bigdrumnation

Reading Time 4 minsFebruary 2, 2023 “Throughout his life, Gordon Rohlehr has been overflowing with creativity… that flowed from his soul, mind, and pen as majestically and powerfully as the waters of Kaieteur Falls and as beautifully and far-reaching as the Ortoire River.” The path of verbal virtuosity traveled by Gordon Rohlehr during his lifetime was never before traversed. Footsteps that followed a cosmic calling and creative compass guided by a mix of parental influences and fueled by passionate perseverance. His father was the superintendent of a boys’ reform school, and his mother was the principal of an Anglican primary school. Though she won… Read More »GORDON ROHLEHR: THE GUYA-DADIAN GIANT!/JOSH TYSON-FERMIN

Reading Time 5 minsJanuary 31, 2023 “[A] conversation with him… was a learning experience… on which he would bring to bear his perceptive literary skills [and] his vast range of interests in many things: cricket, calypso, politics, carnival, art, and international affairs would somehow become interrelated in a conversation that might have begun with a question or comment about the merits of crab and callaloo as a symbol of [our region]”. There will be many tributes to Gordon Rohlehr, from those far more competent than I, those who knew him in his professional life and/or personal life and are far… Read More »AVE ET VALE: GORDON ROHLEHR, 1942—2023/KEN JAIKARANSINGH

Reading Time 1 minsWishing For Wings Big Drum Nation invites readers in the New York metropolitan area and beyond to attend the premiere of Kim Johnson’s Wishing For Wings (W4W) at the Festival of Cinema NYC on August 11 at 12.30 pm. The screening is at Regal UA Midway Theatre, 108-22 Queens Blvd, Forest Hills, NY. Click HERE for tickets to the August 11 (Thursday) screening. The film is a moving documentary on the young convicts in the juvenile prison in Trinidad known as the Youth Training Centre (YTC). The film shows the violence these boys have endured and visited on others and their… Read More »Wishing For Wings

Reading Time 11 minsJanuary 23, 2023 (Originally published on March 20, 20217) In 1977, a calypsonian from Trinidad & Tobago named the Mighty Unknown caused patrons of the calypso tent to fall off their seats when he performed a calypso called “Ah Vex.” Unknown, in his cleverly constructed offering, threw four stanzas of piccong at the St Lucian poet whom the calypsonian alleged had had the temerity to be critical of the place which had been good enough to extend to him, its generosity; “Derek you must be fou bé dangé or mad Sit down on river stone and talk… Read More »Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott; Trinidad? – Llewellyn Mac Intosh

Reading Time 6 minsJanuary 23, 2023 “It is a country full of printable names: Paramin, Fyzabad, Couva, where the trees rhyme.” Bemoaning calypsonians’ facility in using language to conjure imagery, the Mighty Conqueror, in one of his classics, heckled those calypsonians [who] can only sing about a mango if they have the seed to show the audience. In Morning, Paramin, where art emotes and serves as the springboard for poems, Derek Walcott turns Conqueror’s banter on its head. In this offering, he constructs verse after canto that does not merely mimic but extends and reimages Peter Doig’s paintings as rhyme and… Read More »Reflections on Morning, Paramin*/Winthrop R. Holder

Reading Time 6 minsJanuary 23, 2023      “Our culture needs both preservation and resurgence; our cries need an epiphany, a spiritual definition, and an art can emerge from our poverty, creating its own elation.”  As we celebrate Sir Derek Walcott’s birthdate, his play ‘Ti Jean and His Brothers‘ reminds us how Walcott’s work is revered and grounded in the Caribbean experience. Little wonder he called this play one of his most Caribbean plays. It is representative of a theatre of the people; as he noted, they “present to others a deceptive simplicity that they may dismiss as provincial, primitive,… Read More »THE RADICAL INNOCENCE OF CARIBBEAN THEATRE: A REVIEW OF “PLAYS FOR TODAY”/LENNEL A. GEORGE

Reading Time 1 minsJanuary 23, 2023 Happy New Year to our Readers! Continuing with our Cultural Ambassadors Series launched on February 23 last year, today, Sir Derek Walcott’s birth date, we celebrate this titan of Caribbean life and art.  We honor him as a true regionalist and unforgettable thought shaper who used his gift to narrow the distance between the region as he elevated us by celebrating the Caribbean landscape and our being. We begin with Lennel George’s  “The Radical Innocence Of Caribbean Theatre: A Review of  Ken Jaikaransingh’s ‘Plays For Today,” which salutes and gets to the essence of Caribbean… Read More »CULTURAL AMBASSADORS’ SERIES: REMEMBERING SIR DEREK WALCOTT — BDN EDITORS

Reading Time 26 minsJanuary 7, 2023 (First published in Trinidad and Tobago Review, October 6, 2008). A Wide-Ranging Appreciation Of Black Stalin’s ‘Hard Wuk’ (PART TWO) “It’s important to see us through our language…. When I say our language, I mean our Resistance English. [Our] music is for the world but, again, through our eyes.” – Black Stalin, 2001 Commenting on Spice islander talkshop–which approximates a public university where everyone is both student and professor–Bigdrumnation asserts, “Stalin conferred on Brother Valentino the title of ‘People’s Calypsonian’ [and] Stalin lavished tributes (in song)… on panist Winston ‘Spree’ Simon, and chutney singer Sundar Popo.” Just… Read More »A Kaiso Doctor(Black Stalin): Give Praise and Thanks! (Part II)/Winthrop R. Holder*

Reading Time 3 minsDecember 30, 2022 Big Drum Nation pays tribute to the legendary Kaisonian Black Stalin, our organic intellectual whose grounding in indigenous knowledge and eloquent immersion in resistance dialect–nation language in Kamau Brathwaite’s terms–provided a treasure trove of progressive and sustainable ideas that would continually refresh and animate our vision. Indeed, his subversive lyrics, conscious-raising music, and activism have left an indelible mark on the Caribbean and beyond in the Diaspora. Few calypsonians captured the spirit and sensibilities of our times like Black Stalin. As a result, his work has a pervasive timelessness. Born Leroy Calliste in 1941 on… Read More »‘STAY GIVING PRAISES!’: THE IMMORTAL MESSAGE OF DR. LEROY CALLISTE (BLACK STALIN)

Reading Time 11 minsDecember 30, 2022 (First published in Trinidad and Tobago Review, October 6, 2008). AN APPRECIATION “You cannot see a light if it is put in a place of brightness, so it was necessary that [European colonists] create darkness so that their light would shine.” Earl Lovelace, Trinidad and Tobago Review, June 1998 “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Proust Debate, rather a celebration, broke out on Spiceislandertalkshop.com, an open Grenadian forum on the Internet, when word leaked, from the ivory showers of the University of the West Indies,… Read More »A Kaiso Doctor(Black Stalin): Give Praise and Thanks!/Winthrop R. Holder*