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

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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

Reading Time 1 mins AGE  by Keisha-Gaye Anderson   Age should expand the iris of your name into a doorway that lets the blazing light, splintered through darkness, come into clearer view years should bloom you like a field of freesias under the sun of you mind and unfurl you into into one of the beautiful things in time your journey in bone and skin should mark a firmly-trodden path into clay to make a way toward home for those lost in the thicket we should not just grow up but grow in and study the sound that spawned the… Read More »AGE by Keisha-Gaye Anderson

Reading Time 1 mins My Sweet Grenada – Poem by Leslie Alexis   What is it about this island That makes it to all paradise? Is it the people, plants, places That bring smiles to all faces, And when on parting, tears to eyes That venture into this Heaven On Earth land? Grenada, Spice Isle! Maybe it is the pearly white sands On the land’s natural beaches To which the minutes from, one can Count on two pairs of hands. The riches Possessed by this lovely nation Are Priceless, and cannot be stolen, Pure treasures from in paradise, golden And… Read More »My Sweet Grenada – Poem by Leslie Alexis

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