Commentary
Dara Healy
Culture matters
DARA AND HALY
I started running the Kitchener tent since 1967…I’ve done ten seasons climbing the Kitchener tent and I mean people who have been around calypso would always say that one of the MCs the worst they have seen in business to date is Black Stalin. At a certain point around 1976/77 I just said look, Black Man, cool down a little bit on the eceeeing and get into the song more…And I think the results of staying off the stage, we saw it in 79 with the first calypso the crown and my first album.
– Black Stalin, GBTV interview, 1994
TOO LATE. Sadly, this is often the time frame when we honor our cultural practitioners. I wish I had known more about Rawle Titus, for example, so that I would have had an opportunity to benefit from his passion for studying and teaching our traditions.
There are plans to make his creative works available to more citizens, but how can we document and preserve the work of our creators while they are alive? Further, as we consider the long-term impact of icons like Black Stalin, shouldn’t our ambitions go beyond preservation to amplify their work in schools and communities?
There are practitioners who reach deep into communities to connect with the life force of culture, like the single-minded Elder JD. Then there are those like Black Stalin, Jit Samaroo, Julia Edwards and others who sang, danced or played the pan because they had no choice. We have reached the point in our collective history when remembering them is essential.
Our nation is once again in a fragile state, perhaps similar to when George Bailey felt he had to bend the strings and create masquerades to highlight the racism in our society. Or when Minshall’s tech crab tracked our blood across the Savannah stage.
Creativity transformed us in other ways, when, for example, someone bent on the knees and moved under a flaming rod, six inches above the ground. Or how we empowered the community to tell its story of Ram and Leela through drama and dance.
Today, the ability to tell stories could not be imagined by any national plan for culture and art. Few plans could have foreseen Tik Tok or Snapchat. Every week, I meet people, many of them young, who have created their own digital space to address information gaps. They no longer wait for a museum exhibit or national festival to actively engage around the stories that matter to them.
However, how do we pull all the information into one easily accessible repository? Should institutions like the National Archives or UTT now address the complexity of nation-building digital content and how it should be managed? Too often enthusiasm is not supported by ideological clarity, and when this happens, the result is inevitably – confusion. We have a recent example of a celebration pan of global animation that Laventille didn’t mention.
How we protect the works of our icons is another crucial area. Sadly, there are people within the creative sector who plagiarize so often that it is a natural part of their modus operandi. Stealing poetry, choreography or song lyrics happens more often than you think. And no, it doesn’t matter if the icon is still alive.
To help set standards and guidelines, it is imperative that our legal fraternity and other key sectors become more proactive in protecting music, written works, designs and other creative products.
As we move deeper into the digitization of creative works, this issue of protection will become even more pressing. If we felt outrage about the creation of a Rum J’Ouvert – just wait. The potential to create entire online worlds, a metaverse, is closer than we realize. Here, users will be able to buy, sell and interact according to the terms set by the global entity that owns the space.
In the 1940s, we were warned when the Andrews sisters successfully claimed Lord Invader and Lionel Belasco’s Rum and Coca-Cola as theirs. That legal case ended well for us, but do we have the resources or the know-how to protect our creative output in a global and much less regulated digital realm?
Ultimately, documenting our icons must be a priority for all of us if we are to protect their legacy for future generations and inspire much-needed healing in our nation.
Dara E Healy is a performance artist and founder of the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN
