Adventures In Carriacou During Parang Season — Jeff McNish

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I. Atlantic Crossing: A Scattergun Description

#carriacou #grenada #caribbean #sailing #parang

Hi Rich*,

I wanted to drop you a line to let you know that I had a wonderful time in Carriacou after you had sailed on to Grenada.  You’d have loved much of it.  I’ll include a scattergun description of some of my adventures.  They started out as emails to Bridget, then got cut-and-pasted into emails to other friends.  It’s an elliptical account, but you’ll get the idea.  So, thank you for making the connections that got me started.  

I boarded the schooner Alcyone in November 2001 at Tenerife in the Canary Islands. We sailed south to the Cape Verde Islands off the bulge of Africa, a jumping-off spot for crossing to the Caribbean.  The cool thing about the Cape Verde Islands was that they were almost more Caribbean (African and undeveloped) than the Caribbean.  The last night we were there we had gone to a disco above a restaurant.  At midnight, the lights and music suddenly shut off everywhere, because that’s when the generator for the entire island shuts off.  We hung out a while in the dark with the friends we’d made, then swam back to the boat.   

Early the next morning, we weighed anchor and headed across the Atlantic to Barbados, a two-week passage. After a rest in Barbados, we sailed to Bequia where Christmas was already in the air with jump-ups and Christmas tree lightings.  From Bequia, it was a day sail to Carriacou, an island new to everyone on the boat.   

Soon after we arrived, a charter guest checked out the Carriacou Museum and rushed back to the boat to tell me about it and about Canute Calliste, a renowned Kayak musician and visual artist who was hanging out there. I found out that the next weekend they would be having their Parang Festival, a Christmas music festival that people encouraged me to stick around for.  Alcyone had to sail to Grenada to be hauled out, but we figured if I were to stay behind, I could find the boatyard where they were hauling. So, Wednesday, I jumped ship, found a room in a guest house, and hung out to wait for the Parang Festival. 

After two days of jamming, taking every opportunity to play music, and wandering around the island, somebody told me there was a Parang band in Belmont, the BBH Serenaders, that needed an extra guitar player.  That was Thursday.  Sunday night, I played guitar with BBH in the Parang Competition and early the following morning I took the Osprey ferry to Grenada to find Alcyone hauling out in St. David’s Harbor.    

To the uninitiated, the music in Carriacou may seem simple, but it’s incredible!  In the Parang Tradition string bands from the various villages play a “test piece” (everyone performs a version of “The First Noel”) and then a melee piece where you dish the dirt that happened on the island over the previous year in song.  Seven bands were competing. Everyone knows them.  It’s like: be careful what you do, because if you do something wrong it’ll get broadcasted in front of the entire island (population about 6,000, surface area 13 square miles) in a Parang verse.    

Literally fifty percent of the population here can play three chords on my ukulele.  Performed music is very much a part of life here.  Part of what makes the music so cool is the rhythm which is enriched and reinforced with maracas (chac-chacs), triangle (iron) and sometimes anything that’s handy.  I’ve been playing, and somebody will drag a stick along a ribbed glass Fanta bottle and start playing guiro.  Another time, someone picked up a broken bicycle frame and rattled it so it complemented the music.  It reminds me of how in John Storm Roberts’ Black Music of Two Worlds, he says that in Africa music is always participatory; it’s not intended to be listened to, it’s meant to be joined in with.    

* Editors’ Note: Although these notes were sent in January 2002, there’s a timeless quality to them hence our sharing them today/now with the BDN family.

II. Deep Connection Between People, Land, and Sea by Jeff McNish

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Jeff McNish, a life-long musician, worked for Club Med from 1977 to 1982 teaching sailing in Martinique, Guadeloupe, the Dominican Republic, Tunisia, New Caledonia, and Yugoslavia. In addition to his Club Med travels, he sailed in the Caribbean in 1995, 2001 and 2016 and had the good fortune to participate in Carriacou Parang with the BBH Serenaders in 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2013. When not sailing or playing music, he worked as a ghostwriter and editor. Currently, he cares for his three children—ages 13, 11, and 9—and plays music in the San Francisco Bay area. McNish is also the author of “Penguin Blog, West Indies: January-June 2016.“