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Contents

No. 149 January/February 2018

76

42 EMBARK

IMMERSE

ARRIVE

19 Datebook

42 closeup

76 Destination

It’s one of the oldest masquerades in T&T’s Carnival, brought across the Atlantic from West Africa. The moko jumbie tradition once seemed to be dying away, but in recent years a handful of enthusiasts have created a moko jumbie revival, training hundreds of young people in the art of stilt-walking. Ray Funk investigates, and explains the power of these towering figures

Even at the height of Carnival season, Trinidad’s sister island maintains its laid-back, tranquil vibe. Need to escape from the fetes and frenzy?

Welcome to Tobago’s beaches and bays, forests and waterfalls — a natural vitamin shot for the soul

Events around the Caribbean in January and February, from Bahamas Junkanoo to Guyana’s Mashramani to Carnival celebrations up and down the islands, plus St Lucia’s Nobel Laureates Festival, a marathon in Haiti, and the world-famous Havana Book Fair

26 Word of Mouth It’s Carnival time! Come on a panyard lime with Barbara Jenkins, experience the thrilling, shapeshifting ritual of J’Ouvert in a poem

by Shivanee Ramlochan, and discover Carriacou’s unique Shakespeare mas.

Meanwhile, Jamaica celebrates its musical heritage at Reggae Month

34 the game

Superhero moves Inspired since childhood by the Power Rangers TV show, Jamaican taekwondo champ Akino Lindsay uses martial arts to change his life and inspire other young people in Kingston’s toughest communities, writes Kellie Magnus

36 Bookshelf, playlist, and screenshots This month’s reading, listening, and film-watching picks, to keep you culturally up-to-date 10

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Walk tall

57 backstory

How to win the road T&T’s Carnival is full of rivalries and competitions, and none is more fierce than the annual Road March battle.

Mark Lyndersay traces the history of the musical title that reflects the will of masqueraders on the street — and we dare to share our picks for the top ten Road March songs from the 1930s to the present day

72 own words

“I’m unfinished” Tobago-born actor Winston Duke, appearing in the eagerly awaited Black Panther movie, on his love of stories and magical realism, how his village childhood shaped his ethos, and his love of soca music — as told to Caroline Taylor

Escape to Tobago

94 Neighbourhood

Gustavia, St Barthélemy The picturesque capital of St Barts took a beating during Hurricane Irma — but was soon ready to welcome visitors again, to enjoy its Gallic charms with a Scandinavian twist

96 round trip

Art in the open Year-round, across the Caribbean, you can experience art in the street, in public spaces, out in the open — no need to buy a museum ticket.

Here are murals, monuments, and even an impromptu art gallery in Port-au-Prince

ENGAGE 106 green

what follows the storm In September 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Dominica’s houses, businesses, and infrastructure. But the

CaribbeanBeat An MEP publication

96

Editor Nicholas Laughlin General manager Halcyon Salazar Design artists Kevon Webster & Bridget van Dongen Web editor Caroline Taylor Editorial assistant Shelly-Ann Inniss

Business Development Manager, Tobago and International Evelyn Chung T: (868) 684 4409 E: evelyn@meppublishers.com

storm also took a toll on the Nature Isle’s forests and wildlife — a major blow for an economy that depends on eco-tourism. Paul Crask reports

Business Development Representative, Trinidad Mark-Jason Ramesar T: (868) 775-6110 E: mark@meppublishers.com

Business Development Manager Yuri Chin Choy T: (868) 460 0068, 622 3821 E: yuri@meppublishers.com

108 the deal

Seaweed for sale For St Lucian Johanan Dujon, sargassum-covered beaches are’t just a problem — they’re an opportunity. As Erline Andrews learns, Dujon has his eye on a regional market for his Algas Organics line of fertilisers

110 On this day

Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. 6 Prospect Avenue, Maraval, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago T: (868) 622 3821/5813/6138 • F: (868) 628 0639 E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com Website: www.meppublishers.com

A distant light A small speck of land at the northern end of the Leewards, Sombrero Island is known to few — but has a surprisngly colourful history. James Ferguson tells tales of shipwrecks, guano mines, and the 150-year-old lighthouse that saved countless sailors’ lives in the dangerous Anegada Passage

112 puzzles Enjoy our crossword, sudoku, and other brain-teasers!

Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone, tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices!

Printed by Solo Printing Inc., Miami, Florida Caribbean Beat is published six times a year for Caribbean Airlines by Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. It is also available on subscription. Copyright © Caribbean Airlines 2018. All rights reserved. ISSN 1680–6158. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. MEP accepts no responsibility for content supplied by our advertisers. The views of the advertisers are theirs and do not represent MEP in any way.

Website: www.caribbean-airlines.com

118 onboard entertainment Music and movies to keep you busy in the air

120 parting shot On Union Island, colourful produce makes a still life of a vendor‘s stall

The Caribbean Airlines logo shows a hummingbird in flight. Native to the Caribbean, the hummingbird represents flight, travel, vibrancy, and colour. It encompasses the spirit of both the region and Caribbean Airlines.

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11

Cover Stephanie Kanhai of the Touch D Sky moko jumbie group on the road at T&T’s Carnival 2017 Photo Maria Nunes

This issue’s contributors include: Born in Britain and resident in Dominica since 2005, Paul Crask (“What follows the storm”, page 106) is an independent writer, photographer, and magazine publisher. He is the author of two Bradt travel guides and the creator of Dominica Traveller magazine: www.dominicatraveller.com.

Ray Funk (“Walk tall”, page 42) is a mostly retired Alaskan trial judge who has been passionately researching Trinidad Carnival arts for two decades.

He writes regularly for the Trinidad Guardian.

Barbara Jenkins (“Pan jumbie”, page 26) immerses herself in reading and writing, visiting children and grandchildren, cooking, tending weeds, and in the calm citrine waters of Macqueripe Bay. Her novel De Rightest Place will be published in 2018.

Mark Lyndersay (“How to win the road”, page 55) is a Trinidadian photographer and journalist. His BitDepth is the longest running newspaper column reporting on technology in the country.

Kellie Magnus (“Superhero moves”, page 34) is a Jamaican author who writes primarily for children.

She also runs the Jamaica Safer Communities Programme for Fight for Peace International, an NGO that uses martial arts combined with education to realise the potential of young people in communities affected by violence.

Attillah Springer (“How to win the road” page 55) is a Trinidad-born writer, DJ, and flag woman. She is one of the conveners of Say Something, a media advocacy group working on issues of gender-based violence, and a director of Idakeda, a collective of women in her family creating cultural interventions for social change.

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A MESSAGE From OUR CEO

delpixel/shutterstock.com

HELLO CARIBBEAN!

Havana, Cuba — Caribbean Airlines’ newest destination

Hello Caribbean, and Happy New Year!

I am delighted to have joined Caribbean Airlines at the end of 2017. Leading this passionate team inspires me, as I see our tremendous potential to connect the Caribbean and beyond. As a company, we are looking forward to executing the transformation that the airline must embrace to compete successfully.

Caribbean Airlines is an authentic Caribbean airline, and we provide a genuine Caribbean experience on all our services. Our professional teams offer you the warmth of the islands both on and off the aircraft, and we will continue to share Caribbean culture and energy with you.

As the airline which knows the region best, our vision is to connect the Caribbean by sharing more of it with you, and to bring our beautiful islands closer together. The airline business is about providing the service that our customers want, and we have listened to your feedback. Based on what you have told us, our campaign to connect the region more closely begins on 13 January, with the launch of service to Havana, Cuba, our twentieth destination.

Caribbean Airlines will fly twice weekly from Piarco International Airport in Trinidad, every Tuesday and Satur14

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day, with easy connections to and from Barbados, Grenada, and Guyana. Now business, leisure, and other travellers can easily connect to Cuba and enjoy all that this charming country offers.

Cuba is the Caribbean’s largest island. It is rich in history and culture, with a captivating mystique. Vintage cars still cruise the streets, and the beautiful old buildings of Cuba’s colonial cities evoke the feel of a country frozen in time. The island is almost eight hundred miles from end to end, and it abounds in natural beauty, with some of the Caribbean’s most dazzling beaches. Cuba’s depth and diversity make it one of the world’s most fascinating countries.

Caribbean Airlines is also looking inward, with a laser focus on customer experience and a view to growing our business. To enhance our commercial planning, we will concentrate on research, route development, and developing a schedule based on your needs. You can look forward to new and exciting developments in key areas as 2018 unfolds.

January and February are busy months in the Caribbean, and you can fly with us to many of the events taking place. The Mustique Blues Festival runs from 25 to 31 January, at an exclusive venue overlooking the majes-

tic Caribbean Sea. You can fly with us to St Vincent and connect from there.

Grenada Sailing Week takes place from 29 January to 3 February: this regatta is becoming increasingly popular, and is now a signature event on the Caribbean calendar.

Other events include the Holetown Festival in Barbados (11 to 18 February) and Mashramani in Guyana (23 February), which is billed as the most colourful festival of the year and celebrates Guyana’s becoming a Republic on 23 February, 1970. With several daily flights to and from Guyana, Caribbean Airlines will certainly get you there! You can see a detailed Caribbean calendar in the Datebook section of this magazine. Please take a copy home with you, with our compliments.

At Caribbean Airlines, it is our privilege to serve you. Please visit our website at www.caribbean-airlines. com; become a fan by liking us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ caribbeanairlines; and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @iflycaribbean.

Best wishes to you and your families for 2018!

Garvin Medera Chief Executive Officer

datebook Your guide to Caribbean events in January and February, from Junkanoo in the Bahamas to Carnival across the region

Don’t miss . . .

Carnival 11 to 14 February Martinique T photography/shutterstock.com

Colour, spontaneity, extravagance, and wild energy jam through Carnival parade routes across the French Caribbean, following weeks of events leading up to the big masquerade. Biguine music, creole dance moves, and general antics will put a spring in your step.

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datebook

If you’re in . . .

St Lucia

Accompong Festival

Art Deco Weekend

Nobel Laureate Festival

6 January

12 to 14 January artdecoweekend.com

Last two weeks of January Venues around St Lucia

In downtown Miami, skyscrapers embrace the horizon, and architectural elements from various cultural influences abound. But if you appreciate the historical phenomenon of Art Deco, head over the bay to Miami Beach, which boasts one of the world’s most celebrated collections of Art Deco buildings — described

Hear ye, hear ye, all devoted followers of Caribbean literature: St Lucia’s highly anticipated Nobel Laureates Festival has returned, and as usual it coincides with the shared birthdate of St Lucia’s two luminaries: Sir Arthur Lewis and Sir Derek Walcott. In 1979, Lewis won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, while Walcott received his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. A year later, a captivating and prestigious festival celebrating the achievements of these achievers was launched, and has been a significant literary affair in St Lucia’s calendar ever since.

Music, theatre, and visual arts events always feature on the programme, with distinguished lectures dedicated to Lewis and Walcott being popular highlights.

Academics and cultural luminaries

PAUL ATKINSON/shutterstock.com

Marcus Garvey said “a people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” That isn’t the case below the wide-spreading Kindah Tree in Accompong, the headquarters of the Maroon community in St Elizabeth, Jamaica. Every year, hundreds of Maroons and nonMaroons gather to observe their independence from the British, and the honoured Kindah Tree is the main stage. Storytelling and traditional dances go down under this sacred mango tree — a symbol of unity.

Before 1739, Captain Cudjoe, the fierce Maroon leader, held important meetings and ceremonies there.

Today, in the spirit of remembrance, the abeng horn — once used for communication among

isolated settlements — is blown to commence the festivities. Women chant and men beat the drums in procession towards the tree. Prepare for libations of white rum flicked into the crowd, to fend off evil spirits and bring luck. But what good is a rum shower without food? To end the ceremony, the crowd gathers for a meal of unsalted and unseasoned pork with yams. And, of course, a sound-system party that continues until dawn.

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as a “modern take on neoclassical, one that is equally historic, retro, and fabulous.” Over eight hundred structures built between 1923 and 1943 make up the Miami Beach Art Deco Historic District — including a row of lavishly refurbished, rainbowhued hotels with prime views of the Atlantic.

And even if you’re not into the architecture, but just want to shake a leg and be entertained, the Miami Art Deco Weekend programme will keep you on your feet.

“Art Deco Around the World” is the 2018 festival’s theme, and over 150,000 people will be on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach for educational events organised by the Miami Design Preservation League. There’s something for everyone — theatre shows, Hollywood movie tours, classic car shows, dog shows, fashion shows, culinary delights, and activities for children. Arrive early, as many of the events are free.

courtesy farrar, straus and giroux

MIAMI

holbox/shutterstock.com

JAMAICA

such as the late Professor Rex Nettleford from Jamaica, Barbadian author George Lamming, Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck, and many others have delivered the featured address at the annual lectures — impressing audiences and forming loyal returnees. This is the first year of the festival since Walcott’s death in 2017. Expect the organisers to pull out all the stops.

Event previews by Shelly-Ann Inniss

@eldoradorums

eldorado_rum

@eldoradorums

datebook

Jump into January New Year’s Day Junkanoo Parade Downtown Nassau, Bahamas bahamas.com Join the “rush” as large groups parade along Bay Street in Nassau with elaborate costumes, dances, horns, bells, and whistles [1 to 2]

The Next Stage Theatre Festival

jo Crebbin/shutterstock.com

Venues around Toronto, Canada fringetoronto.com The best of the fringe festival performers return to the Factory Theatre, giving new life to hit shows and artists from previous years [3 to 14]

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Bequia Mount Gay Music Fest

courtesy bequia mount gay music fest

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KSK Imaging/shutterstock.com

Venues around Bequia bequiamusicfestival.com The most anticipated music festival on the island is back, featuring a thrilling lineup making you groove to the blues in a cozy, intimate atmosphere [18 to 21]

Cayman Cookout

Port-au-Prince Half Marathon

Venues around Grand Cayman visitcaymanislands.com Tastings, tours, dinners, pairings, and unique epicurean experiences in a relaxed setting of fun, friendship, and barefoot elegance [10 to 14]

Haiti lghmarathon.org Shoe drives, fitness expos — and, of course, marathon day — unite runners from over sixteen countries in the Haitian capital [20 to 25]

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datebook

February fever Mashramani

DigiClicks/istock.com

Venues around Georgetown, Guyana Guyana’s rich cultural heritage and diversity are celebrated on a grand scale by people from all walks of life [30 Jan to 23 Feb]

Havana International Book Fair Havana, Cuba Authors, publishers, and avid readers gather for an exciting festival of poetry, readings, art exhibitions, and concerts [1 to 11]

Antigua Superyacht Challenge Off the coast of Antigua yachtcharterfleet.com Excitement and unpredictability are in the air, as incredible yachts vie in four daily races along Antigua’s south coast [31 Jan to 4 Feb] Started 30 January

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Admiral’s Cup Pro-Am Golf Tournament

courtesy angostura

Golf courses in St Kitts golfstkittsandnevis.com A PGA club professional and three amateurs pair up to compete against other teams from golf clubs across the US, Canada, UK, and the Caribbean [3 to 8]

KaiMook Studio 99/shutterstock.com

Angostura Global Cocktail Challenge Trinidad angosturaglobalcocktailchallenge.com The world’s best bartenders compete to become the House of Angostura’s next global ambassador. Skills, charm, cocktail knowledge, and unbridled talent will be on show [11]

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3

word of mouth Dispatches from our correspondents around the Caribbean and further afield

Desperadoes, 2016 Panorama champions , rehearsing for the finals

Every night I lie down in mih bed Ah hearing a Bass Man in mih head.

— The Mighty Shadow

maria nunes

A

Pan jumbie In T&T, Carnival is the season of steelpan music, and the truest devotees — like Barbara Jenkins — haunt the panyards in the weeks before the Panorama competition

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bassman. A woman on the bass. Tenor man, double seconds woman, guitar-pan man, cello-pan woman. Engine room.

Haunting you, pan jumbie, when you lie down in your bed, in those last weeks before Carnival.

Christmas come. You not taking that on. Itching for New Year’s to hurry up. Because. Next is Epiphany. Feast of Kings. The royalty of your music world come out to play theyself, and you, into a frenzied state of distracted joy.

Gillian B quickens to early summons. You concede a Woodbrook childhood might have some benefit.

“Belmont You” already take win for Ken Morris, Jason Griffith, Harold Saldenah, Dixieland, Burrokeets, Wayne Berkeley, Wendell Manwarren, David Rudder . . .

She, camel shawl and Egyptian hat — 22 degrees Celsius is winter here — and you, off to Phase II. Park easy on the narrow gap between modest houses and upscale towers. Next week, week after, is way-way down Taylor Street. Walk slow. The ground don’t remember your foot yet. You hearing something. Ting. Ting.

Careful, hesitant notes. Floating beyond. Speed up now. Take sharp right.

Before you, a shallow basin. Staid Fatima College, looming One Woodbrook Place frame distant views of Fort George, Cumberland Hill, Lady Chancellor. Metal pan racks lie scattered. Banners bearing the faded name of last year’s tune.

Panyard low buzz. Sprinkle of people. The season early still.

You here for the feeling, the vibe — confirmation that you reach where you supposed to be.

Gillian taking a mental roll call. Look Mackie. Shortsleeved shirt, short pants, polished sockless loafers, backwards baseball cap. The feller with the walking stick?

Not here yet. Over early weeks, a gradual gathering.

Arrivals noted with nods, brief exchanges, the peculiarly Trinidadian nonchalant affirmation of a certain class, a certain generation, who never doubt they belong, be they foreign-based annual Christmas-to-Carnival returnees or us, the never-left.

Early pannists already putting down the tune. Stage side of thirtyish eventually swelling to the Carnival hundred. The Man, legendary Len “Boogsie” Sharpe, Phase II founder, composer, arranger, emerges, circulates, greets. You relish this fleeting time. When practice really begins, the tune rounding, this gentle energy will be gone. Diluted and distracted, amplified and augmented.

Natasha will be drilling down the sections, mannersing them with quiet authority. The Chuckaree boy, the Japanese girls, the brother and sister, still in primary school, the Couva girl, wee hours heading home, asleep as head hit pillow, waking up, doing whole day’s work, coming back, eager to take on this. You bear witness to one of the most adventurous steel orchestras rehearsing, shaping a tune from scratch to polish.

“Jump High”. All yours. No questions. No entrance fee. No secret handshake.

Come next week, week after, this yard, every panyard in the country, will be brightly lit, bleachers overflowing, bar open, t-shirts selling, people drifting in and out. Groupies, floaters, musicologists, sightseers, filmmakers. Cognoscenti and ignoranti all giving voluble opinion on music choice, arrangement, level of pannist skill. By the way, where the bearded Alaskan?

Pat Bishop, late great pan icon, used to say that Laventille would not calm down until her Despers, the Desperadoes Steel Orchestra, returns home up Laventille Hill. Now nomadic, its pan racks like clean-picked bones of mastodons, strewn among razor grass fringing the Foreshore, the band temporarily lodged where a recently razed historic church stood. In that hallowed space, Despers builds their visceral music. Dispossessed, itinerant, defiantly brilliant: sell-out performances in international concert halls, eleven Panorama titles, latest 2016, “Different Me”. In the belly of this kind of rebellious beast, pan was conceived. Fire forging hammer with steel.

Despers beats pan. Into submission. Music exposing scars.

Telling of pain, insults, prohibitions. Hardship endured and overcome. Revelling in the triumphs of recognition, acclaim, the fanatical zeal of community supporters. Turfed out again.

Landowner building a mall. Where to find Despers this year?

Must call Chantal.

Night before Prelims, Behind the Bridge relaxes its edginess for the season. The navel string of your pan passion buried in All Stars. The Blonde Terror, riding partner, squeezes her jeep into bare air near Hell Yard. Humanity solid in the yard. Crush past Jackie. His sketchbook busy.

Come Lent, you will lust after another of his panyard scenes — players, regulars, bar, food booths, merchandise store, Laventille Hills backdrop, moonlight softening precariously perched house clusters. Shove forward. Wedge yourself between man in muscled merino and woman in shapedefying leopard-print leggings.

Ping, ping, ping-ping-ping-ping. The “Full Extreme” tsunami of sound rushes towards you, swallows you alive into its tossing depths, invades every orifice, every pore. You are the sound and the sound is you. This is what you live for. Why you persist in being here. In this complex, crazy, extraordinary little island.

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word of mouth

At Jouvay, it eh matter if you play yourself or somebody else.

Play your dead eighty-year-old granny, who had tongue like scorpion pepper, two foot like twinned fishtail in Caura River, a smile like a butterknife cutting through hot sada.

Play your living mother, who made of more parts glitter than flour, who teach you softness have more than enough space to leave a cutlass waiting, glistening between fat folds, ready to chop yuh from a bed of ample waist.

Play all the dead and all the living in you, in yuh shortpants, in yuh badjohn drawers, in yuh ragged fishnets and curry-gold battyriders, in yuh half-top, in yuh no-top, breasts swinging under electric-tape nipples, panty forgotten in a culvert overflowing with holy water and hell liquor, your own perspiration sliding between bodies at play like the wetness from your body is purgatory-unction.

All the dead, all the living Poet Shivanee Ramlochan on the mystical, carnal, pre-dawn ritual that begins T&T’s Carnival Illustration by Shalini Seereeram 28

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Play yuhself.

Clay yuhself.

Wine en pointe and wine to the four stations of the cross, dutty angel, bragadang badting, St James soucouyant, deep bush douen come to town to make a killing in mud and mudder-in-law on fresh doubles, after.

Play like you eh playing in your public servant office on Ash Wednesday, calves aching and twitching in sensible slingback heels, a pulse in your lower back blossoming each time you bend down to file a papers, salute a clerk, say grace before ashes.

You know where you are, really.

Just how you know the clerk is a chantwell, the office is a concrete antechamber before the final mas, the pavement is a busshead-convergence, the parking lot is a gayelle, the savannah is a arena where paint and abeer might wash, but spirit does linger.

You eh waiting til next year.

Where you plant yourself this Jouvay is where your spectral, midnight lagahoo rattling she coffin, turning wolf to woman to wolf again.

word of mouth

paul crask

Shakespeare mas in Hillsborough

Bard vs bard Paul Crask visits Carriacou and experiences the unusual spectacle of Shakespeare mas

O

n the morning of Shrove Tuesday, people from two villages on the diminutive island of Carriacou set off on foot towards the main town of Hillsborough. One group meanders down the hillside from the north, the other from the south.

Some of the men and boys in the group are dressed in gaudily patterned f lowing cloaks and pantaloons, costumes that are vaguely reminiscent of English medieval court jesters. They also wear hand-painted face masks and wield wooden sticks. On their slow journey to town, they recite passages of Shakespeare’s verse and drop into roadside rumshops for a fortifying drink or two.

These incongruous processions are the start of one of the most unusual cultural customs of the entire Caribbean region, Carriacou’s Shakespeare mas.

Celebrations begin the day before at J’Ouvert, the traditional opening of Carnival. By the time the sun rises,

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Hillsborough’s Main Street is ja mpacked with revellers. Many arrive over the preceding weekend from Grenada, filling the Osprey ferry and mail boat, then squeezing into any and every free corner of the island’s budget hotel rooms.

J’Ouvert in Hillsborough is bohemian, wild, and sometimes downright bizarre.

It’s also great fun.

Covering themselves from top to toe in thick black engine oil, jab-jabs — a name derived from the French patois for devil — often sport a pair of horns on their head and are loosely fettered with chains and shackles. Some jabjabs carry animal skulls, or drag them around on ropes or in carts. Others spend J’Ouvert with a fish or octopus tentacles held half in, half out of their mouths. For travellers on the morning ferry from the luxury resorts of Grenada, these devilish figures might create a rather unsettling first impression of a tranquil little island.

In stark contrast to the engine oil, bright paint in either powder or liquid for m is daubed on face, body, and clothing, and tossed up into the air with abandon. The music is loud, the jump-up is frenzied, and the rum is constantly f lowing. Carriacou is an Amerindian word meaning “land of reefs,” and J’Ouvert morning comes to a fitting close with grilled lobster and fish breakfasts, all prepared street-side.

Hillsborough is a small coastal town, and the afternoon costume parade fills up most of it, by the time it’s completed a first circuit of the two thoroughfares.

It is a colourful, family occasion that continues into the evening with spontaneous singing, drumming, and the kind of string band performances that are usually associated with the island’s traditional boat launching ceremonies.

By lunchtime on Carnival Tuesday, the two groups of villagers who have been making their way down to Hillsborough finally meet on Main Street, where they face off. Women brandish sticks, ring bells, and bang on pots.

Then battle commences. In turn, men from each village square up to each other, stick in hand, and begin quoting passages from Julius Caesar. If their opponent hears a mistake, they receive the swift blow of a stick. Fired up with village pride and local rum, the contest often ends up in a brawl, with sticks and punches flying.

No one seems to have any firm idea about how Sha kespeare mas ca me about, but the most common theory is that English planters of past centuries forced it upon their enslaved labourers as a form of entertainment. Wherever it came from, it has evolved into a unique and unusual custom on an island that is rich in cultural heritage — including a Carnival festival that should be on every Caribbean traveller’s bucket list.

word of mouth

peeterv/istock.com

February was the ideal month, as two of Jamaica’s most revered musical sons — Dennis Brown, the Crown Prince of Reggae, and Bob Marley, the undisputed King — were born on 1 and 6 February, respectively.

Jamaica’s Ministry of Culture has led the way in marketing Reggae Month and making it an international phenomenon. Activities in that inaugural year, a decade ago, included the hosting of the Reggae Academy Awards, the Bob Marley Photographic Exhibition, an Africa Unite/Smile Jamaica Youth Symposium, the first annual Bob Marley Lecture, an African Film Festival, a Reggae Film Festival, the annual Irie FM Reggae Music Awards, and the Bob Marley Creative Expression Day. In 2009, under the theme “Reggae to Di Worl,” an NGO called the Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JaRIA) was given the task of coordinating events and activities for Reggae Month. That year, eleven of Jamaica’s music veterans were honoured and celebrated for their contributions, including Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, who were given a Lifetime Achievement Award. Pam Hall and Dennis Brown were also honoured. Other legends celebrated over the years include John Holt, Gregory Isaacs, Nadine Sutherland, George Nooks, Sugar Minott, Ernie Smith, Pablo Moses, and the Heptones.

The Reggae Month Committee has always emphasised the importance of the reggae music industry to Jamaica’s economy. Education is crucial also: every year the committee organises symposia for high school students in collaboration with the Bob Marley Foundation and the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, to improve public awareness about the island’s musical heritage. The committee also works with the Ministry of Education to host seminars with fifth- and sixth-formers to educate them about career opportunities available in music, and for musicians and stakeholders to learn where reggae music fits into the global music industry.

Most Reggae Month activities are free. And the proceeds of events with admission fees go towards buying musical instruments for schools, supporting industry players, and setting up a music industry foundation. As Reggae Month hits the ten-year milestone, the 2018 programme — its details being confirmed as this magazine went to press — promises to be spectacular, with the Jamaica Tourist Board and the Ministry of Culture adding their strength to a planned mega-event, which will no doubt bring together some of the biggest names in reggae. And maybe some lucky person in the audience will find her life being changed — as mine was, all those years ago. n

Catch a fire

There’s nothing like hearing reggae music performed live in the island of its birth, says Nazma Muller — and February is the month to celebrate that cultural heritage

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he year was 1995, and the place was Priory, St Ann. It was the opening night of Reggae Sunsplash, and my life would be changed forever.

For five nights I listened, spellbound, to the sonic history of the wild child of music — from its birth in the form of mento and its growth and evolution, through the decades, to become ska, rocksteady, lovers’ rock, and conscious reggae. Thousands of devotees, local and foreign, were all united in ecstasy under that star-studded sky, as the high priests of reggae blessed us with hit after hit. There is something magical about hearing reggae performed live in the ganja-perfumed air of Jamaica that cannot be described or replicated. It’s as if the very trees and sky hum along with this mystical vibration.

On 24 January, 2008, the then governor-general of Jamaica, Professor Sir Kenneth Hall, read an official proclamation declaring the month of February as Jamaica’s Reggae Month. It was a signal moment in the history of reggae. The time had come to analyse and reflect on what reggae had done globally and for Jamaica, and for the island that gave the world this most beautiful sound to celebrate its pioneers and progenitors. And

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For updates on the 2018 Reggae Month programme, visit www.jariajamaicamusic.com

The game

Superhero moves Jamaican taekwondo champ Akino Lindsay channels the Power Rangers to change his life and inspire youth in Kingston’s toughest communities. Kellie Magnus finds out more Photo by Nickii Kane

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ho doesn’t want to be a superhero?”

Akino Lindsay, the reigning International Sport Kickboxing Association (ISKA) World Champion, is defending his love for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

“That show had me. I liked the suits, the fighting, the action.

Everything they did was so cool. I wanted to be the black Power Ranger.”

The twenty-one-year-old’s love for the TV show may not be surprising, given its popularity in 1990s Jamaica. The liveaction superhero series was in heavy rotation, featuring a team of teenagers with the ability to morph into Power Rangers with superhuman capabilities.

For Lindsay, the show had a special place in an otherwise challenging childhood. He grew up in Drewsland, an economically disadvantaged area in Kingston, where his mother raised him and his siblings on her own, after his father was killed violently when Lindsay was only five years old.

“Drewsland wasn’t a place for kids,” says Lindsay. “It was where my father died, and that put me in a constant state of unease. I acted out a lot and got into a lot of trouble. Taekwondo literally saved my life. If I hadn’t started taekwondo, I’d be dead or in prison.”

The transition from watching small-screen action to participating in real-life martial arts happened when taekwondo was introduced at his high school, St George’s College. Initially attracted to the flips and kicks he’d seen on television, Lindsay fell in love with the sport’s discipline and camaraderie, and found in its competitive environment a safe channel for his energy, anger, and resentment.

“Taekwondo is a way of life,” says Lindsay. “The thrill of competition pushes me. I want to go all out and give one hundred per cent. If somebody does something better than me, I want to do it ten times better.”

There were other moments off the mat that cemented his love

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for the sport. “The best experience I’ve ever had in taekwondo was when my first coach, ‘Sir’ Herbert Stewart, carried me out for my birthday. He kept calling me son, and that felt good to me. I had a male figure in my life looking out for me, and I felt well blessed.”

From his first competition at age seventeen — which resulted in a loss he describes as spectacular — Lindsay has rolled out an impressive string of performances at the national, regional, and international level. He holds the 2017 ISKA World Champion title, which he first won in 2015. Last year, he also won the Jamaica Taekwondo National Invitational and placed second in the US Open ISKA World Martial Arts Championship. He’s won gold and silver, respectively, at the 2014 and 2016 Pan American Championships, and was the 2014 International Taekwondo Federation World Champion.

He trains in both the International Taekwondo Federation and World Taekwondo Federation disciplines, and enters nearly a

“If I’m doing something, I want to take it all the way” dozen local and international championships each year.

Lindsay competes in both light contact continuous sparring and point sparring categories, with a competition schedule that can include three or more fights a day for consecutive days.

“As an athlete, Akino is very dedicated,” says Michael Rose, taekwondo black-stripe and long-time friend. “In sparring, he’s always excited. I try to emulate him and learn from him.

“As a fan, if you’ve ever seen him fight, you’d want to do taekwondo,” Rose continues. “It’s exciting, dramatic, over the top.

It’s like watching the Power Rangers. The techniques you’d see in the movies are the things he executes. He does all the moves that aren’t easy to do, and makes it look fun.”

Five questions for Akino Lindsay What’s your superhero name?

Shringo, my alter ego. Shringo can block out all tiredness and pain. But so far I haven’t needed him to show up yet.

What are your favourite moves?

A tie. Tornado kick (360-degree turning kick): it’s really cool when you execute it properly.

Reverse turning kick: it’s really hard, but if you do it properly you can counter most kicks.

What do you do for fun?

Play Pokemon GO, text my girlfriend, play football.

What’s your training routine?

Taekwondo training for four hours a day, four days a week. Run once a week.

And your biggest fears?

Planes, elevators, getting old, flying cockroaches, and getting kicked in the teeth.

Lindsay’s ultimate prize is Olympic gold. “If I’m doing something, I want to take it all the way,” he says. “It would be huge for Jamaica.” Kenneth Edwards, who represented Jamaica in taekwondo in the 2012 Olympics, is the only athlete to do so to date. Lindsay trains with Edwards on Jamaica’s combined martial arts team, and is motivated to increase the recognition of Jamaica’s success in the sport.

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ut that longstanding dream is now rivalled by a more personal project: using his skills and talents to transform the lives of young people in circumstances similar to those he grew up in. On hiatus from the University of the West Indies for a year, Lindsay is currently a coach in the Safer Communities Programme, a multi-partner effort to reduce youth violence in six volatile communities in Kingston.

The programme is led by Fight for Peace International, a global NGO that uses boxing and martial arts to transform young people’s lives. (Full disclosure: I run the Jamaica country

programme.) The SCP communities are like Drewsland in income levels and levels of violence, and it’s not hard to see why Lindsay sees himself in the faces of his young charges.

“Taekwondo changed my life. It’s more than the training and the fancy kicks. Now I see it as a way to help other people,” he explains. “We’re keeping children off the street. We’re giving them a family away from family. My most important role is to be there for them.”

Lindsay’s dedication as a coach in the SCP earned him a nomination to the Michael Johnson Young Leaders Course, a coaching development programme for young coaches around the world. The programme is now providing funds and coaching support for Lindsay to develop Math Ninjas, an innovative approach to integrating math instruction into his taekwondo lessons, which Lindsay designed when he recognised many of his young athletes needed help with math.

“I love math and I love taekwondo. I’m fusing the things I love to solve a big problem in Jamaica. Getting this right is as important to me now as the Olympics.”

Balancing his commitment to the project with his Olympic dreams is a challenge, but one that Lindsay is fully ready to take on. “One thing I’ve learned from ISKA is you always have to find a way to keep advancing,” he says. The person backing up is the person losing.

“You never, ever stop fighting.” n WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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Bookshelf The Light in Paint: 50 Years of Watercolours, by Jackie Hinkson (202 pp, ISBN 9789768244260) “To get the images I wanted for this book,” writes Jackie Hinkson in his acknowledgements, “I had to borrow, photograph, and return scores of paintings.” No more immediate testament t o H i n k s o n ’s e n d u r i n g reputation as a visual artist need be found. If artists truly begin to perish when their paintings fade into obsolescence, The Light in Paint proves that Hinkson is here to stay. These works adorn staterooms and living rooms, ampitheatre foyers and art galleries, kitchens and embassies: they are lived with, observed, pored over. They are, even in the generous cross-section afforded us in this book, but a sample of Hinkson’s fifty years of watercolours.

Unsentimental, devoid of florid self-praise, Hinkson is perhaps well known in T&T circles for getting on with the business of painting. It is that business on which

Grounds for Tenure, by Barbara Lalla (University of the West Indies Press, 361 pp, ISBN 9789766406219) When a mysterious offer of a post at an offshore Jamaican campus crops up, Candace Clarke seizes it. Clinging to part-time employment at UWI, St Augustine, has long lost even a faint shimmer of appeal.

To the non-academic mind, the halls of campuses and the trimmed hedges of university quadrangles seem like paltry settings for real drama: yet Grounds for Tenure teems with intrigue, fascination, and more than a few outlandish professors. Clarke is the narrative lynchpin in this subtle, anecdotally seductive novel from Lalla. We do more than feel for Candace: we are invited to think alongside her.

“What really occupied her thoughts was how it was possible to word the wind howling Heathcliff’s anguish, and whether the letters Man-man inscribed on Miguel Street were a sign of his madness or some part of the cause.”

Into Candace’s mind of novels, nuisances, and novelties we go, entering a world of vast imaginations and venial sins, spun in Lalla’s gently magnetic prose.

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this publication trains its eye: apart from a revelatory essay by the artist, and a sensitively wrought contribution from art historian and curator Timothy Wilcox, the book suffuses us in images.

Ordered both by a basic chronology of the artist’s life and by movements in his career, the pieces in The Light in Paint command their own subtle and magnanimous vocabulary.

That is, they contain in their depictions of seascapes, Carnivals, still lifes, architecture, human subjects, and street scenes all they need to make their multiple meanings seen. No further essays, reviews, or verbal dissections are required. In washes of colour on canvas, Hinkson’s The Light in Paint speaks the Caribbean world to us all: vibrant, versatile, forever moving between darkness and its radiant opposite.

The Tryst, by Monique Roffey (Dodo Ink, 198 pp, ISBN 9780993575860) Chaste and virginal? Beware: The Tryst might send you spiralling straight out of your demure cocoon, with riveting results. In this new erotic novel from the winner of the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the stakes for a passion-dry marriage’s survival are high.

Britons Bill and Jane pick up Lilah, a woman cloaked in intrigue, whose origins are far more ancient than the couple know. Lilah, a character study nonpareil in archetypal, predatory female divinity, captivates in every scene. Roffey draws her with bold, unapologetic strokes, revelling in Lilah’s capacity to raze tepid domesticities. Ripe segments of this novel read as poetic riffs: “In the mirror I sparkled and radiated evil. I was lit up by all the loving horrors of my deeds.” The Tryst encircles you at the wrist, leading you down the garden path of darkly-tinctured pleasure: this is ferocious fiction, in any genre.

Collected Poems, 1975–2015, by John Robert Lee (Peepal Tree Press, 212 pp, ISBN 9781845233518) In “Line”, written for Derek Walcott, the St Lucian poet John Robert Lee asks, “When have I not measured this land by your lines? When have I not tracked blue-smoke pits to their riverstone roots by your metaphor?”

Lee’s Collected Poems assembles forty years of his own poems that lead without calamitous disharmony, with the steadying, solid weight of attention, to the land of St Lucia. Everywhere, light pierces darkness, waters trouble ships and souls, “mythology parses into facts,” and the verses do their own careful, robustly considered mapmaking. What Lee invokes for us is both a devotion to the St Lucian landscape and an ardent contemplation of what that landscape might resemble, if we watered it with deeper, stronger loves. Of the love that exists, Lee also writes words that compel us to follow: “all that is left us now is careful patience, that stubborn heart of love, hope, faith, of the ordering line, of the turning word.”

The Greatest Films: A Poem, by Faizal Deen (Mawenzi House, 80 pp, ISBN 9781927494837) A powerful anti-hymnal to cultural assimilation, The Greatest Films explores the brown queer body’s survival in a post-9/11 world. Faizal Deen — author of the first Guyanese LGBTQI poetry collection, Land Without Chocolate — leaps and vaults in experimental flourishes while never succumbing to careless indulgence. Rather, the work in The Greatest Films ricochets to the percussive power of memory: by summoning movies and songs, Deen gifts us a personal world of rich meaning.

Gliding suggestively and smoothly between real vistas and reconstituted dreamscapes, these verses are at their best when they startle, unsettle, and prompt reflection in the reader. In these worlds of motion and fusion, Edgar Mittelholzer brushes up against Christopher Isherwood; “raleigh’s guiana dabbles in alchemy”; roots of boyhood origin relocate betwixt Guyana, Canada, and India. The effects are revivifying: here is a long poem unafraid to bare its bold, revisionist face.

Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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playlist

R.A.W. Angela Hunte (The Hunted Group/ Therapist Music) Brooklyn-born Angela Hunte has receded from her Trinidadian roots, and her recent inventions and collaborations with soca, to rediscover her other Caribbean voice as a reggae songstress. On her debut solo album R.A.W. — an acronym for “reasoning and words” — she uses the sound of roots reggae, dub music, and rockers to convey songs of love beyond the traditional pop music schmaltz that dominates the global charts. As a Grammy-winning songwriter, Hunte knows how to create a memorable hook and an earworm that lives beyond a temporary listen. With lyrics and production values that resonate with a digital native generation, this album sparkles as a daring experiment to move Caribbean music forwards.

Collaborations with reggae star Tarrus Riley on “King & Queen” and reggae DJ and producer Taranchyla on “Rub Dub” give this album both an island vibe and an urban feel that suggest that it has cross-genre appeal beyond borders.

Glass World Rudy Smith Quartet (Stunt Records) Trailblazing steelpan jazz virtuoso Rudy Smith has been fusing the sound of the pan with bebop and progressive jazz for nearly fifty years, premiering the sound of native invention and “creole imagination” in the wider world. Europe has been his stomping ground for all those years, and with his eleventh full-length album Smith serves as a bona fide symbol of music excellence. Glass World finds Smith back fronting his Danish jazz band, re-inventing the idea of the steelpan as a solo instrument for jazz without the feeling of it being too avant garde. “Plangent” was the word used by a reviewer to describe the sound of the double second steelpans used by Smith, but a more apt descriptive would be “euphonious.” That tone juxtaposes beautifully within the songs, mainly written by his long-time collaborator and pianist Ole Matthiessen, to serve up a new standard in a diminishing marketplace for unique jazz. Traditional jazz is best served with originality, and this album delivers.

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E E FR

Single Spotlight Plaisance Eddy Grant (Ice Records) Bodyline Olatunji and System32 (self-released) Guyanese singer and songwriter Eddy Grant returns to his native “land of many waters” — and specifically his birthplace village of Plaisance — to contemplate his life and how that place impacted his musical and personal career. The village’s history highlights the story of its purchase by sixty-five newly freed Africans in the immediate post-emancipation period — one of the first of several predominantly African villages in Guyana purchased by the formerly enslaved with their savings. In this context of real independence, Plaisance represents a return to the original unfettered aesthetic of the young Eddy Grant who successfully blended rock, pop, R&B, and Caribbean music tropes to carve a pioneering international career.

Using his trademarked Ringbang — more an all-inclusive philosophy than a genre — to elucidate this album, the songs have a directness unparalleled in Caribbean songcraft. The standout track “Now We’re All Together” lets Grant’s voice dramatically emote the story of overcoming and homecoming.

With a cheeky stride piano introduction, Olatunji Yearwood blows the lid off of what can be expected in soca this year, as the genre and the players make a determined turn in the direction of global appeal. “Shake your bodyline, shake your bodyline,” the lyrical hook, has Olatunji singing and scatting over it like a Cab Calloway clone or, more contemporarily, Kid Creole, to drive party folk and crowds to the dance floor. Producer System32 has made magic with the vocals that spit rapid-fire wordplay in pleasing tones. Add the freewheeling jazz aesthetic of a Cotton Club big band, and we’re in a new chapter in the continuing fusion exercise that has been soca in search of the ultimate crossover. A driving rhythm and synth horn line says soca, but when that clarinet solo comes in near the end, we know we are onto something big that begins and ends with a bang. Tadow!

Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell

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SCREENSHOTS

Woodpeckers Directed by José María Cabral, 2017, 106 minutes Love literally knows no bounds in Woodpeckers, an inventive, at times enthralling prison drama from the Dominican Republic’s José María Cabral. A precocious filmmaker (he made his first feature at twenty), Cabral — still shy of thirty — achieved notice in 2012 with Check Mate, a slick, formulaic thriller. Woodpeckers — which has been submitted to the upcoming Academy Awards for best foreign-language film — sees him grappling with more interesting material, and for the most part wringing from it successful results.

Inspired by true events, Woodpeckers was shot on location in adjacent men’s and women’s prisons, a catastrophe waiting to happen if ever there was one. Julian (Jean Jean, wiry and compellingly intense) is sent to the men’s penitentiary after being convicted of a robbery charge.

Here he encounters an astonishing phenomenon: men communicating with women in the yard across the way through a form of sign language known as pecker talk,

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami Directed by Sophie Fiennes, 2017, 115 minutes Predictable and conventional are not words associated with Grace Jones. Shot over nearly a decade by British documentarian Sophie Fiennes, Bloodlight and Bami is an engrossing portrait of the provocative Jamaican disco icon that is appropriately neither of those things. Not for the uninitiated, the film forgoes the usual trappings of the biographical profile (there isn’t a single archival photograph or bit of file footage), instead presenting an intimate, vérité-style look at the current life of the virtually ageless Jones, in locations ranging from Paris to Jamaica to New York.

The unvarnished observational sequences are punctuated by polished concert performances, Jones giving redoubtable renditions of dance-floor anthems like “Slave to the Rhythm” and “Pull Up to the Bumper”. Yet it’s in the often-unguarded moments when Jones is out of the spotlight that the film attains its power, becoming a witness to her tenacity, vulnerability, and simple, affecting humanness.

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the men’s hands when grasping the prison bars mimicking woodpeckers grasping a tree branch.

Deputised by Manaury (Ramón Candelario), a convicted murderer temporarily in solitary confinement, Jean Jean quickly learns this unique language of love in order to trade messages with Manaury’s girlfriend Yanelly (a fiery Judith Rodríguez, with a hairstyle to match). It isn’t long before Jean Jean and Yanelly are attracted to one another, and the film must contrive ways of bringing the couple into physical contact with each other. It also isn’t long before Manaury begins to suspect something’s amiss, and the lovers’ idyll is in jeopardy.

Woodpeckers has a novel core idea, the director dramatising it with the panache it deserves. The attendant plotting might still be rather formulaic, but Cabral is able to create a tragic denouement of almost Shakespearean proportions. And the crafty final shot will make you want to watch the film again.

For more information, visit facebook.com/ carpinterosmovie

The West Indies Gang Directed by Jean-Claude Barny, 2016, 90 minutes Based on actual events, The West Indies Gang recounts the deeds of a group of men from the French Antilles — victims of poverty and racism — who robbed a string of post offices in Paris in the 1970s. The protagonist, Jimmy (a sympathetic Djedje Apali), is a single father to a young daughter.

When Jimmy returns to mainland France after obtaining weapons from a separatist militia in Martinique, the gang prepares for its final and most ambitious heist, a bank job.

Sadly, what could have been a bracingly political crime thriller flounders amid unreconstructed Blaxploitation tropes (a scene where a woman is savagely beaten is particularly disturbing) and a literal lack of firepower.

The film also lacks the courage of its anti-colonial convictions, when at the end an incarcerated Jimmy puzzlingly declares that “Our struggle isn’t racial, it’s societal.”

For more information, visit facebook.com/ Legangdesantillais Reviews by Jonathan Ali

Ron Burton / hulton archive / getty images

Immerse

Closeup 42

Walk tall

Backstory 57 How to win the road

Own Words 72

“I’m unfinished’

With ten wins, the late calypsonian Lord KItchener is T&T’s all-time Road March champion

CLOSEUP

With Port of Spain’s Central Bank towers in the background, a member of the Keylemanjahro School of Arts and Culture shows off his stiltwalking skills

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Walk tall Towering above the crowds, striding majestically or dancing in acrobatic defiance of gravity, moko jumbies are one of the most impressive sights in T&T’s Carnival. A performance art derived from West Africa, moko jumbies once seemed to be a dying tradition — but, as Ray Funk explains, the efforts of an enthusiastic few have led in recent years to a bona fide moko jumbie revival, with hundreds of young people learning the art of “getting high” on stilts Photography by Maria Nunes

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A

“

re you coming up?” they ask you at classes and workshops all over Trinidad. That’s the question — are you joining them up on sticks today, or just watching?

There is a moko jumbie revolution building momentum in T&T, with growing numbers of young people — and some parents — learning the art of stiltwalking behind this traditional Carnival masquerade. Even as other forms of traditional mas seem in decline, young people are taking to stilts and striving to touch the sky.

Almost any public event in Trinidad — from government ceremonies to corporate promotions to tourist shows — now has at least a couple of moko jumbies. During Carnival, they join every competition and every parade. In the past decade, creativity in costuming and growing acrobatic skill have led to more and more enthusiasm from the public.

A moko jumbie needs to perfect a nimble athleticism. Getting and remaining aloft require constantly shifting weight and attention. A graceful dismount is also a necessary skill. No wonder the young and limber are drawn to this revelry.

Like the eager participants in #1000mokos, a group formed by artist Joshua Lue Chee Kong and designer Kriston Chen. Since early 2017, they have met every Sunday at the Alice Yard arts space in Woodbrook, west Port of Spain. Free classes strive to get students up and comfortable on sticks, progressing to increasing heights as they leave the yard and walk through the streets to practice in local parks.

Artist and architect Michael Lee Poy, who works closely with #1000mokos, has been smitten with the moko jumbie bug for many years, having previously worked with them in Peter Minshall’s mas band and at the Cleveland Art Museum. Lee Poy builds all the #1000mokos stilts himself, experimenting with various woods and different designs and connectors. For him, moko jumbies are not just about individual athleticism and performing tricks, but about creating new possibilities in mas narratives.

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Members of the #1000mokos group performing in downtown Port of Spain

A moko jumbie needs to perfect a nimble athleticism. Getting and remaining aloft require constantly shifting weight and attention

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ut these are the newcomers. Other pioneers have been training moko jumbies for decades, in some of Trinidad’s poorer communities. In the north, it is Glen de Souza, better known as Dragon, who in 1986 founded a cultural yard in Cocorite, west of Port of Spain, to offer local kids a place to come after school, free from crime and drugs. Initially, Dragon’s focus was on dancing and drumming, but he soon noticed it was stilts that got the kids excited. As one parent commented, “The kids never want to come back to the ground.”

Over the years, Dragon’s Keylemanjahro School of Arts and Culture has trained thousands, and his yard has become the safe haven for a generation of young people. Singlehandedly, he is the person who really paved the way for many others to take the moko jumbie in different directions.

German photographer Stephan Falke became fascinated with Dragon’s work in the mid-1990s, and for seven years he travelled to Trinidad from New York City to document it. The resulting oversized book, Moko Jumbies: The Dancing Spirits of Trinidad (2004), is full of stunning colour photos of the young people who answered Dragon’s call.

Overlapping with Falke’s time, Mexican-American artist Laura Anderson Barbata spent five years coming to Dragon’s yard to make costumes and help with the band in various ways.

Singlehandedly, Glen “Dragon” de Souza is the person who really paved the way for many others to take the moko jumbie in different directions Prior to her arrival, the band wasn’t able to afford any level of costuming, and often relied on body paint, especially bright reds and blues, to stand out at Carnival. Anderson Barbata’s work with the Keylemanjahro band created stunning narratives and new possibilities, such as horse jumbies, scarlet ibis, and portrayals inspired by the Dogon of Mali.

A 2007 documentary by German director Harald Rumpf, Up and Dancing: The Magical Stilts of Trinidad, features the drama of young members of Dragon’s group as they struggle against family challenges to perform for Carnival. Keylemanjahro moko jumbies have even made an appearance on Sesame Street. All this outside support added to the exposure and interest in Dragon’s work and in moko jumbies themselves. Over the years, Dragon has faced various challenges, but he perseveres.

In south Trinidad, meanwhile, the moko jumbie catalyst is Junior Bisnath of San Fernando. After receiving some initial training from Dragon, Bisnath has gone on to train hundreds himself with his Kaisokah moko jumbie group, running since 1995. Kaisokah has an active small group hired for numerous 46

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corporate or government events. They’ve travelled to St Lucia, Zimbabwe, the UK, and Panama to perform and train. Bisnath even took a contingent of moko jumbies to the 2006 FIFA World Cup competition in Germany, with the Trinidad and Tobago national team.

Last year, Bisnath set his eyes on a new milestone. The Guinness Book of World Records includes several stiltwalkers’ exploits. In June 2009, a total of 1,908 participants got on stilts across the globe, from the US and Canada to Brazil, Russia, and Macau, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Cirque du Soleil. And in 2011, 957 primary students in the Netherlands

smashed the record for most stiltwalkers to walk one hundred metres together.

So the Kaisoca crew issued a call throughout Trinidad and Tobago to beat the record. On Sunday 10 September, 2017, they assembled over five hundred moko jumbies, including a small contingent from Grenada, at Skinner Park in San Fernando.

Bisnath hopes to make this gathering an annual event, and is confident he will break the record soon, given the growing numbers of children and adults taking classes. He does hold the record, he believes, for the youngest person on stilts: his son at eleven months.

Moko jumbies from the Touch D Sky group join the Canboulay Riots re-enactment at Piccadilly Greens on the Friday before Carnival

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Jhawan Thomas portrays Peter Minshall’s controversial moko jumbie king, The Dying Swan

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n 2012, Kaisokah members Adrian Young and Jonadiah Gonzales started their own moko jumbie group, Touch D Sky, based in their home village of Tarodale. They were joined by British artist Alan Vaughan, who had been coming to Trinidad for many years, and had designed Young’s king costume, The Crow, for Kaisokah earlier that year, placing fourth in the national competition. Together, they wanted to deepen and extend the traditional masquerade art form. Vaughan’s designs for the band find their inspiration in the richness of Afro-Atlantic culture, and have proven consistently stunning. He believes the costumes and characters portrayed by the moko jumbies should reflect each individual’s athletic agility, and also express an aspect of their personal qualities.

In 2015, Touch D Sky’s Stephanie Kanhai won the national Carnival Queen title, the first moko jumbie ever to do so. Since then, the band has become a force at Carnival, relocating in the weeks before the festival to temporary quarters near the Savannah stage at Granderson Lab, an arts incubation space run by the founders of Alice Yard. Individual Touch D Sky members have increasing opportunities to perform around T&T and even internationally. Young also leads and trains a new youth team, Future Jumbies, and he, Vaughan, and other members of the band have gone to teach in St Martin, Montserrat, and Dominica, to revive and strengthen the art in those islands.

But perhaps the best known individual moko jumbie performer in T&T is Jhawhan Thomas. He was one of those who grew up spending every day at Dragon’s Keylemanjahro yard, and eventually helped train younger kids. He also joined several dance companies and worked in Peter Minshall’s mas camp, and later on in designer Brian Mac Farlane’s studio. In 2007, in what many consider Mac Farlane’s finest Carnival band, India, Jhawan portrayed a stunning moko jumbie elephant. The following year he

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won the King of Carnival title for Mac Farlane’s band Earth, with an abstract costume called Pandemic Rage, engineered by Michael Lee Poy. Then in 2016, just a few weeks before Carnival, Minshall — Trinidad’s most celebrated mas man — called on Thomas to dance a solo moko jumbie king controversially titled The Dying Swan: Ras Nijinsky in Drag as Pavlova. Minshall had featured various moko jumbies in past bands, and indeed his 1988 band was called Jumbie, with both king and queen on stilts. But this new Carnival king created a storm in the press and social media: Thomas performed costumed as a ballet dancer, all in white, with the stilts themselves carved to look like ballet shoes en pointe.

The Dying Swan is considered a turning point in Russian ballet. It is a short piece about the end of life, choreographed in 1905 for ballerina Anna Pavlova, to a cello solo from composer Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals. It became her signature piece, which she performed over four thousand times.

Pavlova’s equally celebrated contemporary, Vaslav Nijinsky, was never known to have done The Dying Swan.

On stage, Thomas performed ballet moves on stilts, imagin-

ing one of the great male Russian ballet dancers in the most famous role of one of his female contemporaries, with the addition of Rastafarian dreads, and the transfer of the music to steelpan. It was unlike anything ever seen at Trinidad Carnival.

Filmmaker Christopher Laird’s short film of it is a remarkable record of a tradition turned on its head.

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round the world, stiltwalking has been going on for thousands of years, and its origins are shrouded in the mists of history. Stiltwalkers are depicted on ancient Greek and Pre-Colombian pottery, and reports from Asia and the Central American Popol Vuh narrative go far back as well. In some places, stilts were simply an efficient mode of transport, especially in hilly or swampy terrain. In nineteenth-century France, sheep herders used them to keep track of their flocks. From these practical uses, stiltwalking became a standard feature in circuses and other public entertainments around the globe.

Caribbean moko jumbies are traced to West African roots that stretch back centuries, brought over the Atlantic in slave ships.

(Or, as some say, the moko jumbies walked across the Atlantic following the ships.) The masquerade’s very name has West African origins.

Scholar Robert Nichols has recorded the history of moko jumbies across Africa, largely in sacred functions, often secret societies. They were completely covered in masks, hats, and gloves, so their identities remained hidden.

Stiltwalking has been going on for thousands of years, and its origins are shrouded in the mists of history

Touch D Sky moko jumbies heading through Belmont to the Queen’s Park Savannah

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A moko jumbie from the Kaisokah group shows off on Port of Spain’s Ariapita Avenue

There are historical reports of moko jumbies throughout the Caribbean, and they survive in limited numbers in many countries. Nichols reports the earliest known Caribbean reference at a 1791 Christmas event with “a masked moko jumbie roaming the streets accompanied by musicians.” In Trinidad, John Cowley notes a newspaper report from the 1890s of stilt dancers stalking “through the streets to the strains of drum and fife.” In 1956, Dan Crowley described Trinidad moko jumbies as having brightly painted skirts and satin or velvet jackets, and peaked hats with feathers — but they were “virtually extinct.” And Trinidad’s great dancer and choreographer Geoffrey Holder, who used moko jumbies in his 1978 Broadway musical Timbuktu, recalled: “I will never forget, as a child, being frightened and awed by these gigantic, masked spectres wandering the streets after the parade.”

In many parts of the Caribbean, moko jumbies survive primarily as part of folklore

Moko jumbies to the world Like many other element of culture, moko jumbies have followed the T&T diaspora around the world. In New York City, a few individuals and small groups have performed at Labour Day Carnival and related events for decades. In recent years, the primary band has been the Brooklyn Jumbies formed in the 1990s

by Ali Sylvester, inspired by Dragon in Trinidad, and working with Najja Codrington from Barbados, who had gone to Senegal for moko jumbie training. The Brooklyn Jumbies worked hard to develop a batch of dancers from all over the Caribbean diaspora.

Now that Sylvester has moved to Orlando, Florida, he’s starting a new troupe there. They explore both African and Caribbean traditions, and have performed and trained in Singapore, Japan, China, the UK, and Costa Rica. Not long ago, a contingent went with the Something Positive dance troupe to Morocco.

Laura Anderson Barbata, after her experience in Trinidad, sought out the Brooklyn Jumbies, and has been working closely with them in a series of projects that have taken them beyond the NYC West Indian community. In 2007, Anderson Barbata launched

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the exhibition Jumbie Camp at an art gallery in Chelsea in Manhattan. Moko jumbie costumes were transformed into sculptures for the show, and the Brooklyn Jumbies paraded on the nearby streets.

The following year, Anderson Barbata and Najja Codrington of the Brooklyn Jumbies went to Oaxaca, Mexico, where they connected with a traditional stiltwalking group there, Los Zancudos de Zaachila. In 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street protests were at their height, Anderson Barbata staged her Intervention: Wall Street, for which she created giant oversize business suits for the Brooklyn Jumbies. Together they rambled through New York’s Financial District handing out gold-foil-covered chocolate coins, drawing worldwide press attention.

Another recent project in September 2016, Anderson Barbata’s Intervention Indigo was a Carnival-style performance that combined dance, music, costuming, procession, and protest.

Moko jumbies hit the streets of the Bushwick neighbourhood of Brooklyn dressed in traditional indigo-dyed fabric, echoing African traditions from the Dogon culture. Anderson Barbata has also worked closely with choreographer Chris Walker at the University of Wisconsin, who had a number of solo pieces on stilts at his October 2017 show Unmasked.

San Fernando’s Kaisokah also has a US branch, founded by Trinidadian Jason Edwards, who trained under Junior Bisnath, Continued on page 54

presentations and tourist shows. Beyond Trinidad, they currently have a strong presence in the Virgin Islands, with Wilfred John of St Croix as a missionary in their cause for forty years. John runs the Guardians of Culture moko jumbies, who appear weekly at local hotels, and made a 2009 documentary called Mokolution tracing the roots of the tradition in the Virgin Islands. John notes a long tradition of male jumbies dressing in skirts with petticoats or bloomers, which changed in the 1960s when teacher Ali Paul moved to welcome women as jumbies, leading to costumes in other styles. John continues to work with schools to get more young people to take up the art, exploring ever more adventurous choreography.

Today’s moko jumbie practitioners, in T&T and elsewhere, are working not just at preserving cultural heritage, but broadening and deepening what is possible, from choreography to design. They are offering young people, from both under-served communities and more middle-class backgrounds, opportunities to develop athletic ability and artistic skills, while building confidence and selfesteem. Junior Bisnath’s motto — painted on the side of his home — summarises the ethos: “Say yes to life, get high on stilts!” n

Trinidad, and seeing moko jumbies as part of a Caribbean aesthetic that could be universal, Pinheiro has been involved in two decades of Carnival and other performances, major theatre events, and lots of workshops.

On the other side of the Atlantic, there is little A Keylemanjahro moko jumbie ties on his stilts history of moko jumbies at London’s Notting Hill or other West Indian Carnival celebrations in Britain, but that is gradually changing. Touch D Sky’s popuand two friends. Since 2010, they have run after-school prolarity in T&T has led to an offshoot based in Newcastle-upongrammes in Brooklyn and Newark, New Jersey. They have parTyne run by Alan Vaughan, together with some of the Triniticipated in Kiddies Carnival in Brooklyn (last year, with all the dadian team. They run workshops and now perform with the girls costumed as butterflies and all the boys as dragonflies) and Elimu Mas Academy for Notting Hill. This year, Vaughan and the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. They’ve performed at Adrian Young developed performances working with contempoevents of all kinds — birthday parties, weddings, political rallies, rary dancers, an art performance called The Isle Is Full of Noises and even the funeral of a prince from Nigeria. (based on Shakespeare’s play The Tempest), and, in collaboraThe Universoul Circus, which started in 1994 and travels the tion with choreographer Martin Hylton, the performance work United States, reflects black culture through circus arts. For many My Knowledge Increase, My Memories Reflect, a celebration of years, it has featured both limbo dancers and moko jumbies Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Civil Rights Movement. from Trinidad, offering perhaps the only full-time professional In 2016, Zak Ové, a British artist of Trinidadian heritage, was work available for practitioners. They hold auditions in Trinidad commissioned by the British Museum to build two moko jumbie to get the most accomplished from various groups. sculptures, seven metres tall, mounted in the museum’s entrance Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, moko jumbies have featured hall in conjunction with an African art exhibit. It was timed with in the work of the Swizzlestick Theatre, formed back in 1997, Notting Hill Carnival, and members of Touch D Sky performed growing out of the theatre and performance work of at the opening. The sculptures were ultimately chosen for the Christopher Pinheiro. Having worked in Minshall’s mas camp in museum’s permanent collection.

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snapshot

There’s no T&T Carnival without music — or without competition. From calypso monarch to extempo champ, the Carnival season is full of opportunities for calypso and soca artistes to match their composition and performance skills, and rivalries can persist for lifetimes. But there’s one musical title that reflects the will of ordinary masqueraders, and for some performers it’s the ultimate accolade.

Mark Lyndersay looks back at the eight-decade history of the Road March competition — and we share our picks for the top ten Road March songs of all time

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be the anthem of wining, that rhythmic gyration of the waist, often done in concert with a partner or two, that found wider international notice in a distinctly corrupted form as twerking.

Each year’s Road March and its contenders are consigned to history along with the masqueraders’ costumes, and it’s a rare song that earns a play on the road after its year of glory. The first Road March title was recorded in 1930, Inveigler (MacDonald Borel)’s “Captain Cipriani”, and a song has won the accolade every year since then, even between 1942 and 1945, when Carnival was officially suspended during the Second World War.

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here were, of course, enormously popular songs before then, songs so entrancing that they jumped from band to band in an environment that was quite different from the mechanised, industrially driven Carnival of today.

Back then, a Carnival band took to the road with its own live music, the earliest form of which were long sticks of bamboo rhythmically beaten to accompany the chantwell — the singer leading the costumed group — who considered life, love, politics, and the bacchanal of the barrack yard in his composition.

“The first song sung by almost every band on the road was probably ‘Sly Mongoose’,” says Professor Gordon Rohlehr, the eminent literary scholar with a lifelong personal and academic interest in the genesis of calypso. The song came to Trinidad and Tobago in 1919, and was sung in a tent by Houdini in 1921, becoming popular on the road in 1923. “It was likely to have been a Jamaican folk song, but melodies travelled throughout the islands and became songs with different lyrics and

Michele Jorsling courtesy ultimate rejects

n Ash Wednesday 2017, MX Prime — the performer formerly known as Maximus Dan and christened Edghill Thomas — along with his production and performance team, Ultimate Rejects, were announced as the winners of Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival Road March competition.

Their song, “Full Extreme”, was played 556 times at competition venues around Port of Spain.

The second-place winner, Machel Montano’s “Your Time Now”, trailed with seventy-two plays.

The Road March competition isn’t like most popularity contests or talent competitions judged by the public. Nobody sits at home to make a call or send a text. To win the Road March, a composer has to write a song that makes people get up and dance — to be specific, all the people who celebrate T&T’s Carnival every year — and keep them on their feet for two days of prancing. To stand any chance of succeeding, t he moder n Road March must

The Road March competition isn’t like most popularity contests judged by the public. Nobody sits at home to make a call

MX Prime (centre) and Ultimate Rejects, 2017 Road March champs

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mark lyndersay/lyndersaydigital.com

David Rudder, whose “Bahia Girl” won the 1986 Road March

arrangements. ‘Captain Cipriani’ was most likely a melody we know as ‘Ambakaila’.”

That music would evolve along with Carnival itself. Popular chantwells would host visitors to their yards as they rehearsed, and eventually a small fee was asked, beginning a tradition that would eventually become the calypso tent. In search of louder rhythms and smoother melodies, the bands would beat biscuit tins, paint cans, and eventually steel drums, which would be shaped and refined to create the modern steelpan instrument.

In parallel, musicians would accompany the bands, first bringing small woodwind instruments, f lutes, clarinets, guitars, and violins. These were eventually joined by full-throated brass, as saxophones and trumpets provided a path of

influence for big-band jazz music to flow into the calypsonian’s repertoire.

Railway Douglas (Walter Douglas), who won the Road March in 1934 with “After Johnny Drink Meh Rum”, was a key personality in the evolution of this stage of the calypso as the favoured voice of the people. “Inveigler was Railway Douglas’s assistant,” explains Rohlehr, “but Douglas thought that picong calypsoes were demeaning and a throwback to slavery days. He would sing topically about social issues and the scandals of the day.”

Calypso would emerge as a narrative form of storytelling and commentary, the structure of the words in balance with the melody, even as live band music entered a long period of jousting with the steelband as the preferred soundtrack to drive bands along the parade route.

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After Sparrow won in 1956, the Road March competition belonged to him and his career-long rival Lord Kitchener for the next decade

With eight Road March wins over three decades, the Mighty Sparrow is tied for third place in the overall Road March rankings

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“Rum and Coca-Cola”, Lord Invader (Rupert Grant)’s 1943 hit, would characterise the sentiments of the male calypso fraternity, who chafed at the presence of the American military on the island and the response of local women to the prized “Yankee dollar.” That response to the social circumstances of the day would find their apotheosis in the Mighty Sparrow (Slinger Francisco)’s 1956 Road March “Jean and Dinah”, a song he later admitted was created as an advertisement for a local store that he repurposed into groundbreaking social commentary, and the first Calypso King crown of his career.

Sparrow’s emergence was preceded by one of the oddest Road Marches of the twentieth century, 1955’s “The Happy Wanderer”, a German march sung by the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir — better known by its catchy chorus, “Val-de-ri,

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Val-de-ra.” The song, says Rohlehr, “was larger in structure than a traditional calypso and may have influenced the form of ‘Jean and Dinah’, which also had a long chorus.” This was a very different era for the Road March, one in which any song with a catchy melody might be popular on the road.

Advertisements for Tisane de Durbon and Nagib Elias’s lumber business were cheerfully sung alongside performances by calypsonians.

It wasn’t until 1976 that the popular “Tourist Leggo” by Antiguan Lord Short Shirt would annoy calypso’s establishment so much that it would be banned from official competitions, beginning an unfortunate era of Road March insularity. Since then, only performers from T&T have been eligible for the competition — though Short Shirt’s song went on to win the Antigua and Barbuda Road March title.

courtesy rca victor

His ten Road March titles make the late Lord Kitchener the all-time champion of the competition

After Sparrow won in 1956, the Road March competition belonged to him and his career-long rival Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts) for the next decade — interrupted only by Lord Christo and Nap Hepburn, who won a twin competition in 1957 with “Chicken Chest” and “Doctor Nelson”, by Lord Caruso in 1959 with “Run the Gunslingers”, and Lord Blakie’s plaintive 1962 “Maria”.

Sparrow and Kitchener’s second ten-year stretch of Road March dominance, starting in the 1960s, was interrupted only once by Shadow (Aldwyn Bailey)’s 1974 “Bass Man”, but that was a change that fundamentally refocused the competition on music. The Mighty Shadow was a Tobagoborn calypsonian who had been working for years to break into the big times. It happened with “Bass 62

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Man”, which told of a melody gifted to him as he was about “to give up calypso and go plant peas in Tobago.” That melody, anchored by a “poom pittity poom” sung deep from his chest, was nothing less than a bass run on a steelpan in a song, anchored by a surprisingly funky bass line.

Shadow — an unabashed fan of Teddy Pendergrass who titled one album If Ah Woulda, I Coulda, I Shoulda — launched a career of songs anchored by soulful beats and empathic, often psychedelic lyrics that drifted some distance from the more commonplace topics favoured by his calypsonian peers. He dropped the traditional calypsonian’s superlative soon afterward, shedding a “Mighty” that was now demonstrably superfluous.

Three years later, Calypso Rose (McCartha

Sandy-Lewis)’s 1977 hit “Tempo” forever ended the Sparrow-Kitchener axis with a Road March that was all about melody, and a chorus that echoed the percussiveness of “Bass Man”. Rose became the first female champion of the road, singing triumphantly over a music bed that made liberal use of modern synthesiser technology.

Kitchener, who understood music in a particularly deep and profound way, would put his stamp on the young people’s soca music, by then the dominant form in play at Carnival parties and on the road, with 1978’s “Sugar Bum Bum”, but would have greater success developing complex musical ideas for the steelband, most notably with “The Bee’s Melody” and “Pan in A Minor”.

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he story of the Road March after “Bass Man” and “Tempo” is a narrative of conflict between the traditional calypso art form and soca, its funk-influenced derivative, alongside the rising importance of the disc jockey as the preferred delivery mechanism for the music of the road, eventually overwhelming the role of the live performing band.

Soca’s hypnotic beat was cemented as the commanding presence in the Road March between 1977 and 1990, but in 1991 the freshly rechristened Superblue — born Austin Lyons, and formerly known as Blue Boy — would introduce the lyric-ascommand to the road mix with the urgent chorus of “Get Something and Wave”. In the twenty-seven

Shadow’s 1974 Road March, “Bass Man”, was a game-changer for Carnival music

The “revenge” Road March

mark lyndersay/lyndersaydigital.com

The Calypso Monarch competition once required finalists to sing two songs for a marking system that encouraged the performance of a “serious” calypso and a party number. In 1974, Sparrow won the competition with a pair of songs tailor-made for the requirements of the competition, “We Pass that Stage” and “Miss Mary”. That year, Shadow performed “Bass Man” and “I Come Out to Play”, two songs popular in parties. From J’Ouvert on Carnival Monday, it was clear that masqueraders were intent on redressing the Calypso Monarch judges’ verdict, demanding “Bass Man” for two days and making Shadow’s vertical prance the dance of the festival.

“That wasn’t revenge as much as it was pure street justice,” recalls Gordon Rohlehr.

“There is an element of mischievous fun in the Road March.”

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The first woman ever to win a Road March title, Calypso Rose has enjoyed a long career breaking barriers

Soca’s hypnotic beat was cemented as the commanding presence in the Road March between 1977 and 1990

Frans Schellekens / redferns / getty images

years since then, the explosive, post-curfew release of the song, which followed the attempted coup of September 1990, still echoes in soca dance music.

Younger performers — including Superblue’s daughter Fay-Ann Lyons, twice winner of the Road March title — have taken that song and its successors as the baseline for their own successful songs for the road.

As Blue Boy, Lyons had already registered two successive Road March wins in 1980 and 1981 with “Soca Baptist” and “Ethel” when he changed the pace and focus of the Road March forever with “Get Something and Wave”. He would infuse that formula into three more winners, “Jab Jab”, “Bacchanal Time”, and “Signal to Lara”, characterising them with sharp chord changes across melodies.

These were songs with music enough for three tunes, eccentric and easy-to-shout lyrics, and a profoundly intuitive sense of what makes people go crazy at Carnival time. Gordon Rohlehr sees a parallel in the relationship between Superblue’s interaction with crowds and the long-ago chantwell’s management of his Carnival band.

The Road March as zeitgeist There’s an argument to be made that the celebration of Carnival on Monday and Tuesday has been influenced deeply by the music of each era of its development. The shuffling march of the earliest Carnivals proceeded to the staccato, almost military beat of bamboo percussion. As the music grew louder and more melodic with the entry of the steelband, the words of the songs became less of a chant and more of a sing-along. The celebratory blast of horns from big bands added the miming of brass playing and the celebratory raising of arms to mostly sunswept skies.

In this heated competition, what made one song the Road March and the others merely popular?

The earliest recorded road marches are distinguished by a subversive wit and topical humour. Between 1935 and 1941, the Roaring Lion (Rafael De Leon) won four of the six competitions with calypsoes that managed to be both bawdy and socially concerned. Lord Kitchener’s return from England was formally heralded with “The Road”, a song that remains, to this day, the unofficial anthem and

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reference point for summarising the annual street party. It was also a gauntlet thrown down to Sparrow, and for the next two decades the pair would battle for the attention of revellers on the road.

Kitchener’s melodies were wildly successful on the steelpan, and he would increasingly turn his attention to that instrument as the decisive interpreter of his compositions, with unparalleled success. His last Road March, “Flag Woman” in 1976, was both a final coda to the supremacy of the steelband as the driving force for music on the road, and a paean to the woman charged with bearing the band’s standard and clearing a path for the heavy steel drums as they rolled through crowded streets.

The next year, Calypso Rose would win with “Tempo”, a song crafted for brass bands, beginning an era that would run from 1977 to 1990 — upbeat songs for dancing that increasingly abandoned commentary for catchy hook lines Continued on page 66

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Meanwhile, as the beat has grown faster, the lyrics have largely abandoned narrative for pop song hooklines, phrases that can be shouted as you leap forward on the tips of your toes, twirling a handy cloth over your head. Several popular soca hits have lifted chord progressions from well-known pop songs and layered them into their music, and the Road March winners of the last seven years have been influenced by the style and structure of international electronic dance music (EDM).

Since the late 1990s, Machel Montano has emerged as the most successful architect of the modern Road March, blending an understanding of the lyric as supporting framework for the mu sic w it h a master’s touch

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Currently tied with Sparrow at eight Road March wins, Machel Montano conceivably has decades ahead of him to break Kitchener’s record

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in the production of the final work. Montano has won eight of the Road March competitions since 1997, five of them since 2010.

In 2018, the traditional calypso tent, once the stamp of artistic approval for a calypsonian, has shrunk almost into insignificance, subsisting on a lifeline of state support. Local radio and the Carnival party are now where music is auditioned for public consumption, and the range that’s offered represents only a fraction of the music actually created for the festival.

The calypsonian now finds himself in the position of the chantwell he replaced more than a hundred years ago, losing ground in Carnival to a more popular music with aggressive, focused practitioners. But, as the recent success of Calypso Rose in Europe demonstrates, the form still has a lot of life to it. The Road March and the creators who compose for it once more look to all the music that makes people dance — whatever its origins — for its influences.

and tip-of-the-toes prancing.

That trend would go to another level in 1991 with a resurgent Blue Boy, now singing as Super Blue. His astonishing troika of winners, “Get Something and Wave”, “Jab Jab”, and “Bacchanal Time”, put down a template for dance-focused soca that fundamentally changed the pace and approach of composers, arrangers, and musicians who would find the fast time and heated pitch of the songs difficult to maintain on the road.

It was here that two things happened in the Road March competition. First, the gulf between the songs that got played on stage to stoke the bands and the music played on the actual road grew wider. Then it became clear to bandleaders that the music, now prepared in special “road mix” recordings, was more easily played by disc jockeys, who also happened to be cheaper than full live bands.

That opened the door to more multi-tracking, sharper cutting on chord changes, and deeper use of electronics in creating the songs, just when it became possible for almost anyone to create music on their computer at home.

On its surface, at the level of the lyrics, Road Marches became instructions to revellers. “Moving to the left,” sang Nigel Lewis. “Hold on to the big truck,” urged Machel Montano. “Footsteps . . . on the ground,” demanded the late Wayne Rodriguez.

On a deeper level, this was music that did more than invite the listener to get up and dance — it was designed to take people already committed to prancing to another level of euphoria and excitement.

It isn’t surprising, then, to find elements of electronic dance music (EDM) showing up in recent Road March contenders, and to see the influence of dance soca bleeding back, as it did in 2014’s “Antenna”, the breakout single by Fuse ODG (Richard Abiona).

Ten for the road 1930 Lord Inveigler Captain Cipriani 1931 King Houdini Mr Huggins 1932 King Radio Tiger Tom Play Tiger Cat 1933 King Radio Wash Pan Wash 1934 Railway Douglas After Johnny Drink Me Rum 1935 Roaring Lion Dingolay Oy 1936 Roaring Lion Advantage Could Never Done

lamented the unfaithfulness of a wife or girlfriend who stole the cash hidden in his mattress and headed for the mainland. Nearly eight decades later, it remains one of the most immediately recognisable calypso choruses, and not just for Trinbagonians. Harry Belafonte’s 1953 recording became an international hit, later covered by performers as unlikely as the Greatful Dead. Needless to say, King Radio never saw a cent in royalties.

Philip Sander

1940 Lord Beginner Run Yuh Run 1941 Roaring Lion Whoopsin Whoopsin

1945

1955

Roaring Lion All Day All Night, Mary-Ann 1946

Obernkirchen Children’s Choir The Happy Wanderer (German pop song)

Lord Kitchener Jump in the Line

1956

1947

Mighty Sparrow Jean and Dinah

King Pharaoh Portuguese Dance (Vishki Vashki Voo) 1948 Lord Melody Canaan Barrow 1949 Roaring Wonder Ramgoat Baptism 1950 Mighty Killer In a Calabash 1951 Mighty Terror Tiny Davis

1938

Though there were no official Carnival celebrations from 1942 to 1945, at the height of the Second World War, informal “Road March” titles are recognised for the most popular songs in calypso tents in those years.

Roaring Lion No Norah Darling

1942

Two separate Road March competitions this year produced rival winners.

1939

Lord Kitchener Lai Fook Lee

1952

King Radio Mathilda

1943

Spit Fire Post, Post Another Letter for Thelma

1937 Roaring Lion Netty Netty

She take meh money and run Venezuela . . . With a perfect combination of plaintive lyrics and jaunty melody, King Radio (Norman Span) 68

Of the eighty-plus songs that have won the official Road March title, some are little remembered, some have become “back-intimes” favourites, and a few are considered landmarks — whether for their musical qualities or for trends they ushered in. Here are all the recorded Road March winners up to 2017 — and our picks* for an all-time Road March top ten.

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Lord Invader Rum and Coca-Cola 1944 King Radio Brown Skin Girl

1953 Vivian Comma / Spit Fire Madeline Oye / Bow Wow Wow

1954 Lord Blakie Steel Band Clash

The greatest calypsonian of all time? The Birdie would certainly agree. It’s a reign that started with a bang in 1956, with the song that won him both the Calypso King and Road March titles. Sixty-two years later, “Jean and Dinah” is more than a calypso classic — it’s a cultural touchstone and a symbol of that brash, confident era between the end of the Second World War and Independence in 1962.

Above all, it tells a story of social evolution. Well, the girls in town feeling bad, no more Yankees in Trinidad . . . As US troops withdrew from the bases around Port of Spain, a surging sentiment of nationalism culminated in the general elections of September 1956, which returned Eric Williams of the PNM as premier and cleared the path to Independence negotiations. But Sparrow portrayed this moment of change in more personal, down-to-earth terms. With the Americans out of the way, Sparrow and his fellow “glamour boys” were “back in control” of Port of Spain’s nightlife scene. “Jean and Dinah, Rosita and Clementina,” the good-time girls who

had reserved their favours for the US servicemen, now had to make do with local trade. In for a penny, in for a pound. A tide was turning, in personal relations as much as in politics, and Sparrow’s preening delivery suggested who he thought would end up on top.

“Jean and Dinah” was oral history and penetrating social commentary, cocky and risqué, with lyrics deserving literary analysis and an unforgettable tune: a calypso to engage listeners’ wits as much as their waists. For most Trinbagonians, it’s as familiar as the National Anthem, a song of similar vintage and asserted confidence. And the famous last line of the chorus — “Sparrow take over now” — was an accurate prediction of the Birdie’s calypso dominance of the coming decades.

Philip Sander

1957 Lord Christo / Nap Hepburn Chicken Chest / Doctor Nelson

1962 Lord Blakie Maria 1963 Lord Kitchener The Road 1964 Lord Kitchener This Is Mas 1965 Lord Kitchener My Pussin 1966 Mighty Sparrow Obeah Wedding 1967 Lord Kitchener Sixty-Seven 1968 Lord Kitchener Miss Tourist 1969 Mighty Sparrow Sa Sa Yea

Lord Kitchener Margie 1971 Lord Kitchener Madison Square Garden

1958

1972

Mighty Sparrow Pay As You Earn

Mighty Sparrow Drunk and Disorderly

1959

1973

Lord Caruso Run the Gunslingers

Lord Kitchener Rainorama

1960

Only once in the past century has Carnival’s traditional connection with the start of Lent been severed. In 1972, faced with a polio outbreak, the government threatened to cancel the festival — then, faced with public outcry, postponed it from February

1961 Mighty Sparrow Royal Jail

Philip Sander

philosopher we’ve ever had.

In “Bass Man”, Shadow manages to capture the frustration of the calypsonian who can’t make a living from his art, yet the impetus to create is greater than the frustration. I don’t know how this thing get inside me. Which artist doesn’t know that truth? This song is the strong foundation on which Shadow has created an entire universe of feeling in his music: a different language and energy, a way to channel all the pain, all the sadness, all those feelings of inadequacy into the ability to have hope and dance in spite of it all.

Attillah Springer

1975 Lord Kitchener Tribute to Spree Simon 1976 Lord Kitchener Flag Woman 1977

1970

As in 1953, separate Road March competitions produced rival winners.

Mighty Sparrow Mae Mae

to May, and from the dry to the rainy season, so that masqueraders were predictably drenched. A year later, Kitchener’s “Rainorama” recounted the drama — and won the Grandmaster his ninth Road March title.

The song’s laid-back rhythm and sweet melody almost disguise the fact that “Rainorama” is an uncompromising defence of Carnival and its place in T&T’s national life, a riposte to those “so and so hypocrites” who call it an unneeded distraction or waste of time. This is calypso as history lesson and as protest, but so seductively composed, it allows no resistance. And for Kitchener it was such a big hit that when he built his dream house in Diego Martin, on Port of Spain’s western outskirts, he named it “Rainorama” — proudly declared in an illuminated sign on the front lawn.

1974 Shadow Bass Man It was the song that broke the Sparrow/Kitchener monopoly on the Road March title.

I wasn’t even born when “Bass Man” won the Road March — but, growing up in a house with Shadow being played constantly, I decided early on that he is the greatest thing that ever happened to music in Trinidad and Tobago.

Although he’s won the Road March title only twice in his long career, Shadow’s skill at storytelling and the way he plays with melody, his bizarre vocal range and the sweet sadness of his musical arrangements, make him the most avant-garde street

Calypso Rose Tempo Port of Spain too small for the Carnival . . . T&T’s capital considers itself ground zero for the festival, but Calypso Rose dared sing this infectious tune about heading south to San Fernando, and took her first Road March title. It was history-making: for the first time ever, the Road March was won by a woman, and Rose successfully defended the title a year later, when she also became the first woman ever to win the Calypso King title, which immediately had to be renamed. After Rose, it was twenty-one years before another woman, Sanelle Dempster, won Road March, WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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and only two others — FayAnn Lyons and Patrice Roberts (duetting with Machel Montano) — have taken the title.

Some say Rose’s Road March breakthrough should have come a decade earlier, with “Fire in Me Wire”. For years, rumours have had it that the 1966 Road March invigilators fudged the figures, unready for a woman calypsonian to win. Whatever the truth, if longevity is the best revenge, Rose has come out on top, enjoying a huge surge of international success in recent years with her Far From Home album.

Philip Sander

the trivialising of non-mainstream modes of worship.

But if you’ve ever seen or heard a gathering of Spiritual Baptists on a street corner, or observed that moment in an Orisa feast when the repetitive nature of the drumming and the call and response of the chants propel some dancers into a state of possession, then you understand that “Soca Baptist” speaks deep truths about the ecstatic nature of Carnival music.

When I hear it now, I think it is a classically non-Western way of not seeing a distinction between what is sacred and what is profane. Indeed, beyond the perception of the profanity of jam and wine, soca is a spiritual encounter.

1978 Calypso Rose Come Leh We Jam 1979 Poser A Tell She (Smoke Ah Watty)

1981 Blue Boy Ethel 1982

1980

Penguin Deputy

Blue Boy Soca Baptist

1983

Almost any Road March by nine-time winner Superblue — formerly known as Blue Boy — could make a top ten.

But his first-ever Road March does something extraordinary. Without a single historical reference, Blue tells the story of how we masked our spiritual traditions in our popular artforms, as his observation of the Spiritual Baptists “bacchanal” brings him to the conclusion that the ecstatic nature of the doption is the same as what happens in the soca fete.

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Attillah Springer

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Girl”. So simple and pure in its sweetness, this is a classic Caribbean love song, the chipping pace perfect for the road. But the secret to why “Bahia Girl” is so significant is in the last verse: Ile Ife Ile Ife, she make me to understand. Ile Ife, the mythical home of the Yoruba people of Nigeria, is the reason Rudder shares so much in common with “this girl from Bahia.” It’s no accident this was the same time scholars and spiritual leaders of the Orisa community were starting to share information on shared spiritual retentions in Brazil, Trinidad, and Cuba.

In the post–Black Power era, when T&T’s black middle class started reconnecting with African spiritual forms that had been shamed into secrecy, music became a way to reclaim what was lost. It was common to hear stories of people “ketching power” when Rudder was on stage, then ending up in an Orisa yard soon after to consult with an elder. It terrified many and delighted many more. Still others missed it completely, distracted by the infectiousness of the music.

Blue Boy Rebecca

Attillah Springer

1984 Mighty Sparrow Doh Back Back 1985 Crazy Soucoyant 1986 David Rudder Bahia Girl In his breakthrough year, David Rudder won it all, taking the title of Calypso Monarch with “The Hammer” and both Young King and Road March with “Bahia

1987 Mighty Duke Thunder 1988 Tambu This Party Is It 1989 Tambu Free Up 1990 Tambu We Ain’t Going Home

1991 Superblue (formerly Blue Boy) Get Something and Wave 1992 Superblue Jab Jab 1993 Superblue Bacchanal Time 1994 Preacher Jump and Wave 1995 Superblue Signal to Lara 1996 Nigel Lewis Movin’ 1997 Machel Montano Big Truck It was the coming-of-age song for the generation of Trini xennials: too young to remember Black Power, too young to attend curfew parties in 1990, but old enough to remember the disappointment of 1989’s World Cup football defeat — all defining moments in T&T history. The popularity of dancehall in the 1990s had led to a kind of apathy towards mainstream soca and calypso. That apathy was challenged by the advent of Kisskidee Karavan, which advanced a new frontline of local rapso, ragga, and hip-hop artists unfraid of articulating their reality in their own language, and also made you want to dance. What Machel Montano — who himself had grown up with us — was able to do was take soca and turn it on its head again, pull it away from the establishment and open the way for a whole new era

of celebratory defiance. “Big Truck”, the first of eight Road March titles for Montano over the next two decades, set the pace and defined a generation. The nostalgia the song evokes for a time of innocence, adventure, and experimentation is bittersweet, hardened by the cynical jump-and-wave formula for winning prizes and fete money. It remains to be seen if the direction soca has been going since “Big Truck” is what the music needs or what the Carnival deserves.

2005 Shurwayne Winchester Dead or Alive 2006

fete-goers and masqueraders to fling themselves from side to side, arms outstretched, en masse. It was totally senseless, and resistance was futile.

Machel Montano and Patrice Roberts Band of de Year

Philip Sander

2007

2011

Machel Montano Jumbie

Machel Montano Advantage

2008

2012

Fay-Ann Lyons Get On

Machel Montano Pump Yuh Flag

2009

2013

Fay-Ann Lyons Meet Superblue

Superblue Fantastic Friday

1998

2010

2014

Wayne Rodriguez Footsteps

JW & Blaze Palance

Machel Montano Ministry of Road

1999

It was a song that seemed to come out of nowhere and rampaged over all opposition. Radio DJs Jason “JW” Williams and Ancil “Blaze” Isaacs —the former skinny and antic, the latter stocky and serious — looked like a classic odd couple on stage and in the wildly popular video (which inexplicably featured a man in a Cookie Monster costume, a triumphant touch of the absurd and a reminder that a whole generation of young Trinbagonians grew up watching Sesame Street twice a day on the state-owned TV station).

“Palance” took its title from a Trinidadian word meaning “have a good time,” a concept exhaustively represented in our vocabulary. Repeated endlessly in the chorus, “palance” was the cue for

2015

Attillah Springer

Sanelle Dempster River 2000 (tie) Superblue / Iwer George Pump Up / Carnival Come Back Again 2001 Shadow Stranger 2002 Naya George Trinidad 2003 Fay-Ann Lyons Display 2004 Shurwayne Winchester Look de Band Comin’

Machel Montano Like ah Boss 2016 Machel Montano Waiting on the Stage 2017 Ultimate Rejects, featuring MX Prime Full Extreme On the Wednesday before Carnival 2017, a building caught fire in downtown Port of Spain. Pedestrians and office workers stopped to gape as firetrucks wailed through the city. Two blocks to the west, another crowd gathered, taking part in a company’s giveaway game. The speakers blared as the flames rose higher: the city could bun down, we jamming still. Was MX

Prime — formerly known as Maximus Dan and the main voice of Ultimate Rejects’ “Full Extreme” — poking fun at Trinbagonians’ inability to take anything seriously? Maybe.

Undeniably, the song was the biggest of last year’s season. Like all great Road March songs, it captured the desires and fears of the people in the most straightforward language. Ultimate Rejects sang the ultimate jammette song — a song of defiance and also a sad understanding that the systems that exist in our society are not really made to benefit the people anyway. We wine as the city burns: a prophecy fulfilled.

I stormed Panorama champs All Stars’ band on Carnival Tuesday afternoon as they chipped through town playing their “Full Extreme”. All those people, all that rum, all that choking in the cloud of talcum powder in a sea of sailors. It was the most beautiful non-J’Ouvert Carnival experience I’ve had in years.

Carnival is the mirror that reflects that Trinbagonian ability to seek joy and beauty even in the worst situations. It is as much a blessing as it is a curse.

Attillah Springer

* So how did we choose our ten standout Road Marches? By the not very scientific method of polling all the members of the Caribbean Beat team, plus a handful of the magazine’s past and present music writers. Disagree with our picks?

Have your say at www.caribbean-beat.com/roadmarch.

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Own words

“I’m unfinished” Tobago-born actor Winston Duke, appearing in the upcoming Black Panther movie, on his love of stories, his sense of being a work in process, and why returning to T&T keeps him grounded — as told to Caroline Taylor

I

left Tobago when I was about ten years old. My memories of Tobago are of running up and down on the beach, exploring my neighbourhood with friends, and a strong community of family. Family that always cooked and laughed together, family that supported each other, and came over any day they chose to. I remember freshly baked bread and sweet bread which my cousin, who lived about ten miles and four villages away, would have her teenage son deliver to us via bicycle. I really remember being part of something and somewhere — knowing I belonged.

Something in particular which is etched in my memory is my village’s annual harvest festival. There was nothing, and has been nothing in my life ever since, that compared to that kind of familial and community interaction — my entire village cooking and opening their homes for others, including complete strangers, to freely eat, drink, dance, and converse.

Then I moved to Brooklyn, New York, and the transition for me was incredibly hard. It was a huge culture shock. I came from an extended family in Tobago that easily spans at least two hundred and fifty people. So emigrating to a place where it’s just your mother and sister and little to no support systems was hard. I think I retreated deeply within myself.

Brooklyn wasn’t a safe space for me. I

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remember our first year living at our new studio apartment, it was broken into and all we had was stolen. I often wanted us to come back home, but I also knew it just was not the plan. The plan was to build — to achieve — to gain something different and valuable.

I wanted to become an actor because I love stories and I wanted to be a part of telling great stories to as many people as I could. I figured out early on that I wanted to be a part of stories that reflect the lives of people who don’t always get to have a voice.

My love for storytelling started back home in Tobago. I would listen to the older people in my village tell folklore stories about a gold-toothed donkey that they believed was a person who could shape-shift. Or of the douens which were supposedly the souls of children who died before they were christened. Or of this old man, Papa Bois, who lived in the forest and would protect it from hunters. I would always ask for those stories to be told to me every time older family and friends dropped by our house or restaurant. And let me tell you, they loved telling me those stories as well. This, I think, created my love for the genre of magical realism to this day.

L

anding the role of M’Baku in Black Panther was incredible. I just wanted to get in the room. I told my

representation to just get me an audition and I’d do the rest. I loved [director] Ryan Coogler’s work — I remember being incredibly moved by Fruitvale Station and knowing that’s the kind of storyteller I wanted to work with one day. One with a clear and distinct voice.

Being on set was something I never experienced before. Working with my own personal heroes in that superhero setting was something poetic and epic.

To be able to meet and work alongside Angela Bassett, Forest Whittaker, Martin Freeman, and Chadwick Boseman, to name a few of this incredible ensemble, and not end up feeling out of place, was something I had only ever dreamed of before this movie. The knowledge that I was part of something that would allow people of colour all over the world to see themselves represented was surreal.

What helped me to stay grounded was being careful to constantly check in with who M’Baku was — I wanted viewers to see a strong and impassioned leader willing to do whatever he has to for the betterment of his people.

Hollywood is going through a period where a lot of people are advocating for inclusion and representation, and I think that directly correlates to the opportunities I am getting. Also, people are crying out for transparency, equality, and equity, so it’s a space that is empowering artists

Kwaku Alston

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©Marvel Studios 2018

Winston Duke (at centre) as M’Baku in Black Panther

such as myself — who, perhaps, do not fit some of the previously held notions of leading male or female actor. I am sixfoot-five, two hundred and thirty pounds, and I think now is the time when the possibilities are higher for me to play people with depth. Not just goons and muscle, but layered and thinking individuals who have complex motivations.

Caribbean culture, and I would say the time is now. The world is “smaller” due to the internet and social media. People are craving their reflection.

I would like my career to go into writing and producing stories about the immigrant experience. I love stories about outsiders who, through sheer will, create their own path. I would love to

I figured out early on that I wanted to be a part of stories that reflect the lives of people who don’t always get to have a voice I believe this creates a huge market for strong stories that can come from the Caribbean — our folklore, our knack for great drama and storytelling has its place now. We just have to create the work. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before — just think of Euzhan Palcy and Sidney Poitier as zenith examples. We have beautiful sub-cultures which can and should be explored — our relationship to the sea and our fishermen, our mixed, blended cultures and the trials that come with that, our richly mixed and painful history of rebellion, revolution, and discovery — all of these stories are present in our 74

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explore more magical realism, and follow my personal mission of depicting people who usually don’t get seen or given the opportunity to be visible.

I

try to return to Tobago at least once a year. Most recently I was in T&T briefly in the days before Carnival 2017, but then had to rush back to set to complete shooting for Black Panther.

It never works out perfectly to be there for Carnival, but I try every year. I fail because Carnival usually falls at one of the busiest times of year for me. That said, I love coming home. It charges me up.

There are still a lot of things in process.

Homes get built by people with their bare hands, with their blocks and cement and PVC pipes, and things aren’t finished, and it always feels like me. I’m in process — I’m unfinished.

Film, and my current life, are all about the product and the end result — but, to me, it’s the story in the process that makes everything worthwhile. So my focus tends to stay there, and coming home always reminds me of that. It keeps me grounded.

I want to say a big shout-out to Bunji Garlin and Machel Montano — because I listen to their music almost every day.

“Buss Head” — I listen to their lyrics of artistry, patience, process, and integrity.

It reminds me that I come from a place with beautiful people who create and know themselves. It makes me further interrogate who I am and why I do what I do. n

Black Panther will be released on 9 February in the UK, and 16 February in the US. For a longer version of this interview, visit discovertnt.com

Photostravellers/shutterstock.com

ARRIVE

Destination 76 Escape to Tobago

Neighbourhood 88 Gustavia,

St BarthĂŠlemy

Round trip 96 Art in the open

Despite the ravages of Hurricane Irma, St BarthĂŠlemy is ready to receive visitors

Destination

The beach is usually a place to relax, but there are also options to get your blood racing — like a shoreline canter on horseback. As co-founder of the Buccoo-based NGO Healing with Horses, Veronika Danzer-La Fortune introduces differently-abled youngsters to a gentle equine herd for fun and therapeutic play

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piotrandrewsphotography.com

Carnival season is bacchanal time in T&T. But although Tobago has its share of the intense action, Trinidad’s smaller sister island still manages to hold on to its tranquil vibe year-round. If Carnival isn’t your thing, and you’re looking for an escape option, Tobago’s lush hills and clear, warm waters beckon — as you can see in this photo essay. Prepare for a dose of true natural beauty

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marianne s. hosein

The numerous small rivers tumbling down Tobago’s hillsides create an abundance of waterfalls — some of them popular tourist spots, others known only to locals. Getting to Parlatuvier Falls — near the village of the same name on the island’s Leeward Coast — requires an arduous scramble over giant boulders, but the reward is a pristine pool surrounded by emerald green foliage

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Tobago has no shortage of pristine blue bays — but, for many locals, Pirate’s Bay near the island’s northern tip may be the most treasured of all. On the outskirts of the village of Charlotteville, it’s accessible only by boat or footpath, making it an oasis of quiet

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Over two hundred and forty bird species have been recorded on Tobago — from shy manakins to gregarious parrots, impressively large tropicbirds to tiny hummingbirds, their iridescent plumage catching the light as they flit among nectar-filled flowers

ADVERTORIAL Barcode This Carnival season, Barcode continues to bring premier entertainment in our “I Love Soca” series. Every Tuesday, from 2 January to 13 February, 2018, Barcode showcases the best soca artistes from Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, St Vincent, and beyond. Situated on the Scarborough Waterfront, our bar/club hybrid is unique as the island itself. Our newly extended outdoor decking is fully covered, and can easily accommodate three hundred persons with the extraordinary feel of the southern Atlantic breeze.

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can you expect from this family-owned company? We offer the most affordable rates on the island and individualised packages to suit our diverse customers. Continuously aspiring to remain the best in the auto rental industry, we ensure a convenient, courteous experience, which adds to our clients’ peace of mind. Our mantra, “excellence matters,” speaks for itself!

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tarique eastman

Viewed from beach level, the jetty at Pigeon Point and its thatched shed may be Tobago’s most instantly recognisable and most photographed landmark. But from high above it’s barely a speck in the broad expanse of shallow blue water extending all the way out to Buccoo Reef

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An Oasis of Serenity

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DebraLee Wiseberg/istock.com

As any Tobagonian can tell you, the island’s Main Ridge is home to the oldest legally protected forest reserve in the world, dating to 1776 — an early milestone in the history of conservation. The reserve is home to hundreds of species of wildlife, and protects Tobago’s watershed — and is criss-crossed by hiking trails that can take you to the very heart of the island’s natural splendour

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Just twenty-five miles long and six wide, Tobago can feel bigger than its size on the map, thanks to its rugged terrain and winding mountain roads

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Among villages of modern concrete houses, a few Victorian-era wooden gingerbread cottages still survive. Even the most modest boast hints of elaborate fretwork, and high-pitched roofs designed to repel tropical downpours

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Goats — like these, heading home on a rural lane — are staple livestock in Tobago.

They also become the star attraction at Easter, when traditional goat-racing brings out the island’s competitive instincts

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Sunset at Mt Irvine Bay, Tobago’s most popular surfing site

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Community Lane, Spacious, Comfortable, Rustic Mt Pleasant, Tasty local lunches [from $25] Tobago Delicious Fireside Curries (868) 313 2917 Well Stocked Bar (868) 298 5249 Happy Hour Fridays See our reviews After-work Specials on Google Maps, 10 Minutes from Crown Pt Tripadvisor & Facebook.

Steak & Seafood Dinners For more information visit [from $120] www.honeysrestaurants.com

Little Tobago Charlotteville

Tobago Main Ridge Forest Reserve Black Rock Buccoo Reef

Speyside

Pigeon Point Store Bay

Scarborough

Crown Point

Caribbean Airlines operates numerous flights each day between Trinidad and Tobago

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NEIGHBOURHOOD

The postcard-perfect capital of St Barts looks like a small French harbour town transplanted in the Antilles — with a Swedish twist to its Gallic charms

After the storm

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Although battered by Hurricane Irma in September 2017, the residents of Gustavia got to work in the immediate aftermath, cleaning up and rebuilding their town.

By the end of October, St Barts authorities reported that the island was ready to receive visitors for the traditional start of the tourism season in November.

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Gustavia, St Barthélemy Streetscape Gustavia’s U-shape is determined by the contours of its harbour, hemmed in by the hills to the east, and watched over by three Swedish-era forts. Swedish influence is also evident in the town’s historic architecture, with its redroofed, white-painted stone houses, now scrupulously restored. Look out for the clock tower on Rue Gambetta, shaped like a slightly squat obelisk, with an upper-section of blue-painted timber — the remnant of a church destroyed long ago in a hurricane. The bell, dated to 1799, is still rung to mark municipal celebrations and other momentous events. Another town landmark is a huge eighteenth-century anchor discovered by accident in 1981, thought to have belonged to a ship of the Royal Navy.

History

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When St Barthélemy was claimed by France in 1648, Le Carénage — the small, narrow bay on the island’s west coast, sheltered by volcanic hills — was the natural site for a harbour. In 1784, St Barts was ceded by France to Sweden, beginning a nearcentury of Scandinavian rule. The Swedes renamed the capital after King Gustav III, and declared Gustavia a free port, opening an era of highly profitable trade (and smuggling). Repurchased by France in 1878, the island declined into an economic backwater until the 1960s, when electricity finally arrived and the construction of a small airport encouraged the first tourist resorts. High-end tourism is now the mainstay, as St Barts has developed a reputation as a playground of the international jet-set, who converge here in their yachts for New Year’s celebrations — when locals retreat to their homes, awaiting the return of the low season.

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Fort to fort Gustavia is small enough to explore by foot in a morning, and the town’s three forts make ideal guideposts.

Start on the eastern side of the harbour entrance, where the Quai Jeanne d’Arc is overshadowed by the remains of Fort Gustav and its almost comical lighthouse. From here, you can scope out your entire route: south along the waterfront to St Bartholemew’s Anglican Church, then west to Fort Karl, then north again along the harbour to Fort Oscar and the Municipal Museum in the eighteenth-century Wall House, home to everything from historic artifacts to natural history specimens and local craft. Should your stroll rouse a thirst, you’ll have your pick of chic little cafés where the atmosphere ranges from French to very French.

Time for a swim

Souvenir

St Barts’s beaches are deservedly famous, and the island’s compact size — less than ten square miles — means they’re all within easy reach of Gustavia. Nearest to hand is popular Anse de Grands Galets, better known as Shell Beach, just over the hill from the harbour and below Fort Karl. (As its name suggests, the beach is strewn with pink seashells underfoot.) Further out along the coast, you can take your pick: does your dream beach have trendy bars and restaurants like St-Jean on the north coast, or do you prefer a more isolated locale, like Gouverneur to the south (with its view of St Kitts) or rugged Colombier at the island’s western tip, accessible only by a hiking trail?

Given the extremely well-heeled demographic of most St Barts visitors, it’s no surprise that Gustavia boasts some of the Caribbean’s poshest boutiques, including branches of designer shops from the most fashionable Paris streets. You’ll have no trouble replacing your Louis Vuitton luggage, your Hermès scarf, your Cartier necklace. In a somewhat less ruinous price range, you can also find boutiques with locally made jewellery and straw hats, and beauty products from Ligne St Barth, made with indigenous herbs and ingredients like mango butter, Gustavia frangipani, and pineapple.

Co-ordinates 17.9º N 62.9º W Sea Level

St Barthélemy

Caribbean Airlines operates regular flights to Princess Juliana International Airport in Sint Maarten, with connections on other airlines and via ferry to St Barthélemy WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM

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Round Trip

It’s a common sight in Port-au-Prince: informal outdoor galleries set up by working artists like Baptiste Jonas, who displays his paintings in the Petionville neighbourhood, hung salon-style on a chain-link fence. All are available for sale, or simply to catch the eyes of passing traffic

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Across the Caribbean, Carnival brings astonishing artistry out into the streets. But all year round there are ample opportunities to experience art in public spaces, out in the open — en plein air, as a painter might say. From murals to monuments, here’s a regional roundup of outdoor art that doesn’t require you to set foot in a museum

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Born in Ciudad Bolívar, the Venezuelan artist Jésus Soto (1923–2005) is famous for his interactive Penetrable sculptures, in which flexible hanging tubes create geometric forms that viewers can enter. Like this red sphere, which floats along the Francisco Fajardo highway in Caracas

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Officially known as the 1763 Monument, towering above Georgetown’s Square of the Revolution, this sculpture by pioneering Guyanese artist Philip Moore (1921–2012) depicts the rebel leader Cuffy, mastermind of a rebellion against slavery in the colony of Berbice. The statue’s intricately carved surfaces include West African and Amerindian symbols of strength and power

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courtesy fresh milk

courtesy fresh milk

Devised by the Fresh Milk art centre in 2014, the Fresh Stops project commissioned six young artists to produce original artworks to be incorporated into roadside benches across Barbados. Works

by Simone Padmore (above) Matthew Clarke (right), Mark King (below right), Versia Harris (below), and others put provocative imagery literally behind the backs of commuters across the island

A landmark of the University of the West Indies Mona campus in Jamaica, the mural by Belgian artist Claude Rahir (1937–2007) — completed in 1979 — adorns the façade of the Assembly Hall. Three stories high, it depicts the university’s eight faculties alongside images of children at school and at play

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On Martinique’s southwest coast, the Anse Cafard Slavery Memorial is an unforgettable reminder of the Caribbean’s tragic past. Created by sculptor Laurent Valére in 1998, the memorial’s hulking concrete figures — each eight feet tall and staring out to sea — depict a group of Africans drowned nearby in 1830, shackled together in the hold of a slave ship. The figures’ posture suggests a powerful sorrow, while their rough-hewn faces project a determination to survive

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ENGAGE

Green Deal 106 108 The

What follows the storm Seaweed for sale

On This Day 110 A distant light

Recent sightings of Dominica’s national bird, the Sisserou parrot, prove that the endangered species survived Hurricane Maria

Green

What follows the storm When Hurricane Maria tore through Dominica in September 2017, lives were lost, homes destroyed, and businesses crippled. But the storm also took a toll on forests and wildlife — with major implications for an economy that depends on eco-tourism. Paul Crask reports Photography by Paul Crask

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n the silent, misty morning after the hurricane, it both felt and looked like the end. With sustained winds recorded at 220 miles per hour, and gusting off the scale, the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Maria was so brutal and stark that it brought me to my knees.

Lush forests were transformed to naked hillsides of leafless, skeletal shards that were once trees but now looked more like ghosts. Some had even had been stripped of their bark. Around eighty percent of Dominica’s 25,000 homes were damaged, with most losing at least the roof. Businesses were destroyed and wantonly looted, lives had been lost, and others were declared missing. A stunned silence reigned.

While the socio-economic and infrastructure damage, clean-up, and repair became the immediate focus of the collective recovery efforts, the effect of the storm on the island’s natural heritage was, understandably, of secondary concern.

It was not until the fourth week of the aftermath that I happened to hear a local radio broadcast discussing the impact of the hurricane on nature.

“Nature takes care of itself,” said one expert, urging us not to worry about it too much, yet acknowledging that the

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revival of the island’s nature and wildlife was important for tourism. Increasingly, Dominica’s natural and cultural heritage are linked to tourism revenue, rather than something that ought to be preserved and celebrated in its own right. With the advent of destination marketing, nature has, rather unfortunately, become regarded as an eco-tourism product.

Dominica’s habitats range from dry and littoral woodlands on its coasts to cloud forest atop its many volcanic peaks.

But the predominant habitat, covering around eighty percent of the island, is rainforest. The island’s rainforest is home to a diverse and fragile ecosystem that includes around two hundred species of fern and rare birds such as the regionally endemic rufous-throated solitaire (or mountain whistler), four species of hummingbird, twelve species of bat, and the locally endemic and endangered red-neck (Jaco) and imperial (Sisserou) parrots.

Hiking trails, often developed from historic traces used by Kalinago and Maroons, weave through this habitat in a vast but hidden network, and have become a draw for independent travellers with a love of the outdoors and unexplored places. Waterfalls, countless rivers, crater lakes, and one of the densest clusters of

volcanoes beyond the Pacific Rim have earned the Morne Trois Pitons National Park UNESCO status, and Dominica has long branded itself the Caribbean’s “Nature Island.” With most hotels describing themselves in some shape or form as eco accommodation, and with many people employed in the eco-tourism service sector, nature has indeed become inextricably linked to earnings.

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ature does take care of itself, and, thankfully, there’s been no suggestion anyone should interfere with its recovery in Dominica. But the leaves that were beginning to reappear on trees four weeks after the hurricane were far from a canopy. And a rainforest really needs a canopy.

Without a full leaf canopy, the forest is exposed to full sunlight, and plants that are opportunistic and sun-loving will tend to occupy the spaces on the forest floor that were previously the domain of those that prefer the shade, and upon which other plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, amphibians, and invertebrates are dependent. Without a canopy, birds such as the two endemic parrot species have no natural source of food, and will seek fruits elsewhere, usually in gardens or citrus plantations. In the weeks following the hurricane, people observed the Jaco parrot foraging in such places. In late November, there was finally a confirmed sighting of the Sisserou. Given that it exists only in Dominica — and is the national bird, appearing on the country’s flag — there is real concern that the species could be pushed closer to extinction.

Recent studies of the effect of hurricanes on forests have been made in Brazil, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Conclusions are varied, as are estimates of how long it takes for a forest to fully recover — ranging from fifty to four thousand years. But

Dominica’s Trafalgar Falls, a popular attraction for visitors, before and after Hurricane Maria

in this kind of habitat are dependent on animals and birds to disperse seeds. If those creatures are not there to do that, or their numbers have been adversely impacted, new tree growth is reduced, along with future food sources.

From my porch on the western slopes of the Morne Anglais volcano, I saw the landscape transition from brown to green within four weeks of the hurricane and, even though I know it is just thin new foliage painted over much deeper cracks, I see it as a promising beginning, and no longer an end. Nature may well recover better than its dependent eco-tourism sector,

Nature may well recover better than its dependent eco-tourism sector, which has been very badly hit

none of the studies followed a hurricane as severe as Maria, and even Dominica’s own experience after Hurricane David in 1979 is not really comparable, as David was a weaker storm and predominantly affected the south of the island. Category five (plus) Hurricane Maria tracked through the middle of the island, and so all habitats were affected.

Having hiked all over Dominica, and written about it for more than ten years, I am concerned, but not without hope. I do

fear for the survival of the Sisserou, but I also know how fertile this island is and how quickly plants and trees grow. Also the sheer number of deep valleys and steep mountain slopes means that leeward-facing and other slightly more protected sections of forest perhaps did not suffer quite as much as those that are more exposed. In these largely inaccessible habitats, I would like to imagine the mountain whistler still sings and the Sisserou finds nourishment.

But around eighty percent of tree species

which has been very badly hit. It is estimated that around fifty per cent of hotels in Dominica will require a partial or total rebuilding period of a year or more, and (unsubstantiated) estimates of the scale of migration from the island by people who need to find a life and an income elsewhere are already quite disturbing.

As time passes, I am hopeful that the shade-loving plants will out-muscle the sun-loving opportunists in Dominica, and that nature will thrive. But this has to be a time for fresh, new, creative thinking, and not simply more of the same. “The same” doesn’t exist any longer — and, with the obvious effects of climate change, more extreme weather events like Maria seem inevitable. The future is not what it used to be. n WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 107

THE DEAL

Seaweed When the beaches of St Lucia were inundated with sargassum, Johanan Dujon didn’t see a problem — he saw an opportunity.

Under the Algas Organics label, the young entrepreneur manufactures a sargassum-based fertiliser, and his eye is on a regional market.

Erline Andrews learns more

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ack in 2011, sargassum seaweed — a greenishbrown mass of vegetation that usually originates from the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic — began piling up on beaches across the Caribbean.

It’s not unusual for the seaweed to appear seasonally, but scientists speculate that because of warmer temperatures due to climate change — plus the effect of man-made fertilisers and sewage contaminating the sea — quantities grew dramatically, becoming a serious challenge for the Caribbean’s tourism and fishing industries, the mainstay of many islands.

In 2014, the seaweed problem reached a peak. Twentyone-year-old Johanan Dujon was at a friend’s house when the conversation turned — as it likely did at many gatherings in St Lucia — to the sargassum, which was clogging the engines of fishing vessels, killing fish and crabs, and emanating a sickening odour as it rotted on beaches.

“Her mom was mentioning that seaweed can be used as fertiliser, [and asking] why was nobody doing anything about it,” Dujon recalls. “That is where the thought came from. If this material is coming here and we can make something out of it, then we’d be solving two issues. We’d be creating a product that we could make money off of, that [also] kept the beaches clean.”

Dujon, by his account, hadn’t been a brilliant science student.

After graduating from the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College — where he studied literature, Spanish, and business — he was a primary school physical education teacher and ran a fishing supplies business. But he had the foresight to see an opportunity in the sargassum influx, and the drive and the family support to carry it out.

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e l a S r o F

“When I first came up with the idea, I couldn’t sleep. It was like a tugging — get up and go try something with the seaweed!” says Dujon. “I finally said to my father, Dad, let’s go and collect some seaweed to experiment. The average person who said that to their parents, their reaction would be, What are you doing?

His reaction was — he has a pickup that we still use to move the products around — he says to me, OK, let’s go.

“He would go out with me to collect the seaweed. My mom as well,” Dujon continues. “We would dry the seaweed in the initial instance and try to sell it off in front of supermarkets — and nobody bought one bag. Nobody. But . . . the point is the support was there from the onset. It’s still there now.”

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oday, Dujon is managing director of Algas Organics, which produces a liquid fertiliser — Algas Total Plant Tonic — made from sargassum. Dujon came up with the product after months of experimenting. He, his family, and a small team of part-time employees harvest the sargassum from affected coastlines and manufacture bottles of the fertiliser with support from international and local public agencies.

After operating for several years out of the Dujon home, a processing plant will formally open later this year, and after selling to retailers and corporate clients in St Lucia, Algas has begun exporting to Barbados. Dujon hopes eventually to export to other countries in the region and beyond, and expand manufacturing operations to other parts of the Caribbean affected by sargassum. In January 2017, the St Lucia Chamber of Commerce named him Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

Giles Romulus runs the UNDP’s Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme in St Lucia, which helped fund Algas’s operations after Dujon agreed to share profits with the St Lucia Fisherfolk Cooperative Society, an NGO that represents the fishing community. “He got a lot of support,” Romulus explains, “and the fact that he’s willing to go into partnership with a civil society organisation that can benefit and also give him some guidance — that helped. Johanan realised he couldn’t do it alone.”

Romulus points to Microsoft, Dell, and Facebook. “Many of the biggest companies in the world started in the university bed-

Marc Bruxelle/shutterstock.com

“Being successful as an entrepreneur comes from you having the latitude to fail,” explains Johanan Dujon room,” he says. “You start small and you look for opportunities for partnerships. [Algas] is an excellent example of a partnership that has brought results in a short period of time.”

Romulus said he hopes the project will grow if another injection of funding is approved. In addition to the manufacturing plant, he’d like to see Algas set up a research lab. “We want expansion beyond sargassum,” he says. “St Lucia has a lot of endemic plants that need to be studied. I believe that there are chemicals in our plants in the Caribbean that are yet untouched.”

Last year, Dujon was a presenter at the Earth Optimism Summit organised by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. The inaugural event was intended to celebrate and share successful ideas in environmental protection. Dujon was selected after responding to an invitation for submissions, and may have been the only representative from the English-speaking Caribbean. “We, in all of the environmental challenges that we’re faced with, have the opportunity to convert them into profitable ventures,” he told the audience.

He presented test results that show Algas fertiliser performing better than the big American brand Miracle-Gro, and touted its organic nature. “Our product reduces the need for synthetic chemicals, which leach out into our soils and into our waters

Courtesy Johanan Dujon

and increases your yield,” he told the summit. “If you match innovation with funding, mentorship, technical support, and community and environmental conscience, what you’re going to get is a revolutionary solution which can stand out at the global scale,” he concluded.

There’ve been other ideas bandied about for making productive use of sargassum. A team at the University of the West Indies St Augustine campus has experimented with turning it into plastic. Barbadian environmental entrepreneur Mark Hill has made it into food and particleboard. But Dujon’s project seems to be the first to really bear fruit.

He’s encountered other people who had the idea to convert the sargassum into salable fertiliser. “They had the idea but they couldn’t do it,” he says. “Entrepreneurship is about risks. I am twenty-something. If I leave my job and this doesn’t work, I can do something else. Being successful as an entrepreneur comes from you having the latitude to fail. If you have a mortgage and children and a wife, it’s not OK to fail. The younger you, are the easier it should be to take risks.”

The region needs more venture capitalists, he says, to put money into risky but potentially lucrative start-up businesses.

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on this day

A distant light

For such a tiny, remote place, Sombrero Island in the Anegada Passage has had a surprisingly colourful history — from shipwrecks to a guano-inspired international incident to the crucial lighthouse that began service one hundred and fifty years ago.

James Ferguson tells its story Illustration by Rohan Mitchell

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s dusk fell on the evening of 1 January, 1868, Europe-bound ships passing warily through the infamous Anegada Passage — the forty-mile stretch of water separating the British Virgin Islands from the northern tip of the Leewards — may have been surprised to see the regular and reassuring flashes of a distant lighthouse on their starboard side. A white glow appeared directly across the dark water every sixty seconds before fading away into the night. Some ships, it is said, sounded their sirens in appreciation as they headed out of the Caribbean Sea into the Atlantic. Once a dangerous place of hidden reefs and unpredictable currents, the Anegada Passage was suddenly a great deal safer.

The site of the beacon was a tiny, arid outcrop at the northernmost tip of the Leeward archipelago, one of the most remote of the Caribbean’s seven thousand islands and a minuscule outpost of the British Empire. Named Sombrero Island because it resembled a Mexican hat in shape, this ninety-acre islet had no fresh water, almost no vegetation, and a large population of lizards and seabirds. It was considered part of the (relatively) larger colony of Anguilla and had belonged to Britain since 1714.

The lighthouse, made of steel girders and shipped across the Atlantic from London, was assembled and situated on Sombrero’s highest point, forty feet above sea level. An engraving of 1875 shows an Eiffel Tower–like construction standing on a base, topped by a lantern room. It burned kerosene and was operated by a staff of four lighthouse keepers, who worked shifts at night to keep the light shining before it was extinguished at dawn.

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Sombrero was undeniably isolated, lying thirty-four miles northwest of Anguilla, but it had known irregular human habitation since the early nineteenth century. A British sailor marooned for stealing beer had survived his ordeal by being spotted by a passing American ship. It was then discovered

by British geologists that vast accretions of seabird droppings had formed nitrate-rich guano deposits. News of this find reached the United States, and in 1856 an American company began extracting the fertiliser and exporting it back to the plantations of the South. Workers were required for the gruelling mining operation, and an exclusively black workforce was recruited from neighbouring islands. In its heyday, the operation employed two hundred men, accommodated in ramshackle huts and reliant on supplies brought from St Martin. As there was no port or beach, the guano had to be shovelled into barges which then transferred their cargo to boats lying off the island.

Just like the extraction process, the social situation was unsustainable. A violent dispute over wages broke out in August 1860, and, according to The New York Times, one of the workers “hurled a tremendous lump of guano at [a white foreman’s] head, crushed his skull with the blow, and left him for dead on the ground.” The workers then took over the island, plundering the stores, until order was finally restored. Seven years later, an international court ruled that the US company had illegally occupied the island, and sovereignty — together with the guano mine — was restored to Britain. Extraction continued until supplies ran out in 1890 and the mine was closed. Little remains of this nitrate mini-boom, apart from a few scattered industrial ruins, a worker’s tombstone, and the gouged, cratered landscape.

Little remains of Sombrero Island’s nitrate mini-boom, apart from a few scattered industrial ruins Perhaps understandably for someone who spent thirty-one years adrift in the middle of the ocean with only four companions, Sam likes to talk. He was part of a team that consisted of a Principal Keeper, two assistant keepers and a cook. They would each spend six weeks on Sombrero and two weeks leave back on Anguilla. According to Sam, those six weeks flew by. Unless you got to brooding, that is. “Sometimes it could get a little boring if you started to think too much” . . . For recreation, the keepers snorkelled and fished.

Once Sam saw a large shark while snorkelling, which, thankfully, was not interested in him. They listened to the radio, played cards or dominoes, and star-gazed.

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or twenty-two years, the lighthouse keepers had shared the island with a fractious community of miners and overseers, but now they were left on their own. The lighthouse itself was administered by Trinity House in London, the organisation charged with UK maritime safety. In 1931, improvements were made to its light power and it was given a solid concrete base. This proved ineffective, however, when Hurricane Donna smashed into Sombrero in September 1960, and damaged it beyond repair.

It was demolished and replaced by a similar-looking skeletal structure mounted on a concrete base, inaugurated in July 1962.

It was 126 feet high, requiring the keepers to climb 163 steps to reach the lantern room at the top.

The lives of the lighthouse keepers from the 1970s are evocatively recreated in an article entitled “Marooned” by Sarah Harrison in The Anguillian. Interviewing the recently retired Sam Richardson in 2013, she captures the strange, lonely existence of those men:

This way of life was to end, to Sam’s regret, in September 2001, when a third, automated lighthouse was donated to Anguilla’s government by Trinity House and installed alongside the now disused concrete bases of the two previous structures. Looking rather like a white space rocket ready for take-off, this fifty-foot unmanned facility emits a white flash every ten seconds, powered by solar energy.

Sombrero Island continues to provide a vital maritime service, exactly 150 years after the first London-built lighthouse began guiding shipping through the feared Anegada Passage.

Today it is uninhabited, visited occasionally for maintenance checks or by divers or ornithologists, who must climb steep metal stairs from a dinghy to reach flat ground. The site is eerily atmospheric, with crashing waves and the noise of breeding boobies and terns filling the air.

Twenty years ago, in 1998, there were reports that the nowdefunct Beal Aerospace company wanted to lease the island as a test rocket launch pad — but, thankfully, the plans came to nothing. And that will probably remain the case, as one of Sombrero’s distinct disadvantages — along with its precipitous cliffs and lunar appearance — is the fact that at only forty feet above sea level, it is occasionally swamped by large waves during storms or hurricanes, leaving only the lighthouse standing above water. n WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 111

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Across 1 This ultra-hot chilli has a sting [8,6] 9 Magical dexterity [7] 10 Art style newly acquired [7] 11 Something other [4] 12 Borat’s former Soviet Republic [10] 14 A monument, tall and pointy [7] 15 Give generously [6] 18 Apparition [6] 20 Spartan [7] 22 Like some rum barrels [5] 24 Alongside [4] 25 What was borrowed [4] 27 Finish [3] 28 Untruth [3] 29 Like the dodo bird [7] 30 Lord Invader’s most famous calypso hit [3,3,4,4] Down 1 Dominica’s rare national bird [8] 2 When you miss your alarm [9] 3 Books have these [4] 4 Australia’s interior [7] 5 The place to hear steel music [7] 6 Softness and fluffiness [10] 7 Function [5] 8 Bird droppings make good fertiliser [5] 13 Scent to ward off mosquitos [10]

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SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

by James Hackett There are 10 differences between these two pictures.

How many can you spot?

Spot the Difference answers Boy on stilts has a different shirt; there is more detail in his head-tie; there is a handkerchief in the boy’s pocket; the left-hand stilts have grooves; the boy on the ground has a different shirt; there is more grass detail in the right image; the circle on the boy’s cap is bigger on the right; the boy’s cap has a different bill on the right; the boy on the right has a bandana on his hand; the shadows are different.

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artist athletic beach beaten Belmont Big Truck Blue Boy current Desperadoes fern fly Gustav harbour harvest hills hurricane Inveigler Jean and Dinah

Kitchener lime Maroon martial moko jumbie organic panther port road march run sargassum sheltered sky Spice Island stilt Store Bay tent track

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If the puzzle you want to do has already been filled in, just ask your flight attendant for a new copy of the magazine!

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Caribbean Crossword

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79% (2017 year-to-date: 10 December)

Caribbean Airlines CARIBBEAN Trinidad Head Office Airport: Piarco International Reservations & information: + 868 625 7200 (local) Ticket offices: Mezzanine Level, The Parkade, Corner of Queen and Richmond Streets, Port-of-Spain; Golden Grove Road, Piarco; Carlton Centre, San Fernando Baggage: + 868 669 3000 Ext 7513/4

Antigua Airport: VC Bird International Reservations & information: + 800 744 2225 (toll free) Ticketing: VC Bird International Airport Hours: Mon – Fri 8 am – 4 pm Baggage: + 268-480-5705 Tues, Thurs, Fri, Sun, or + 268 462 0528 Mon, Wed, Sat. Hours: Mon – Fri 4 am – 10 pm

Barbados Airport: Grantley Adams International Reservations & information: 1 246 429 5929 / 1 800 744 2225 (toll free) City Ticket Office: 1st Floor Norman Centre Building, Broad Street, Bridgetown, Barbados Ticket office hours: 6 am – 10 am & 11 am – 7 pm daily Flight Information: + 1 800 744 2225 Baggage: + 1 246 428 1650/1 or + 1 246 428 7101 ext. 4628

/ Across the World

Nassau

Orlando

Airport: Lynden Pindling International Terminal: Concourse 2 Reservations & information: + 1 242 377 3300 (local) Airport Ticket Office: Terminal A-East Departure Hours: Flight days – Sat, Mon, Thurs 10 am – 4 pm Non-flight days – Tues, Wed, Fri 10 am – 4 pm Flight Information: + 1 242 377 3300 (local) Baggage: + 1 242 377 7035 Ext 255 9 am – 5 pm daily

Airport: Orlando International Reservations & information: + 800 920 4225 (toll free) Ticketing: Terminal A – departures level (during flight check-in ONLY – Mon/Fri 11:30 am – 2.15 pm) Baggage: + 407 825 3482

St Maarten Airport: Princess Juliana International Reservations & information: + 1721 546 7660/7661 (local) Ticket office: PJIA Departure Concourse Baggage: + 1721 546 7660/3 Hours: Mon – Fri 9 am – 5 pm / Sat 9 am – 6 pm

St Lucia Airport: George F L Charles Reservations & information: 1 800 744 2225 Ticket office: George F.L. Charles Airport Ticket office hours: 10 am – 4 pm Baggage contact number: 1 758 452 2789 or 1 758 451 7269

St Vincent and the Grenadines Airport: Argyle International Reservations & information: + 800 744 2225 Ticketing: Argyle International Airport (during flight check-in ONLY)

Tobago Grenada Airport: Maurice Bishop International Reservations & Information: 1 800 744 2225 (toll free) Ticketing: Maurice Bishop International Main Terminal Baggage: + 473 439 0681

Jamaica (Kingston) Airport: Norman Manley International Reservations & information: + 800 523 5585 (International); 1 888 359 2475 (Local) City Ticket Office: 128 Old Hope Road, Kingston 6 Hours: Mon-Fri 7.30 am – 5.30 pm, Saturdays 10 am – 4 pm Airport Ticket Office: Norman Manley Airport Counter #1 Hours: 3.30 am – 8 pm daily Baggage: + 876 924 8500

Jamaica (Montego Bay) Airport: Sangster International Reservations & information: + 800 744 2225 (toll free) Ticketing at check-in counter: 8.30 am – 6 pm daily Baggage: + 876 363 6433

Airport: ANR Robinson International Reservations & information: + 868 660 7200 (local) Ticket office: ANR Robinson International Airport Baggage: + 639 0595 / 631 8023 Flight information: + 868 669 3000

NORTH AMERICA Fort Lauderdale Airport: Hollywood Fort Lauderdale International Reservations & information: + 800 920 4225 (toll free) Ticketing: Terminal 4 – departures level (during flight check-in ONLY – 7.30 am to 7 pm) Baggage: + 954 359 4487

Miami Airport: Miami International Reservations & information: + 800 920 4225 (toll free) Ticketing: South Terminal J – departures level (during flight check-in ONLY – 12 pm to 3.00 pm); Baggage: + 305 869 3795

New York Airport: John F Kennedy International Reservations & information: + 800 920 4225 (toll free) Ticketing: Concourse B, Terminal 4, JFK International – open 24 hours (situated at departures, 4th floor) Baggage: + 718 360 8930

Toronto Airport: Lester B Pearson International Reservations & information: + 800 920 4225 (toll free) Ticket office: Terminal 3 Ticketing available daily at check-in counters 422 and 423. Available 3 hours prior to departure times Baggage: + 905 672 9991

SOUTH AMERICA Caracas Airport: Simón Bolívar International Reservations & information: + 58 212 3552880 Ticketing: Simón Bolívar International Level 2 – East Sector Hours: 7 am – 11 pm City Ticket Office: Sabana Grande Boulevard, Building “Galerias Bolivar”, 1st Floor, office 11-A, Caracas, Distrito Capital + 58 212 762 4389 / 762 0231 Baggage: + 58 424 1065937

Guyana Airport: Cheddi Jagan International Reservations & information: + 800 744 2225 (toll free) Ticket office: 91-92 Avenue of the Republic, Georgetown Baggage: + 011 592 261 2202

Suriname Airport: Johan Adolf Pengel International Reservations & information: + 597 52 0034/0035 (local); 1 868 625 6200 (Trinidad) Ticket Office: Paramaribo Express, N.V. Wagenwegstraat 36, Paramaribo Baggage: + 597 325 437

Destination:

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737 onboard Entertainment — January/february Northbound

Southbound

J A NU A R Y

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Logan Lucky

Peter Parker’s attempts to fall back into his normal daily routine are threatened by the emergence of a new villain.

Jimmy Logan leads his siblings, Clyde and Mellie, in an elaborate scheme to rob North Carolina’s Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey, Jr • director: Jon Watts • sci-fi, action • PG-13 • 130 minutes

Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig • director: Steven Soderbergh • comedy, drama • PG-13 • 119 minutes

Northbound

Southbound

F E B R U A R Y

Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok

Murder on the Orient Express

Thor must race against time to stop Ragnarok — the destruction of his world and the end of Asgardian civilisation at the hands of the ruthless Hela.

In the most timeless of whodunits, we follow renowned detective Hercule Poirot as he attempts to solve what would become one of the most infamous crimes in history.

Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett • director: Taika Waititi • sci-fi, action • PG-13 • 130 minutes

Tom Bateman, Lucy Boynton, Kenneth Branagh • director: Kenneth Branagh • drama, thriller • PG-13 • 113 minutes

Audio Channels Channel 5 • The Hits

Channel 8 • East Indian Fusion

Channel 11 • Kaiso Kaiso

Channel 6 • Soft Hits

Channel 9 • Irie Vibes

Channel 12 • Steelband Jamboree

Channel 7 • Concert Hall

Channel 10 • Jazz Sessions

parting shot

Island bounty In Union Island, southernmost part of St Vincent and the Grenadines, the centre of action is Mulzac Square in the small town of Clifton. Piles of fruit and vegetables in vendors’ stalls make a series of colourful still-life scenes, while the brilliant blue water of Clifton Harbour glistens nearby.

Photography by Nature Picture Library/Alamy

120 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM