Reading Time 2 mins July 7 – 9, 2021 The month of July provides the opportunity to salute two outstanding octogenarian Caribbean cultural icons, the Birdie and brother Val. Big Drum Nation features back-to-back releases on these two prolific and popular proponents of socially conscious Caribbean music. While today, July 7th,… Read More »Saluting Brother Valentino/Emrold Phillip at 80!–BDN Editors
Reading Time 3 minsJune 17, 2021 The Oil refineries in Curaçao in the early 1940s played a significant role in steelpan coming to Antigua; that was where Antiguan workers met their Trinidadian counterparts. On one occasion, the Ship taking them back to Antigua stopped to refuel in Trinidad, and that was where they first heard the sound of Steel Pan, met the men who played them and saw the steel oil drums used to make them. Upon returning to Antigua, they set out trying to make the steel pans they heard in Trinidad. Point, a neighborhood along the coast where… Read More »Iron Band-Steel Pan Wadadli Style– Iyaba Mandingo
Reading Time 1 minsJune 17, 2021 (Update) “Every heart, every soul, is a drum… here’s your sanctuary.” David Rudder, Song of the Earth Kim Johnson’s The Illustrated Story of Pan captures and reveals so much of the Caribbean‘s essence by prompting our dangerous memory, its activation, and reclamation. By fashioning a haven for deep meditation on “the transformation of a drum into a melody maker,” the book compels cultural retrieval, not just in Trinidad and Tobago, pan’s birthplace, but in pan communities throughout the world. Against the backdrop of panjumbies adding to Johnson’s story, in this post, “Iron Band-Steel Pan Wadadli Style,” Iyaba Mandingo initiates a discussion on the Antiguan… Read More »Recapturing The (True) Spirit Of The ‘Pan Pioneers’*
Reading Time 9 minsJune 16, 2021 BDN is pleased to share Dr. Laurie Lambert’s talk, “Comrade Sister: Caribbean Feminist Revisions of the Grenada Revolution,” which she presented at the 2021 virtual African Liberation Day Celebrations hosted by the Grenada African Liberation Day Organizing Committee (GALDOC), May 25, 2021. The presentation was primarily excerpted from her acclaimed book of the same name. Read the post and join the conversation. BDN Editors Thank you to the organizers for the invitation to present. I am going to read a section from my book, Comrade Sister: Caribbean Feminist Revisions of the Grenada Revolution. It’s a book of literary… Read More »Comrade Sister: Caribbean Feminist Revisions of the Grenada Revolution–Dr. Laurie R. Lambert
Reading Time 6 minsJune is here again. Mid-year. National Caribbean American Heritage Month gives the Caribbean its deserved center stage in the nation’s consciousness! So it is in geography as it is in history and current affairs; the Caribbean is middle America. As it is annually, June 1 began month-long activities officially designated as National Caribbean American Heritage Month by Presidential Proclamation in the United States of America since 2006. The proclamation was enacted under the George Bush administration in recognition of the extraordinary contributions Caribbean Americans have historically made to the development of the United States. Millions of people… Read More »Caribbean American Heritage Month: Recognizing a Key Ingredient of the American Mosiac – Martin P. Felix