and Tobago’s Culture Shop have
all performed at Out of the Drum. Sistah Mafalda
Thomas, artistic director of the Philadelphiabased
Afro-Caribbean drum and dance group
Kuumba Performers, recalls participating in
the festival. “It was such an enlightening and
unforgettable experience to behold such a diverse
group of dancers and drummers from the African
diaspora. I give big props to the ADA for hosting
such an event — I’m forever grateful.”
When it was launched in 2004, Out of the Drum
was also, to Yearwood’s mind, an opportunity for her
dancers to build skills around all areas of producing
a performing arts festival. This is consistent with
56 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Yearwood’s penchant for pushing at boundaries.
Francine Carbey, the company’s resident drama
tutor and artistic director for some fourteen years
and counting, initially came to the ADA as wardrobe
mistress. Samantha Zachariah, an ADA member
since 2010, wrote her first play after joining.
“It was [my] first time really doing something like
that and seeing it come alive,” she says. Drummer
Jahlarni Nanton, a member since age three, now
seventeen, says, “I was a very standoffish person.
I would sit in the corner and don’t talk to nobody,
but it just uplifted me to be the person that I am
now” — the kind of person emboldened to enter
the national junior calypso competition. This is a
running theme, the more ADA dancers you speak
to: Nailah Liverpool talks of how the ADA built
her confidence; Guyana native Shonette Sobers,
who joined as an adult three years ago after being
drawn to the drumming one evening in the city,
spoke of how it helped her find herself — “how to
listen, how to be a family.”
Several ADA members have gone on to
greater things: such as former principal dancer
and regional soca star Tizzy, who Hull-James
remembers looking up to (“so tall, so elegant,
dancing so beautifully”); another Ms Antigua
Universe, Stephanie Winter; and Abi McCoy, who
this season graduates summa cum laude with a
BFA in musical theatre from Westminster College
of the Arts at Rider University in Lawrenceville,
New Jersey. “ADA allowed me to explore all
aspects of performance, from costuming to ticket
handling,” says McCoy. “However, Antigua Dance
Academy is more than just dance, playing drums,
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 57

58 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

and performing — it’s about finding out who you are and where
you come from. It has gifted me with appreciation for what my
ancestors have endured.”
Soyica Straker is an elder drummer with ADA, and his
daughter Meserete Ozundo, whom he brought to ADA as a
child, is the current principal dancer. Straker says part of ADA’s
legacy has been as a feeder to the many groups that have since
sprouted, even the ones that claim to
be self-taught. And Straker and Yearwood
have taught workshops not
only throughout the Caribbean but
Stateside as well — Straker reflected
on one workshop in New York where
their unique style of drumming “had
them going.” Yearwood’s esteem
among her peers is well-earned:
“I’ve worked with them — they
understand the work we do.” Off the dance floor, they’ve sought
to encourage engagement around Afro-folk traditions, including
hosting the first Caribbean Arts Encounter meeting.
So there’s lots to celebrate for the little company that did —
which, as senior dancer and Chicago native Zinnijah Guadalupe
puts it, has “more of a sense of community and more of a priority
for the community” than any other dance group of which she’s
been a part. Anniversary year activities, which launched in
November 2016, include workshops (in folk song, drumming,
dance, health, head-tieing, and makeup for the stage), a Creole
“We at ADA pride ourselves
on being the true storytellers
of Antiguan culture,” says
dancer Abi McCoy
dress tea party, their annual production (in July), a Tobago tour
(in August), and Out of the Drum (in November).
“We at ADA pride ourselves on being the true storytellers of
Antiguan culture — through dance, through music and through
our attire,” McCoy says. It’s important, Jahlarni Nanton adds,
because the drum “is our heartbeat,” and like so many cultural
elements, this and other folk traditions “are dying away now.”
One of Yearwood’s future projects
is to tangibly document in book or
video form the research that has
gone into her productions, including
the variations in dance and
rhythm across the Caribbean. Mostly,
though, she wants to see her dancers,
drummers, and other actors, seventyfive
strong at this writing, continue to
“spread their wings . . . you’ve come,
you learn, you’ve blossomed — go out there.” But they need a
home. “If we had more money, there’s so much I could do,” says
Yearwood, who has had the opportunities to leave, but opted to
stay in Antigua and build. “It continues,” she says. “I didn’t start
for it to come to an end when I stop. The legacy should be the
continuance of Antigua Dance Academy.” n
Find the Antigua Dance Academy online at www.facebook.com/antiguadanceacademy
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 59

SHOWCASE
Hadriana’s
wedding
An excerpt from the classic Haitian novel
Hadriana in All My Dreams, by René
Depestre — newly translated into English
by Kaiama L. Glover
Illustration by Shalini Seereeram
I
died on the night of the most
beautiful day of my life: I died on
the night of my marriage in the
St Philippe and St Jacques Church.
Everyone thought I had been struck
down by the sacramental Yes that
burst out of me. It was said I had been
swept away by the fire of my consent,
overcome by the depth of its power and
truth — that I had been done in by my own
bridal passion.
Truth be told, my false death had
begun half an hour before I cried out
in the church. Before the bridal party
departed to head to the church, I was
already completely ready to leave. I took
a final look at myself in the sitting room
mirror. Let’s go, Hadriana! said a voice
inside me. It was excessively hot, and at
the base of the stairs, amidst the affectionate
chattering of my bridesmaids, I
mentioned how thirsty I was.
“I’d love a glass of ice water.”
Mélissa Kraft immediately volunteered
to go get me one, but I did not give
her the chance. In my full bridal regalia, I
charged towards the pantry — speeding
through the manor as I had always done. I
was faster than my friends. Had someone
anticipated my last-minute thirst? A
pitcher of lemonade awaited me on the
oak dresser, plain as day. I poured myself
a tumbler-full, then a second, then a third,
drinking each glass to the very last drop
until my thirst was entirely quenched.
In the heat of that nuptial oven, the cool
lemonade was intoxicating. For days,
making the most banal gestures had felt
as exhilarating as the wedding itself. The
emotions of every moment thrilled me.
As I emerged onto Orleans Street, a
joyful din arose from the town square.
“Long live the bride! Long live Nana!”
It was truly that general state of
jubilation that people in Jacmel had been
talking about for the past several days:
confetti, garlands, and orange blossoms
rained down on my path, mixed with
hand-clapping and shouts of adulation.
Young girls were crying tears of joy! Some
part of me also felt like crying. But laughter
blocked its path through my eyes, my
mouth, the rapture of my skin . . . I moved
forwards — sunlit, ecstatic on the gallant
arm of my devoted father. On Church
Street, on the Sorels’ balcony, a little boy
cried out: “Here’s a kiss for you, Nana!”
I wanted to send one right back to
him. But it was too late: I was dying.
Just a moment prior, a terrifying unease
had started to come over me. A sharp
tingling had begun coursing through me,
as if I were being pricked with needles
from head to toe. I couldn’t breathe. I
was suffocating under my veil. My father,
though right by my side, noticed nothing.
Standing proudly in his tuxedo, he helped
me respond to the cheering crowd. No
one noticed the state I was in. On the
square just in front of the church, I saw my
fiancé Hector on the arm of Mam Diani,
60 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

my friend Patrick’s mother. And Hector
saw me for the first time in my bridal
gown; the idea that he would soon be able
to take it off me was completely blinding
him. He could not see that the hands of
death had been the first to slip under my
dress, rustling with dreams.
With my first steps inside the
church, I thought my legs would
give out before I could make it
to the altar. The sounds, the colours, the
lights, the smells — they made a jumble
of confused impressions on my muddled
senses. I could not make out the difference
between the sound of the organ and
the flicker of a candle, between my own
name and the green banners, between the
smell of the incense and the bitter flavour
that was burning my taste buds. I moved
forwards, groping as I went, through a
sort of effervescent tar. I found myself
kneeling in front of a wide well: I pulled
myself together and concentrated what
life I had left on my sense of hearing. I
felt as if I were swimming desperately in
viscous, bituminous water towards the
most fantastic object in the world: my
fiancé, Hector Danoze, just to my right, his
flesh turned shapeless and phosphorescent.
He had become nothing more than three
giant letters that spelled out YES. My
frantic swimming sought only to reach
that goal as it first came close, then moved
away, liquefied into a stream of lava that
enveloped Hector, the priests, the altar, the
hymns, the decorations, the attendees, the
sky beyond the apse. This empyreumatic
sound-light-body, on one of its backward
surges, suddenly threw itself at me. It
lodged itself in my genitals. And my
genitals came together as a final sigh that
began climbing up through my body like
the rising mercury of a barometer. I felt its
upward movement in my guts, then in my
digestive tract. It left a strange emptiness
in its wake. It stopped for a few moments
at my heart, which was barely beating. Was
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 61

the sigh of my sex going to take its place?
I felt it rise up through my throat. It nearly
choked me before finally settling its burning
weight on my tongue. With the four lips of
my true mouth, I screamed the ultimate Yes
of life to my Hector and to the world!
“Hadriana Siloé is dead!” the voice
of Dr Sorapal rang out above my lifeless
body.
I heard a tumult of overturned chairs
and benches, a racket in Creole, a
clamouring whirlwind of panic. In the
midst of all this, I could make out Lolita
Philisbourg’s sensual, dramatic soprano.
It seemed as if people were ripping fabric
It was said I had been swept away by the fire of
my consent, done in by my own bridal passion
all over the church. Something fell down
just next to me, and then someone cried
out: “Hector is dead too!”
It seemed he had followed me to the
grave. The voice of Father Naélo snapped
me out of this first dream within my
dream: “Hadriana Siloé has been taken
from us at the moment of her marriage.
The scandal has occurred in the house of
the Father!”
Someone’s arms lifted me off the
church floor. Whose could they be? I
would have recognised immediately those
of my father, Hector, or Patrick. The man
had trouble pushing through the crowd
of attendees. My dangling feet knocked
into people as we passed. A hand grabbed
my right foot. It held on for a long time. I
felt the cool evening air despite the death
mask that had been welded onto my face.
The bells chimed with their full force, the
backdrop to the cheers and hand-clapping,
just as before. Whoever was holding me
began to run. Several others ran alongside
us noisily. Of all my senses, only my hearing
still functioned. A woman’s voice cried
out: “Long live the happy couple!”
62 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM
Immediately, the Carnival began on
the town square. I noticed that I could
smile — laugh, even — from within my
misfortune. I had my first giggling fit of
the night — people were doing Carnival
dances all around me; drums and vaksin
were going wild. I felt as if the man carrying
me was also dancing. My stiffened
limbs were incapable of joining him. As
soon as whoever it was had crossed the
manor’s doorstep, my sense of smell
immediately came back to me: it was the
smell of the waxed floor of my childhood.
The man placed me carefully on one of
the sitting room rugs.
There was a furious commotion
all around me, punctuated
intermittently by sobs and
exclamations. I could hear the sadness and
surprise in my girlfriends’ bitter utterances
— admiration and anger in those of my
male friends. At one point, I felt someone
leaning over me. A hand took hold of my
wrist; another moved what must have
been a stethoscope to different spots on
my chest. The people attached to these
hands exchanged a few words. From their
voices, I understood they were Dr Sorapal
and Dr Braget. Once again, I wanted to
laugh. Young Dr Braget, ever since his
return from Paris, would say to me every
time we met: “When are the Siloés going
to switch family doctors? I’d so love to
watch over the health of their daughter.”
And now, his hand in my blouse, he was
feeling my breasts. Would he realise that
they were still full of life? My optimism did
not last long.
He placed something on my mouth.
“Negative,” he murmured to his older
colleague.
“She has no pulse,” said Dr Sorapal.
“Her breasts are still warm. Splendid,
fresh fruits! It’s like they’re still alive!”
“A dying star continues to shine, my
friend! Check her eyes.”
Dr Braget parted my eyelids. I saw
him, but the fervent gaze in his catlike
brown eyes, misty with tears, could not
see me back!
“No ocular reflex,” he said.
“All that remains is to prepare the
burial license. It’s official: stiff limbs, no
respiratory or ocular reflex, no pulse,
diminishing core temperature. Heart
attack.”
“Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Dr Braget.
“Damned myocardial infarction!”
They cursed death instead of deepening
their exam. I focused on my sense of
sight: perhaps there would be a glimmer,
the flicker of an eyelid. As he ran his
fingers through my hair, Dr Braget’s face
was suffused with tears.
Dr Sorapal kept chewing on his lower
lip. “The saddest night of my long life,”
he said.
“It’s my Waterloo,” said the other one,
the Don Juan. n
Originally published in 1988, Hadriana dans tous mes rêves is considered a
classic of modern Haitian literature. Set in Jacmel on Haiti’s south coast in the
1930s, the novel tells the magical story of the beautiful Hadriana Siloé, who
seems to die on her wedding day — the victim of a supernatural plot. The
story is an extended love letter to author René Depestre’s hometown, its creole
culture, its architecture, and its annual Carnival. Visitors to Jacmel can trace the
exact route of the narrative through the streets of the town, and next to the
crumbling, stately mansion Depestre depicted as Hadiana’s manor, a public staircase
is decorated with a mosaic spelling out the opening lines of the novel.
Hadriana in All My Dreams, copyright 1988 by Editions Gallimard and René
Depestre, English translation copyright 2017 by Kaiama L. Glover, used with
permission of Akashic Books (akashicbooks.com)

ARRIVE
andre donawa
64 Escape
Land we love
80 Neighbourhood
Santiago de Cuba
84 Destination
Clockwise Barbados
96 Layover
Paramaribo, Suriname
Jetty at Brownes Beach, Barbados, on the outskirts of Bridgetown

ESCAPE
Land
we love
Ivan Kokoulin/shutterstock.com
For many visitors, Jamaica
means the famous beaches
and resorts of the north coast,
or Kingston’s hot reggae and
dancehall scene. But head inland,
into the island’s lush landscape,
and you quickly realise why the
name “Jamaica” means “land of
wood and water.” Waterfalls and
rivers, forests and hills — this is
a country as beautiful as rugged.
And for some of the island’s
most breathtaking views? Head
for the heights of the Blue
Mountains, like Nazma Muller
64

In the hills above Ocho Rios,
the Blue Hole — also sometimes
called Secret Falls — are
a turquoise oasis set among a
profusion of trees and flowers
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 65

In St Elizabeth Parish, between the
villages of Middle Quarters and Lacovia,
Bamboo Avenue stretches for two and
a half miles through a natural green
tunnel
66 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 67
Doug Pearson/awl/getty

The Black River, Jamaica’s
second-longest, runs from the
limestone hills of the Cockpit
Country to the mangrove forests
of the Lower Morass before
emptying into the Caribbean Sea
KKulikov/shutterstock.com
68 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

In the hills of St Ann Parish, the farming
community of Nine MIle is perhaps best
known as the birth- and burial place of
Bob Marley
70 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 71
Digital Light Source/uig/getty

Up close, the Blue Mountains of
western Jamaica are lush and
green — but from a distance,
their mists and hazes lend the
hills the indigo shades that give
the range its name
doug pearson/awl/getty
72 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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To
the
most
high
The flames licked the logs in the fireplace, and
I drew my chair closer, huddling deeper in
my sweaters. A window was open, and the
cold wind seeped in. Outside, a steady rain was
falling, and the mist wrapped itself around the hills
behind Whitfield Hall. I was spending the night at
the eighteenth-century guesthouse so I could start
the hike to Blue Mountain Peak at the delightful hour
of four the next morning.
For twenty years I had dreamed of ascending
the peak again. I first made the hike in 1998, and
survived the seven miles to suffer the agony of the
feet (I’d worn construction boots). For days after, I couldn’t walk
— my toes, calves, and thighs bawled fi mercy, and I couldn’t
sleep for the pain. But that ascent to the heavens has always
stayed with me: the memory of the astonishing light among
the fern-draped trees at seven thousand feet, the mist rolling in
on all sides to cloak the mountaintops, and the heart-stopping
panoramic views of these endless woody mammoths.
For me, these mountains have always been the most mystical
part of the most mesmerising place on the planet. So when the
hundred thousand acres of the Blue and John Crow Mountains
National Park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in
2015, I thought it only fitting and long overdue. In taking its place
alongside other sites like the Egyptian pyramids, Timbuktu,
Viñales Valley in Cuba, and the Great Wall of China, the park is
now recognised globally for its invaluable natural and cultural
resources, including 1,300 species of flowering plant, two
hundred bird species, and the legacy of the legendary Maroons.
I arrived in Jamaica for what seemed like mission impossible.
I was toting a tabanca (that uniquely Trinidadian word for
heartbreak), feeling sorry for myself, and in full moping mode. In
short, totally unprepared for trudging up the sides of mountains.
Whitfield Hall, an historic
coffee estate, is also the
trailhead for the hike to
Blue Mountain Peak
I doubted I had either the physical or mental strength to make
it up Jacob’s Ladder, the first most formidable stretch of calfclenching
steepness.
It was a Sunday morning when we drove up from Kingston
to Whitfield Hall. Along the way, we passed ladies on their way
home from church, calmly climbing the steep slopes in their
heels. “A nuh no fenky fenky ooman like down a Kingston,” my
guide, Carey pointed out. “Serious ooman dat.”
To be sure, to live in these rugged mountains, like the
Maroons did, one needs a certain mettle. But just as the air, soil,
and altitude combine to bring out the finest qualities in the coffee
grown here, so it is with the people. The challenge of living in
these mountains requires a resilience and determination that
few of us have.
Of course, I had forgotten how cold it could get up here. After
a simple yet tasty dinner of rice and peas and veggies served up
by Everton, the resident chef and man of business at Whitfield
Hall, I girded my loins to face the eighteenth-century (heaterless)
shower. I am certain I set a Guinness World Record for the
quickest shower ever. The kerosene lamp cast a warm glow in the
cosy room as I dove beneath the covers and promptly fell asleep.
nazma muller
74 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

The trail to the summit of
Blue Mountain Peak ascends
through cloud forest
see the lights of Kingston twinkling far
below. By the time I reached the bottom of
Jacob’s Ladder, I was sweating. But when
we stopped to take a break, the cold set in
again. I tried to control my breathing, but
the steepness of this first part of the hike
was daunting, and all I could do was stop
and rest every few minutes.
At 2 am, I was awakened by the sounds of the other guests
— a group of seven from Canada, Israel, Germany, and England
— getting ready to take off. They were hoping to reach the peak
in time to see the sunrise. I drifted off again, hoping that the
predicted rain would fall and save me from certain failure. But
at 3.30 am, when my body clock woke me, there was no rain. I
could hear Carey moving around in the next room. Damn it, I
thought, the game is on. Reluctantly, I pulled on my sneakers.
Outside, it was freezing and pitch-black. Above, the stars
were out in all their glory, blazing bright in a totally clear sky.
Soon we heard the roar of a motorbike coming up the road.
Ranger Ryan Love parked at Whitfield Hall and joined us on
the trail. In no time, we were climbing a steep slope, and I could
Barely half an hour in, and I was
contemplating turning back. It
seemed impossible. What was
I thinking of, at the age of forty-three,
with no preparation whatsoever? But
the thought of conceding defeat bugged
me. That, and Carey. “Yuh nuh do yoga,
Rasta?” he teased. “Come, man, do some
belly breathing.”
Hmmph, I thought, I can’t let down the
side now. And so I continued to climb, as
the sky slowly lightened. The trail was
now a narrow track running along the side
of the mountain, trees on either side. The
birds were waking, and as the sun rose slowly we could hear the
various tweets and calls ringing out.
“I’m going to try to make it to Portland Gap,” I told Carey
and Ryan.
“Cho, man,” Carey replied. “We nah turn back. Me and Ryan
a mek bivouac and carry you. Nobody haffi know.”
“I will know, Rasta. Me must do it myself.”
At Portland Gap, the halfway point, the Jamaica Conservation
and Development Trust were refurbishing some cabins. Many
hikers prefer to overnight here before ascending the peak. In
the trees above the cabins, a woodpecker appeared. Then a
hummingbird. Morning had broken and the inhabitants of the
mountain were waking up.
nicholas laughlin
76 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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BRAWTA
“I visited Dolphin Cove Ocho Rios, which I bought from
Brawta Living. It works. I took my family. It gave us a chance
to enjoy some of our countriy’s amenities at an affordable
price. It was an awesome experience. Thank you!”
—Simma Hotgal
The above was taken directly from the reviews on our
Facebook page.
We now invite you to join our Brawta family and save up
to eighty per cent on top attractions in Jamaica.
Nazma MUller
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 77

Near the summit, a semiruined
shelter is surrounded
by hydrangea bushes
nicholas lauglin
78 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Jamaica
C a r
Bamboo
Avenue
Montego Bay
Cockpit Country
Nine Mile
Black
River
i b b e a n
Ocho Rios
Kingston
S e a
Blue Hole
Blue
Mountain
Peak
Caribbean Airlines operates daily flights to Norman
Manley International Airport in Kingston and
Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay from
destinations across the Caribbean and North America
As we passed four thousand
feet, the air became thinner, and
the views became even more
spectacular
I decided to soldier on, see how far I could go. As we passed
four thousand feet, the air became thinner, the lichens and moss
became more abundant, and the views became even more
spectacular. It was all I could do to keep on breathing — and
putting one foot in front the other. A crested quail dove waddled
along the trail ahead of me, searching for breakfast. Then
another, and another. In the trees, hummingbirds abounded.
And still, I kept on going.
Then suddenly, up ahead, it appeared. The most wonderful
sight in the world: the most famous graffiti-covered, brokendown
shelter in the world. I had made it to the Peak.
Somehow I had found the strength, way down deep inside,
beneath the self-doubt, to conquer the mountain. Perhaps it was
the spirit of the Maroons that motivated me, or the countless
ordinary Jamaicans who face the day-to-day uphill struggles to
survive with a smile and an irieness that is infectious.
Whatever it was, I give thanks. Who knows, perhaps one day,
twenty years from now, I will climb the Peak again. n
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 79

NEIGHBOURHOOD
istock.com/LiselotteMathiasen
Santiago
de Cuba
On a bay sheltered by the peaks of
the Sierra Maestra, Santiago — Cuba’s
“second city” — is a storehouse
of history and a musical epicentre,
especially during Carnival in July
History
Founded in July 1515 by Spanish conquistador Diego de
Velázquez, Santiago de Cuba — named for St James, the
patron saint of Spain — was the capital of the island for
most of the sixteenth century, until it was replaced by
Havana. A favourite target of English and French pirates
and privateers, Santiago was the first port in Cuba to
receive enslaved Africans, and later on was a destination
for French settlers fleeing nearby Saint-Domingue during
the Haitian Revolution. The resulting social and ethnic
diversity has made the city a cultural hotbed, especially for
music and dance.
In the twentieth century, Santiago was best known
as the place where the Cuban Revolution began in 1953,
with the famous attack on the Moncada Barracks — and
where, on 1 January, 1959, Fidel Castro proclaimed the
Revolution’s victory from the balcony of the city hall.
Streetscape
The heart of Santiago de Cuba is the paved Parque Céspedes —
more of a plaza than a park. Around it are the cathedral, the house
of Diego de Velázquez — sometimes said to be the oldest surviving
residential house in the Americas — and other historic buildings.
From here, the city sprawls into the Sierra Maestra foothills, with
streets and alleys often ascending steeply. The city centre still
contains numerous colonial-era buildings with ornate columns and
balconies. To the southwest, commanding the entrance of the bay,
the Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca is a seventeenth-century fort
designed to protect Santiago from pirate raids. Built over a period
of six decades, the Castillo is now recognised as a UNESCO World
Heritage Site and one of the best surviving examples of Spanish
military architecture in the Americas.
Marc Venema/shutterstock.com
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Matyas Rehak/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
Stefano Ember/shutterstock.com
Carnival city
Santiago is famous throughout Cuba for its
Carnival. Originally, there were two separate
Carnivals in the city each year: a pre-Lenten
festival observed mostly by the upper classes, and
a second celebration around the feast of St James
in July, coinciding with the end of the sugar cane
and coffee harvest, and therefore popular with
the largely Afro-Cuban estate labourers. The
“winter” Carnival died out in the early twentieth
century, while the more energetic and egalitarian
“summer” Carnival thrived. Conga provides the
traditional soundtrack for the festival of parades
and processions, floats and dancers and bonfires.
istock.com/alxpin istock.com/orukojin
Co-ordinates
20º N 75.8º W
Sea level
CUBA
Santiago de Cuba
wilfred dederer
A touch of Egypt
Bacardi rum is no longer made in Cuba, but the
family legacy — and the connection to Santiago
— is preserved in the Emilio Bacardí Moreau
Museum. Founded in 1899 by the head of the
rum dynasty, and housed in a white neoclassical
building like a giant slice of wedding cake, the
museum includes exhibits devoted to the history
of Cuba and the architecture of Santiago de
Cuba, plus an excellent collection of colonial-era
Cuban paintings and sculptures. But its most
famous exhibit may be the Egyptian mummy
in the archaeology gallery — a favourite of
schoolchildren, and many adult visitors as well.
Remembering Martí
Santiago’s Santa Ifigenia Cemetery is the final resting place of numerous
Cuban heroes, including Fidel Castro, but its patriotic centrepiece is the
mausoleum of José Martí (1853–1895) — poet, essayist, political philosopher,
and revolutionary, killed during the Cuban War of Independence against the
Spanish empire. Built in the form of a tower, Martí’s mausoleum is ringed by
six monumental sculptures of women, representing the provinces of Cuba at
the time of his death. “Do not bury me in darkness,” Martí once wrote, “I will
die facing the sun” — and indeed the structure is designed so that a beam of
sunlight illuminates the poet’s statue inside.
Caribbean Airlines operates daily flights to Miami and Kingston,
Jamaica, with connections on other airlines to Havana and Santiago
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 81

ADVERTORIAL
Please, have fun!
Introducing the all-new
It’s a bold evolution of the Swift’s DNA.
Completely new styling, a performanceenhancing
lightweight chassis
and advanced safety technologies.
It’s a bold evolution of the Swift’s
DNA. Completely new styling, a performance-enhancing
lightweight
chassis, and advanced safety technologies.
Swift Chief Engineer Masao
Kobori says, “We set out to create a car
that makes people go ‘WOW!’ the instant
they see it, the instant they get inside,
and the instant they step on the accelerator.”
Top Gear summed it up as “Another
great product from Suzuki, the Swift is a
cracking and likeable supermini.” Introducing
the new Suzuki Swift!
With more than 5.4 million sold, the
new Suzuki Swift continues to exude an
overwhelming sense of presence. From
the outside, the new Swift is more muscular
and emotive with a well-grounded
look that is wider and aggressive and
a body that is shorter and lower. The

“
We set out to
create a car that
makes people go
‘WOW!’
”
blacked-out A pillars create the appearance
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With the entire range weighing less
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The new Swift rests on Suzuki’s newgeneration
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platform, which delivers enhanced vehicle
performance and collision safety. Newly
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retain the Swift’s characteristic directresponse
steering while providing a supple
and comfortable ride.
Reinvigorated power units ensure
lively performance without sacrificing
Suzuki’s customary excellent fuel economy.
The new Swift comes equipped with
the 1.2-litre, 16-valve engine.
Get inside, and the bold evolution of
the Swift’s DNA continues. The instrument
panel has sporty white accents and satin
chrome is used throughout the cockpit
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the front. An amazing 265 litres of luggage
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Sporty, high-quality, advanced, and
just simply easy to own, the love affair
Caribbean people have had with the
Suzuki Swift looks set to continue with the
introduction of this latest model set to go
on sale in our region in June 2017.
Contact your local Suzuki dealer today to arrange a test drive!
More information can be found at www.suzukicaribbean.com.

Destination
Clockwise
Barbados
Twenty-one miles long and fourteen wide,
Barbados is small enough to explore from
end to end in a single day — while making
room for different landscapes, historic
architecture, and (of course) incredible
beaches. Here’s a round-the-island itinerary
that shows off the best of Bim
84 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Just outside Oistins, Miami Beach
shows why the sandy shores of
Barbados’s south coast are so popular
with bathers: warm turquoise water,
gentle waves breaking on white
sand, and a skyline of pine trees
swaying in the breeze
andre donawa
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 85

The bold red clocktower
overlooking the Garrison
Savannah, on the outskirts of
Bridgetown, is both a historic
site and a landmark
Filip Fuxa/shutterstock.com
86 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

above barbados
Just north of Bridgetown, where
Barbados’s “Platinum Coast”
begins, Batts Rock Beach is
renowned for its clear, shallow
water — while mischievous green
monkeys play in the trees above
the high-water line
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 87

At the northern tip of the
island, St Lucy Parish can feel
like a long way from the resorts
of the west coast. The historic
parish church, a whitewashed
Georgian structure dating from
1837, sits atop a hill near the
village of Fairfield
above barbados
88 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

Most people think of Barbados as a flat
island, but that’s not true of the northeast,
where limestone hills rise abruptly from
the Atlantic coast. From the summit of
Chalky Mount, the view of the island
spreads wide like a map
90 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 91
andre donawa

The east coast around the
village of Bathsheba is wild and
windswept — from here, there’s
nothing between Barbados and
Africa but the vast Atlantic
92 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 93
andre donawa

Eighteenth-century Codrington College — a
theological school now associated with the
University of the West Indies — looks like a
fragment of Oxbridge transplanted to St John
Parish, set among stately palm trees
andre donawa
94 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

ADVERTORIALS
The Crane
Set on Barbados’ world-famous Crane Beach, The Crane
Resort goes beyond typical Caribbean vacation packages,
and offers unparalleled service and spacious
rooms. These are combined with award-winning restaurants
which offer a variety of cuisines, including Thai,
Japanese, Italian, and contemporary Caribbean. There is
also complimentary wifi in all guest rooms and around
the resort — even on renowned Crane Beach — and
complimentary long-distance calls to most international
destinations.
To book, or for more information on rates, feel free
to contact us via email at reservations@thecrane.com
or call us at (246) 416 6531.
Rostrevor Hotel
Furnished with tropical pops of colour, our rooms are outfitted
with kitchenettes and private balconies with enviable
views of the turquoise Caribbean sea, pool, and lush gardens.
Nestled between nightlife and restaurants, Rostrevor
is exceptional value and exceeds your expectations!
Email: reservations@rostrevorbarbados.com
Website: rostrevorbarbados.com
Telephone: (246) 628 9298
Direct Car Rentals
Trusted for over forty years, with a fleet of over a hundred
new vehicles. We carry only current and up-todate
models. Choose from our economy range to our
SUV range and people carriers — your vehicle is fully
insured and well maintained. Competitive rates and
seasonal discount.
Email: info@barbadosrentals.net
Telephone: (246) 420 6372
St Lucy
Parish Church
Batts
Rock
Beach
Chalky Mount
BARBADOS
Bathsheba
Codrington
College
CELEBRATE
CARIBBEAN
CULTURE
the Best of
This summer, experience the culture of the different
countries of the Caribbean, in one location and at one time.
Garrison
Savannah
Miami
Beach
Caribbean Airlines operates daily flights to
Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados
from destinations across the Caribbean and
North America
AUG 17-27, 2017
Asserting Our Culture, Celebrating OurSelves
www.carifesta.net
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 95

LAYOVER
frans lemmens/Alamy Stock Photo
On the western bank of the Suriname River, with an old Dutch fort at its heart,
Paramaribo surprises many first-time visitors with its friendly, sophisticated vibe. The
relatively compact historic centre is easy to explore on foot and full of unexpected
pleasures — perfect for exploring in a free afternoon or weekend break
nicholas laughlin
Even the briefest stay in Suriname’s capital reveals its
unexpectedly cosmopolitan charms. Here’s how to
make the most of Paramaribo when time is tight
If Paramaribo is one of the Caribbean’s
prettiest cities, that’s thanks to its
traditional architecture, recognised by
UNESCO and relatively well-preserved
in the streets and squares closest to the
river. Built of wood (on brick platforms),
with balconies and classical columns,
these heritage buildings are almost
uniformly painted white with dark
green trim.
Is there anything more Caribbean than a
trip to the beach? When Surinamese are
ready for a swim, they don’t head to the
sea — rather, they turn inland to Colakreek,
a freshwater bathing spot with waterslides
and camping facilities. The name comes from
the naturally dark-tinted water, which does
indeed look like Coca-Cola — perfectly clean,
but stained by the tannins from forest leaves.
gilbert jacott
dolphfyn/shutterstock.com
Suriname’s ethnic diversity means
Paramaribo is a culinary cornucopia.
By all means try its Creole, Chinese,
Indian, Brazilian, and other
restaurants — and don’t miss the
chance for a lavish Javanese meal.
There are warungs — traditional
restaurants — scattered across the
city, but head for the northern
neighbourhood of Blauwgrond,
where numerous family-run warungs
offer dishes like gado-gado and satay
in unpretentious surroundings.
nicholas laughlin
Onafhankelijksplein — that mouthful
is Dutch for Independence Square — is
the biggest green space in the centre
of the city, but a stone’s throw from its
manicured turf you’ll find the Palmentuin,
a small park planted entirely with
towering palm trees. It’s a tranquil,
vertical green space that gives a hint of
the vast forests in Suriname’s interior.
As the day ends and the sun dips
below the horizon, Paramaribo’s most
atmospheric spot just might be the
Waterkant, the terrace running along
the riverfront. Take a friend, buy a djogo
(litre-size bottle) of Parbo beer, find a
bench, and enjoy the spectacle of dusk
settling over the river.
Caribbean Airlines operates regular flights to Johan Adolf Pengel International
Airport in Suriname from Port of Spain, Trinidad, with connections to other
destinations across the Caribbean and North America
gilbert jacott
96 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

ENGAGE
diyana dimitroda/shutterstock.com
98 Green
The energy of the
future
100 Inspire
standing up for
rights
102
On This Day
Twisting Rhodes
Year-round sunshine makes the Caribbean ideal for harnessing solar energy

Green
Wind turbines on the coast
of Aruba contribute to a
goal of one hundred per
cent renewable energy
by 2020
The
ENERGY
of the future
Across the Caribbean, most islands are still
dependent on fossil fuels for their energy
needs. But the movement towards renewable
energy — solar, wind, and hydro — is real,
and some countries are moving faster than
others, thanks to abundant natural resources.
Erline Andrews investigates
Photography by iStock.com/hairballusa
Nelson Island — a tiny
fragment of land less than
one mile off the northwest
coast of Trinidad — is a focal
point of the island’s history.
Indian immigrants, arriving as indentured
labourers between 1866 and 1917, were
processed at the island before being taken
to the mainland.
Today, Nelson Island, a heritage
site, has another important role. It uses
Trinidad and Tobago’s biggest off-grid
solar-power system: fifteen kilowatts of
solar energy power four buildings and
external lights around the island.
The system is about to get an upgrade,
and the company SM Solar Wind Energy
Systems has been recruited to do the job.
It’s the company’s first major project since
the business was founded seven years ago,
which is an indication of how limited solar
energy use remains in T&T, despite assurances
from governments over the years
that more will be done to move the country
away from oil and gas and towards
environment-friendly renewable energy.
The Caribbean region is seen as a
good place to develop renewable energy,
because of the abundance of options
available here and because of the success
of its neighbours in Latin America.
Costa Rica powered its electricity grid
for months last year and the year before
solely on renewable energy.
“If I was in it for the money, I would
have given up a long time ago,” says
SM managing director Ignacio Smith, a
project manager who explains that he
founded the company after reading about
the environment situation in T&T. “I got
really scared. We had already overshot
our biocapacity by one hundred per cent.”
Smith says he started SM because he
wanted to “ignite change.”
Since then, some promising steps have
been taken towards renewable energy
use in the private and public sectors. The
privately owned Savannah East building
opened recently in Port of Spain. It’s the
first certified green building in T&T, and
uses the largest solar-power system in
the country. The Canada-based firm that
designed it is also helping the National
Insurance Board get green certification
for its new headquarters.
The state has also spearheaded projects
here and there, like the installation of
98 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

solar-powered security lights at thirteen
community centres and solar-power projects
at twenty-one secondary schools. In
2011, the government put in place a package
of fiscal incentives to boost renewable
energy businesses, including import duty
exemptions on the equipment and parts to
produce solar water heaters, the removal
of VAT on solar water heaters, solar PV
panels, and wind turbines, and a 150 per
cent tax allowance for companies that hire
renewable energy service providers. And
the government pledged in 2015 that ten
per cent of the country’s electricity would
be generated from renewable energy
by 2021, but momentum seems to have
stalled.
Legislative and regulatory changes still
have to be made to facilitate the integration
of renewable energy into the national
electricity grid, and a national energy
policy is yet to be completed. According
to a 2015 report from the United States
Department of Energy, none of the energy
generated in T&T’s electricity grid came
from renewable sources.
T&T, which produces oil and gas and
therefore doesn’t face the problems
associated with high fuel prices that
plague other countries in the region, is
still too wedded to the use of fossil fuel
energy, says Smith. “The reason is, you
have very big industrial groups pushing
for that agenda,” he explains. “At the end
of the day, it is really about the private
sector’s agenda. It is not about the people
of Trinidad and Tobago.”
But elsewhere in the region, the outlook
for renewable energy is rosier. Last year,
Jamaica generated more than ten per cent
of its electricity from renewable sources,
including wind, hydropower, and solar,
according to the Jamaica Information
Service. The country has pledged to reach
thirty per cent renewable energy generation
by 2030.
A US Department of Energy survey
summarises renewable energy developments
in the rest of the Caribbean:
• Aruba has set a goal of one hundred
per cent renewable energy by 2020. The
island got 15.4 per cent of its energy from
renewable sources in 2015.
• Guadeloupe generates more than seventeen
per cent of its electricity from a wide
variety of renewable sources: wind, hydropower,
geothermal, biomass, and solar.
• Belize has set a goal of ninety-five per
cent renewable energy by 2030. In 2015,
sixty-five per cent of the energy generated
in Belize came from renewable sources,
mainly hydropower and biomass.
• Five more territories the department
surveyed had renewable energy numbers
of between ten and twenty per cent: the
Dominican Republic, Haiti, Curaçao, the
US Virgin Islands, and San Andrés and
Providencia (a department of Colombia
in the western Caribbean Sea). And three
had numbers above twenty per cent:
St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica,
and Bonaire.
But in eleven other countries or territories
the department surveyed — Anguilla,
Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas,
Barbados, the British Virgin Islands,
Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis,
St Lucia, Turks and Caicos, and Puerto
Rico — renewable energy generation
was at zero or close to it. The department
“The Caribbean is so fortunate. It has all these
resources that most countries would die for. And
it’s sitting there shining on you every day”
describes most of the countries and territories
in the region as “almost entirely”
or “highly dependent on imported fossil
fuels, leaving [them] vulnerable to global
oil price fluctuations that directly impact
the cost of electricity.”
“From a commercial perspective
we don’t see it really snowballing yet,”
says Ralph Birkhoff, a Canadian project
developer and consultant currently
based in Anguilla, of renewable energy.
“It’s unfortunate that governments
aren’t moving faster and accelerating
their conversion into renewable energy,”
he adds. “There’s a lot of interested
technology firms and providers, and
there’s a lot of private investment capital
available, primarily from the US, UK, and
Canada, and potentially from sources in
Asia as well.”
The 2015 Caricom report Caribbean
Sustainable Energy Roadmap and Strategy
outlined some of the reasons for the
slow pace. “Many member states have
taken the lead in setting targets, creating
responsible agencies, and developing
domestic policy mechanisms to support
an increase in renewable energy
and energy efficiency . . . Despite these
important steps, however, sustainable
energy development across the region
continues to be limited by policy and
data gaps, administrative ineffectiveness,
and often inefficient and uncoordinated
implementation efforts.”
Observers believe the lagging countries
will get their act together for one
simple reason: they have no choice. David
Cooke, a clean-energy consultant who
writes a regular column for the Jamaica
Observer, believes the move to renewable
energy is inevitable and will happen one
way or the other. “Solar PV is now the
lowest-cost option in over sixty countries,”
he says. “Very rapidly it’s going
to be more than half of the world where
solar PV is going to be lowest cost. Wind
is just marginally behind but not as widely
available,” he adds. “They’re beating out
coal, natural gas, and anything else. You
have large swaths of the world rapidly
developing renewables.”
And people are demanding the cheaper
option. “They are chomping at the bit,”
Cooke says of Jamaicans. “The man in
his little two-bedroom house is wanting it
badly. They’re sending me emails: ‘How
can I do this? How can I do that?’”
Meanwhile, conditions remain favorable
in the region for renewable energy.
“They’re sitting on a goldmine,” says Birkhoff
of Caribbean countries. “We have
sun. We have wind. We have geothermal.
We have oceans that create energy.
“The Caribbean is so fortunate. It has
all these resources that most countries
would die for,” he continues. “And it’s sitting
there shining on you every day, and
we still are not moving quick enough to
harness these resources.” n
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INSPIRE
Attorney and activist
Arif Bulkan first wanted
to be a fiction writer,
but his “accidental”
career in law has made
him a quiet, passionate
defender of some of
the Caribbean’s most
vulnerable. Raymond
Ramcharitar learns
about Bulkan’s career
as an advocate for
indigenous rights and
his involvement in
two landmark LGBT
rights cases StandINg up
Photography courtesy
Arif Bulkan
for rights
In a recent book, the US anthropologist
David McDermott Hughes accused
Trinidadians and Tobagonians of
having a blind spot for the defining
issue of our time: climate change. This
came as a surprise to many, as the number
of activists and causes in Trinidad and
Tobago and the region is very high.
From children’s rights to women’s
issues, to reproductive health and crime
and poverty reduction, activists and
activism abound. But climate change
is not the only lacuna in the activism
landscape. Two critical areas, till very
recently, were virtually unheard of: LGBT
(lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender)
rights, and indigenous people’s rights.
One man who has been working quietly
on both for decades in both T&T and
Guyana was recently recognised.
Dr Christopher Arif Bulkan, an advocate
attorney and University of the West
Indies academic, is the most recent
Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards
for Excellence laureate in Public and
Civic Contributions for his work on both
indigenous people’s and LGBT rights. He
now lives and works in Trinidad, where
he’s based at UWI, St Augustine, but has
also lived and worked in Guyana and
Barbados over the past two decades.
In the pursuit of Amerindian rights,
Bulkan has been a major contributor in
educating the indigenous population of
Guyana — who make up more than ten
per cent of the country’s total population
— and was the lead local consultant
hired by the government of Guyana to
revise the Amerindian Act in 2002. His
100 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

doctoral thesis was on the issue, and has
since become a textbook, The Survival of
Indigenous Rights in Guyana. Bulkan has
also, in recent times, and in collaboration
with colleagues at the University of the
West Indies, launched two potentially
paradigm-altering cases in the courts of
Belize and Guyana on LGBT rights.
Arif Bulkan grew up in
Guyana during the Burnham era.
“This was a menacing period,” he
recalls, “where amid economic hardship,
free speech was stifled, political rallies
routinely broken up by paid thugs, and
opponents of the regime were harassed,
bullied, and pursued with the full force of
the law.”
The natural environment made a tremendous
impression on Bulkan and his
family. His sister Janette, an anthropologist,
is an ardent activist who campaigns
for the preservation of Guyana’s rainforests.
Even his brothers, whom Bulkan
describes as businessmen, are vocal in
their condemnation of political corruption,
and have paid a price for it.
His own path to his present position
was not a straight one, despite his gift
for activism and combining law practice
with social conscience. “This may sound
like I always wanted a career in law,” says
Bulkan, “but in truth that happened by
accident. For as long as I remember, what
I really wanted to do was write fiction.”
His activism grew as his education
grew. He began university in Guyana,
won a scholarship to UWI, another to University
College London, and yet another
to Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto,
Canada. When he returned to Guyana in
1990, after his UWI education, he became
involved in political activism. Then on
returning from the UK and Canada, he
worked as an attorney, magistrate, and in
the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions,
as well as lecturing part time at
the University of Guyana. During one of
these sojourns, in 2002, he was hired by
the government of Guyana to work on the
revision of the Amerindian Act.
Annette Arjoon-Martins, one of the
co-founders of the Guyana Marine Turtle
Conservation Society, credits him with
being an inspiration to her personally, and
of enormous help in educating indigenous
populations with regard to their rights. “I
have known Arif all my life,” she says. “He
has always been an inspiration. When I
started my career as a conservationist,
he was a young lawyer. He was very gracious,
assisting us as we needed, always
pro bono. When I established the GMTS
in 2000, he was one of the first people I
went to.”
He’s done the same for other groups.
Joel Simpson, founder of the Guyana Society
Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination
(SASOD), remembers Bulkan’s
Bulkan’s path to his present position was not
a straight one, despite his gift for activism and
combining law practice with social conscience
presence and participation in the initial
meetings which led to its formation when
Simpson was a student at the University
of Guyana in 2001, and Bulkan was a
lecturer. This area of endeavour, which
has occupied Bulkan for the last decade,
he pursues in conjunction with his UWI
colleagues Tracy Robinson and Douglas
Mendes, and the organisation they cofounded,
the University of the West Indies
Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP).
Outside of activism and teaching,
though, Bulkan also works hands-on
as an advocate. He is the lead attorney
in one of the two cases initiated by
U-RAP, both of which could change the
landscape of LGBT rights in the Caribbean:
Caleb Orozco vs the Attorney General
in Belize, and McEwan, Clarke, Fraser,
Persaud, and SASOD vs the Attorney
General in Guyana. Bulkan and his team
planned to initiate legal action in Belize,
since its legislative environment was
conducive to the kind of litigation pursued
(the decriminalisation of same-sex acts).
But, as they were about to file, he says,
the Guyana case of cross-dressers being
arrested under vagrancy laws came to
public attention. “These laws are always
selectively applied to the poorest of the
poor,” he says. “Always those least able to
navigate the legal system, and they end
up pleading guilty.” Similar cases against
cross-dressers were also initiated in Trinidad
and Tobago in recent years.
The Belize case established the unconstitutionality
(in Belize) of the criminalisation
of sexual intimacy between consenting
adults of the same sex. The Guyana
case, which challenged the archaic Guyanese
law about “the wearing of female
attire” by men in public, and the inverse
for women, is still being determined via
the appeals process.
LGBT rights are a contentious area in
the Caribbean, but it may be more noise
than substance. “The debates on this
tend to be hijacked by the very vocal, but
we have no sense they are the majority,”
Bulkan says. “Polls done by Caribbean
Development Research Services of Barbados
have shown a shift in sentiment on
the issue. Younger people are more tolerant
— though this is a word I don’t like.”
Bulkan’s UWI colleague Dr Sharon
Le Gall describes him as one of those
rare people who is both a teacher and a
scholar. Apart from his book on indigenous
people’s rights, he has co-authored
another on constitutional law. “I think
Arif’s major contribution is still to be
felt,” said Le Gall. “This is work with his
students, of whom he demands the highest
standards. The effects of his work as a
teacher and exemplar will be realised far
in the future.” n
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 101

on this day
Twisting
Rhodes
Sixty years ago, a brilliant young
Jamaican named Rex Nettleford arrived
at Oxford University. His studies there
propelled him to a career at the
pinnacle of Caribbean academia —
and were underwritten by a Rhodes
Scholarship. James Ferguson
considers this unlikely and
highly complicated legacy of the
imperialist Cecil Rhodes
Illustration by Rohan Mitchell
It grieves me to say this about my alma
mater, but Oxford University has a long
tradition of accepting money from bad
people. Both the university and individual
colleges have rarely shown significant
scruples in welcoming donations from an
unsavoury array of slave owners, arms dealers, and
human rights violators who have been happy to offer bequests
— perhaps to salve their consciences (unlikely) or to show off
their philanthropic credentials for posterity (more likely).
The controversial figure of Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) is prominent
among Oxford’s dubious donors, his £3 million–plus bequest in 1902 having
funded a new building in his former college, Oriel, initiated the Rhodes
Trust — of which more later — and created Rhodes House, a library and
headquarters for the trust. Rhodes is a pervasive presence at Oriel and in Oxford
generally, with buildings, portraits, a fellowship, an annual dinner, and an infamous
statue commemorating him. “No one has more memorials in Oxford than Cecil
Rhodes,” remarks Richard Symonds in Oxford and Empire.
The problem is that Rhodes, even by the standards of his age, was a virulent racist and
white supremacist. The sickly vicar’s son from Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire was
to become a multi-millionaire diamond trader and founder of the De Beers gem empire.
He also became prime minister of South Africa’s Cape Colony and was instrumental in
102 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

the formation of Rhodesia (named with characteristic modesty),
today’s Zimbabwe. He is widely credited with the advent of
apartheid and many of the other economic and social ills that
have blighted southern Africa. He was in no doubt as to the virtues
of imperialism, and his notion of empire was based on race. “I
contend that we are the first race in the world,” he wrote in his
will, “and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for
the human race.” As for the black majority in South Africa, they
were “a subject race” whose land could be stolen with impunity
and who were not “civilised” enough to vote.
The Oxford of 1902 clearly had no objection to such opinions,
even if Rhodes was despised by many liberals and by the growing
African black nationalist movement — and so it remained
for over a century, his bequest added to by other philanthropists.
But in 2015 something happened. Inspired by students at Cape
Town University, who had campaigned for the removal of a
statue of Rhodes on the university’s campus, a group of Oxford
students demanded that Oriel College remove the Rhodes statue
overlooking the High Street (on the building he had paid for).
The demand turned into a social media cause célèbre, branded
Rhodes Must Fall, with supporters talking of “decolonising education”
and opponents arguing that such historical re-trials were
pointless acts of political
correctness. As Peter Scott
argued in the UK Guardian
newspaper: “If we are to
begin a cull of not very nice
people, there will be a lot of
empty statue plinths.” Oriel,
it was reported, was worried
that other donors would withdraw
funding if the statue
was removed. In the end,
compromise prevailed; the
college agreed to provide “context” that would help explain
“historical complexity.” To the protestors’ dismay, Rhodes
stayed where he was.
It did not escape the attention of the British tabloid press that
some of the main anti-Rhodes activists were Rhodes Scholars —
that is, beneficiaries of grants from the Rhodes Trust designed
to allow them to study at Oxford. The implicit charge was one
of hypocrisy and ingratitude. But however they reconciled their
status with their beliefs, this system of international scholarships
was (and is) arguably the most significant aspect of Rhodes’s
legacy. Intended to encourage leadership qualities among what
he termed “young colonists,” the scheme aimed to bring “the
whole uncivilised world under British rule” by allowing students
from the Empire (now the Commonwealth) and the United States
to pursue a second degree or research. As of 2016, precisely
7,776 individuals had benefited from a Rhodes Scholarship.
Some are famous, such as Bill Clinton, Kris Kristofferson (both
from the United States) and Malcolm Turnbull (Australia), and
there are thousands more high-achievers in every field.
The programme is nowadays heavily skewed in favour of the
US (thirty-two out of eighty-three annual scholarships in 2013,
with only one to Pakistan and ten to southern Africa). The Commonwealth
Caribbean, receives one, and Jamaica one.
Oxford would enhance Nettleford’s
already conspicuous intellectual
gifts and propel him into an
outstanding academic career as a
historian and social commentator
Which brings me to the anniversary in question. It was
sixty years ago that Ralston Milton (“Rex”) Nettleford,
one of Jamaica’s most eminent cultural luminaries,
arrived at Oriel College as a Rhodes Scholar to begin a three-year
MPhil in political science. There he was taught by, among others,
Isaiah Berlin, perhaps Britain’s greatest twentieth-century political
theorist. Oxford would enhance Nettleford’s already conspicuous
intellectual gifts (he already had a first-class degree from the
University of the West Indies) and propel him into an outstanding
academic career as a historian and social commentator, writing
about Rastafari, the politics of twentieth-century Jamaica, and
much else besides.
What interested him was the importance of African identity
in the diaspora, especially Jamaica, and he saw Africanness,
as exemplified by the folk religion of Pocomania, as intrinsic
to Jamaican culture. Mirror, Mirror (1970) analysed Jamaicans’
complex relationship with their African heritage and the
temptations of abandoning it in the face of mainstream western
influences.
A committed educationalist, Nettleford grew up in relatively
humble conditions in Trelawny Parish, but made the most of his
schooling to reach university and then Oxford. He would return
to UWI and remain there for
the rest of his career, until his
death in 2010.
It is, of course, a pleasing
irony that Rex Nettleford,
who advocated a reconnection
with African traditions
and cultural values, should
have benefited from the largesse
of a man who openly
professed to despise such
values. At Oxford, he not only
delved further into political science, but he also enjoyed a lively
artistic scene, working with Dudley Moore and others on theatrical
and musical productions. Dance was his great love, and
he was an accomplished dancer, choreographer, and producer,
co-founding Jamaica’s National Dance Theatre Company, which
incorporated African folk music into a fusion that he termed “the
rhythm of Africa and the melody of Europe.” Nettleford retained
his affection for Oxford, and in a further gratifying irony the
Rhodes Trust tastefully marked its centenary in 2004 by creating
a Rex Nettleford Fellowship in Cultural Studies. One suspects
that Rhodes himself would not have approved.
In Pamela Roberts’s book Black Oxford, which looks at
African and Caribbean Rhodes Scholars, there is a reproduced
cutting from the Oxford Mail of 14 February, 1958, which
describes how postgraduate Rex Nettleford gave lessons in
“Afro-Caribbean dancing” to members of the Oxford University
Ballet Club. Charmingly diplomatic, he is quoted as saying,
“Now, I don’t agree with the myth that the English haven’t got
rhythm in them. The English have as much rhythm as anyone
else — a little inhibited, that’s all.” How true. And how his
generosity of spirit stands in stark contrast to the arrogance of
the man who unwittingly helped him — and many others — in
their chosen careers. n
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 103

puzzles
146 puzzle grid.pdf 1 5/23/17 2:29 PM
1 2 3 4 5 6
CARIBBEAN CROSSWORD
Across
1 Artificial channel for water [9]
4 River that runs through Cambridge [3]
7 Raise [8]
9 Bahamas capital [6]
11 Egg-shaped [4]
12 Call it a word scramble [7]
14 Pen, lighter, or razor? [3]
15 Gauzy fabric [7]
16 Greek letter [5]
17 Mistake [5]
19 Full of wisdom [7]
21 United by more than English [12]
23 Marathon participant [6]
24 They command the navy [8]
25 Cloud’s home [3]
26 South African language [9]
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
7 8 9
10
11 12
13 14
15 16
17 18 19 20
21
23 24
22
Down
2 Gout-causing acid [4]
3 They carry building materials [12]
4 Act [7]
5 Abused [10]
6 Jamaica’s peaks [13]
7 Water power [13]
8 Safe place [5]
25 26
10 Steep section of a Jamaican hike [12]
13 Covenants [10]
18 Breeding ground [8]
20 Bacteria-growing dish [5]
22 Spectacular party [4]
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
by Gregory St Bernard
There are 14 differences between
these two pictures. How many can
you spot?
Spot the Difference answers
Pirate’s hat is repositioned; “K” symbol on pirate’s hat is larger; pirate’s earrings are removed; pirate’s gold tooth is replaced; pirate’s scarf is
repositioned; pirate’s vest is removed; coconut tree is repositioned; flagpole is taller; pirate’s sword is longer; sand castle is wider; fish icon
on sign is repositioned; colour of sand shovel is changed; fish’s right fin is moved; fish’s expression is different.
104 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

WORD SEARCH
architectural
Carifesta
chip-chip
choreography
climb
creative
creek
doctorbird
drum
energy
fern
fort
fossil
human rights
man o’ war
maroon
Nettleford
Oriel
palm
Parbo
performing
Premier
pro bono
prodigy
Renewable
satay
soursop
Spice
Superfood
vitamin
waterfall
Waterkant
Caribbean Beat Magazine
Caribbean Beat Magazine
Sudoku
by www.sudoku-puzzle.net
Fill the empty square with numbers
from 1 to 9 so that each row, each
column, and each 3x3 box contains
all of the numbers from 1 to 9. For
the mini sudoku use numbers from
1 to 6.
If the puzzle you want to do has
already been filled in, just ask your
flight attendant for a new copy of the
magazine!
Sudoku 9x9 - Puzzle 3 of 5 - Medium
Medium 9x9 sudoku puzzle
2 5 1
9 6
4 6 3
5 3 1 4
6 2 8 7
1 5 4 9
5 1 2
3 8
4 8 7
www.sudoku-puzzles.net
4
Sudoku 6x6 - Puzzle 2 of 5 - Hard
Hard 6x6 mini sudoku puzzle
2
1 6
6 2
5 1 2
5
www.sudoku-puzzles.net
www.sudoku-puzzle.net
Solutions
Caribbean Crossword
Word Search
C 25 S K Y 26 A F R I K A A N S
U N N E R 24 A D M I R A L S
22
N
I T R E L
T E K S D R G
Sudoku
Mini Sudoku
Sudoku 6x6 - Solution 2 of 5 - Hard
Sudoku 9x9 - Solution 3 of 5 - Medium
4 1 5 2 3 6
6 3 2 5 4 1
3 6 2 4 7 5 9 8 1
9 8 5 1 6 3 4 7 2
7 1 4 9 8 2 6 3 5
S
1
H
7
L 2 U I C E 3 W A Y 4 C A 5 M
6
B
R H H I L
E I G 8 H T E N 9 N A S S A U
Y C A E 10 J R T E
2 4 1 6 5 3
5 6 3 1 2 4
5 9 7 3 1 6 8 2 4
6 4 3 2 9 8 5 1 7
1 2 8 7 5 4 3 6 9
O
15
D 11 O V A L 12 A N A G R A M
R 13 A E 14 B I C D E O
R G A N Z A 16 O M E G A U
E R R B T N
3 5 6 4 1 2
8 5 1 6 4 7 2 9 3
L 17 E R 18 R O R 19 S A 20 P I E N T
E E O O L E D A
C
M
O M M O N W E A L T H I
R
23
www.sudoku-puzzles.net
4 3 9 8 2 1 7 5 6
2 7 6 5 3 9 1 4 8
Y
CM
MY
CY
www.sudoku-puzzles.net
1 2 4 3 6 5
CMY
K
C
21
Caribbean Beat Magazine
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 105
146 key.pdf 1 5/23/17 2:26 PM
A R C H I T E C T U R A L J H
P D P N P W A T E R F A L L U
E C R E A T I V E N E R G Y M
R E O U L R E N E W A B L E A
F O D M M P R E M I E R W H N
O C I A S T X T K C F P A Z R
R H G N R U N T S L O R T C I
M I Y O M I P L O I S O E A G
I P F W M A C E U M S B R R H
N C A A T L R F R B I O K I T
C
Caribbean Beat Magazine
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
C H O R E O G R A P H Y E A Y
CMY
K
word search puzzle.pdf 1 5/23/17 2:36 PM
A R C H I T E C T U R A L J H
P D P N P W A T E R F A L L U
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
E C R E A T I V E N E R G Y M
R E O U L R E N E W A B L E A
F O D M M P R E M I E R W H N
O C I A S T X T K C F P A Z R
R H G N R U N T S L O R T C I
M I Y O M I P L O I S O E A G
I P F W M A C E U M S B R R H
N C A A T L R F R B I O K I T
G H T R E T E O S F L N A F S
K I C I B R E R O P O O N E A
V P R M N O K D P N I O T S T
D O C T O R B I R D R C D T A
C H O R E O G R A P H Y E A Y
D O C T O R B I R D R C D T A
V P R M N O K D P N I O T S T
K I C I B R E R O P O O N E A
G H T R E T E O S F L N A F S
146 word search.pdf 1 5/23/17 2:35 PM

87% (2017 year-to-date: 31 January)

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737 onboard Entertainment — JULY/AUGUST
Northbound
Southbound
© 2017 Disney Enterprises, Inc.
J U L Y
Beauty and the Beast
When an independent young woman called Belle is taken
prisoner by a Beast in his castle, she learns to look beyond the
Beast’s hideous exterior.
Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans • director: Bill Condon • musical,
fantasy • PG • 129 minutes
Gifted
Frank is raising his niece, Mary, a brilliant child prodigy. His plans
for a normal school life for Mary are foiled by the attentions of
his mother.
Chris Evans, Lindsay Duncan, Mckenna Grace • director: Marc Webb • drama
• PG-13 • 101 minutes
Northbound
Southbound
A U G U S T
Born in China
The stories of three animal families in some of the most extreme
environments on Earth. Witness some of the most intimate
moments captured on film.
John Krasinski • director: Lu Chuan • documentary • G • 79 minutes
The Boss Baby
Seven-year-old Tim discovers that his new baby brother — “Boss
Baby” — is actually a spy on a secret undercover mission.
Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Kimmel • director: Tom McGrath •
comedy, animation • PG • 97 minutes
Audio Channels
Channel 5 • The Hits
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parting shot
A Library
For All
Overlooking the Place de la
Savane, the ornate Bibliothèque
Schoelcher is Fort-de-France’s
main public library, and a monument
to the nineteenth-century
French abolitionist Victor
Schoelcher, who left his personal
collection of books to Martinique
on condition that it was open to
everyone — including the formerly
enslaved whose freedom he had
campaigned to secure.
Photography by
Pack-Shot/Shutterstock.com
112 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

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