Caribbean Beat — September/October 2021 (#166) by MEP Caribbean Publishers

A MESSAGE From OUR CEO The borders of Trinidad and Tobago reopened on 17 July, marking the restart of operations from Caribbean Airlines’ home base. This return to the skies came after sixteen months of dealing with the devastating impact of the COVID19 pandemic on our commercial activities. Globally, passenger demand is expected to remain suppressed for the next two to three years. As a consequence, to be sustainable beyond 2021, we’ve adjusted our planned strategy, fleet size, and route network to deal with the predicted reduced passenger numbers. In spite of the challenges, we are committed to our objective of connecting the region, and our schedule is being reintroduced on a phased basis, to fulfil this ambition. Alongside flights to our regular markets, some additions to the network include weekly service between Trinidad and Dominica and twice weekly service between Trinidad and Eugene F. Correia Airport at Ogle, Georgetown, Guyana. Keep checking our website and social media feeds for the latest information. With the opening of T&T’s borders, our cargo operation, which remained extremely active throughout the pandemic, resumed service to seven passenger routes into and out of Trinidad. The routes include Dominica, Barbados, St Vincent, Grenada, New York City, Toronto, and Miami. Earlier this year, we also increased cargo capacity to Kingston, Jamaica, where we operate all-cargo flights each Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday using a 767 aircraft, and launched an additional all-cargo flight out of Trinidad every Monday. Operating in a pandemic adds new elements to the customer journey, which requires even greater coordination among all major stakeholders. Among the key factors of which we are mindful are the health and safety procedures for different countries, which are subject to change, sometimes at short notice. Accordingly, we work closely

with governments and public health and other authorities to keep you informed and to keep the travel experience safe and seamless. Our website (www.caribbean-airlines. com) and free mobile app provide up-to-date information on entry requirements, travel restrictions, quarantine policies, visa and e-visa conditions, and various health declaration forms in one convenient location. The link is travelguidelines. caribbean-airlines.com. Also, several countries have implemented technology solutions which allow them to centrally manage and disseminate crucial information related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The solutions include provisions to enable travel authorisation, airport screening, tracking and trace management, and supporting quarantine measures. You are advised to check with the respective destination country for information on the existing technology solution for entry (where applicable). We recognise that in the past year you may have been unable to travel as freely as you liked. As such, if your miles were due to expire in 2021, they are now extended for one year from the previous expiry date. No fee will be applied to reinstate your miles or reactivate your account. For any queries on this extension, you may contact our call centre or email us at miles@caribbean-airlines.com. Caribbean Airlines is committed to adding value for our customers, particularly through alignment with strategic international partners. To this end, we launched a new partnership with Enterprise Holdings, the parent company of three globally recognised and trusted car rental brands: Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Alamo Rent A Car, and National Car Rental. The agreement allows you to book Enterprise, Alamo, and National car rentals via our website to destinations throughout our network. You benefit from special low rates, and frequent flyer members can earn miles on rentals. If you are not a frequent flyer member, you may join the programme for free via our website. We have also expanded our interest-free payment plan, Caribbean Layaway, to include all routes in our network. Via our call centre and ticket offices, you can pay for your flights on a phased basis. For as little as twenty-five per cent down, you may hold a reservation and pay off the balance at a later specified date and time. Conditions apply and all travel must be within a two- to twelve-month window. In the coming months, our focus will be on ensuring that Caribbean Airlines remains your number-one choice for travel to and from the region. There are some exciting plans afoot, which I will share in the next issue. Thank you for your support. Our teams are delighted to return to the skies, and to offer you the authentic Caribbean hospitality that you enjoy.

Garvin Medera Chief Executive Officer

Contents No. 166 • September/October 2021

20 36 EMBARK

8 Wish you were here Potaro Gorge, Guyana

10 Need to know

Make the most of September and October, even during the time of COVID-19 ARRIVE

18 The Deal

The UWI’s “Revenue Revolution” Vice-Chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles believes private sector partnerships will guarantee future success for the university and the region. Natalie Dookie learns more

20 RounD Trip

Just like the movies The Caribbean’s distinctive landscapes have starred as locations

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for dozens of films, from Hollywood hits to independent local productions

30 CLOSEUP

Hidden figures The imaginative power of art meets the materials of science in the continuously innovative works of Bahamian Tavares Strachan, which meditate on history’s unsung heroes, writes Andre Bagoo

36 Snapshot

Prime factor Raw emotion and relatable lyrics are what draw listeners to T&T singersongwriter Annalie Prime, says Laura Dowrich

38 Bucket List

English Harbour, Antigua Few views in the Caribbean are more recognisable — and more stunning — than the panorama of English Harbour on Antigua’s south coast

40 Backstory

“My music has an accent” The sonic world of composer Tania Léon was shaped by her childhood in Cuba — and by her willingness to reinvent herself, writes Caroline Taylor

48 DID you even know

Are you the Caribbean’s biggest movie buff? Let our trivia column put you to the test

Caribbean Beat CaribbeanBeat An MEP publication

Editor Nicholas Laughlin General manager Halcyon Salazar Design artist Kevon Webster Production manager Jacqueline Smith Web editor Caroline Taylor Editorial assistants Shelly-Ann Inniss, Kristine De Abreu

Business Development Manager, Tobago and International Evelyn Chung T: (868) 684 4409 E: evelyn@meppublishers.com Business Development Representative, Trinidad Tracy Farrag T: (868) 318 1996 E: tracy@meppublishers.com

Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. 6 Prospect Avenue, Long Circular, Maraval 120111, Trinidad and Tobago T: (868) 622 3821/5813/6138 • F: (868) 628 0639 E: caribbean-beat@meppublishers.com Website: www.meppublishers.com

Cover Exuma in the Bahamas is just one of the places in the Caribbean that have served as movie locations — in this case, the James Bond film Thunderball Photo BIOSPHOTO/Alamy Stock Photo

Printed by SCRIP-J, Trinidad and Tobago

Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat on your smartphone, tablet, computer, and favourite digital devices! 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 2021. 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

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greater synergy among CARICOM countries. Regionally, several governments have already implemented technology solutions which allow them to centrally manage and disseminate crucial information related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The solutions include provisions to enable travel authorisation and airport screening, to support quarantine measures, and manage the crucial process of tracking and tracing COVID cases. Perhaps this use of technology can be taken a step further, and applied to more collaborative border control, which could make regional movement more The COVID-19 inferno offers an opportunity for convenient for travellers. governments and businesses to transform themselves In the Caribbean, tourism and its related using digital tools, says Che Forgenie, and create a better services are an economic powerhouse, future and represent a couple of the main pillars sustaining our growth and development. Tourism’s contribution is multi-layered and cross-sectoral. The industry is a vital source tudents schooled in the Caribbean are exposed to of jobs — especially for women and youth — and income, via elements of Greek mythology, so many of us are familtourism receipts and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows. iar with the phoenix — the immortal bird that is reborn Digitisation can be a considerable enabler, which can provide a prong of support to players within the tourism and over and over again in paradise, each time rising from the fire service industries (hotels, cruise lines, restaurants, airports, and ashes of its previous reincarnation. The legend evokes airlines), linking them directly and in (near) real time to the elements of life and death, creation and destruction. Even time government departments to whom they may be accountable. itself is tied in with the tale of the phoenix. This crisis is bringing about a sea of change in governA year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, we are ment and executive mindsets on the role of technology, with all too familiar with its devastating effect on business, mental health, and a long list of other areas. Further, in many countries substantial investment at the government and business levels towards sustainability and competitive advantage. large and small, developed and undeveloped, the tourism and As far as the Caribbean goes, as in the rest of the world, service-related industries have been decimated. Restaurants, the pandemic has tested our mettle. However, major lessons hotels, cruise lines, and airlines have all been dealt a severe can be drawn from the steps that have already been taken blow due to the pandemic — in some cases, a fatal one. globally. One lesson is the importance of learning — both tactiI wonder how history will record this pandemic and its cally, in the process of making specific changes to businesses effects. Will the world emerge like the phoenix, or will the (which technologies to execute, and how), and organisationally, impact of COVID consume us beyond recognition? If I was a in how to manage change at a pace that greatly exceeds that betting person, I would place my stakes on the former. There of prior known experiences. is opportunity within the pandemic’s inferno. COVID-19 has As travel re-opens and our service sector exhales a little, brought to the fore the need for companies large and small to there is an opportunity to use technology along with other shed their feathers and re-emerge: stronger, agile, refreshed. resources to rethink and to build back better towards a more Management professor Leon Megginson opined that “It is sustainable, competitive, inclusive, and resilient tourism sector. not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most And like the phoenix who lived in paradise, similar to us in the intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Caribbean, we too, can rise above the ashes. The pandemic has pushed companies into rapid change, and over the technology tipping point. Digital transformation is now the standard. As a region, as individual governments and businesses, how adaptive we are to these changes, and how we manage to leverage digital technology to solve issues in our society, will bear heavily on our survival in this digital world. Within our version of paradise, the Caribbean, the re-opening of physical borders in many territories presents an opportunity to almost “eliminate” borders. Digital adoption has taken a quantum leap at both the organisational and industry levels, and the advances we have made can help to build

Rise like the phoenix

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wish you were here

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Potaro Gorge, Guyana Rising near the tepui Mt Ayanganna in the Pakaraima Mountains, the Potaro River flows eastwards for 140 miles before joining the Essequibo. For aeons, making its way across the vast Guiana Shield, the river has cut into the plateau of soft sandstone, creating a series of nine waterfalls, some small, some large, and one vast: world-famous Kaieteur, one of Guyana’s true natural wonders, and our planet’s largest single-drop waterfall. At Kaieteur, the Potaro plunges 741 feet from the edge of the plateau into its gorge, with a neverending roar and clouds of spray. From the top of the falls — which you can visit by air on a day-trip, or by trekking upriver — the view stretches across miles of rainforest broken only by glimpses of the river glinting in the sun.

Photography by Pete Oxford/Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo

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NEED TO KNOW

Rodney Legall/Alamy Stock Photo

Essential info to help you make the most of September and October — even in the middle of a pandemic

Don’t Miss Miami Carnival

Many of us have been haunted by memories of in-person Carnival experiences over the past pandemic year — the pulsating rhythms of steelpan or soca, the pageantry, the vibes we wish would last long after the last headpiece is toted home. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the countdown to the first physical Carnival since the start of COVID-19 is finally over. Miami Carnival has always been known to bring people together, and from 2 to 10 October, mas lovers will make up for lost time at the Junior Carnival, Panorama, and J’Ouvert events, and the highly anticipated Sunday Mas parade and concert. For updates on this Carnival reunion and the official schedule, visit www.miamicarnival.org. “Cause we heading out ah road, and we in party mode . . .” Shelly-Ann Inniss

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Thinking of advertising

Halcyon Salazar

General Manager Media & Editorial Projects Ltd. T: (868) 622 3821/5813/6138 E: hsalazar@meppublishers.com

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need to know

DIY

Long before the web, electronic games, or contemporary board games, there was warri — a traditional game of strategy which came to the Caribbean through our ancestors, a derivative of African mancala board games or pit and pebble games. Today, it remains deeply ingrained in the culture of Antigua and Barbuda, celebrated every October during National Warri Month. In West Africa’s ·Ijo· language, warri means “houses,” and in Antigua, the game is played in homes, schools, on street corners — you name it. Originating in Sudan, warri (also called oware in Ghana and ayoayo in Nigeria) is played by all ages. Although the name resembles a wordplay on war and worry, neither occurs during the game, despite the fact that strong mathematical skills and critical thinking for strategic moves are required. Warri involves two players and forty-eight seeds called nickars, which traditionally come from plants of the Guilandina genus. Grab a goodnatured friend as your opponent, and try to capture more seeds than her. An elongated wooden board containing six hollows on each side (twelve in total) rests between the two of you, and each player’s territory is marked by the holes on their side. At the beginning of the game, four seeds are placed in each hollow. To move, a player takes all the pieces from one hole and drops them one by one into the holes that follow in an anticlockwise motion. The next player does the same starting from any hollow on his side. Note that the seeds belong to both players, therefore a player’s seeds will deliberately go into the opponent’s hollows, and this will continue between the players until one of the two players manages to capture 12

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Courtesy Antigua & Barbuda Tourism Authority

The art of warri

them. You are not allowed to pick up seeds from your opponent unless you’re capturing. Capturing starts when the last seed from your turn ends on your opponent’s side and there are two or three seeds in the hollow. The seeds are then reaped and stored in two supplementary holes on the opposite ends of the board, or simply close to the reaper. Traditionally, the twelve hollows represent the months of the year. Since warri deals with seeds, each player becomes a farmer sowing where the ground is fertile, and of course he’ll have to defend his field. When conditions are favourable, he’ll raid his

adversary’s territory to accumulate reserves. Try making your own board, and join the fun. You can improvise a warri board by digging holes in the earth, as was customarily done in Africa, or use egg crates or bowls for the hollows. Depending on your artistic ability, you can even draw a board or carve your own out of wood. Who knows — it could be in the shape of a turtle, a seahorse, or even a barracuda. The seeds can be pebbles, small marbles, even seashells, but they need to be identical. Game on! SAI

Courtesy Marcel Pinas

need to know

Marcel Pinas’s Kibi Wi Totems outside Fort Zeelandia

All About … Afaka script Outside the austere stone walls of Fort Zeelandia in Paramaribo stands a cluster of towering cylinders, made from stacked oil drums painted a slick black, and mounted with intricate forms in cut aluminium. Created by artist Marcel Pinas, these Kibi Wi Totems assert a presence in the landscape of Suriname, and symbolise a desire for refuge. Pinas, born in the eastern district of Marowijne, is Ndjuka, one of the six Maroon peoples of Suriname, descended from enslaved Africans who in centuries past escaped the horrors of the plantation and formed unique communities in the forested interior, and rich, distinctive cultures — celebrated annually on Maroon Heritage Day, 10 October. Ndjuka is also the name of a language, thought to be spoken today by about thirty thousand people in Suriname and across the border in French Guiana. The symbols on Pinas’s totems represent Ndjuka phrases — “kibi wi” means “protect us” — in a unique script devised over a century ago. Around the year 1908, a Ndujka man

named Afaka Atumisi had a dream in which, he later said, a spirit promised to reveal to him a series of symbols for writing the Ndjuka language, which at that point was entirely oral. Afaka eventually compiled fifty-six characters, which came to be known as Afaka script, creating a syllabary for the language, in which each character represents a specific syllable.

Afaka taught his script to others, and by the time he died in 1918 it was reported that over a hundred people in the Tapanahony area could read and write his script. It came to broader attention when a Catholic missionary named Brother Bernard observed Afaka’s nephew Abena reading a book written in what seemed to the friar to be mysterious symbols. In later decades, the number of fluent readers and writers declined. By 1975, an article in the Suriname Museum journal estimated that “most probably there remain only five.” Today, it’s more common for Ndjuka to be written (or typed) in Roman characters, but Afaka’s script continues to survive — making Ndjuka the only surviving Creole language with its own indigenous writing system. That survival is in large part due to the efforts of Marcel Pinas and other Surinamese artists — Maroon or otherwise — who use the characters in their work as an assertive motif of cultural identity. Afaka script recurs in Pinas’s paintings, sculptures, and works in other mediums, spelling out a message of persistence and resilience for the present and the future. Nixon Nelson

li, le

te, ten (‘ti’)

wa, wan

di (‘ba’)

e, en

do, du

u, ku

so, su

ko, ku

no, nu

we, wi

me, mi

dyo, dyu

lo, lu

mo, mu

nya, nyu

ba, pa

bo, bu

tya

se, si

fo, fu

go, gu

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Courtesy LES ÎLES

need to know

Joven Caribeno (2019), by Walkind Rodriquez

How To Become an art collector Artistic talent from the Caribbean is vast and diverse, owing to our mixed cultural backgrounds, modern perspectives, and intricate histories and geographies. This diversity makes Caribbean art exciting and competitive in the global market. LES ÎLES (“the islands” in French) is a new online marketplace for contemporary Caribbean art. It’s also building its own private collection dedicated to living Caribbean artists, while encouraging new collectors to do the same. Shelly-Ann Inniss learns more 14

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Experiencing art increases dopamine in the brain, and captivating artworks can be found just about everywhere these days — not only traditional museums, but in social media and online galleries. With advances in digital technology combined with the volume of creative talent in our region, LES ÎLES was launched in 2020 to connect Caribbean artists digitally with the international art market — on a scale that can impact as many artists as possible, including both established and non-established figures who may not have had the opportunity to exhibit internationally before. “Investing in our own people is our collective path to success,” says Anjeni Ramtahal, founder of LES ÎLES. Opportunities to speak with the artists personally, visit their studios, and learn more about them have significantly increased due to online avenues, too. But how do new collectors decide where to start without breaking the bank? Ramtahal recommends understanding what you emotionally connect with, as a starting point. “Being a member of the Caribbean diaspora, I connected very strongly with Caribbean artists, as they address a lot of issues I recognise in my daily life,” she says, “particularly relating to identity and migration.” Joven Caribeño, a painting by LES ÎLES participating artist Walkind Rodriguez, depicts a young boy who leaves the Dominican Republic, the artist explains. He feels guilty about abandoning his country, and fears going into the unknown. Later, he learns new cultures and practices, which eventually enrich who he becomes — indicated by the colourful lines flowing through his body. This is one of the pieces featured in LES ÎLES’ private collection, and the personal story of many others in the diaspora. New art collectors might be apprehensive about investing via online shopping, but LES ÎLES takes a personalised approach to the journey. “Our hands-on support involves customised presentations of the artist’s stories, works and trajectories, theme, and aesthetic. We provide images and videos of the works, and also visualisations of them in the collector’s own space based on their budget,” explains Ramtahal. Fundamentally, there’s an immense difference between buying art and collecting it. You don’t have to be a collector to start acquiring pieces that you love. Buying is for fun and can be whimsical; whereas, collecting is more purposeful and strategic. Art collections are incredible investments that can have a profitable return in the future. Unlike stocks or financial investments, art is a tangible investment and its value remains even if the market dives. Keep in mind that investments are a waiting game as they take time before a profit is realised. Over the past year, LES ÎLES has seen artist value grow significantly due to factors such as major public commissions, museum acquisitions, and international exhibitions. “The trajectory is different for each artist, and this is what we consult on when recommending art as an investment — from artists who are just graduating, to those that are already represented,” Ramtahal says. In the end, the experience of art is always subjective; therefore, when purchasing a piece, buy what moves you, what you can afford. Be absolutely certain whether you are investing in an original or a copy, and document your purchases thoroughly. If you have any doubts about works you’ve purchased or refrained from buying, pause for a while, and engage in serious research and evaluation. Always remember that the quality of the piece is more important than the artist’s name, and art education is a continuous process.

need to know

The Read The ibis and the heron Across cultures, storytime is a treasured opportunity to entertain, pass on lessons, and share community spirit from time immemorial. During Guyana’s Indigenous Heritage Month every September, traditional tales are always on the programme, as storytellers from Indigenous communities share their wit and wisdom. Among the Makushi — one of Guyana’s Indigenous groups, who live mainly in the north Rupununi — pantanî (pronounced pan-duh-nee) means stories, and there are many of them. The recent anthology 33 Amerindian Tales collects the insights of contemporary Makushi storytellers, sharing them with readers who can’t travel to Guyana to hear them in person — like this tale from Thomas John of Surama, translated by Kenneth Butler, illustrated by Géraud de Ville de Goyet

Fishing Birds In a time before human beings, where everything lived as one with the sea and the forest, there were two fishing birds. One was for the river and one was for the ponds. The first one was a green ibis, which only fished for worms on the shores of the river. The other was a cocoi heron, which looked for fish in the ponds. Both were the best at what they did. Rumours spread about their individual skills, and there were talks of one being better than the other. It came to the attention of the green ibis, which became very upset and decided to trick the cocoi heron into displaying his “charms.” Having heard about the rumours, the heron also wanted to see the ibis’s charms, so he accepted the challenge without further discussions. They decided to hold a competition to see who was the best fishing bird of all. It was set to begin at the first sign of the full moon and to last for the whole duration of the full moon. The other birds would be the judges of the two. The ibis and the heron got themselves ready for the big event

and after several days of hard training came the full moon, which signalled the beginning of the competition. Both birds took out their charms and rubbed them. Everyone was amazed at what was taking place in front of them. There were so many fish coming towards the heron and so many worms towards the ibis! Both birds continued fishing tirelessly for three nights. When it finally came to an end, the judges started counting the number of fish and worms that the two birds had gathered. Both birds were so tired that they could not even stand on their legs anymore, so they just dropped right there, waiting for the judges to tally up the numbers. When the judges finally finished their count, it was time for everyone to know which was the best fishing bird. The ibis was

certain it would be him, but so was the heron, and everyone had their feathers crossed for their favourite bird. But when the judges announced that it was a tie, the ibis couldn’t believe it and fainted upon hearing the result. Likewise, the heron was so disappointed that he started crying. And all the other birds left the ibis and the heron. A few hours later, having digested the initial shock of the results, the ibis and the heron were still curious to know how the other had done. They decided to exchange their charms so that the other could feel how it works. But what they had not realised is that they did not fish for the same thing. And when they set out to test the other’s charm, they were about to get surprised. Using the ibis’s charm by the river, the heron started seeing worms crawling towards him and he got scared and flew away. At the same time, the ibis was doing the same thing with the heron’s charm and, seeing all the fish swimming towards him, he was so scared that he left the pond and did not return. He went to the river, looking for the heron, while the heron was looking for him by the pond. To this day, they still haven’t found each other. That is why you can see the heron fishing in the ponds while the ibis is always by the river, looking for worms . . .

33 Amerindian Tales, edited by Dr Géraud de Ville de Goyet, is a selection of the best stories originally published by the Pantanî Blog’s digital storytelling project. It’s available for download at cobracollective.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/12/33_ amerindian_tales_low.pdf

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bookshelf

This month’s reading picks from the Caribbean Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor

Musings, Mazes, Muses, Margins by Gordon Rohlehr (Peepal Tree Press, 184 pp, ISBN 9781845234652) For every factual record made of the Caribbean space, a parallel fiction must surely exist. Is there a subterranean region that dwells purely, fantastically, in our dreamspace? If so, prolific literary historian, critic, and scholar Gordon Rohlehr leads us to its underwater territories in Musings, Mazes, Muses, Margins. A genre-resistant odyssey, at once intensely personal and remarkably allegorical, the work is nothing less than an invitation to spend time in the labyrinthine splendour of Rohlehr’s mind. Woven into the generosity with which the author shares his Guyanese upbringing are blueprints of hidden messages, extraordinary stratagems, condensed and spiralling reflections: all the prototypical efforts of a dream diary, a metaphysical travelogue, and a tome to face the current uncertainty of this age, all in one. It’s an inimitable masterclass in being both present and perpetually open to oneself, and to one’s place. 16

Sweethand

All the Rage

Antiman

by N.G. Peltier (Piatkus Books, 278 pp, ISBN 9780349429755)

by Rosamond S. King (Nightboat Books, 112 pp, ISBN 9781643620718)

by Rajiv Mohabir (Restless Books, 352 pp, ISBN 9781632062802)

A Trinidadian romance novel should be saccharine, sentimental, and full of soca, right? Not so fast, says N.G. Peltier’s first entry in the Island Bites series: there’s more to loving on an island than those sanddusted tropes. When pastry chef Cherisse and music producer Keiran collide on home soil for a much anticipated wedding, they don’t expect the dynamic of their longstanding enmity to shift — except, of course, it does. Lust stirred into the equation, alongside flaring tempers and oppositional views: it’s a perfect cocktail for drama-tinged allure. What distinguishes Peltier’s approach to local romance is her striving for authenticity: Trinidad shouldn’t feel like a colourful foil backdrop for stereotypical fulsome fare, and in her hands, it doesn’t. Add a pair of protagonists who feel like well-honed individuals unto themselves, not merely two souls yearning to be the bake to each other’s shark, and you’re in for a seriously good time.

Open any blood-soaked atlas to the world’s inequities: white supremacy is at the heart of so many of them. If this is uncomfortable to hear, then All the Rage, Rosamond S. King’s second full-length collection of poems, will make for an incendiary reading companion, as necessary as it is unapologetic. King’s verse rifles through bodegas, upends abattoirs, knocks hard against the thick visors of police brutality, asking questions most of us aren’t brave or resolute enough to voice: will those with blood on their hands and in their lineages stand up and be accountable? Will Black femmes and girls ever be able to breathe easier in American streets? These poems play as much as they confront, hopscotching and diagramming themselves on the page, defiantly eking out pleasure zones on the battlefield, stealing roses under quarantine, limboing disrespectfully before the Stars and Stripes. This is lifesaving, confrontational work.

How can the Self sing itself into being? Rajiv Mohabir’s transcendental memoir Antiman never hides from its reader, even when subterfuge might mean easier, more breathable survival. It’s just one of the multifarious beauties of a book that is part confessional, part bhajan, part verse-lair. The memoirist brings his lush, oft-brutal lyricism as a poet to bear on the story of his life, his family’s, and the undulating rhythms of a quest for radical selflove. The result is a world of intense contradictions and stunning discoveries, whose truths peal forth in haunting prose. Embracing his Aji’s Guyanese Bhojpuri is an affront to Mohabir’s father, who rids the home of Hindu signposts; one poignant scene sees beloved remnants of tradition destroyed. Be prepared to read Antiman far from dryeyed, as a reclamatory and alchemical act: this is the most undaunted writing to emerge in our contemporary Americas.

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playlist

This month’s listening picks from the Caribbean Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell

Single Spotlight

National Trash

Option

Jamaica to India

Lágrimas Negras

Gary Hector (self-released)

Oswald (ACP)

Emiway Bantai and Chris Gayle (Bantai Studio)

Mista Savona feat. Beatriz Márquez (Cumbancha)

On rock-n’-roller Gary Hector’s solo debut album, away from his legendary band jointpop, one hears in the songs the timbres of Mick Jagger and Johnny Cash and the aesthetic spirits of Dylan and Elvis Presley, coalescing to present a standout musical declaration of an independent spirit in an island space that time and again demands much cultural allegiance. The simple juxtaposition of the strum of an acoustic guitar and the twang of a pedal steel guitar — masterfully performed by Nashville ace John Heinrich — as lead instrumental sounds leaves sonic space for lyrics to plot a storyline that acknowledges shortcomings and dreams, and reveals love and regret. A mature self-reckoning of his place in Trinidad and Tobago serves to reinforce Hector’s compact songs with a sense of ironic pathos and a kind of mordant wit that gives the album a feeling of triumph — not the victory often awarded to island émigrés, but a win for staying true. Golden.

Oswald Clerveus from Saint-Martin — the French side of the island — is a hitmaker who croons kompa and zouk incorporating modern R&B and pop that is a fan favourite for many. His latest album, Option, has fifteen tracks sung in both Kwéyòl and English, creating a pleasurable exercise for non-native ears, dancing between lyrics that bring universality to the Caribbean language and music that plays with our idea of modernity. Sensuality drips from songs like “First Night” — “This is only between you and me / No need to hold back / You don’t have to worry / I won’t tell nobody if we do it on the first night.” That sonic aesthetic continues throughout the album, suggesting that the chill vibe is a preferred normal in a locked-down Caribbean. There is an easy familiarity to some of the harmonies and melodies, assuring popular uptake after a first listen. Dancing close is guaranteed.

We are told that cricket “has always been more than a game in Trinidad.” In the rest of the West Indies, too, for that matter. We know that is also the case in India. That similarity provides a connection for collaboration beyond the boundary. Popular Indian rapper Emiway Bantai has teamed up with Jamaican cricket superstar Chris Gayle to give the world a dancehall-infused jam with hints of Bollywood that is sung in both in English and Hindi. Hedonistic, braggadocious, fun. Who’s complaining? “Remember the days when we never had nothing / Now a three course meals (yeah) steak and mutton (rich).” One gets the sense that the Indian market is a magnet for our cricketers from the Caribbean. DJ Bravo from Trinidad has a hit record there, “Champion”, that could easily be matched by this tune. Maybe Gayle is paving a path for a post-cricket life. Songs as earworms and a vast Indian market are a great place to begin. Six runs!

“Lágrimas Negras” is an iconic Cuban song lamenting a jilted love. It’s been described as the “perfect fusion of the son with the bolero,” and represents a proud cultural heritage. From the forthcoming album Havana Meets Kingston — Part 2, Australian producer Mista Savona has once again — the first time was in 2017 — tapped into the meaningful connections between Jamaica and Cuba to plant the seeds for a new synergy that tingles with the idea of uplifting dub rhythms giving hope to the lyrics of melancholy. Here is a cast of icons: Jamaican drummer and riddim king Sly Dunbar matches Cuban avant-garde jazz bassist Gáston Joya to provide a rhythmic base upon which Beatriz Márquez’s vocals give credence to her repuation as one of the very greats. Sublime solos from pianist Rolando Luna and trumpeter Julito Padrón make this single a welcome sign of another great recorded meeting of island cultures.

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the deal

The UWI’s “revenue revolution” The University of the West Indies predicts that research-driven private sector partnerships can strengthen economic and social recovery across the region — with benefits for companies, governments, and the UWI itself. Natalie Dookie talks to Vice-Chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles to learn more Photography courtesy the University of the West Indies

he pandemic has wreaked havoc on the Caribbean, inflicting massive economic damage, with many countries in the region at risk of becoming COVID-19 economic longhaulers. Recovery from this historic recession is expected to be fragmented and uncertain. It is against this backdrop that the largest and longest-standing higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, the University of the West Indies, provides a glimmer of hope. Recognised as a centre of excellence in research, knowledge creation, and innovation, the UWI is well-positioned to steer the Caribbean’s “build back better” campaign, with private sector partnerships playing a vital role in the next chapter of the UWI story. Since assuming office in 2015, Vice-Chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles — a distinguished academic and international thought leader — has championed the university’s “reputation revolution” movement. “We wanted to be ranked by the best

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and most respected ranking agency in the world, Times Higher Education,” says Beckles, “so we studied the pillars on which universities are assessed, and embarked on a three-year journey to fix the university within the context of that matrix, subsequently initiating our first-ever ranking in 2018.” To date, the UWI remains the only university in the English-speaking Caribbean to make the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Using UNESCO’s base data, the Times impact

ranking in fact positions the UWI in the top 2.5 per cent of the best universities globally. Building on this success, as the university approaches its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2023, it hopes to be well on the way to realising the self-sufficiency goals set out in its ten-year Triple A strategy, founded on three pillars: access, which means increasing participation in higher education for all; agility, creating an entrepreneurial university; and alignment, creating value-added relationships with partners. As Beckles explains, “We are now in the ‘revenue revolution’ phase, where each campus will be required to have a number of bankable commercial projects, which will present opportunities to further partnerships with the private sector. In Trinidad, for instance, by 2022, the St Augustine campus will launch an offshore global medical school. It is anticipated that within three to five years, this project could generate up to twenty-five per cent of the campus’s long-term capital and revenue needs.” Local investors will be invited to help fund this venture, when the UWI floats a US$60-million bond on the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange. In addition to these project financing opportunities, the UWI also wants to partner with progressive Caribbean entrepreneurs to take innovative products to market. “We want to put our private sector relationships on a more sophisticated sustainable path. The UWI has a massive bank of intellectual property in agriculture, banking, finance, music, and tourism, to name a few, and we are eager to convert this into commercial activity by developing patents,” says Beckles. This time around, however, the university wants to ensure that it remains connected to its IP research.

istorically, the UWI has been at the forefront of pioneering industrialisation research in the Caribbean. In the 1960s and 70s, the Cave Hill campus was among the first to explore solar water heating technology. More recently, after fifty years of leading the climate change agenda, in 2019 the International Association of Universities selected the UWI as its global leader in the mobilisation of research and advocacy for the achievement of a climate-smart world. Funded by the UNDP, the UWI will be the first university to host an institute dedicated completely to climate smart studies. The soft launch of the UWI Global Institute for Climate Smart and Resilient Development is expected to take place soon. If it is to advance its research agenda, the UWI needs to bring entrepreneurs and researchers together. Beckles is keen to establish commercial and industrial research and innovation parks at each campus. “These parks should be owned and driven by the private sector,” he says. “We will provide the facilities and they will work with our scientists to innovate products. To advance this initiative, we are working with Caribbean governments to develop a framework of incentives to encourage private sector participation in an Innovation and Research Fund, which will drive regional transformation and help convert research into industrial activity.” Governments in the region are on board, as they get ready to award exclusive commercial licences in a number of new areas to the UWI. “We will be able to establish companies around these licences,” Beckles explains, “and this will trigger the dawn

of new business relations between regional governments and the UWI. One area in which our biochemists and biologists can get to work immediately is by applying science and technology to cannabis research, developing cannabis medicinal products to go to market.” If a regional business wants to convert research into entrepreneurial efforts and develop new products, then the university wants to work with them. There’s already a lot of joint activity taking place between Caribbean governments and the UWI in the area of research and innovation, especially with respect to re-imagining the post-COVID period, and what needs to be done to build the region back better. “The operations of the UWI must align with the strategic plans of the countries in which we operate. We want to help Caribbean countries come to an innovation

The university’s research should “leave the faculties and go into the factories,” says Sir Hilary Beckles ecosystem consciousness,” says Beckles. In 2017, the UWI established a partnership with the government of Jamaica to host the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre. Chaired by Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, this is a transformative tool, which seeks to safeguard and protect the tourism product globally. With the decimation of many tourism-based regional markets due to the pandemic, the work by the centre on innovating tourism products and developing post-COVID marketing strategies is now critical to the reactivation of Caribbean tourism. This encapsulates Beckles’s vision for how the university’s research should work: it must “leave the faculties and go into the factories” in order to positively impact Caribbean businesses, jobs, and economies. For innovation to take place on a wider scale in the region, the Caribbean needs to have an indigenous private sector committed to research and development. Caribbean countries must also be at a stage of economic development where they are ready for this type of cross-fertilisation. “We are ready and driven,” says Beckles of the university’s next stage of development, “even more so by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have to get on with it. It’s a very exciting moment for us — however, we cannot do it alone, which is why the alignment pillar is very important. We can only do this with the support of the governments and a progressive private sector.” n

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round trip

Just like the movies From Hollywood classics like Fire Down Below and Heaven Knows, Mr Allison to innovative independent projects by local filmmakers, the Caribbean’s diverse landscapes have appeared in numerous movies over the decades. Join us on a tour of some unforgettable locations across our region that have brought life and colour to the cinema screen

The natural cave system in the Exumas now called Thunderball Grotto was a filming location for a classic James Bond movie

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The Bahamas

Courtesy Bahamas Ministry of Tourism & Aviation

When 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea premiered in 1954, it was the most expensive Hollywood production to date, and one of the first to be filmed in wide-screen CinemaScope. Based on the classic Jules Verne novel about Captain Nemo’s submarine the Nautilus, its undersea sequences — with special effects which were then considered state-of-the-art — were filmed partly in the Bahamas, whose extraordinary underwater reef formations astonished viewers. Hollywood came calling in the Bahamas again in 1965, with the James Bond film Thunderball. Sean Connery, as Bond, experiences Junkanoo in Nassau before discovering the undersea lair of the villain Emilio Largo. The filming location in the Exumas — a natural cave system with a narrow entrance, where colourful fish teem in the eerie glimmering water — is to this day known as Thunderball Grotto, a favourite site for snorkellers and Bond fans alike. Meanwhile, 2010’s Children of God, directed by Bahamian Kareem Mortimer, opens in Nassau but soon shifts to Eleuthera, the long, tapering island famed for its pink sand beaches. Here, the film’s characters variously seek and sometimes find creative inspiration, spiritual solace, and romance, and the laid-back, idyllic landscape contrasts with the high-stakes drama of the plot.

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Dominica Published in 1953, Phyllis Shand Allfrey’s novel The Orchid House — a fictionalised version of the author’s earlier life, set in Dominica — is now considered a classic of Caribbean literature, described by Allfrey herself as “a love story by a woman in love with an island.” Nearly forty years later, it was brought to life on the small screen by Trinidadian filmmaker Horace Ové, who directed a four-part adaptation for the UK’s Channel 4, filmed entirely on location in Allfrey’s home island. “Dominica itself was the real star of the film,” according to Polly Patullo, writing in Caribbean Beat in 1993. “As Phyllis Allfrey described it, the island is removed from the stereotype of sweeping white-sand beaches and hotels drenched in bougainvillea. It is a wild place of mountains, rainforest, waterfalls, a mysterious Boiling Lake, rare parrots, and a luxuriance of greenery that dazzles the eye whichever way one turns.” The Nature Isle’s astounding, rugged natural beauty also attracted the producers of the wildly popular Pirates of the Caribbean series, who used Indian River, the sulphurous Valley of Desolation, the Titou Gorge, and the cliff-backed bays of the northeast coast to represent various fantastical locations for swashbuckling adventures.

Dominica's wild, rugged landscape was the setting for the TV adaptation of Phyllis Shand Allfrey's novel The Orchid House

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Hello Bipo/Shutterstock.com

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Trinidad

Jason C. Audain

For many cineastes, 1974’s Bim — about a gangster anti-hero turned politician, played by Ralph Maraj — remains the high point of Trinidadian film. In more recent decades, a government-supported film sector has produced dozens of features and shorts, most of them showcased at the annual Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, and many also going on to the regional and international festival round. Filmmakers have taken advantage of Trinidad’s diverse landscapes — from the gritty bustle of Port of Spain, as seen in She Paradise (2020), to the hilltop village of Paramin, the main location for Play the Devil (2016), and the rainforests of the Northern Range, setting for the thriller The Cutlass (2017). The largely rural district of Mayaro, in the island’s southeast corner, has been a favourite location, with its windswept Atlantic beaches stretching for miles, vast coconut estates, and close-knit village communities. 2009’s The Ghost of Hing King Estate, directed by pioneer Horace Ové, used rural Mayaro as the setting for a chilling mystery drama, featuring a host of local theatre luminaries, like Michael Cherrie, Eunice Alleyne, Wendell Manwarren, and Cecilia Salazar. Gentler in tone, 2017’s Green Days by the River brought the beloved Michael Anthony novel to the screen, a story of first love, growing pains, and the verge of adulthood.

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Rural southeast Trinidad — with its acres of coconut trees and vast beaches — is a favourite location for filmmakers

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Downtown Kingston, birthplace of reggae, was immortalised in the classic film The Harder They Come

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Jamaica

Friedrich Stark/Alamy Stock Photo

Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, had a holiday house on Jamaica’s north coast, so it’s no surprise that the island was the setting for 1962’s Dr No, the first in the Bond film franchise, which has often favoured Caribbean locations. (1995’s GoldenEye, though not set in Jamaica, was named for Fleming’s villa.) But a more grounded and rooted portrait of the island and its people emerges from the work of its own filmmakers, among whom the late Perry Henzell is still a towering figure. His 1972 crime drama The Harder They Come is often said to be the film that introduced reggae music to the world, with Jimmy Cliff in the lead role and music by the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, and the Melodians, among others, in the mix, and the city of Kingston prominently featured. A few years later, in 1976, Smile Orange took a satirical look at the Caribbean tourism industry, with acclaimed actor Carl Bradshaw leading the cast and a barely exaggerated setting in an unnamed north coast resort. More recently, 2010’s Better Mus’ Come is a social drama set in the 1970s — a time of intense political unrest in the country — with a love story at its core, and a gripping recreation of the urban landscape in which reggae grew to maturity.

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Folio Images/Alamy Stock Photo

Tobago For many travellers from outside the region, Trinidad’s sister isle — with its lushly forested Main Ridge, picturesque bays, and teeming coral reefs — is a well-kept secret. But in the late 1950s, the island was certainly on the radar for Hollywood location scouts, who chose Tobago as a substitute for more distant tropical settings. In 1957’s Heaven Knows, Mr Allison, Tobago stood in for an unnamed island in the South Pacific during the Second World War. Stars Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum played a missionary nun and a US Navy officer stranded and threatened by hostile Japanese soldiers. Dozens of young ChineseTrinidadian men were hired as extras, since there was no local Japanese community to draw on. A few years later, in the Disney family adventure movie Swiss Family Robinson, Tobago once again played the role of a Pacific island, where a clever Swiss family manage to survive shipwreck and the depredations of pirates to build an idyllic treehouse — actually constructed by set builders in a giant samaan tree near Goldsborough. Various other scenes were filmed at locations including Pigeon Point, Mt Irvine, and Belle Garden — where an elaborate shipwreck set was constructed out on the rocks. Jump forward a few decades to 2016’s Bazodee — a musical romantic comedy starring soca legend Machel Montano — and Tobago finally got to play itself, with a beach resort offering the location and opportunity for the leads to start the plot-required process of falling for each other.

Tobago's gorgeous coast of sheltered bays and steep cliffs stood in for the South Pacific in a couple of classic Hollywood movies

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closeup

Hidden figures From a massive block of Arctic ice shipped to the Caribbean to a gold urn launched into orbit, Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan creates works that blur the lines between science and art. The intention, writes Andre Bagoo, is to meditate on history’s unsung heroes

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he giant ice block, cut from a frozen river in northern Alaska, weighs 4.5 tons. Its sides appear dip-dyed, like a Mark Rothko painting fading from white to blue. It is a translucent thing of beauty in its own right, glistening in the metallic mouth of a forklift. But artist and explorer Tavares Strachan (his surname is pronounced Strahn), the first Bahamian to visit the North Pole, has plans for it. In March 2005, Strachan ships this block of ice to his old primary school in Nassau. It is housed in a solar-powered refrigerator unit. Students are stunned and delighted. Fluctuations of temperature result in a delicate dance of fissures on the ice block’s surface. Strachan calls this work The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want. In this deeply resonant piece, the Nassau setting underlines the inaccessibility of the Arctic — as both a remote, physical space and a space of scientific exploration. What, we ask, accounts for the fact that in countries like the Bahamas, the dream of pursuing a career as an explorer or an astronaut or a scientist might seem out of reach? Equally, what accounts for the fact that only certain utilitarian disciplines are venerated, and a career in the arts might as well be like going to the North Pole? “That’s how I managed the question of expectation in a colony where the value of success is placed on law and medicine and science and engineering,” Strachan said of this work, in a profile last year. “If you weren’t one of those things, no one really paid attention.” But, he added, “It’s hard to dismiss four

Chris Hoover, courtesy the artist Chris Hoover, courtesy the artist

Opposite page The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (Arctic Ice Project) (2004−8; ice, refrigeration unit, solar panels, battery system) Above Excavating the ice block from a frozen river in Alaska Below Tavares Strachan on one of his expeditions to the North Pole

courtesy the artist

tons of ice in a MIT-built freezer system.” (Incidentally, one year later, fellow Bahamian artist Blue Curry would execute a kind of rejoinder, shipping a ton of sand from a beach in the Bahamas to a gallery in Germany). Strachan has earned a reputation for projects that examine what happens when art and science collide. Yet he’s not necessarily exploring the margins between two seemingly disparate disciplines. He’s co-opting the guises of scientific enquiry to examine who makes it into the room and who does not. I see his work as being engaged with history: with what the Irish poet Eavan Boland might have described as “the secret histories of things”; with the people who do not make it into the official record. Who gets to lay claim to discovering the North Pole? Who gets to go into outer space? Who gets to discover DNA?

trachan divides his time mainly between the Bahamas and New York City. He was born in Nassau in 1979, the second of six boys. His mother was a seamstress and his father worked with the police. Growing up on a small island, he’d roam the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica, cultivate a habit of gardening, explore the flora and fauna of New Providence Island (where you can ride in horse-drawn carriages), and feast on the wonders of the sea, fishing for red snapper and spending hours adrift on cerulean waters. “I think the sense of isolation, for me, created this kind of imaginary universe,” he’s said. That imaginary universe informed his sense of being boundless. Strachan grew up not feeling empowered by art. Yet he decided to

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courtesy the artist

Above The Encyclopedia of Invisibility (Mahogany #9) (2018; leather, gilding, archival paper, maple, felt, acrylic, book, with stand) Opposite page Tavares Strachan wearing one of his B.A.S.E.C. jackets

Tavares Strachan has earned a reputation for projects that examine what happens when art and science collide

study painting at the University of the Bahamas. Then he signed up for the demanding glassworks programme at the Rhode Island School of Design in the US in 2000. Mastering glass is a difficult task, a steep summit to surmount by any standards. This act alone anticipated Strachan’s future projects: it was a gesture that hinted at defiance and a kind of fragility. (Among the projects in which he subsequently put some of his skills to use is a project that reportedly involved a series of rockets built from glass that used sugarcane as fuel). He eventually settled in New York in 2008, two years after finishing a sculpture MFA at Yale, and now lives with his family in Harlem. Despite his eagerness to discover the world

beyond the Caribbean, the Bahamas is never far from Strachan’s consciousness. For his 2003 senior thesis, the artist sent a light metre to his mother’s house in Nassau, transmitted its readings online, and devised a plexiglass light box that radiated the lumens of his childhood bedroom. He’s also launched a fashion label, B.A.S.E.C., in collaboration with his mother Ella. The line’s pieces — which Strachan sees as no less important than the rest of his work — include bomber jackets designed to do precisely what the ice block he shipped from Alaska did: bring other worlds home. In addition to being a fashion line, B.A.S.E.C. stands for the Bahamas Air and Sea Exploration Centre, the entity founded by Strachan to increase young people’s access to science and technology, after his stint training as a cosmonaut at a Russian military facility in 2009. B.A.S.E.C. pieces, produced entirely in the Bahamas, are embroidered with the logo of the centre and also feature images of the Arctic and figures like Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr., the first African-American astronaut, who died in a supersonic jet crash before he could reach space in 1967.

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brooke didonato, courtesy the artist

courtesy anthony meier fine arts

“The jackets are all reversible, so the idea is that the person of the future will wear one thing in many ways, as opposed to many things in one way,” Strachan says. Last year, for his work entitled Enoch, he also launched an effigy commemorating Lawrence into orbit: a twenty-four-karat-gold urn featuring the astronaut’s likeness.

n addition to being the first Bahamian to visit the North Pole (he’s made at least four expeditions), Strachan helmed the first Bahamian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, in 2013. He has also shown work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the MIT List Visual Arts Centre, and has been the recipient of awards such as the 2019– 20 Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute. Strachan’s first major British solo exhibition, In Plain Sight, opened in September 2020 at the Marian Goodman Gallery in London, and involved an immersive, site-specific experience that incorporated new and existing work. Its main point of departure was the figure of Matthew Henson, an African-American explorer who was the first person to reach the North Pole in 1909 (Henson looms over much of Strachan’s work, including the ice block project). Henson’s story has long been overlooked, undoubtedly because of his race, and Strachan’s meditations on his life comprise part of a larger project called The Encyclopedia of Invisibility, inspired by his childhood, and by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. Whereas Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings seeks to catalogue folkloric inventions, Strachan’s

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tom powel imaging, courtesy the artist

Above Installation view of the Bahamas Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2013 Opposite page, above and below What Will Be Remembered in the Face of All that Is Forgotten (2014; neon sculpture, stainless steel, nine transformers, MDF)

Encyclopedia considers what real-life things might not have made it into the Encyclopedia Britannica. “It’s interesting to look at this body of work — or all the work that I’ve been doing for the past two decades — as a kind of protest,” Strachan told The New York Times Magazine. The Encyclopedia is partly a sculptural work, a 2,416-page book with fifteen thousand entries describing people, places, objects, concepts, artworks, and scientific phenomena that are hard to see. Urban legends, invented languages, B-movies, and mythical creatures jostle alongside entries on Tara Grinstead (an American beauty queen who mysteriously disappeared in 2005), the Haenyeo (female deep-sea divers of South Korea, known for their iron will and determination), and a species of glass squid found in the Antarctic, Galiteuthis glacialis. Strachan also used pages from the text to wallpaper the gallery walls, inviting us to consider what the art world might be missing. But the show had a twist. Some of these forgotten figures jumped off the walls and came to life, actors singing of the forgotten and downcast, of war, race, and freedom. Henson and Lawrence emerged, backlit by art and arias. “The gallery turns out to contain hidden spaces, through which this promenade performance weaves its stirring way,” reported the critic Elizabeth Price in the UK Guardian. This performative turn is a natural development for an artist whose concepts and ideas have always had a playful yet epic feel. Apart from shipping an Arctic ice block to the Aubrey Sayle Primary School in Nassau, Strachan has had entire

shows that ooze drama. There was the exhibition whose location was secret (2011’s seen/unseen), and his installations that spell out “I am,” “You belong here,” and “We are in this together” in huge neon displays (created between 2014 and 2020). He has also brought figures like Rosalind Franklin, an overlooked English chemist whose work was key in understanding DNA, hauntingly back to life, using intriguing materials like a cricket ball, mineral oil, and Plexiglas (2015’s Seeing is Forgetting the Thing that You Saw). His paintings, which place diverse figures like Queen Elizabeth II and James Baldwin together in collage-like arrangements, also feel like the work of an artist making new spaces in the theatre of life. Or, rather, an artist showing us the spaces we were never meant to go to. n

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snapshot

Prime factor Confessional in tone, fusing influences from calypso, reggae, and folk music, the songs of Trinidadian singer Annalie Prime draw listeners in with their emotion, writes Laura Dowrich — and that sense of connection has won her a devoted audience in the year since her debut album was released Photography by Bryan Bissoon, courtesy Annalie Prime

istening to Annalie Prime’s debut album I Think Too Much can feel like an intrusion. It’s like a diary you’ve stumbled upon, and while you feel like you shouldn’t have this much insight into her mind, you can’t help but be drawn into the raw emotion and relatable lyrics. In the song “’Lee M’Alone”, she sings an anthem for all introverts, with the chorus “If I get low, low, low, when I get high imma say hello. Give me some space for a while I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to smile.” Or, in “In My Head”, Prime is a girl curled up in bed pining for an unrequited love: “I just want to love you and only you, I just want to know you’re mine. Don’t nobody want real love no more, so I’ll hold you in my mind.” Prime’s soulful lyrics have resonated with many listeners who discovered the singer over the past year. She’s seen subscribers to her YouTube channel grow

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every day, and the buzz has seen her starring in Nessa Preppy’s virtual concert for her album launch and a home concert series by telecoms provider Digicel. She also became the face for Trinidadian menswear designer DAWW Creations for his women’s line, and the LivinLocal clothing line from media personality Aaron Fingal. Prime says she was surprised fans connected to her music, which she confesses is really a bunch of journal entries. “Because we are connected,” she says, commenting on the album’s appeal, despite it being so personal. “That is something I really want to teach people through my music. As different as we are, the human journey is the biggest connection that we have. We are all experiencing life in the same way.” The album’s acceptance gave her confirmation that she is on the right path. “In Trinidad and Tobago, and probably the Caribbean, you don’t really get introspective music, people don’t really talk

about what they felt deep down. I was really afraid of putting stuff like that out, and I thought Caribbean people wouldn’t connect to it, because we are accustomed to happy-go-lucky songs,” she explains. Prime’s sound is a combination of calypso, reggae, and folk music, and she is one of a growing number of younger Trinidadian artistes, also including Jimmy October and Kalpee, who have embraced a fusion of sounds. “Folk is a huge part of my life,” she says. “Even though in my house secular music wasn’t played a lot, when my father played music, it would be that kind of music — country and folk music. That impacted me a lot, and it taught me how to tell stories in music, too.” Growing up in Chase Village in central Trinidad in a religious household, Prime was also exposed to non-secular music that was played repeatedly on local TV channels. The stars of the day — David Rudder, Ella Andall, Nappy Mayers, and Melanie Hudson — were who she was exposed to. When she started buying her own CDs in her early teens, she delved into popular American music, buying albums from Chris Brown and Alicia Keys. “Alicia Keys is the person who taught me to write songs,” she says. “Around form one, we just got Internet, and I was able to read about artistes. That was the first time I was able to read that Alicia Keys was a musician, singer, and songwriter just like Lauryn Hill. That sparked a fire, and pushed me to write songs in a professional way. Her album As I Am is where I learned about verse, pre-chorus, chorus, what was an interlude — I learned that from that album.” In 1998, when T&T’s Wendy Fitzwilliam won the Miss Universe competition, Prime was captivated by the serenade song “All My Life” by KC and JoJo. That planted the idea that she could be a singer, she says — not only because of the song, but because dark-skinned Black people dominated the pageant. “That whole night was magical,” she recalls. “It planted the seed.”

uoyed by her dream, Prime opened the songwriting floodgates, penning songs in seven copy books, each one containing a full album’s worth. She

Annalie Prime’s soulful lyrics have resonated with many listeners who discovered the singer over the past year

did a deep dive into learning as much as she could about recording and the technical aspects of creating music, and in 2013 started producing music that she put up on SoundCloud. She sent one of her songs, “Jasmine”, to an A&R agent in the United States, and got signed in 2014 to a four-song deal by Tommy Boy Entertainment, a legendary hip hop and electronic label. But the deal didn’t work out, Prime says, because her brand didn’t fit into what they expected from her. “They wanted more indie-pop — like Taylor Swift but with an African look. I do sing songs like those, but I also sing other types of songs. I understand as a label you are a business and you have to find ways to make money from the

artiste, but they weren’t able to package all of my styles together. I was expecting them to sit down and figure out a way to blend the genres together,” she says. Still, “I was really grateful for that opportunity, because from that I was able to learn what I really need if a label comes to me.” Following her separation from the label, Prime took a two-year mental health break, to sift through some personal and management issues which she says were draining her. It was during that time that her debut album was conceptualised. The first single, “Moko”, dropped just before T&T, like the rest of the world, went into lockdown to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime hit the brakes on the album, and, as she is wont to do, channelled her thoughts into

words, which resulted in a novel called Periwinkle Paradise, currently available on Amazon. The book is based on the mental disorder of the main protagonist, Jasmine Adderley — Prime’s alter ego, who also stars in a song on I Think Too Much called “Miss Adderley”. At the time of this interview, Prime was getting ready to release her sophomore album, 9, based on her birthday on the ninth of the ninth month. “This album is really about honouring feminine energy and bringing back a balance in the energies,” she says. She sings about that feminine energy in “I Get So Tired”, a social commentary on issues such as violence against women and racism. While she is open to a publishing or licensing deal, Prime is more focused on building a community around her music. And while she doesn’t see herself entering the soca arena, fans may see her in a calypso tent one day. “I love to listen to certain soca artistes, like Erphaan Alves and Kees Dieffenthaller, but for some reason I never felt compelled to sing it — soca is not my thing. Calypso is my thing,” she says. “The calypso that David Rudder and Ella Andall sing — once I hear that beat, that does call my soul more. If it have tent next year, you could see it!” n

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bucket list

English Harbour, Antigua Natural beauty and lessons from history come together at this spectacular harbour on Antigua’s south coast ANTIGUA Low, rounded hills, covered in green forest, shelter the narrow, curvaceous bay. Dozens of yachts, their masts swaying gently in the sea breeze, dot the turquoise-blue water. Historic buildings near the shore are surrounded by manicured lawns and gardens, and in the distance you can see a landscape of further bays and hills unfolding against a brilliant tropical sky. The view over English Harbour from Shirley Heights is one of the Caribbean’s most instantly recognisable. This natural harbour on Antigua’s south coast was a British Royal Navy base for centuries, and today is preserved as a national park, where history lessons — via the carefully restored Georgian dockyard — meet nature’s beauty, while numerous hiking trails offer unforgettable vistas.

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English Harbour

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backstory

“My music has an accent” When Tania León won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music, it was overdue recognition for the seventy-eight-yearold composer, whose distinctive sound is shaped by memories of her childhood in Cuba. Caroline Taylor learns more Photography by Chris Lee, courtesy New York Philharmonic

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Tania Léon at the premiere of her Pulitzer-winning composition Stride

ou’re probably not going to find yourself humming the music of Cuba-born composer, conductor, and educator Tania León. That is, if you can find it. Recordings of her more recent work — including Stride, the piece for which she won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music — are frustratingly hard to come by, despite how often her work is performed in major concert halls across the globe. Post-modern (she even enjoys the term “post-genre”) and fiercely multicultural, her music is an expression of all she hears, all that she’s lived, all that sparks her imagination. “The traditions that we carry today are traditions that have been enmeshed with other traditions. It’s like I speak with an accent, so my music has an accent,” explains the seventy-eight-yearold. That music bustles with complex

Latin American and African diasporic rhythms (including jazz), unpredictable melodic lines, clashing harmonies, and unusual orchestration — like the porcelain mugs she uses in Indígena (1991), recalling how, as children growing up in Cuba, she and her brother would use everything as instruments in their own little orchestras. It’s a musical experience that’s at once alien and familiar — and incredibly evocative. Because while you may not always follow what’s happening in it, you will certainly feel it. Now a naturalised US citizen, León was born in Havana, Cuba, on 14 May, 1943, to a humble family with African, French, Spanish, and Chinese roots. At four, she began studying the piano at the encouragement of her grandmother, and the following year her grandfather bought her a second-hand instrument. She describes growing up in Cuba as a “kaleidoscopic experience in sound,” where music of all kinds was everywhere. She would study the classics with her teacher, then deconstruct and augment them when she got home. She also had a strong ear, allowing her to recreate things she heard. León completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music at the Carlos Alfredo Peyrellade Conservatory in Havana, with dreams of going to Paris to become like the renowned Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich. But life would take her on a very different path. In 1967, León arrived in Miami on one of the United States’ Freedom Flights, which offered asylum to Cuban refugees. It was a transition she describes as traumatic, not least because she found herself unable to travel to Paris until her US citizenship could be finalised. So she relocated to New York, found work as an accountant, and began studying music — even though she could barely speak English. One weekend, substituting for a friend as an accompanist at the New York City Ballet, she had a magical encounter with Arthur Mitchell, the company’s first Black principal. He invited her to be a founding partner of the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969, and its first music director. He encouraged her to go beyond improvisation, and to write her first ballet — Tones. After the premiere, León jokes that she said to herself, “I better study composition!” And she did, com-

pleting another bachelor’s and master’s in music at New York University. When the Dance Theatre of Harlem later travelled to Europe, in 1974, León received the unexpected opportunity to conduct the Juilliard Orchestra. She jokes that she returned home and said, “I better study conducting!” And she did — at the Berkshire Music Centre at Tanglewood, where her instructors included the likes of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. It was the beginning of a fruitful international conduct i ng ca reer. A nd wh i le she eschews labels — “any label limits the person,” she insists — she makes another acknowledgement: “it’s not common for a woman of my skin colour to conduct serious music, so I have to know the score inside out, or work twice as hard as male conductors.”

Tania León’s music bustles with complex Latin American and African diasporic rhythms, unpredictable melodic lines, clashing harmonies, and unusual orchestration A visit back home to Cuba in 1979, after a long absence, proved to be a turning point in finding her voice as a composer, and embracing her musical accent. She played some of her work for her father, who asked her, “Where are you in this music?” He took her to a Santería ceremony, where she rediscovered the African rhythms with which she’d grown up. He died not long after, leaving her with that lingering question, and an even greater compulsion to explore the cultural traces and nuances in music — starting with her homeland’s.

he rest was histor y-making. Dozens of ballets, chamber works, and pieces for orchestra, voice, and her beloved piano. Commissions from and roles with prestigious arts

organisations and universities around the world — as advisor, visiting professor, guest conductor, and composer. Multiple awa rd s, i n c l u d i n g a G u g g e n h e i m Fellowship and honorary doctorates. Creative collaborations with renowned ar tists like directors Julie Taymor and Robert Wilson; authors Margaret Atwood and Wole Soyinka (with whom she created her first opera, The Scourge of the Hyacinths, where its beloved aria “O Yemanja” was partly inspired by memories of her mother singing a folk song); as well as fellow Caribbean icons Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid, and Geoffrey Holder, with whom she created two pieces for the Dance Theatre of Harlem — “Dougla” and “Bele”. She is also the founder and artistic director of Composers Now, dedicated to empowering living composers and celebrating the diversity of their voices. And she’s been working on an opera commission, Little Rock Nine, about the integration of Arkansas’s public schools in 1957. Then, of course, there is the Pulitzerwinning Stride — a commission by the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the centennial of the United States’ 19th constitutional amendment, ending the denial of (white) women’s suffrage, which she premiered last year. The piece was inspired both by suffragette Susan B. Anthony and her own fiercely progressive Cuban grandmother. And even as it ends with triumphant bells of celebration, underneath she scores West African clave rhythms to signal that the dreaming and the struggle would continue for Black women, who had not been afforded the same rights. A luta continua. And so does León. She’s working through the isolation, struggles, and losses of the COVID -19 pandemic, still full of her characteristic warmth, humour, and curiosity — taking inspiration from all around her, and quietly communing with her ancestors. “It’s been a tremendous, surprising life,” she says, laughing. “It’s very nice to be recognised, but the biggest prize of my life is that I’ve been able to manifest a dream that started in a very small place, far from here, with people who are not here anymore.” n

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Ship your Fresh Cargo from the Caribbean to Miami and Beyond

With 14 weekly all-cargo flights supplemented by shipping connectivity on passenger flights, you can trust us to keep your produce, seafood and other perishable goods fresh.

Weekly All-Cargo Schedule Day

Flight #

Route

Sun

BW 8040

Miami – Kingston – Montego Bay

BW 8041

Montego Bay – Miami

BW 795

Miami – Port-of-Spain

BW 794

Port-of-Spain – Miami

BW 791

Miami – Barbados – Port-of-Spain

BW 790

Port-of-Spain - Miami

BW 8042

Miami – Kingston

BW 8043

Kingston - Miami

BW 793

Miami – Port-of-Spain - Guyana

BW 792

Guyana - Miami

BW 8038

Miami - Kingston

BW 8039

Kingston - Miami

BW 791

Miami – Barbados – Port-of-Spain

BW 790

Port-of-Spain - Miami

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did you even know

Courtesy Ava and Gabriel

A scene from Ava and Gabriel — see question 6 below

1. The very first movie in the James Bond series was set mostly in Jamaica, where Ian Fleming, author of the Bond novels, had a vacation house. What was the title of the film? 2. Bim (1974), which tells the story of an Indo-Trinidadian boy who turns first to a life of crime then to politics, is considered a Caribbean classic. Who was the lead actor, who later turned to politics himself, serving as a T&T government minister? 3. What is the title of the 1994 Cuban

film, exploring sexuality, friendship, homophobia, and censorship, named

Our Round Trip travel feature, starting on page 20, takes you to some of the Caribbean locations made famous in the movies — now test your knowledge of Caribbean-related cinema history with our trivia quiz! Check your score in the answers below. And if you’re stuck, look for hints in our Round Trip.

for two flavours of ice cream at Havana’s Coppelia ice cream parlour?

7. Who was the first Caribbean actor ever to win an Oscar?

4. In the 1957 Hollywood film Heaven

8. The Hollywood blockbuster Black

Knows, Mr Allison, Tobago stood in for an island in what part of the world?

5. What is the name of the Haitian

filmmaker renowned for his feature and documentary films on historical figures such as Patrice Lumumba, James Baldwin, and Karl Marx?

6. The 1990 film Ava and Gabriel: A Love Story, a tale of forbidden romance and social intolerance, is set in what Caribbean island? 7 Puerto Rican José Ferrer, in 1950, in the title role of Cyrano de Bergerac 8 Letitia Wright (who plays Shuri), born in Guyana, and Winston Duke (M’Baku), born in Tobago 9 Euzhan Palcy of Martinique, director of the 1983 film La Rue Cases-Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley)

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Panther included Caribbean-born actors in two major roles — who are they, and where are they from?

9. A question for longtime Caribbean Beat readers — check our online archive for the answer! The very first issue of the magazine, back in 1992, featured a Caribbean filmmaker on the cover — who was it?

Answers: 1 Dr No 2 Ralph Maraj 3 Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate) 4 The South Pacific 5 Raoul Peck 6 Curaçao

Lights, camera . . .