bigdrumnation

Kamau Brathwaite Revisited – Margaret Prescod-Cissé

Reading Time 3 minsIn a performance of his poem,  Kumina, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, counts consecutively and deliberately, the days and the activities encompassed in this spectacle of loss.  Grief is laid bare, in words that are hauntingly plain and emotive, as the speaker comes to terms with the death of a beloved.  The poem ends in an African chant that is at once an invocation of the ancestral spirits and a profound benediction of mourning.  Since Brathwaite’s passing on February 4, eulogists, in their grandiloquence, have spoken of his intellectual prowess and his contributions to the arts, the fashioning of a… Read More »Kamau Brathwaite Revisited – Margaret Prescod-Cissé

Grenadians in the Diaspora Reflect on the Meaning of Independence

Reading Time 4 minsFebruary 7th, 1974, the date Grenada, was given independence by Britain, is not one that I celebrate. We are not a free people. Hence my reason for not being particularly interested in celebrating the event of being granted political independence. Independence, as I see it, is a work in progress. And quite frankly we have a mighty long way to go to attain sovereignty; when we can chart our own course. We are not self-defining people: far from it. It would be more fitting to celebrate a National Heroes Day the way we go about celebrating independence… Read More »Grenadians in the Diaspora Reflect on the Meaning of Independence

NATION FOOD AND NATIONHOOD: A REVIEW OF MERLE COLLINS’S “SARACCA AND NATION” – Caldwell Taylor

Reading Time 6 minsFebruary 7, 2019 “The whole of nature”, wrote William Ralph Inge, “is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive” .  We eat to live and if Brillat-Savarin the eighteenth century French gastronome is to be  believed, “we are what we eat”. Of course the idea that there exists a relation between food and character did not originate with Brillat-Savarin: the Old Testament anticipated him by more than 3,000 years. Now in addition to being what we eat, can it also be said that we are how we eat, the how calling attention… Read More »NATION FOOD AND NATIONHOOD: A REVIEW OF MERLE COLLINS’S “SARACCA AND NATION” – Caldwell Taylor

Edward Kamau Brathwaite (May 11, 1930 — February 4, 2020): Inspires Still –Carlyle G. Leach

Reading Time 2 mins…is all too sudden. Sonny. im want to ress a while from all dis pain an distrulationcause when im reach down-dey. im nevva soon-come-back again… The weary salmon swims upstream to spawn future generations, fertilizes, and ultimately becomes part of the fabric of all that is exists thereafter in that ecosystem. Such is the life of a true creative revolutionary. Engaging in the lifelong struggle to find and then to fill a space with ideas heretofore non-existent, the creator withstands the slings and arrows of both the entrenched old guard and of the trying-to-join-the-club new jacks. Brathwaite… Read More »Edward Kamau Brathwaite (May 11, 1930 — February 4, 2020): Inspires Still –Carlyle G. Leach

Bob Marley: 75 and Growing – Richard Hoyen

Reading Time 3 minsThursday, February 6, 2020 “Play I some music, (dis ya) reggae music”, so begins Bob Marley’s Roots Rock Reggae. In today’s world, Reggae is universal and Jamaica is synonymous with that Genre. There is not a country that has not adopted Reggae as part of its music. Jamaica, a land built by slave labor, captured by the Spaniards and snatched by the English. The Europeans exterminated the natives and filled the island with Africans, captured and enslaved. They added Indian and Chinese labor to the menu. The Africans brought with them instruments of music, so did the… Read More »Bob Marley: 75 and Growing – Richard Hoyen

Valuing Self and Celebrating Our Own Creativity and Exploration – Merle Collins

Reading Time 7 minsWhat is the meaning of independence? Big Drum Nation sat down for a cyber chat with renowned Grenadian writer Merle Collins, someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about Grenada and the psyche of its people. Big Drum Nation [BDN]: It has been 46 years since achieving independence from Britain. What would you say are Grenada’s highest and lowest moments in these 46 years? Merle Collins [MC]: Each time I consider Independence I remember the struggles of T.A. Marryshow and others for a Federation of the West Indies.  It’s the past, but as we think of… Read More »Valuing Self and Celebrating Our Own Creativity and Exploration – Merle Collins

Underground Diaries: Trains of Thought – Martin P. Felix

Reading Time 2 mins“Doesn’t anybody ever know?/Doesn’t anybody ever know?/That the world’s a subway, subway.” – Our Lady Peace “Superman’s Dead” The New York City subway has long held a fascination with Caribbean immigrants. Antigua’s Swallow captured this sentiment when he gave a Caribbean nation roll call in the Subway Jam. Decades before, Lord Invader introduced us to “New York Subway”, a journal about going to Brooklyn to visit a lady, and not being able to figure out his return subway route. When subway artist Michael Stewart was killed by transit cops in 1984, world-famous Haitian-Puerto Rican artist Jean-Michel Basquiat remarked… Read More »Underground Diaries: Trains of Thought – Martin P. Felix

My Public Education was Arrested when I Abandoned the New York Subway — Winthrop R. Holder

Reading Time 2 minsJanuary 16, 2020 “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” – John Muir. The Arrivant? “I was a… rootless man of the world. I could go, belong, everywhere on the worldwide globe.” – Edward K. Braithwaite. In 1975 I was a recent immigrant, a new student at Brooklyn College, when, since one of my professors stressed the importance of current events, I undertook to learn to fold and read the New York Times on my long subway trips. Other commuters–many of whom would get off at the Wall Street and Bowling… Read More »My Public Education was Arrested when I Abandoned the New York Subway — Winthrop R. Holder

II. Engaging an Underground Subculture of Reading — Winthrop R. Holder

Reading Time 2 minsJanuary 16, 2020 In mid-September 2019, I had to retrieve a long-lost book from a friend who works for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) at the Avenue X Station in Coney Island, Brooklyn. As someone slowly (re)embracing public transportation, I pondered reentering my world of the 1970s and 1980s; I resolved to take the subway. And, since I had not completed that week’s NY Sunday Times, I decided to carry reading material for what could be a three-hour round trip. I recalled my early days navigating the underground. But, of course, distance and time often provide perspective. And it… Read More »II. Engaging an Underground Subculture of Reading — Winthrop R. Holder

III. Begging to Avoid Trouble — Winthrop R. Holder

Reading Time 2 mins January 16, 2020 The daily kaleidoscope of headlines, many in foreign languages, peering out from straphangers’ papers, may have served to remind commuters of the vibrancy of our multilingual, global village when there wasn’t as much government-inspired anti-immigrant sentiment as today. I remember sometimes being impressed by the arresting artwork of a New Yorker cover that I’d buy one. Or a salacious headline, especially from the Daily News or the New York Post, would induce me to buy the newspaper, sometimes only to read half of the article. And, oh, the graffiti, how that “faux-art” led to reflections on what it… Read More »III. Begging to Avoid Trouble — Winthrop R. Holder