bigdrumnation

Reading Time 1 minsThis piece opens our 2015 Carnival Studies. So now it is time to tell the stories of the Grenadian Carnival: our  Grenadian show opens on August 1, 2015. And remember this: “Nothing has happened until it’s  described “ -Virginia Woolf ======================BDN=================== September time is Carnival time in Begur, the small town on Spain’s Costa Brava. The Costa Brava Carnival is a Caribbean Carnival; its roots in Cuba. Spain’s Caribbean Carnival goes by the  name of Fira d’Indians, the Indians’ Fair.    Note: Costa Brava is located in Catalonia; it is a fine time to read Orwell’s Homage to… Read More »Caribbean Carnival in Costa Brava, Spain

Reading Time 1 minsA “West Indian Apartheid” lingered in West Indian cricket until the latter years of the nineteen-fifties: of course the game was merely reflecting the state of play in colour-coded societies that stood blackness in the basement. This writer allows that the “gentleman’s game” was not alone in race/colour prejudices. Young Derek Walcott (Nobel Prize winner in Literature 1992) saw the racism/colorism in Grenada during the three months he spend on the island, teaching Latin and English at the Grenada Boys’ Secondary School (GBSS). Professor Simon Rotenberg [University of Chicago] saw it in the course of a 1952 visit to Grenada. Enough. Back to the Oval  A campaign to… Read More »Cricket: a colour commentary

Reading Time 3 mins I Come From Nigger Yard – Martin Carter I come from the nigger yard of yesterday leaping from the oppressors’ hate and the scorn of myself; from the agony of the dark hut in the shadow and the hurt of things; from the long days of cruelty and the long nights of pain down to the wide streets of to-morrow, of the next day leaping I come, who cannot see will hear. In the nigger yard I was naked like the new born naked like a stone or a star. It was a cradle of blind… Read More »I Come From The Nigger Yard – Poem by Martin Carter

Reading Time 2 minsWorkers’ Lament  – Mighty Composer [Fred Mitchell], (circa 1970)  [See Video below]  Oh how my heart goes out to my people Ah mean the poor and the working class Who got to work everyday for little or no pay Until judgment come to pass They got to make up their minds for pressure Till the day they going to their graves Because the rich and powerful master Keeping them hand to mouth like slaves   So they got to keep on working hard And sweating till they smelling bad While they praying for the day to done… Read More »Workers’ Lament – Mighty Composer

Reading Time 2 mins As we continue in the spirit of International Workers Day, Big Drum Nation highlights Caribbean and Latin American labor heroes and heroines.  Hubert Henry Harrison (April 27, 1883 – December 17, 1927) An immigrant from St. Croix, Danish West Indies at the age of 17, Hubert Henry Harrison (April 27, 1883 – December 17, 1927) was regarded by the famous historian J.A. Rogers as “the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time” and by John G. Jackson of American Atheists  as “The Black Socrates.  This great labor giant, although unheard of in American history books, was also a… Read More »On the 132nd Anniversary of Pioneering Black Radical Hubert Henry Harrison’s Birth

Reading Time 1 minsThe “Labourers March” on Sauteurs (January 11, 1848) was the dramatic highpoint of an  industrial’ action initiated on December 22,1847,  arguably the dawn of collective political life in post-emancipation Grenada. Coming just a decade following the abolition of chattel slavery, the Sauteurs protest pitted ex-slaves against the former masters.   Labour Day in Grenada must remember the courage of the St Patrick’s labourers, the Country’s proto-trade unionists.       Trinidad’s 1919-20 Stevedore’s Strike enlarged the political  and ideological imagination of the “dock workers”. This historic action produced several songs , including : The English say we can live on two… Read More »The “Labourers March” on Sauteurs / Trinidad’s 1919-20 Stevedores Strike

Reading Time

Reading Time

Reading Time 1 mins Grenada National Stadium Cricket April 21, 2015 “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” -CLR James   The West Indies Cricket Team remains the most storied of our federal institutions: the team has survived the Federation (1958-62) – its lamentable demise codified in a Sparrow rendition Federation.    Junior Murray   Federation boils down to simply this It’s dog-eat -dog and the survival of the fittest.     Sparrow’s Federation is Eric Williams’ version of the mash up; there exists many other versions and we may wish to pursue them later on.   Genesis of West Indian Cricket West Indies cricket is a study in European colonial rivalries, for the… Read More »Cricket