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Reading Time 2 minsDraft: Not for Quotation, Citation or Distribution Link to part 1 THE JAB JAB AND COMIC LICENCES ? [Part 2 of 2] “The molasses Negro [Negre Molassi] wears nothing. His whole body and face is smeared with an atrocious mixture of soot and molasses”  – Lafacdio Hearn, after viewing Martinique’s 1887 Carnival. See Hearn’s “Two Years in the French West Indies” published in 1890. Jab in Haiti “A band of bare-chested horned men whose bodies are covered with sugar-cane syrup mixed with soot and charbon [charcoal] In Haiti these Carnival characters are called lanceurs de cord”. – Novelist Edwidge Dandicat in “After the Dance: A Walk… Read More »Carnival: A Mass Plays Mas’  [Caldwell Taylor]

Reading Time

Reading Time

Reading Time 1 minsGrenada’s Carnival Tradition (Hudson George) [Continued from August 4] Presently,  the government is getting more involved in our carnival celebration. However, I personally believe that government involvement in the festival is not in the interest of culture but in the interest of getting  financial revenue from the events.  I am saying so because our government officials are trying their best to commit cultural genocide within the rural communities within our tri-island state  by limiting the carnival activities in the villages and trying to influence rural citizens to come to St. George’s and play mas. I believe the government… Read More »Grenada’s Carnival Tradition (Hudson George) Pt. 2

Reading Time

Reading Time

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