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There’s so much more: Boat-tailed grackles– a bird species Bridget had identified for me in Montserrat on Alcyone’s first pass through the Caribbean. Googling them I learn they may actually be Greater Grackles, whose range includes the Caribbean. Frogs run over on the road. Goats everywhere. A snake run over on the road. A couple ah donkeys.
I arrived in Belmont around 4:30, met Uncle Winston, the bandleader, and composer (“Margerita! Seniorita! We doan wanna play dat ting. We wanna play tings we kyan nous! El muchacho! El Parango! We doan wanna play dat ting. We wanna play tings we kyan nous.” I think I’ve isolated the second tenor harmony for singing) and then, having arrived four hours early for rehearsal, I went for a walk to the top of the mountain up to an area called Six Roads.
I walked past a party. I asked what the occasion was. Somebody had died four years ago, but they’d just got their tombstone. Par-ty! Par-ty! The living and the dead around here seem pretty tight. There’s a tradition, African, in Carriacou called “Big Drum.” It’s a way of communicating with the ancestors and each rhythm indicates which of seven tribes you came from in Africa.* And when you drink your first Jack Iron of the day, you spill a little on the earth for the ancestors.
A jump-up sound system being set up in a hollow — not quite in the middle of nowhere because the island is small and houses, goats, chickens are scattered all over. But still, when I was walking back down the mountain enjoying the greenery and the DJ at the Par-ty started blasting dance hall at 5:30 pm, it echoed among the trees and up-and-down hills that the road runs through. A nice mix of nature and art. A ten-year-old kid mowing the path to his shack with a machete…
I rehearsed with the BBH Serenaders from about 8:00 till 10:30, then caught a ride to Hillsborough with Roy, the bass player and Godwin, the cowbell player. They are middle-aged guys who spent 20 years working in England before settling back here. First, we stopped at a jump-up in nearly the middle of nowhere, then we moved on.
They both have a taste for smooth reggae and jazz and such. We went to Roy’s house in Mt. Pleasant (does everybody run a bar from their spare room here?) and he kicked up his sound system and we talked music philosophy till about 12:30. Oh, and they smoke marijuana. I didn’t want it wasted on me since Chris wasn’t here with the video camera to see me messed up.
Oh, a new Christmas song. I wanna piece of pork,
I wanna piece of pork,
I wanna piece of pork for me Christmas
I doan wan no manicou
you can keep your callalou
I wanna piece of pork for Christmas.
(Manicou is what they call their indigenous opossum. Callaloo is a bush you make soup from.)
*Editor’s’ Note: See Tribal Allegiances in Carriacou in Caldwell Taylor’s, “Bai Bureh’s People Come Home to Carriacou: ‘For True, Time Is Really Longer Than Rope’”