Caribbean Beat — November/December 2021 (#167)

The Power To

Do Our Part

Nature gives us the air we breathe, the food that nourishes our

bodies, the peace that feeds our souls. It’s time we do our part.

Republic Financial Holdings Limited is an official signatory of

the United Nations’ Principles of Responsible Banking.

Our commitment: to make a positive impact on the health of

our environment by employing environmentally sustainable

banking practices.

We have the power to make a difference.

A MESSAGE From

OUR CEO

Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties;

the ability of a substance or object to spring back into

shape; elasticity.

2020 and 2021 have taught us many lessons. One of the

most important is resilience.

Another twelve months have swiftly passed, and this

brings us to the brink of a new year — a year that will have

its own challenges, which we will, no doubt, rise above.

The pandemic has rewritten the rules, offering opportunities

for renewal, and provided a glimpse of the new economy

that will emerge from the old. We have learned to exist

alongside many uncertainties, reflecting and re-aligning our

expectations.

This past year has shown us that, despite the scale of the

challenges facing us, we are resilient, and will remain so. We

continue to adjust our business model, allowing us to reduce

costs without compromising the authentic Caribbean service

that you know and love. More will be revealed as we enter

2022.

In July 2021, the borders at our base in Trinidad

re-opened after being closed to commercial air traffic for

sixteen months. This was welcome news for Caribbean

Airlines, and our teams worked assiduously to ensure that

on 17 July we were ready to safely restart operations and

welcome you on board. With all protocols in place, our

commercial schedule was re-introduced on a phased basis,

including additions to the network of weekly service between

Trinidad and Dominica and twice weekly flights between

Trinidad and Eugene F. Correia Airport in Ogle, Georgetown,

Guyana.

We launched some new products, including Your Space,

which gives customers travelling in the economy section

the option to pay for the seat next to them, or the entire

row. Your Space seat prices start from as low as US$20,

depending on the route (conditions apply). Our Duty Free

store at Piarco International Airport (POS) in Trinidad is fully

re-opened, and arriving and departing customers (from POS)

can now enjoy the convenience of ordering your favourite

Duty Free items online before your flight. Frequent flyers can

keep your miles active and earn more miles by flying with us,

shopping at any Massy Store in the Caribbean, renting vehicles

with the Enterprise Group, using the RBC co-branded

card, or shopping on the Caribbean Airlines website. Club

Caribbean members are reminded that your membership is

extended until 2022 — the specific month and date of the

extension will vary depending on your individual membership.

For the 2021 winter schedule, we have added capacity

between:

• JFK, New York, and Trinidad

• JFK, New York, and Kingston, Jamaica

• JFK, New York, and Montego Bay, Jamaica (seasonal

service)

• Toronto and Trinidad

• Toronto and Kingston

• Fort Lauderdale and Kingston (Tuesday and Thursday

from 7 December)

Please visit www.caribbean-airlines.com for full details on

services to all of our destinations.

During this special season, our lives are filled with the

spirit of giving, the importance of family and friends, and a

sense of healing, rejuvenation, and new opportunity. We are

looking forward to 2022 with renewed energy and focus.

There are many exciting developments that will unfold in

the new year around product enhancements and a brand

refresh. We’ll share more details as activities progress.

To our loyal customers and partners, a big thank you for

your enduring goodwill and the value you add to this airline,

as we live our vision to be the Airline of Choice serving

the Caribbean, profitably. Your support has helped us to

survive and kept us motivated. We are grateful for the opportunity

to continue and develop our relationships with you in

2022.

To the people of Caribbean Airlines, thank you for being

part of this dynamic organisation.

And from all of us, we wish you and your loved ones a

Happy Christmas and prosperous renewal in the New Year.

Garvin Medera

Chief Executive Officer

Contents

No. 167 • November/December 2021

10

20

38

EMBARK

8 Wish you were here

Pigeon Point, Tobago

10 Need to know

Make the most of November and

December, even during the time of

COVID-19 — from parang season to

Divali treats

18 Bookshelf and playlist

This month’s reading and listening

picks

ARRIVE

20 Bucket List

Where Next?

Almost two years into the COVID-19

pandemic, like everyone else, we at

Caribbean Beat are longing for a

break. As we look forward to the year

ahead, the magazine team shares

wishes for future travel

30 Backstory

Devoted to the dance

Trained in the tradition of

Bharatanatyam dance at one of the

leading academies in India, Trinidadian

Alana Rajah dreams of establishing the

ancient artform in her home country.

Sharda Patasar learns about the

discipline and adaptation required to

make classical Indian dance flourish

34 Portfolio

Assembling fragments

A new exhibition in Toronto brings

together an important collection of

historical photographs and the work

of contemporary Caribbean artists, to

show how our stories and ideas have

evolved over time

38 Closeup

In the light of language

Canisia Lubrin’s sense of the

wondrous power of words is rooted in

her childhood in St Lucia. Now one of

the Caribbean’s most lauded younger

poets, she continues to revel in

language’s luminous potential, writes

Shivanee Ramlochan

48 DID you even know

How much do you know about

Caribbean dance traditions? Let our

trivia column put you to the test

4 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM

CaribbeanBeat

An MEP publication

Editor Nicholas Laughlin

General manager Halcyon Salazar

Design artist Kevon Webster

Production manager Jacqueline Smith

Web editor Caroline Taylor

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Tobago and International

Evelyn Chung

T: (868) 684 4409

E: evelyn@meppublishers.com

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Media & Editorial Projects Ltd.

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Cover Common squirrel monkeys

— known locally as sakiwinkis — are

among the diverse wildlife protected

in Guyana’s 371,000-hectare

Iwokrama rainforest reserve

Photo Nick Fox/Shutterstock.com

Printed by SCRIP-J, Trinidad and Tobago

Read and save issues of Caribbean Beat

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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

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Website: www.caribbean-airlines.com

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5

A taste

of home

For Caribbean people far from home,

Christmas brings a longing for the familiar —

and never more so than during the COVID-19

pandemic, writes Vaughn Stafford Gray

A

family friend recently reminded me that we in the

Caribbean are lucky to call home a place where

people pay to escape their lives for a week. Despite

being called the developing world, the Caribbean is rich — in

culture, in experiences, in history. The soil our ancestors toiled

continues to nourish us, and the sun that burned their backs

warms our sea. Their strife has imbued us with a grit that

allows us to weather any disaster, whether hurricane, volcanic

eruption, political unrest, or pandemic. “Better must come”

is the fulcrum around which our Caribbean culture was established.

If we were to choose a collective noun to describe

Caribbean people, it would be “resilience.” A resilience of

Caribbean people.

The COVID-19 pandemic delivered an economic shock

to the region — most islands depend on tourism — that

further complicated historical issues with which we continue

to contend. “We are now being inundated by the new, while

still being overwhelmed by the old,” said St Lucia Prime Minister

Philip Joseph Pierre in a recent address to United Nations.

Among many things, COVID-19 lifted the kimono on mental

health and isolation, revealing how many of us are struggling.

Before borders closed at the behest of the pandemic, some

Caribbean folk were able to return home. Those who missed

the last flights waited (im)patiently. Finally, a few months later,

some could decamp to homelands that reopened. Some

would have to wait much longer.

Immigration has allowed the Caribbean diaspora to become

one of the largest in the world — the United States alone has

over eight million Caribbean descendants. But living abroad

can be debilitatingly isolating. After living in Toronto for over a

decade, I moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Though it was beautiful,

I never felt more alone in my life. Gone was the large

Caribbean community that I could depend on for gossip from

the region, musical accents, and ingredients to make “real”

Sunday dinner.

The ability to have a taste of home is not just about ingredients,

but also the ceremony and bonding that comes through

cooking. Food is an integral part of who we are as

Caribbean people. So when hotels throughout the region

temporarily closed their doors, many donated foodstuffs to

workers and nearby communities. Even when uncertainty

plagues tomorrow, a home-cooked meal is a panacea.

My first (and only) Christmas in Halifax saw me checking my

airline app daily, counting down the days until I’d return home

to Jamaica. It was tracking to be the worst Christmas I ever

had, until I received a registered package. I couldn’t ignore

how heavy the carefully wrapped item was. Under layers of

paper lay a red tin, and inside it was an entire black cake.

It was a gift from my Jamaican friend’s mother back in

Toronto. When we spoke, she said, “You know for us,

Christmas isn’t Christmas without cake.” It’s funny to think of

the power that black cake has. In addition to connecting our

people, reminding us who we are and where we came from,

black cake is our Balm of Gilead.

The British, influenced by a fruit cake recipe that dates back

to Ancient Rome, created plum pudding and took the recipe

to the colonised Caribbean islands. Enslaved cooks were

expected to replicate the recipe despite not having the exact

ingredients. Armed with natural African ingenuity, rum, spices,

and dried fruit, they made something for the “Big House” table

that was a far cry from the original. It was better. And this

improved recipe spread throughout the Dutch-, French-, and

Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Caribbean ingenuity is infinite. According to the World Bank,

the Caribbean has the “most highly skilled” diaspora globally.

And wherever they are, Caribbean people proudly represent

their homelands and the region. They go abroad for education

or to maximise earning potential, but they never forget who

they are. And many count down to the day they can return.

But the ability to return home is not without complications.

A homecoming can, too, be metaphorical. After all, home is

more than a place; it’s a feeling. And at Christmas time, seeing

a black cake shimmering after being doused with rum can

transport every Caribbean person home. It’s the forgiving family

member ready to embrace us sweetly.

As we enter another holiday season in this, the new normal,

the things that keep us connected to home, now more than

ever, have pride of place. Our accents and passports may

differ, but we are united by our history, culture, and cuisine.

Something as simple as black cake connects us to home. It

connects us to our ancestors, and when hardships appear, it

will offer a slice of hope to future generations.


7

wish you were here


Pigeon Point, Tobago

If there’s one iconic landmark that immediately says

you’re in Tobago, it’s the Pigeon Point jetty with its

thatch-roofed hut, extending from a long curve of

gently golden sand into water of an almost unbelievable

turquoise hue. It’s the subject of a thousand postcards

and ten thousand holiday snapshots, and the icon of the

most famous beach in Trinidad’s sister isle, renowned

for its warm, shallow, sheltered sea. Part of a 125-acre

nature reserve near Tobago’s southwestern tip, Pigeon

Point — with its endless groves of coconut trees and

peerless sunset views — is also the gateway to the only

slightly less famous Buccoo Reef and Nylon Pool.

Photography by Dieter Deventer/Alamy Stock

Photo

WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 9

NEED TO

KNOW

Essential info to help you make the most

of November and December — even in the

middle of a pandemic

maria nunes

Don’t Miss

Parang season

In Trinidad, the sound of Christmas often comes with Spanish lyrics.

The fun of going from house to house and waking people with the jovial

sounds of parang music is the island’s traditional version of carolling.

Before COVID-19, lively performances of the Spanish-style folk music —

sometimes fused with soca and chutney — often serenaded passersby

around the Arima, Lopinot, and Paramin districts in the weeks leading up to

Christmas, with September designated Parang History Month — and the

start of the annual parang season — by T&T’s National Parang Association.

Live music performances may have taken a pause due to the ongoing

pandemic, but the Drive-In Parang Theatre event planned for December

2021 will keep you safely in your bubble while you listen to some of the best

paranderos. Visit facebook.com/npattofficialpage for the full line-up.

Shelly-Ann Inniss

10

WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM


need to know

Must try

Best Barbados rums

For centuries, rum has been integral to Barbados’s heritage. The spirit’s

unmatched legacy — from modest beginnings on the island to world acclaim

— has led to countless international awards bestowed. At the new Barbados

Rum Experience (running from 1 to 7 November), the island’s three main rum

producers — Foursquare Distillery, St Nicholas Abbey, and Mount Gay Distilleries

— offer exciting opportunities to sample the best fine aged liquors and learn

about their cultural significance. Home-bound tipplers don’t have to feel left out

— award-winning mixologist Shane McClean shares three special cocktail recipes

for some coveted Barbados blends

Mount Gay Black Barrel

Matured in whisky casks, then further

aged in charred bourbon barrels, Black

Barrel features spicy notes like nutmeg,

clove, and ginger, making you yearn

for more after the first sip. It’s ideally

paired with steak, lamb, pork, or fish,

since the rum carries tannins, which

assist in breaking down the proteins.

1703 Express

45 ml Mount Gay Black Barrel

1 dash of black pepper

30 ml pineapple juice

25 ml fresh lime juice

25 ml white sugar syrup

Combine in a mixing glass with one

scoop of ice. Shake and strain over

fresh ice into a rock glass. Garnish with

a pineapple chunk.

Doorly’s 12

A rich heritage and unique notes

full of character and complexity are

wonderfully combined in this twelveyear

old rum — exemplary for anyone’s

introduction to the spirit. It’s perfectly

smooth, with aromas of toffee apple,

cinnamon, and caramel. After dinner,

this mouth-watering sipper can

complement — or replace — your

dessert.

Doorly’s Old Fashioned

45 ml Doorly’s 12

25 ml white sugar syrup

6 dashes Angostura bitters

1 dash cinnamon

Combine ingredients in a rock glass,

add a scoop of ice, and stir. Garnish

with a cherry and orange segment.

St Nicholas Abbey White

Unlike most of the island’s other rums,

the Abbey makes their white rum from

sugarcane syrup instead of molasses

or sugarcane juice. On the nose, it’s

extremely earthy, with hints of citrus

notes, almost like the varied fragrances

of freshly cut sugarcane. The

recommended cocktail is an aperitif,

and can be paired with chicken, fish, or

a fresh garden salad — or savoured on

its own on a hot afternoon.

Abbey Spritz

45 ml St Nicholas Abbey White

25 ml fresh grapefruit juice

1 tbsp granulated sugar

30 ml sparkling water

Combine ingredients in a wine glass,

fill with ice, and stir. Garnish with a

grapefruit wedge.

For more information on the

Barbados Rum Experience, go to

visitbarbados.org

Courtesy Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc

12


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need to know

Rasmalai, a delicate cardamom-flavoured

dessert popular in India

ManaswiPatil/Shutterstock.com

All About …

Divali treats

Observed this year on 4 November, Divali — the Hindu festival of light and

renewal — honours Mother Lakshmi, the deity of wealth and purity, and the

triumph of light over darkness, good over evil. Celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago,

Guyana, Suriname, and other Caribbean territories usually include visiting the

homes of relatives to share in scrumptious meals and distributing sweets to

friends and neighbours. You probably know the most popular treats, like kurma,

barfi, and gulab jamun. But the repertoire of traditional Indian sweets is much

larger. Have you tried any of these?

Kulfi

Best known as the Indian version of

ice cream, kulfi has a luxuriously dense

texture, not whipped soft. Traditionally,

the recipe is laborious, but you can use

full cream and cornstarch to knock off

some hours. Evaporate the milk, add

sugar, cardamom, saffron, and chopped

nuts, then cool. Place the mixture in a

popsicle mould and freeze for about

twelve hours. When set, drizzle with

pistachios and serve.

Kalakand

Widely sold on the street in India

but hardly made at home, kalakand

has an ideal consistency somewhere

between cake and fudge. It’s made via

a reduction of milk and sugar, and can

take hours of constant stirring. If you

don’t have much time, condensed milk,

homemade paneer, and cardamom will

get you similar results in less than an

hour. Top with pistachios.

Rasmalai

This Bengali dessert immerses delicate

cottage cheese balls in a creamy milky

syrup. It’s one of the healthiest sweets

served for Divali, due to its low sugar

and low sodium content. To prepare it,

curdle milk flavoured with cardamom

to form the cottage cheese balls, then

boil them in syrup made from sugar,

cream, saffron, and more milk. The balls

will soak up the syrup, then you can chill

them and garnish with pistachios. The

end result resembles a soft dumpling

that melts in your mouth.

Mysore Pak

This delicacy was first made in 1935 for

the king of Mysuru (or Mysore) — a city

in Karnataka state. Legend says the

palace’s chief chef Kaksura Madappa

prepared lunch for the king, but ran

out of time while he brainstormed

an unusual dessert. Madappa mixed

generous amounts of ghee, sugar, and

gram flour to a syrupy consistency

and plated it. When the king was ready

for his dessert, the syrup had partially

solidified and resembled fudge — and

the rest is history. Traditionally, mysore

pak is served at weddings and special

occasions in southern India.

Lyangcha

You may have heard of gulab jamun,

but do you know its cousin lyangcha,

beloved in Bengal? Shaktigarh — the

lyangcha capital — has thirty shops

on both sides of Delhi Street, each

claiming to serve the best variety.

Prepared with paneer and cheese-like

khowa, this cylindrical sweet is coated

with sugar syrup and fried in ghee.

SAI

14



need to know

Ekaterina Bolovtsova courtesy Pexels

Shopping list

Virtual Christmas gifts

Getting presents is one of the most fun parts of Christmas — and buying them

can be one of the most stressful. Imagine doing your Christmas shopping without

spending time in crowded malls, long lines, traffic, or waiting for a parking space.

With the tap of a finger, your Christmas cheer can be en route to happy recipients.

And if you can’t be with them physically this season, a thoughtful present will surely

lift spirits. Here are some virtual gift ideas to help spread the cheer

Relaxation time

Calm and serenity make a huge

difference to our countenance and

overall well-being — even if it’s a short

reprieve. Gift certificates for spa

experiences and yoga sessions are a

great way to help restore physical and

mental balance. And virtual classes

that let you exercise at home with

Caribbean instructors have grown in

popularity over the past two years. You

can’t go wrong with the gift of a calmer

mind and a healthier body.

A learning experience

Learning never gets old. And the range

of online masterclasses available

for almost every conceivable skill or

discipline is breathtaking. What do your

friends and loved ones enjoy the most?

Cooking, gardening, interior design?

Subjects like history or science? Or

picking up a new language? They’ll

be elated that you signed them up

for something they’re extremely

passionate about.

Book talk

If you’ve got a literature lover on your

list and can’t decide just what novel

they’d like best, why not give them the

gift of literary community? T&T’s Bocas

Lit Fest — the largest literature festival

in the Caribbean — recently launched

a Friends of Bocas subscription

programme, offering access to a rich

archive of video and audio recordings

featuring a decade’s worth of readings,

discussions, and performances — plus

access to a book network for discussing

favourite titles, discounts on monthly

Bocas workshops, and more. And your

gift subscription will help the festival’s

year-round programmes supporting

Caribbean writers. Find out more at

www.bocaslitfest.com/friends.

Art access

Do you know someone who’s excited

about art, history, and culture? A

gift membership at their favourite

museum might include exclusive

events, free entry into exhibitions, and

even more benefits. Museum lovers

in the Caribbean diaspora can explore

the Metropolitan Museum of Art or

the Museum of Modern Art in New

York City, the Art Gallery of Ontario in

Toronto, or the Tate in London, which

all have membership programmes. You

might get bumped up to best friend

status, too.

Pass on the love

Charitable organisations welcome

donations throughout the year — and

especially at the end of a collectively

challenging one. For your friend who has

everything, the perfect gift that keeps

on giving could be a donation to a good

cause in their name. Make a difference

this Christmas season by donating to

reputable international non-profits like

World Central Kitchen (which helps feed

people affected by disasters around

the world), or local charities like the

Living Water Community in Trinidad and

Tobago, Ocean Acres Animal Sanctuary

in Barbados, or any other group helping

make our communities and countries

into better places.

SAI

16


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bookshelf

This month’s reading picks from the Caribbean

Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor

This One Sky Day

by Leone Ross (Faber

& Faber, 385 pp, ISBN

9780571358014)

In Popisho, the fictional

setting of Leone Ross’s

lavish, sprawling novel, every

citizen has a “cors,” a unique

gift of magical, otherworldly

ability: the power to heal,

to prophesy, to intuit the

pain or deception of others.

Set in this Caribbean-esque

archipelago over the course

of twenty-four hours,

This One Sky Day asks the

reader questions steeped

in coconut milk, saffron,

and star anise, as nourishing

and palate-pleasing as the

best cook food. What do

we do with our own “cors”

during our time on earth?

Are we bettered or bested

by ungovernable love? It’s

impossible to approach the

kaleidoscopic orbit of the

book with anything like stoicism:

expect to be wooed

by lyrical prose, spellbound

by seemingly incalculable

events, swept up into the

exploits of elemental lovers

striving to be their best,

most unfettered selves. In a

word, Ross’s fictional fare is

an opus, demanding satiation.

Can You Sign My

Tentacle?

by Brandon O’Brien (Interstellar

Flight Press, 82 pp,

ISBN 9781953736048)

This debut poetry chapbook

is tired of old tropes. Can

You Sign My Tentacle? animates

our anthropocene’s

Black joy and resistance

against the ghoulish spectres

of racism: a slew of

institutional evils is called to

account, dragged into the

light of confessional verse.

In poems as suited to page

interpretation as oral performance,

Brandon O’Brien

populates each realm of the

work’s imagined or real multiverse

with brave vulnerability:

in “the lagahoo speaks

for itself”, our title character

angrily declaims, “I know the

scent of every dead girl’s

close male relatives / I could

sense the sour of trigger

fingers / in the alleys at the

edges of hotspots.” As with

the best speculative writing,

the convergence of the

worlds we imagine and the

world we inhabit becomes

preternaturally real, borders

of certainty and illusion

blending to create space:

and this realm, the poems

say, belongs to Blackness.

Testimonies on the

History of Jamaica,

Volume 1

by Zakiya McKenzie (Rough

Trade Books, 45 pp, ISBN

9781914236051)

Zakiya McKenzie’s revisionist

pamphlet is the very

definition of “small axe chop

down big tree.” In less than

fifty spare pages, McKenzie

contains the violent racism

of slaveowner and lord of the

plantocracy Edward Long’s

1774 polemic The History

of Jamaica. Interweaving

historical accounts with

creative conjuring, the

author-researcher presents

us with three testimonies

speaking to their own,

particular Jamaican truths.

In the voices of Izolo,

Wande Sheba, and Tansy,

we encounter Jamaican

history through the minds

and hearts of those whose

immediate stories register

most dimly and scantly in

official archives: the Black

enslaved and subjugated.

Each telling indicts oppressors

with scathing certainty,

but perhaps even more

majestically than this, makes

room for the full expression

of personhood denied the

incarcerated African woman

and man.

Dominoes at the

Crossroads

by Kaie Kellough (Véhicule

Press, 180 pp, ISBN

9781550655315)

As open to risk as it is to

interrogation, Kaie Kellough’s

collection of braided short

stories summons an alternate

Caribbean-Canadian

present and future, one in

which the lives and expectations

of the Black Caribbean

diaspora’s citizens gleam

with further realised possibilities.

The musicality of

narrative winds and weaves

through almost all these

stories: gig-players, buskers,

and traffic-consigned

listeners each feel the pulse

of melody, its historicity and

specific yearning, pulling on

their lives with insistence

and fervour. “Kaie,” the

author, is also a character

presented in this assemblage.

It’s a stylistic choice

that might jar in other

settings, but Dominoes

at the Crossroads wields

this experimentation well,

scratching at the surface

of what we consider to be

origin stories, asking: how

can we make more of the

tales we’ve been told, the

tales we wish to tell?


playlist

This month’s listening picks from the Caribbean

Reviews by Nigel A. Campbell

Songbook, Vol. 1

Michael Boothman (Poui

Tree Records)

Nostalgia is making a

comeback: the Rolling

Stones and Genesis will tour

stadiums next year, and

Paul McCartney and ABBA

have new albums in 2021. In

the Caribbean, kysofusion

pioneer Michael Boothman

from Trinidad is back with a

bang. Boothman is an elder

statesman on the regional

music scene, with international

standing and a professional

music career spanning

six decades. The appearance

of a new full-length album

after a gap of some years

is a happy revelation that

signals his creative juices

are still flowing. Songbook,

Vol. 1 points to the idea that

this is a first step on a new

journey, a fresh awakening of

the Boothman oeuvre with

rearrangements of classics

from the 1970s like “Saying

It With Music” and “Mystic

Sea”, and many new songs.

This album is a showcase of

fine songcraft, sophisticated

musical ideas, and a kind of

independent production

value that understands that,

as audiences mature, quality

never dissipates.

B.A.L.A.N.C.E.

Kyle Noel (3230341

Records DK)

On this new album, Kyle Noel

has positioned the steelpan

in a conversation with electronic

drums and percussion

to create a musical product

that evokes elements of

various Caribbean musics,

alongside Afropop, jazz,

hip hop, and Latin music.

B.A.L.A.N.C.E. is not a busy

album trying to be everything

to all, but a showcase

for smart songwriting that

recognises the beauty of

the timbre of the steelpan

to lead listenable songs

beyond the narrow restrictions

of a Trinidad pan jam.

Guest instrumental soloists

and rappers add context,

giving the songs a familiarity

in a modern popular music

world — standing out tellingly

is Milliraps, who raps of

her carnal desires on “Doing

It Right” — and enlivening

the idea that steelpan music

innovation is not dead. Noel

is marketing this album as

a sonic frequency therapy

targeting the seven chakras

to balance the mind and

body. It does more. It also

effectively broadens the role

of the steelpan in contemporary

music.

The Id

Trishes (Nash the Boy)

The Id is a follow-up to

Trinidadian-American singer/

songwriter/musician Trishes’

2019 album, Ego, and one

can begin to see a pattern.

Super-ego next, anyone?

This new album features

her trademarks: live looping

synthesis layering harmonies

to create original music that

jibes with musician Prince’s

theory that “there’s joy

in repetition,” and to ably

generate a sonic presence;

astute lyrics that sincerely

reflect Trishes’ activist bent,

in this case, the need for

examining personal inner

turmoil, animus, and prejudices

as an essential part

of affecting social change

globally; and a modern electronic

vibe so cool among a

new influential generation.

Plus great pop songs, period.

“Big Sunglasses” is a hit here.

Science tells us that the id

is “the impulsive and unconscious

part of our psyche

which responds directly and

immediately to basic urges,

needs, and desires.” Five

monologues here thoughtfully

address this. What The

Id does is win. Gratification!

Muriel’s Treasure:

Volume 8

Various Artists (Cosmic Spy

Music)

The subtitle of this compilation

is “Vintage Calypso of

the 1950s and 1960s.” The

compiler’s stated mission

is “finding things on the

scrapheap of history . . . and

salvaging them.” When one

notes that this is Volume 8,

the idea that calypsos from

the 1950s and 60s were

consigned to the scrapheap

of history comes as a shock

to Caribbean sensibilities.

That era, bracketing the

calypso craze breakthrough

in the US market offered by

Belafonte’s Calypso album,

was replete with satirical,

socially conscious, and scandalous

calypsos from all the

islands. Twenty-five songs

from the Bahamas, Jamaica,

the US Virgin Islands, Barbados,

and Trinidad and Tobago

are collected on this album.

Calypsos from icons like

the Mighty Sparrow, Mighty

Spoiler, and Lord Invader

intermingle with ditties from

Eloise Ross, the Ticklers,

and Edmundo Ros. If Volume

8 is a starting point, going

back to Volume 1 should

be a must-do for calypso

devotees.


bucket list

Where next?

After almost two years of the

COVID-19 pandemic, who doesn’t

want a break? Here at Caribbean Beat,

we feel just the same. As 2021 draws to a

close, and we look forward to the year ahead,

members of the magazine team tell us what

place in the Caribbean they’d love to visit for the

first time, and why


Bahamas Junkanoo

During hall initiation at the University of the West

Indies Mona campus, I was renamed “Junkanoo.” This

Bajan had never heard of the Bahamian festival, but

my animated personality and dance performances at

fresher competitions earned me the unique hall name.

Some Bahamian hallmates excitedly explained that

staunch revellers traditionally make their costumes

from cardboard and colourful crêpe paper. They

recalled stories about the playful rivalry among

Junkanoo groups, and listed some must-do’s in the

Bahamas. Throughout the entire conversation, I was

grinning and calculating. Brass bands combined with

whistles and cowbells push my activate button — and

brass music dominates Junkanoo. When I discovered

the dances for the street parades in Nassau on Boxing

Day and New Year’s Day are choreographed, two costumes

floated through my thoughts, and I was mentally

“rushing” in the street. The fact that Junkanoo is

one of the first and last Carnivals on the Caribbean’s

calendar — in the coolness of night — is a bonus.

Shelly-Ann Inniss

Shane Pinder/Alamy Stock Photo


21

Havana tour

I’ve been working on Caribbean Beat for many years,

and one of its unintentional but inevitable perks is

becoming exposed to a lot of fascinating places. It’s

very easy for me to briefly lose focus at my desk while

working on a destination feature, and I think Havana

accounts for most of my time spent daydreaming at

work. With an atmosphere that feels like a living time

capsule, from baroque-style buildings with their distinctive

colourful façades to the magnificent Havana

Cathedral and Capitol, the choice of places to explore

in Havana seems endless. I certainly couldn’t be without

a capable camera to capture the city’s characteristic

architecture. Another Havana icon I would love

to see up close are the well-preserved classic cars.

A sightseeing tour from the backseat of one of these

rumbling antiques would surely make it an authentic

Havana experience, and not just a daydream. I should

get back to work . . .

Kevon Webster



23

Florian Wehde courtesy Unsplash


Whale-watching

in Dominica

I’ve been wanting to explore Dominica for years, not

least because it’s one of the best places in the world

to go whale-watching. The island’s western coastline

drops off steeply, creating deep, near-shore canyons in

the bays of the Caribbean Sea where its resident population

of nearly two hundred vulnerable sperm whales

can safely breed, calve, and shelter year-round. These

well-studied cetaceans even have their own unique

culture and dialect. Whale-watching in most places is

seasonal, because the whales are migratory — so the

fact that you can spot Dominica’s residents all through

the year, and that they’re so accessible, makes the

Nature Isle truly unique. The best months for whale

sightings are from November to March, when you

might also be lucky enough to see mighty humpbacks

breaching, too! With Caribbean Airlines now offering

direct flights from Port of Spain, it’s something I can’t

wait to experience.

Caroline Taylor

WaterFrame/Alamy Stock Photo


25

The Baths,

Virgin Gorda

The Baths in Virgin Gorda, one of the

British Virgin Islands, are an impressive

natural wonder and unlike anything

else in the Caribbean. It is without a

doubt the perfect place to relive my

favourite childhood pastime of climbing

any and everything. It’s a natural

playground, characteristically volcanic,

and with many attractions scattered

between Devil’s Bay and Spring Bay.

These gigantic granite boulders are a

prime spot for bouldering, a style of free

climbing without ropes. The unique and

complex formations possess a variety of

challenging and technical routes I would

like to try. These routes are found in the

hidden caverns, grottoes, tunnels, and

overhanging arches, with more being

discovered yearly. It’s always a plus

when you’re surrounded by soft white

sand and refreshing tide pools to gently

catch you if you fall, and you can easily

transition from tough climb to relaxing

swim if you so please.

Kristine De Abreu

Sean Pavone/Shutterstock.com


Iwokrama,

Guyana

Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo

I’ve hiked through Tobago’s rainforest,

dived with whale sharks and canoed

through limestone caves in Belize, hiked

the table-top mountains of Venezuela’s

Gran Sabana, and fished the flats of Los

Roques. Adventure travel is my favourite

type of tourism — the more rural the

better. Travel is the best aspect of my

job, but it’s mostly business, with very

little time for sightseeing. One place I’d

love to return to is Guyana. I’m eager

to visit Iwokrama, “the Green Heart of

Guyana,” as an adventurer. I find myself

daydreaming of exploring the untamed

rainforest, populated by exotic wildlife,

and traveling on the waters of the mighty

Essequibo River with my family. We are

all passionate about nature and fueled by

adventure — an unbeaten path is calling.

Evelyn Chung


27

Prisma by Dukas Presseagentur GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo


Canaima National

Park, Venezuela

My fascination with Venezuela started years ago,

when I made a last-minute decision to join a feisty

tour group out of San Fernando, Trinidad. Our destination

was Merida, high up in the Andes, and boasting

the highest cable car ride in the world. The entire busride

from the airport was a thing of wonder, too. The

Venezuelan terrain was larger than life, with broad

shallow rivers and giant boulders. I half-expected

our bus to round a bend and to find Clint Eastwood

perched on a horse, contemplatively chewing a twig.

Venezuela is simply a land of superlatives, and that

always makes for great travel stories. So my bucketlist

fave is Canaima National Park, the home of the

world’s tallest waterfall, Kerepakupai Merú — also

known as Angel Falls. The park covers three million

hectares and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. La

Gran Sabana awaits me there, with its giant tepuis —

table-top mountains which tower above the savannah.

“Tepuis” will sound exotic, too, when I tell my stories.

Tracy Farrag


29

backstory

Devoted to

the dance

Photography by Nyla Singh,

courtesy Alana Rajah

Alana Rajah studied

Bharatanatyam at the

renowned Kalakshetra

school in Chennai


Originating in south India almost two thousand years ago, Bharatanatyam,

a major classical dance form, is little known in Trinidad, where most Indian

cultural traditions are rooted in the north of the subcontinent. Alana Rajah has

set out to change that. Trained at the Kalakshetra school in Chennai, her goal

is to establish Bharatanatyam in her home country — adapting and improvising

as needed. Sharda Patasar learns more

We are meeting at noon. It’s because she

begins teaching some days at 7 am, and

finishes close to lunchtime. But even

before that, she does her own training

online with her teachers from India at

4.30 am.

“It takes a toll, you know,” says Alana Rajah, when in our

warmup conversation I mention that I am planning on taking a

course that will begin at 4 am, five days a week. “That was how

I got injured. At 4.30 in the morning, my body is still waking

up here, while they [in India] are nine and a half hours ahead.

Nowadays I am constantly tired.”

Rajah’s fatigue is only natural. She has been on this schedule

for the past year. 4.30 am daily online training — the COVID-19

pandemic has made travel to India impossible — 7 am departure

for work, 5 pm return home to begin teaching her own dance

students.

“When I told my family that I was going to pursue dance, they

very honestly told me that it would be a very difficult life,” she

recalls. “My adulthood would be quite a strain, because dance

does not have that safety net, that financial cushion . . . I valued

their opinion, and they were very much correct,” she says, laughing,

“but I didn’t feel bad about it. I always felt that I was strong

enough to work as well as pursue my career as a teacher and

performer. I prepared myself mentally to work a full-time job

and come home to work another full-time job, because it isn’t

something that we as artists can control. Even though we are

born with a passion, or a talent, or the art within us, it’s a societal

fact that it is an industry that does not afford you a luxurious

lifestyle.”

Rajah’s chosen artform is Bharatanatyam, one of the oldest

classical dance forms of India, and perhaps one of the most

physically demanding. “The physical body lends itself to the

practical aspect,” she explains. “We have yoga and kalari. Those

are two things you learn first to build leg strength to help your

body become accustomed to the geometric lines or patterns that

make up the style of Bharatanatyam.”

At the Adavallan Art Academy, which she established with

the vision of creating her own dance school in Trinidad, Rajah

does not sacrifice this aspect of her students’ dance training.

Diet and fitness are essential disciplines, even for students

as young as five years old. “I feel that discipline is something

that does not hold true to Caribbean culture or Trinidadian

culture,” she says. “It’s something we don’t have as a people. It’s

something we don’t see even in the highest of positions, from

government to public service to customer service. So, for me, it

was my personal goal to inject that into the society.”

And how does she contextualise herself as a Bharatanatyam

performer in Trinidad, where up to today Indian arts are seen

as rooted in India rather than Trinidad? “It’s unfortunate,” says

Rajah. “All of us exist within the same space, and there are things

that lend to the beauty of our culture, our cultural identity, and

Indians make up a large portion of that population.”

Perceptions of artforms like Bharatanatyam are slowly

changing, at least in relation to the outside world. Social

media has been instrumental in the growing awareness of the

Caribbean Indian diaspora and its artists. In 2020, at the annual

South African Indian Dance Alliance’s Global Dance Conference,

participants from Guyana and Trinidad were invited for the

first time, to work with other dancers and share experiences as

artists of the Indian diaspora. “We are becoming more embraced

and recognised,” says Rajah. “Because even for India, it took a

long time for them to appreciate dancers of the diaspora outside

of India . . . they didn’t understand the history of Indians being

taken from India and settling across these various countries and

islands. That is a concept that is now settling within their minds.

And that appreciation is growing, which I am so grateful for.”

In Trinidad and Tobago, before Rajah’s emergence, there had

been only one practitioner of Bharatanatyam dance. Under the

tutelage of Rajkumar Krishna Persad at the Trinidad School

of Indian Dance, a basic foundation was enough to take Rajah on

a quest to deepen her knowledge of an artform that dates back

approximately two thousand years.


31

Indian classical music in Trinidad has no younger, formally

trained musicians and singers. Most are still students.

Unlike Western musicians, who can attain formal

qualifications by sitting the Trinity College or other

internationally recognised examinations, Indian classical

music studies have to be done in India, as there are no

formal examination bodies in the West. Furthermore,

job prospects as music teachers at formal institutions

in Trinidad are near to absent for anyone trained in

Indian classical music. The University of the West Indies

is perhaps one of the few bodies that provides a small

window of opportunity.

The Internet opened the world of Indian classical dance to

her. Rajah’s research in Bharatanatyam brought up names like

E. Krishna Iyer, Balasaraswati, and Rukmini Devi, a group of

artists who were commonly known as the Revivalists. They

were responsible for introducing Bharatanatyam to a public

stage. In previous centuries, Bharatanatyam was practiced only

by the Devadasis, women who lived within the inner sanctums of

the temples of Tamil Nadu and were considered to be the brides

of the gods. Among the Revivalists, Rukmini Devi Arundale,

founder of the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai, was the one

to whom Rajah was most attracted.

“She was a Brahmin, so she went against all of her cultural

conditionings and beliefs to learn this artform, and created this

huge institute for Bharatanatyam,” Rajah explains. “There were

flocks of students who went to specialise in the artform, and left

Kalakshetra as budding artistes. That is something I wanted to

do. Not only go to her institute, but do the exact same thing that

she did for her country, because I felt when I was young I would

have loved to have a Rukmini Devi as my mentor . . . I would

have felt so much better existing with the passion that I had,

because this was something that was not mainstream.”

Rajah’s quest took her on scholarship to Kalakshetra, an

institution that is “like military camp for dance,” as she describes

it. There, after four years of intense study to earn her Diploma in

Dance, it was back in Trinidad that her trials would begin.

“After doing all of that, and coming back to Trinidad to try

and share your knowledge or add that artform into the cultural

community here, you are then labelled with, ‘You feel you know.

You is it because you went away and study’ — which is so

unfortunate. It really breaks down all of your spirit . . . So you

really have to crawl into a hole and create magic again, just to

escape the ole talk.”

Additionally, Bharatanatyam is linguistically and musically

different to most other Indian classical forms in Trinidad. The


Students of Rajah’s Adavallan

Art Academy

[similar to a lute], flute, violin, nattuvangam [cymbals], and the

vocalist. We do have drums, but those artistes improvise freely,

they aren’t trained in the music. We do not have veenas or veena

artists. We have the violin, we have the flute, but the entire genre

is different. They aren’t at all trained in Carnatic music. I’ve now

had to explore working with the tabla, because that is what is

available here. And sitar, as well as not having a natuvanar or

vocalist. Even if I have a vocalist, the music can’t be set to a particular

rhythmic cycle, as we would in Carnatic music, because

that concept isn’t practiced by them. And if I’m dancing, I’m not

Bharatanatyam is linguistically and

musically different to most other

Indian classical forms in Trinidad.

The musical heritage of Indians in

Trinidad is mostly rooted in northern

Indian folk music and dance

musical heritage of Indians in Trinidad is mostly rooted in

northern Indian folk music and dance. Those who have studied

classical Indian music are primarily educated in north Indian

traditions. Bharatanatyam dance introduces a south Indian

aesthetic, language, and rhythm.

In a traditional Bharatanatyam recital, the dance is performed

through facial expressions and hand gestures. Through these,

the rasas are communicated. In the Indian classical tradition,

the concept of rasa — roughly translated as essence or flavour —

is critical to performance. The expression of the navrasas, or the

nine emotions, is the responsibility of musicians and dancers alike.

Communicating these effectively to audiences is one of the main

goals of performance. As such, in the Indian classical tradition,

music is defined as a trilogy: dance, instrumental music, and song.

As Rajah explains, “When you learn any of the eight forms

of Indian classical dance, there are many things that you have

to learn simultaneously with it. Indian classical music, it’s like a

sub-main to your dance. You have to learn percussion, which is

the inherent rhythm of the universe. It’s that structure, the time

cycle of how you would set your music to dance, so you have to

be very knowledgeable about that.”

In Trinidad, the challenge was adaptation of this knowledge.

“In the Carnatic musicians’ setup, the instruments used for

Bharatnatyam are the mridangam [a two-headed drum], veena

able to do the nattuvangam, which is like the most important

part of the orchestra for Bharatnatyam. So I’ve had to try to find

ways to work around it.”

Na veena na ragam, na mridangam na talam — “Neither veena

nor ragas, neither mridangam nor rhythm” — the phrase could

very well be the beginning of another text, not the Natyashastra,

the ancient Indian treatise on dance and performance, but a

Caribbean one.

Rajah sees this as lending to creativity and presentation. “It

just takes a bit more out of both sides, the musicians and the

dancers.” In addition, she’s started pre-recording a spoken introduction

for the performance — “for the audience to understand

what will be unfolding, what they are supposed to feel, what they

will be seeing on the stage.”

This feels like another coming of age story in the history

of Bharatanatyam. It continues the narrative of resilience and

imagination — of those who dared to cross boundaries, and of

women, most importantly, who challenged the order of things.

Transplanted in Trinidad, it is yet another transformation of the

form, despite Rajah’s attempts to retain the purity of form.

Improvisation, after all, is a feature of Bharatanatyam’s

history, and Alana Rajah, with her relentless drive to perfect

her art and establish her own version of Kalaskshetra in the

Caribbean, is in fact a pioneering spirit, charting a course for a

future generation. n


33

portfolio

Unknown. Jamaican Women, c. 1900. Gelatin

silver print, overall: 17.5 × 23.5 cm. Montgomery

Collection of Caribbean Photographs

Purchase, with funds from Dr Liza & Dr Frederick

Murrell, Bruce Croxon & Debra Thier, Wes Hall

& Kingsdale Advisors, Cindy & Shon Barnett,

Donette Chin-Loy Chang, Kamala-Jean Gopie,

Phil Lind & Ellen Roland, Martin Doc McKinney,

Francilla Charles, Ray & Georgina Williams, Thaine

& Bianca Carter, Charmaine Crooks, Nathaniel

Crooks, Andrew Garrett & Dr Belinda Longe, Neil

L. Le Grand, Michael Lewis, Dr Kenneth Montague

& Sarah Aranha, Lenny & Julia Mortimore, and The

Ferrotype Collective, 2019. © Art Gallery of Ontario

2019/2210

Assembling

fragments

Historical photographs and works by

contemporary Caribbean artists come

together in a new exhibition at the Art Gallery

of Ontario, to show how stories of ourselves

have changed over time

Almost thirty years after St Lucian

poet Derek Walcott delivered his

Nobel Prize lecture in Stockholm,

one hopeful and especially

quotable sentence continues to

resonate in the imaginations of

Caribbean thinkers. “Break a vase, and the love that

reassembles the fragments is stronger than that

love which took its symmetry for granted when it

was whole.” The Caribbean’s broken vase, Walcott

suggested, is reassembled from the “shattered

histories” and “shards of vocabulary” of our

ancestral traditions — relics of five centuries of

violence and oppression. “This gathering of broken

pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles,” Walcott

wrote. “Antillean art is this restoration.”

Fragments of Epic Memory, a new exhibition at

Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario — which opened

in September 2021 and runs through 21 February,

2022 — borrows from Walcott’s Nobel lecture

both its title and the summoning idea that the task

and privilege of Caribbean artists is to create new

stories and images from the disjecta membra of

our troubling past and present. It also reminds us

that those stories and images must evolve over

time — that each generation must indeed reassemble

the fragments and reimagine the forms of

our individual and shared memories.

Fragments of Epic Memory is the first exhibition

organised by the AGO’s Department of Arts of

Global Africa and the Diaspora, established in

2020 under the directorship of Julie Crooks. In her

previous role as photography curator, Crooks managed

the landmark acquisition of the Montgomery

Collection of Caribbean Photographs, thought to

34


Above Gomo George. Women’s

Carnival Group, 1996. Watercolour on

rag paper, 55.9 × 76.2 cm. Courtesy of

the artist. © Gomo George

Left Paul Anthony Smith. Untitled,

7 Women, 2019. Unique picotage on

inkjet print, colored pencil, spray paint

on museum board, 101.6 × 127 cm.

The Hott Collection, New York. © Paul

Anthony Smith, Image courtesy of

the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery,

New York


35

Left Duperly Brothers. Port Royal, Jamaica,

c. 1890. Albumen print, overall: 25.6 × 36.2 cm.

Gift of Patrick Montgomery, through the American

Friends of the Art Gallery of Ontario Inc., 2019.

© Art Gallery of Ontario 2019/3071

Below Kelly Sinnapah Mary, Notebook of No

Return, 2017. Acrylic painting on paper, 43.2 x 50.8

cm. Private Collection © Kelly Sinnapah Mary

be the largest collection of historical images of

the region outside the geographical Caribbean.

Now Crooks has brought together selections

from the Montgomery Collection with works by

approximately thirty modern and contemporary

Caribbean and diaspora artists, to “show how

the region’s histories are constantly revisited and

reimagined through artistic production over time.”

“The story of the Caribbean and its artists isn’t

one story,” says Crooks, “but a kaleidoscope of

histories and voices and experiences, best understood

through the interplay of them all.” She also

notes that Toronto is a major centre of the global

Caribbean diaspora, and works by Canada-based

artists are prominent here. These include a newly

commissioned work by Toronto-based Sandra

Brewster, whose Feeding Trafalgar Square (2021)

is based on an old photo of the artist’s mother

on a holiday visit to London — “turning a joyful

moment into a moving meditation on what it

means to be displaced.”

Among the other “fragments” assembled

by Crooks are paintings by the Guyana-born

modernists Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling,

a large-scale video installation by Jamaican

Ebony G. Patterson, and works by artists such as

Christopher Cozier of Trinidad and Tobago, Firelei

Báez of the Dominican Republic, Nadia Huggins of

St Vincent, and Kelly Sinnapah Mary of Guadeloupe.

In the AGO galleries, these works are

interspersed among approximately two hundred

photographs from the Montgomery Collection,

manifesting both affinities and discordances

across time. What to make of those affinities and

discordances — how exactly to assemble the

fragments, into what shapes, and why — is the

question the exhibition poses to each visitor. n


Above left Unknown. Martinique Woman, c. 1890.

Albumen print, overall: 14.6 × 10.2 cm. Montgomery

Collection of Caribbean Photographs

Purchase, with funds from Dr Liza & Dr Frederick

Murrell, Bruce Croxon & Debra Thier, Wes Hall

& Kingsdale Advisors, Cindy & Shon Barnett,

Donette Chin-Loy Chang, Kamala-Jean Gopie,

Phil Lind & Ellen Roland, Martin Doc McKinney,

Francilla Charles, Ray & Georgina Williams, Thaine

& Bianca Carter, Charmaine Crooks, Nathaniel

Crooks, Andrew Garrett & Dr Belinda Longe, Neil

L. Le Grand, Michael Lewis, Dr Kenneth Montague

& Sarah Aranha, Lenny & Julia Mortimore, and The

Ferrotype Collective, 2019. © Art Gallery of Ontario

2019/2208

Above right Sandra Brewster. Feeding Trafalgar

Square, 2021. Photo-transfer on wood. Art Gallery

of Ontario. Commission, with funds from the

Women's Art Initiative, 2021. © Sandra Brewster

Left Ebony G. Patterson. ...three kings weep...,

2018. Three-channel digital colour video

projection with sound, running time: 8 minutes,

34 seconds. Purchase, with funds from the

Photography Curatorial Committee, 2020.

© Ebony G. Patterson, courtesy Monique Meloche

Gallery, Chicago. 2019/2469

For more information on

Fragments of Epic Memory, see

ago.ca/exhibitions/fragments-epicmemory


37

closeup

In the

light of

language

Few Caribbean poets have enjoyed critical

acclaim as sudden and early as St Luciaborn

Canisia Lubrin. Her sophomore

book The Dyzgraphxst has won a slew

of awards, but, as Shivanee Ramlochan

learns, Lubrin’s concern is not with the

spotlight of fame, but with the luminous

possibilities of language itself

Photography courtesy Canisia Lubrin

Canisia Lubrin’s literary star isn’t merely on the rise. It’s

embedded, twinkling, in the firmament. In the past few months,

she’s won the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature,

the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize, and a 2021 Windham-Campbell

Prize in Poetry — you might imagine glittering achievements

are now par for Lubrin’s poetic course. Yet accolades are the

least of what we discuss in our Zoom interview: instead, Lubrin tells me about

her earliest songs.

“In St Lucia, as a child, the first stirrings of language came to me in my

grandmother’s folktales, stories, and songs,” she says. “I look back and see

the markings of poetry in my life, on that small island.” Nothing has ever

been miniature about the imagination of St Lucia, Lubrin’s birthplace and

physical home till she emigrated to Canada as a teenager for education. The

countryside, where she grew up, was replete with culture: folk music, rural

theatre troupes, her mother’s storied trip to Dominica for an acting gig. These

were glowing hallmarks of Lubrin’s life in language, too.

They resided in her spirit, she says, while she devoured the plays of Derek

Walcott in high school — though, she reflects with an arch smile, she can’t recall

ever learning a single Walcott poem in those classrooms. Instead, Ti-Jean and

His Brothers straddled Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Sam Selvon’s A Brighter

Sun. When Lubrin learned that English literature would be summarily struck

from the academic offerings after form three, owing to a staffing deficit, she

was disconsolate. Literature, she knew then, was

something she needed to do.

Writing, reading, feasting on language were her

St Lucian rituals. She laughs as she summons a

memory conjured by her sister during a pandemic

chat: an image of five-year-old Canisia, lying on her

stomach, legs kicked up behind her, utterly rapt in

the pages of a massive set of newly bought encyclopaedias.

“Was I reading every word?” she muses

out loud, her eyes gleaming with the past vision of

her younger self. “Perhaps not, but I was marvelling,

in those encyclopaedias, at what a world we have.”

Others, as the years progressed, would come to

marvel at her: a form three teacher held Lubrin’s

composition on “The Day After the Storm” aloft,

running through the hallways effervescing with joy

at what she had written. “My goodness. You wrote

this? You did this? You have to keep writing. You did


this.” Continue she did. She remembers the animating spark fuelling her application

letter to York University in Toronto, which she’d go on to attend, and the

clear sense that she was on her way to a future that not only involved writing,

but centred it. A future, indeed, where such a thing as “being a writer” was not

amorphous, speculative, otherworldly — but as real as flesh, blood, and bone.

Emigration challenged Lubrin physically — “I felt as though I’d walked

into a freezer,” she says, wincing, conjuring thoughts of her first frigid

autumn and winter — and philosophically. Immersing herself in Toronto,

she learned, meant being confronted by a place where “I knew I’d met a lot of

closeted issues about race and the way power functions, what it means to be

othered.” Finding community in this city was initially rough going, coupled with

the aggressions, micro and major, thrown into her path: she remembers being

followed in shops with suspicion, and having the ubiquitous anti-Black slur

thrown at her during the course of her stints at nannying and factory work. It

was a sharp insight into how daily-paid labourers, those assigned to allegedly

menial tasks, are nonetheless reduced within their Black and brown bodies in

one of Canada’s richest cities.

“In St Lucia, as a child,

the first stirrings of

language came to me in my

grandmother’s folktales,

stories, and songs,” Canisia

Lubrin says


39

Yet, as much as Lubrin maintains Toronto is

still a hard locale, she unsurprisingly loves the

woven pattern of its many languages. She delights

in telling me that, here, “You can walk through

Portuguese, then streets away you’re in Spanish,

in Hindi, in Cantonese. There’s something magical

about a place where this is the ordinary.”

From the streets to the library stacks, Lubrin

actively sought language, finding a revelation

in the poetry and prose of Trinidad-born writer

Dionne Brand. Up to that point in her undergraduate

career, there was but one Derek Walcott poem

on the syllabus, “Forest of Europe”, and Brand had

not been explicitly taught. It was only following

an urgent recommendation from her teaching

assistant on a satire course, Stephanie Hart, that

Lubrin “ran, not walked” to the library, seizing

No Language is Neutral and Land to Light On, reading

the former in one fell swoop. She laughs at

the recollected miracle of it, saying how “utterly

pissed” she was that Brand had not been formally

introduced into her academic learning, alongside

the feeling of sheer, unalloyed gratitude for the fact

of Brand’s writing in the world. Not many years

after this, Lubrin would be sitting in Brand’s graduate

poetry seminar, another vital thread in the

making of an intimate professional and creative

bond between them.

Entering publication’s lettered halls, however, proved

daunting. Four solid years of journal rejections lined Lubrin’s

path, so much so that a solicitation from an editor at publisher

Wolsak and Wynn for what would become her first book, Voodoo

Hypothesis (2017), shook her. The first twelve poems she’d written

during Brand’s course were included in that manuscript, but it

was spilt blood that gave the work its form and voice.

In 2016, Lubrin, alongside countless others, reeled at the

murder of Philando Castile, slain in front of his partner Diamond

Reynolds and her four-year-old daughter near Minneapolis,

Minnesota. That summer, Canisia grimly nods, was a horrific

sequence of violence against Black bodies and minds. The killings

piled up, and Lubrin took to her pages, reworking ninety-five

per cent of Voodoo Hypothesis to reflect the conditions of the

world as she saw them, “through my place as a diaspora woman

writer, with my queer lens.” The result was a debut book committed

to “raising up language like a shield against European

histories and sciences,” as poet Sonnet L’Abbé described it. But

while Voodoo Hypothesis was astonishing in its power, it was only

Lubrin’s beginning.

The Dyzgraphxst (2020), her second collection, took its first

pulse from interrogation. Dionne Brand, in whose conversations

“books are made,” says Lubrin fondly, asked the younger

writer about the absence of the “I” voice in her poems. This

prompted soul-and-verse searching, and when the first draft of

the manuscript arrived, Brand asked “Who is this Jejune? We

need more of this voice.” Thus, what had been intended as a peripheral figure

became the animating force of The Dyzgraphxst, a narrator not restrictive in

vision, but invitational: “I absolutely found that I was reflected in the concerns

of the language, and could make that space horizontal rather than vertical,

so you can enter it, so I can sit with you, so the next person can enter and sit

Lubrin is modestly conscious — not to

mention grateful — for the space and time

that literary prizes create for her writing.

Fame, however, has never been her ambition

with us.” Critical responses to Lubrin’s sophomore offering might be said to

speak for themselves, and the poet is modestly conscious — not to mention

grateful — for the space and time that literary prizes create for her writing.

Fame, however, has never been her ambition. She pursues something far less

glittering, but perhaps no less inwardly luminous.

“I had to break the language open, reconfigure it so something different

could come to the world — jagged, not making apology for its breakages, that

simply exists and shows what it shows,” Lubrin says of her labours. In her roles

as educator and poetry editor at publishing house McClelland & Stewart, her

work is as originary, as border-resistant. “In every sphere, I try always not to

make it about me, to enter into a kind of appreciation for what is possible,” she

concludes, already envisioning multiple worlds where language — Canisia

Lubrin’s guiding light — reveals what has always been. n



41

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did you even know

Let’s dance

In this issue of Caribbean Beat, you’ll find a

profile of Trinidadian dancer Alana Rajah. How

much do you know about other Caribbean dance

traditions? Test yourself with our quiz — and

check your score in the answers below!

6. What is the name of the small ankle bells worn by

dancers in many classical Indian styles practised today in

Trinidad, Guyana, and elsewhere in the Caribbean?

Robertharding/Alamy Stock Photo

1. What celebrated Trinidadian dancer and choreographer,

based in New York City in the 1940s, performed under the

name “La Belle Rosette”?

2. What is the name of the acclaimed dance group cofounded

at Jamaica’s Independence in 1962 by cultural

luminary Rex Nettleford?

7. The most popular traditional dance in the Bahamas

shares a name with a style of music and the large goatskin

drum that is the main instrument — what are they called?

8. What agricultural product is dried after harvesting, and

traditionally turned over in the sun by “dancing” it with the

workers’ feet?

3. The style of sensuous dance known to Trinis as wining

has a different name in Barbados — what is it?

4. What is the name of the popular Haitian two-step dance

style, similar to merengue, that evolved in the 1950s?

5. What Cuban prima ballerina founded the company that

would become the country’s Ballet Nacional?

9. Masquerade dancers in St Kitts — who perform in

colourful costumes and masks, to the music of drums, fiddle,

and fife — have a repertoire of six main dances. How many of

them can you name?

10. What is the name of the traditional Puerto Rican dance

in which the dancer sets the rhythm and the lead drummer

attempts to follow?

Answers:

1 Beryl McBurnie

2 The National Dance Theatre Company of

Jamaica

3 Wuk up

4 Compas (sometimes spelled konpa)

5 Alicia Alonso

6 Ghungroos (sometimes spelled gungurus)

7 Goombay

8 Cocoa beans

9 Quadrille, fine, wild mas, jig, waltz, and boillola

10 Bomba


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Caribbean Beat — November/December 2021 (#167)

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