bigdrumnation

Reading Time 1 minsExcerpt of a February 5th cyber chat, on the meaning of independence, with Merle Collins,  the renowned Grenadian writer, in which she reflects on Kamau Brathwaite’s seminal work on ‘nation language.’  BDN: If the advancement of literacy was a key goal of the revo–and even today– why then should authors privilege creole/nation language in their writing?  MC: This is a great question to think about just at the point when one of the great advocates of nation language (Kamau Brathwaite), has passed on.  Brathwaite, a revered and thought-provoking Barbadian writer, died today, February 5, 2020.  Of what he termed “nation… Read More »Valuing Self and Celebrating our Own Creativity… (Excerpt)–Merle Collins

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Reading Time 3 minsThe great Lord Burgess (July 28, 1924 – November 29, 2019), real name Irving Louis Burgie, is a champion in the calypso arena and a person of great historical significance in this esoteric artform. Mr. Burgie played a major role in the popularization of calypso music in the 1950s, when he wrote eight of the 11 songs on Harry Belafonte’s 1956 album called Calypso; the first album to sell one million copies, which included the Irving Burgie’s interpretation of the Jamaican banana boat folk song, Day-O Irving Burgie was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 28, 1924.… Read More »The Great Lord Burgess*–Clevil James

Reading Time 5 minsFebruary 10, 2020* “We lived in a society which denied itself heroes” – V.S. Naipaul in the Middle Passage. Rejoice; Kamau is 80 –years- old today. We wish him a happy eightieth as we hasten to proclaim our filial indebtedness to this outstanding Caribbean scholar, who has tutored both our self-image and our self-knowledge during his more than fifty years of heavy intellectual toil. In a half-century of fierce intellectual exertions, Kamau has been at once poet, philosopher, playwright, literary critic and theorist, surveyor of the Caribbean spirit (in space and in time),  teacher, student of Caribbean… Read More »BEAT EIGHTY DRUMS FOR KAMAU – Caldwell Taylor

Reading Time 3 minsIn a performance of his poem,  Kumina, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, counts consecutively and deliberately, the days and the activities encompassed in this spectacle of loss.  Grief is laid bare, in words that are hauntingly plain and emotive, as the speaker comes to terms with the death of a beloved.  The poem ends in an African chant that is at once an invocation of the ancestral spirits and a profound benediction of mourning.  Since Brathwaite’s passing on February 4, eulogists, in their grandiloquence, have spoken of his intellectual prowess and his contributions to the arts, the fashioning of a… Read More »Kamau Brathwaite Revisited – Margaret Prescod-Cissé

Reading Time 4 minsFebruary 7th, 1974, the date Grenada, was given independence by Britain, is not one that I celebrate. We are not a free people. Hence my reason for not being particularly interested in celebrating the event of being granted political independence. Independence, as I see it, is a work in progress. And quite frankly we have a mighty long way to go to attain sovereignty; when we can chart our own course. We are not self-defining people: far from it. It would be more fitting to celebrate a National Heroes Day the way we go about celebrating independence… Read More »Grenadians in the Diaspora Reflect on the Meaning of Independence

Reading Time 6 minsFebruary 7, 2019 “The whole of nature”, wrote William Ralph Inge, “is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive” .  We eat to live and if Brillat-Savarin the eighteenth century French gastronome is to be  believed, “we are what we eat”. Of course the idea that there exists a relation between food and character did not originate with Brillat-Savarin: the Old Testament anticipated him by more than 3,000 years. Now in addition to being what we eat, can it also be said that we are how we eat, the how calling attention… Read More »NATION FOOD AND NATIONHOOD: A REVIEW OF MERLE COLLINS’S “SARACCA AND NATION” – Caldwell Taylor

Reading Time 2 mins…is all too sudden. Sonny. im want to ress a while from all dis pain an distrulationcause when im reach down-dey. im nevva soon-come-back again… The weary salmon swims upstream to spawn future generations, fertilizes, and ultimately becomes part of the fabric of all that is exists thereafter in that ecosystem. Such is the life of a true creative revolutionary. Engaging in the lifelong struggle to find and then to fill a space with ideas heretofore non-existent, the creator withstands the slings and arrows of both the entrenched old guard and of the trying-to-join-the-club new jacks. Brathwaite… Read More »Edward Kamau Brathwaite (May 11, 1930 — February 4, 2020): Inspires Still –Carlyle G. Leach

Reading Time 3 minsThursday, February 6, 2020 “Play I some music, (dis ya) reggae music”, so begins Bob Marley’s Roots Rock Reggae. In today’s world, Reggae is universal and Jamaica is synonymous with that Genre. There is not a country that has not adopted Reggae as part of its music. Jamaica, a land built by slave labor, captured by the Spaniards and snatched by the English. The Europeans exterminated the natives and filled the island with Africans, captured and enslaved. They added Indian and Chinese labor to the menu. The Africans brought with them instruments of music, so did the… Read More »Bob Marley: 75 and Growing – Richard Hoyen