bigdrumnation

Reading Time 5 mins     A Review of ‘ATTACK WITH FULL FORCE…’ — CLYDE WEATHERHEAD* “A small band of heroic fighters, no matter how courageous, without the leadership of a strong political force armed with the necessary ideological outlook and linked to the masses of the people and mobilizing them ideologically and organisationally to take the insurrection to the conclusion of capturing the political power of the state by the people and in their interest will not achieve a decisive victory for the People’s Cause and the advance of the society. “ History, it has been said, is written by… Read More »A Review of ‘Attack With Full Force…’ — CLYDE WEATHERHEAD

Reading Time 4 mins“life hadn’t caught up with art, but play had to ceased to be play.” V.S. Naipaul. By Winthrop R. Holder LIFE may have caught up with art when armed rebels seized hostages while looters rampaged the city, sowing fields of fire in their wake. Expressed love for country was the avowed reason behind the action, steeped in the conviction that even Allah – who knows all – and the oppressed populace were bound to support the overthrowing of the government. Everywhere, the events were being described as an attempted coup, but those familiar with their literature would have… Read More »Naipaul and The Rebels Without Conscience* — Winthrop R. Holder

Reading Time

Reading Time 5 minsJune 30, 2023 When I was five or six years old, my father brought home a portable record player for our home with several LPs. There were two or three by the Kingston Trio and one album by the Limelighters. They were both “folk” groups. These purchases reflected an intense and transitory popularity for a certain lusty, harmonized, guitar-driven music from 1958 to 1963. The Kingston Trio is, for me, an historically interesting group. They were started by Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds. Shane and Guard grew up in Hawaii, attending the same prep school… Read More »GROWING UP IN THE USA WITH CALYPSO!/Jeff McNish

Reading Time 8 minsMay 30, 2023 “My activism always existed. My art gave me the platform to do something about the activism.”–Harry Belafonte.  Harry was so many things but never enough, for he set his standard much higher than stardom. His legacy illuminates and inspires us in his afterlife. From music to film, Harry broke records and became the industry standard–becoming the first recording artist to go platinum with his monster album Calypso, which caused a stir in Trinidad as it was labeled “The King of Calypso.” Harry is an EGOT (Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and Tony) recipient, a rarity even… Read More »Harry Belafonte! If Not The King Of Calypso, Then The King of Woke?/Kanene A. Holder

Reading Time 7 minsJuneteenth: A Special Case for Reparations Ain’t no stoppin’ us nowWe’re on the moveAin’t no stoppin’ us nowWe’ve got the groove There’s been so many things that’s held us downBut now it looks like things are finally comin’ aroundI know we’ve got, a long long way to goAnd where we’ll end up, I don’t know “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now.” (1979) Song by McFadden & Whitehead  The past is not past. And slavery is not just the past. African American communities are still enslaved today because many still suffer from the long-term social–economic effects of slavery, directly and… Read More »Juneteenth: A Special Case for Reparations — Martin P. Felix

Reading Time 6 mins June 30, 2023 ‘We went through a repertoire of Elvis, Beatles, and Rolling Stone songs-none of which they recognized. The first tune that caught their interest was when we did Harry’s classic, Jamaica Farewell. They knew it enough to join the chorus with their halting English, encouraging other tables to harmonize.‘ My first introduction to Harry was with his Live at Carnegie Hall album, which somehow came into my hands in the late 1950s. It wasn’t inevitable. I was weaned by the next-generation music of Alan Freed’s Rock and Roll shows, which was anathema to the… Read More »HARRY BELAFONTE: THE GREAT EMISSARY!/ KEN MURRAY*

Reading Time 1 minsMay 30, 2023 Happy Indian Arrival Day! Throughout May and early June, Caribbean nations celebrate Indian Arrival Day (IAD) as a day of deep reflection on the strides made by Indo-Caribbean people since their Arrival in 1838 to the region’s plantations as replacements for the newly-emancipated Africans. Beginning on May 1 in Grenada, the celebrations culminate on June 1 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and June 5 in Suriname.  Today, May 30, IAD is celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago with rousing ceremonies throughout the nation, as is done to varying degrees throughout the Caribbean on particular… Read More »Happy Indian Arrival Day, 2023!

Reading Time 3 minsMay 30, 2023 It sits innocently in the Undergraduate Humanities Programmes list, alphabetically bookended by Theatre Arts and Visual Arts. Yet the University of the West Indies (UWI) Bachelor of Arts BA Theology degree is a jarring testament to the religious and ethnic discrimination that still exists in our nation’s highest education institution, paying lip service to diversity, equity, and inclusion as core values. Taught every year at St Augustine (Trinidad) campus by members of the Seminary of St John Vianney and the Ugandan Martyrs since 1970, UWI’s Theology degree is unapologetically Christian and Catholic in content. The… Read More »UWI Discrimination: Why no Hindu or Islamic BA Theology Degree?/ Dr. Kumar Mahabir

Reading Time 8 minsMay 4, 2023 Joint Statement by First Nations, Indigenous Peoples, and Advocacy Groups of 12 Countries with the British Monarch as Head of State, on the occasion of the Coronation of King Charles III, May 6 th 2023 Apology, Reparation, and Repatriation of Artefacts and Remains We, the undersigned, call on the British Monarch, King Charles III, on the date of his coronation being May 6, 2023, to acknowledge the horrific impacts on and legacy of genocide and colonisation of the indigenous and enslaved peoples of Antigua and Barbuda, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada,… Read More »Joint Statement by First Nations, Indigenous Peoples, and Advocacy Groups of 12 Countries with the British Monarch as Head of State, on the occasion of the Coronation of King Charles III, May 6 th 2023