No longer Director

For those of you who have not heard and are not aware, I ceased to be Director of Culture on 31st December, 2008.It's a move that has been a long time in coming. For those people who wish to speculate that my return to the College has to do with politics or changes in government or any mundane reason like that, let me attempt to set the record straight right now.I took up the position, initially in an acting capacity, on 20th October 2003, on the understanding then that it was a secondment from my position at the College of The Bahamas. In July 2004, however, I was transferred from the College to the Civil Service, and given a letter signed by the Governor of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas, as is customary for civil service appointees. I queried the move, and indicated that I had no intention of making a full-time move to the Public Service, and requested that the arrangement be rectified. However, the wheels of government turn slowly when they turn at all, and nothing came of that request.At that time, things were looking vaguely bright for culture in The Bahamas. The National Commission on Cultural Development had been established, and was meeting on a regular basis to craft a new way forward for Bahamian cultural life. The period was revolutionary, in that for the first time in decades cultural experts from every different field sat in a room together, hashed out policy and made recommendations directly to government, and fashioned real visions for the way forward for a country that has been impoverished intellectually, socially and emotionally by too-rapid, uneven material development and a lack of reflection. During that period, the Commission drafted three pieces of legislation for the government, travelled throughout the Islands of The Bahamas, touched base with Bahamians everywhere, and highlighted the extent of what we do not know about ourselves.Out of the Commission also came a draft National Cultural Policy for The Bahamas, the beginning of a way forward for us as a people and a nation that goes beyond the surface and beyond the material.As time passed, however, it became evident that the Commission was more revolutionary in title and composition than in any other manner. Its role was treated as instrumental only in so far as it met the specific goals of the politicians. Two of the three pieces of legislation were adopted, and in a watered-down fashion; the specific recommendations contained in those two -- recommendations that reflected the will of the Bahamian people, as determined through nation-wide surveys, in town meetings, and from radio discussions -- were ignored. The Heroes and Honours Bills were pushed through the House of Assembly in a hurry, and ignored their most fundamental elements -- that the successful implementation of Bahamian honours would require the abolition of the British ones, and that the recognition of National Heroes would have to acknowledge, depoliticize and recognize and celebrate the milestone that was Majority Rule. The change of government affected Bahamian cultural development in a very basic fashion -- by ignoring the vision developed for the country by the NCDC (not because it was a bad vision, but simply because the Commission was instituted by the previous administration, and most things so establlished were dismantled, as had happened five years before), leaving culture in the position it had been in 2003, when I first took the position.Here's why I'm returning to COB, then.

1. I always planned to do so, the fact that my secondment/temporary appointment was botched notwithstanding.
2. After five years, culture is right back where it was in 2003 -- entirely dependent on the personalities who head it, and on the goodwill of those politicians and civil servants who might look upon it favourably. If those people exist, as they have done over the past five years, good things will happen in culture. If not, then culture will continue to die, as it has done for the vast majority of our independence. I am temperamentally unsuited to walking in circles. I have a pretty good sense of direction, and I know futile wandering when I see it. 
3. Conflict of interest. I was a cultural worker before I became Director, specifically in the fields of theatre and writing, and my husband is a theatre director who has worked for all of his career in various capacities on various contracts for the government of The Bahamas. His first government job came in 1983, when he was contracted to mount the folk opera Sammie Swain for the Tenth Anniversary of Independence, and he has been involved in the production of national events on a fairly regular basis ever since. However, my position as Director compromised the extent to which he was able to work with the government, and certainly for the Department of Culture (more accurately, the Cultural Affairs Division), even in situations when he was the most experienced/best qualified/most available director. Further, as a playwright and member of a theatre production company, my work was curtailed by the fact that I was a government official.
4. The strictures of the civil service are at fundamental odds with my calling as a writer and with the democratic principles on which our country is founded. General Orders prohibits any civil servant from speaking about his or her job without permission. As a civil servant, very simply, I could not say what I thought outside the confines of boardrooms and the offices of Under Secretaries, Permanent Secretaries and Ministers.
5. I see more potential for change among people under forty than among those over it, and the vast majority of the people in the civil service are over forty. There is far more potential for national development outside the service than in it, and the soon-to-be University of The Bahamas is poised to be a catalyzing force in that development.
6. And last, but not least: so my career has some room to grow. I'm forty-five, with a statutory 20 more years of service ahead of me. In two or three years, though, I will have reached the top of my particular Directorial scale, and will be stuck at the same salary, with the same perks, with no hope of advancement, for the remaining 18 years, unless I choose to leave the technical field and move into exclusive paper-pushing. That is the situation that has afflicted most of the people who work in the Cultural Affairs Division, and there is no good reason why it will not happen to me. COB offers far more scope for career advancement and potential earning. (And, not incidentally, I have come to equate salary scale with respect for one's field and position. The dead-endedness of every long-term position in the Cultural Affairs Division, in which no senior officer has received a promotion of note in a good twenty years, and the concurrent impossibility of hiring new blood, are the best indicators that I have ever had of the complete non-importance of culture and its development to the politicians and civil servants that have run the country for that period of time. But more on that later.)

So I'm leaving government and going back to the College because, ladies and gentlemen, it's the twenty-first century. We've almost closed the first decade of that century, and we're still running our country with a late eighteenth century institution, developed exclusively for colonization and for the subjugation of hostile populations. I'd rather work for a late twentieth-century institution, thanks. At least the College was established in my lifetime, and has changed more in its short thirty years than the Public Service has changed in 230.It's a no-brainer, really. But more on that to come.Cheers.

R.I.P. Harold Pinter

 How Pinteresque, to die on Christmas Eve.

LONDON (AP) — Harold Pinter, praised as the most influential British playwright of his generation and a longtime voice of political protest, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.Pinter, whose distinctive contribution to the stage was recognized with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, died on Wednesday, according to his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser."Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles," the Nobel Academy said when it announced Pinter's award. "With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution."

R.I.P. Hubert Farrington December 12, 1924-December 8, 2008

For those of you who hadn't heard, Hubert Farrington, the first Bahamian classical dancer (that I know of) and the founder of the Nassau Civic Ballet, was knocked down and killed on Sunday past. (I'm not clear exactly which date he was killed, but as I heard of his death two days ago, I'm guessing it was last Sunday. If I've got the dates wrong, please somebody let me know).Mr. Farrington was one of the three "stars" taught by Meta Davis-Cumberbatch in the second quarter of the twentieth century, the other two being Winston Saunders and E. Clement Bethel -- students for whom she desired much and expected even more. Perhaps because of her ambition and expectation, and certainly because of her discipline and hard work, each of these men laid the foundations for a vibrant cultural life in this country. That we have not capitalized on it is not their fault. But we must remember them anyway.Mr. Farrington began as a musician, but when he migrated to New York in the 1940s he learned to dance and, most remarkably, became a good enough ballet dancer to become a professional working at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. He returned to Nassau in the 1960s to found a ballet school, the Nassau Civic Ballet, and that action was seminal to the future development of dance in the capital. From the Civic Ballet came the New Breed Dancers by way of Alex and Violette Zybine, and the New Breed Dancers provided many many of the professional dance teachers working in Nassau today.Mr. Farrington was one of the most brilliant men I have ever met. He was not easy to talk to. He was often in another world, but when he was in ours his intellect was staggering. He remained like that until his death.R.I.P., Hubert Farrington. Another cultural giant has passed on.

Bahamas International Film Festival Opening - Maria Govan's Rain

I went. I saw. It conquered.Kudos to Maria. I'll be back later to amend this post and add thoughts and observations.But in short: it was a fine opening film for the Festival. Well done to all.

In Memoriam Miriam Makeba

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHgKcPP6yK0&hl=en&fs=1]

ArtOvation

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obNHqWQ4XMQ&w=425&h=344]Go check it out.

Friendship Around the World Award (Part I)

Geoffrey Philp linked me in this some time ago, and I'm going to try indulge in it now. 

Friendship Around the World AwardJack Mandora, whose blog I admire, has passed this award along to me with the mandate of sharing it with friends whom I’ve met through blogging. I will add that they became my friends because of the remarkable content of their blogs.

I have to say my blogging practices have changed lately, and I haven't done as much reading as I should, but let me start. So here are mine - part I.Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot - Geoffrey PhilpThere are lots of Caribbean blogs out there, but not so many that deal with literature. Geoffrey's one that I read, partly because I know him in person, but also because I like his observations.Heraclitean Fire - Harry RutherfordOK, I'm a poet in my spare time, and I read lots and lots of poetry blogs, many of which I visit on a very regular basis. But Harry writes about more than poetry, and his links are always interesting. Unless he's talking about some sport or another, I find every post of his fascinating, probably because he's able to synthesize material really well. It's a skill that I admire and to which I aspire. Bahama Pundit - Larry Smith, et al.The idea behind this blog is to bring Bahamian columnists together in one online spot and give us a platform that reaches beyond the newspaper circulation. I like and admire Larry as a reporter. He does his homework and makes observations that hold up after some scrutiny, and his fellow columnists are also pretty interesting. (I was one of them for a while, and hope to be again, but that's not the reason I picked this blog!) Maybe it's a little to localized for most people, but it's worth a look in my books.Weblog Bahamas - Rick Lowe et al.I read Rick's blog because he and I hold opposite views of the world in just about everything except the potential and the need of human beings to make their own realities. It's good to see what libertarians, and especially white Bahamian libertarians, are thinking, even if I disagree from the pit of my stomach with 99.999999999% of what they think. But Rick doesn't only talk about politics and economics. He also reads some pretty interesting stuff, he has eclectic taste in music, he takes some cool photos, and he doesn't let you go away without having been provoked in some way or another. And some of his co-authors are almost as good.Signifyin' Guyana - Charmaine D. Valere's blogI read this blog because Charmaine doesn't just write about Caribbean issues, she also reads and reviews work by Caribbean (primarily Guyanese) writers, and her perspective is an interesting one. She's part of the diaspora, lives outside the region, but she's part of the global Caribbean that is going to transform our nations in years to come. Go Charmaine.Carter's Little Pill - Julie Carter's blogAs I said, I read lots of poetry blogs. Julie's, like Harry's, isn't all about poetry, though it could be because her poems are kick-ass. But there's a lot about Julie in it too, and I like what I see of Julie online. It's because of her and what she wrote that made me suspect Ohio was going to vote for Obama. Well worth a read.Savage Minds - Group blog about anthropologyYes, I'm a poet and a Caribbean woman, but don't forget I'm an anthropologist as well. There are other anthro blogs out there, but this one strikes closest to me and my particular training -- social anthropology with a distinct UK/European bias and a deep admiration and love for (though not always acceptance of) the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss.I'll stop there for now, but I'll be back. There are some people I missed. But you have to excuse me -- Obama and the world's changing are taking up some of my time.If I've called your name, go spread the meme!

Why Obama matters to all of us, everywhere

Four Fingers and a ThumbOn a hot day in a school in Laventille, I am reasoning with a student. This beautiful young woman of 17 years or so. I say to her, what do you want to be? She laughs and says a stripper.Her classmates laugh too, because to them it is a joke, as funny as their lives being lived out in predictable boxes.On a hot day in a school in Laventille painted in colours disturbingly similar to the wall around the Royal Gaol, this beautiful young woman sums up the totality of her potential in saying that she wants to be a stripper.I am not amused. I am also not surprised that she doesn’t hesitate to respond in the negative. I fight the urge to run from the room screaming and crying because she is living proof that you can build buildings but if you don’t build the people, your social fabric will crumble and then what is the point of phallic concrete edifices in you city?I suggest to her that she creates her own reality. I suggest to her that words have power and if you call yourself a whore enough, the ease of the words on your tongue will numb you to the dread reality of your actions.I ask her again what she wants to be. She says that what she wants for herself is not what other people want for her.She says she wants to be a hairdresser and a singer. And I wonder who has told her that she can’t be anything she puts her mind to.

This is from a blog by Trinidadian writer Attilah Springer, who wrote it on Saturday while engaging in the "escapist fantasy" that Barack Hussein Obama might win the US election. I posted it because it is so fundamentally true in so many places that are growing young people of colour.The "No You Can't" mentality is pervasive throughout the world, not just in the USA, and it's in part because our leaders swallowed wholesale and without critical examination the concept that there are first and second and third class citizens in this world, and people of colour never break into the first group, and it's also in part because the popular media really only promote images of non-white people engaging in sex, drugs, violence and angry, nihilistic music. It's also in part because our leaders see no value in supporting an economy or a culture that enables us to create alternative images for our own young people.Until now.The fact that Obama has been elected President of the United States of America means something. It means something to all of us, and it's far more than just the fact that he's African-American (and when we apply that to him, it means something real, it's not just another synonym for black/negro/nigger/ex-slave). It means that the people who elected him, who are overwhelmingly under 30, of all backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, beliefs and class are the people who are creating new realities for us. And maybe it also means that something of that hope, of that new reality, will trickle down to the rest of us in the African diasporic world.  It isn't going to come easily, and it isn't going to come automatically. But what it does mean is that we can no longer fool ourselves that our destinies are out of our hands. And it means too that throughout the Caribbean we must make our own futures. We have to confront those politicians who have nothing but old ideas, stuff fed to them by imperialists and racists and people who didn't even realize that they were imperialistic and racist but who were force-feeding those worldviews anyway, and tell them it ain't like that anymore.And we have to kill the "No We Can't" attitude stone dead.Dare to dream. America just has had its dream come true. Time for us to dream big too.

Are we all criminals?

Got this from zotz, aka Drew Roberts, who is a passionate proponent of creative commons licensing, of a rethinking of the copyright laws of the twentieth century:http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&file=http%3A//blip.tv/rss/flash/730724&autostart=false

Download media

 I wanted to post it, and link to the page it came from, because I agree with it, 95%.  My reservation comes when I'm thinking about our local creative work.  Creative commons is all very well when it's applied to corporations versus individuals -- the very issues that are being discussed above.  But what happens when corporations lay claim to the intellectual property of countries, cultures, groups?  What recourse do the creators have then?  I am still a supporter of copyright law when it applies to those peoples and cultures who did not get to benefit from the turning of knowledge into capital that occurred in the twentieth century; I believe that without the fundamental comprehension that what we imagine and make is worth cash we in the Americas will continue to do what we were established to do by Europe and its successors in North America -- provide the raw material for others to refine, market, sell, and profit from.But check out the video.  It's still something worth discussing.  Good food for thought.

Some of my best friends

are Swedish.And one of them read my last post, and commented.  Actually, she did so over on Facebook, where my blog posts are imported as notes, but I liked what she said enough to bring it back over here.Her point is that Engdahl didn't mean cultural hegemony as much as he meant linguistic hegemony.  Now he may well have, and assumed that it would be understood by a global audience as well as it is clearly understood by his fellow Swedes (Ella picked it up immediately, and it went whooshing over my head). Here's Ella offering her support to him, and making some good points as she does so:

arrogant, Moi?ah... and perhaps this is in part a knee-jerk nationalistic reaction on my part... but i think there's an element of truth in what Horace Engdahl is saying, though by pinning it on the US alone, he undermines the credibility of his argument. I think it IS fair to say that the English speaking literary world is insular - to its detriment. in part, that's linked to the sheer volume of English language literature published yearly (and i think there are valid concerns about how the sustainability of the publishing industry's current model of swamping the market in order to trail for bestsellers, but that's another argument...) - you could, theoretically, never NEED to read something new which wasn't originally written in English, and still have plenty of unread Englsih lit and criticism to spare when you died. i get that. and, obviously, smaller languages don't have to contend with that sort of embarrassment of riches and therefore HAVE to translate work in order to be able to provide readers with enough new material to 'feed' a readership which can read as much as its englsih counterparts, but obviously can't produce as much literature. i get this too. 

but the side effect of that need for translation is that it becomes seen as a virtue in itself, and i genuinely believe that to be the case. but even in the uk, where you can take a train to mainland europe, there's a very small proportion of total new literature (both critical and fiction) which was originally in another language. and, noticeably, a lot of them are actually recent nobel prize winners. (if the nobel prize committe sees part of it's job as promoting non-english language literature, surely that's a positive thing?) from what i've seen of US bookstores and curricula, the problem is even more exacerbated there - which inevitably influences contemporary US authors. so, i actually think that horace engdahl is making a valid argument about the negative influence of cultural (or rather, linguistic) hegemony on the work of contemporary US fiction - of course its broad brush and imperfect (paul auster springs to mind as an obvious exception), though he phrases it in the most obnoxious way imaginable. 

Last week I wanted to spend some time expanding on why I found Engdahl's comment -- as it was reported (and I know that there's a gap between what he said and what was picked up) offensive.  This week, if I find the time, I'll expand more fully on what I wanted to say.  Meanwhile, it's all food for thought.

Nobel judge: U.S. too ignorant to compete

Now I'm not the biggest fan of the USA.  Let's put it another way:  I'm not a blind fan of the USA, and a lot of what the US thinks is great about itself I would question.But never would I question the greatness of that nation.  The arrogance of this Swede, though, is staggering.  

U.S. writers are "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture," dragging down the quality of their work.

"The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."

Nobel judge: U.S. too ignorant to compete - CNN.com

Presentation Zen: Is education killing creativity?

Came across this:

our education systems (around the world) are outdated and mainly designed to meet the needs of industrialization. Sir Ken [Robinson] makes many good points — some you may not agree with — but he certainly is not saying that math and science should be taught or studied less, rather that music and the arts and creativity in general should be pursued more.Presentation Zen: Is education killing creativity?

I think I tend to agree.Forget being tentative. I totally agree.Here's what Sir Ken says in his own words:

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects ... At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth. And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in school than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics.

See for yourself - the YouTube clip via Riz Khan:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAt-3Yk2u80&hl=en&fs=1]And the whole thing itself thanks to TED:http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swfArt and culture make good business.

Liberty - Decisive Moments

I got this one thanks to Rick Lowe of Blog Bahamas. It's worth a second link, I think.Liberty - Decisive Moments

What you make of a picture shows who you are, not just what the photograph depicts. Yet photographs do have an effect, as Lange suggested, in teaching people how to see. Admittedly, this may take a long time to happen. When Matthew Brady's photos of the carnage at Antietam were displayed in Washington, during the Civil War, audiences exclaimed, "How ghastly!", but did nothing: photography was too new a technology; the viewers weren't accustomed to the reality that the pictures purported to represent. When Capa's photos of men struggling and dying in the waters of Normandy appeared in Life, the American public — perhaps also not used to the raw quality of the images — took it as another just sacrifice and carried on. But when Adams' photo of the Saigon execution appeared in American and world media, sped by technology that was on the cutting edge of communications, it galvanized many people's thoughts overnight. The sense of immediacy — the sense, at least, of a sudden intrusion of unmediated, unjustified brutality — was greater than before. Eyes that had become accustomed to the contemplation of war, and had even accepted its photographic images as classical representations of reality, now looked at an image that was disturbingly hard to fit in the comfortable, classical frame.

The Role of the Writer in Society

On Thursday past, the organizers of the Bahamas International Literary Festival (BILF), a new-brand entity, so new it don't even have itself a webspace yet, held a literary forum that served as a precursor to the festival. Six Bahamian writers were invited to present on the topic The Role of the Writer in Society. I was privileged to be among them. The others were: Keith RussellObediah Michael SmithAlex MorleyIan Strachan... Who?  who'm I forgetting? Or can't I count? ... I don't think I can count ... there were only five of us!  Gah!Well, anyhow.  The evening was memorable for a couple of reasons.  The first was the size of the audience.  It filled almost the entire length of the upper floor of Chapter One Bookstore, much to my amazement.   Now I know it's entirely possible, even likely, that a good chunk of the attendees were students who had no choice in the matter, whose classes were meeting there, who might even have an assignment about the topic later on.  But that didn't stop the fact that there were, oh, maybe fifty or sixty people in attendance from making me hold the event in awe.  Writers in this country are not used to such interest.  At least I'm not.Just for posterity's sake, and because it might be of interest, and because I've been toying with the concept of podcasting for some time and thought this is on the way to creating one, below's an updated version of the presentation I gave.  It's not exactly the same because Thursday was a runaround day and I wasn't able to get all the quotations I wanted for the presentation, but it's 90% similar.  The comment box is on, for feedback's sake, if people are so inclined.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VITJjobWLyU&w=425&h=350]So I'm not an purist when it comes to writing.  Art for art's sake, as Achebe said, being somewhat of a myth.  I don't necessarily believe that all art has to have a function, a purpose; the kind of art that does isn't really art, as it puts emotions and empathy second to function.  But on the other hand, as Ian Strachan, who spoke last, said of writing -- whatever you think about it, the act of writing is always a political act.  One needn't be a socialist (as Alex Morley is) for that to be true; you just need to write, and to share your writing with people beyond yourself.  In fact, each of us spoke about agency and writing and change and revolution of some kind.  Revelation, said one of us (don't remember which one -- if you're reading this, own it, Keith or Ian or Obie or Alex!) is revolution.  If you don't know my name, said Obie, channelling Baldwin, you don't know your own.  (Obie read an essay which meandered through various meditations about writers and society and kept coming back to just that -- if you don't know my name, you don't know your own.)  Write for change, said Alex.  Write to tell the truth.  Write to show ourselves ourselves. Write to make a difference, said Keith.  Write to tell the truth.We talked a lot about truth and difference and change among us, each of us in our own particular way.  So it's no coincidence that I'm going to post the next video here now.  Chris Abani talked about story and the power of telling a tale, the power of telling the truth, and somebody filmed him doing so.  Watch the video below to see what he said.  It's akin to what we said, only (forgive me, colleagues) better.http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf

CARIFESTA X - An Alternative to the same old, same old

wonder of the world: CARIFESTA X - An Alternative to the same old, same oldThe Bookman, a blog from Trinidad and Tobago, muses on art, CARIFESTA, and society.  It's not coincidental, I think, that this week I've been to two talks already about the same thing:  one on Wednesday at PopOp Studios about CARIFESTA XI to be held in The Bahamas, and one last night at Chapter One Bookstore about the role of the writer in society.  At the end of the panel discussion from last night, where six of us, writers from very different backgrounds and with very different bodies of work, spoke about that role, we were answered in the discussion that followed by a visual artist who told us that our conversations were not isolated, that they were happening all around the country.   Something is happening nationwide about the Caribbean arts.  Perhaps we are coming into ourselves.  The Bookman suggests that perhaps this something is happening regionally.  Because I believe in the latter, I'm going to quote from The Bookman's comment on CARIFESTA X to illustrate, just a little, what I mean, and what I hope:

One cannot help but feel that art is held as a fringe. That artists are at the edges of society, almost invisible, except for moments when society is engaged with it and comments on talent. It is always the same trite comment at that, that there is so much talent in Trinidad and Tobago…and? What are we doing about it?

...

So I am going around in circles with my point. The public need to be educated about what is happening in the arts locally and regionally. The corporate world needs to get more involved in the arts and make it much more relevant to their own business mandates, and the artists themselves must start to hold themselves to the highest standards, look at their profession as deserving of much more than handouts and government support and we need to be very loud and clear about just how much we mean to our society by having alternative spaces to show our work and encourage the society to see that we mean business and that it isn’t business as usual.

A Little Respect

Received the following by email.  It's from Terneille Burrows (TaDa).  Quite frankly, I was thrilled to get it. Those of us who work in the Department of Culture have made similar points in boardrooms and accountants' offices, but the attitudes about ourselves and our artists persist.I'm not going to say more -- I'm just going to post her letter and let her speak for herself.

---

 

Big Acts, Big Budgets... bad for Bahamian Artists??

By Terneille Burrows*A major concert sponsored by Bahamian companies and featuring multi-platinum hip-hop artist Lil Wayne will take place in Nassau on Friday September 26, 2008. Will Bahamian performers on this show be fairly treated and compensated???However outrageous it may seem, Bahamian recording artists are often times given the "short end of the stick" when it comes to being recruited to perform on shows featuring major international recording acts. Despite the promoters best efforts to make local artists feel important (backstage, pre and post party events access etc.), there may not be payment offered for the artists' services, which can include not only performing at the show, but making promotional appearances, attending rehearsals, meetings, sound-check and lending their name and likeness to be attached with the event promotion. (Oops, the natives were neglected from the big budget…oh well…)However, it seems everyone except the local artists financially benefit (promoters, advertising media, venues, event consultants, security firms, sound and lighting companies etc.) When promoters apply for international artists' visas and other required licenses to work in our country, should we also demand that our local artists be compensated for their contributions as well? While some might argue that local performers should jump at the chance to be on a big event, merely for the presumed prestige of it, I would have to disagree. Bahamian artists have long fought for the respect of our craft, as some of us do this for a living, while others aspire to. I feel as though if an artist or entertainer has worked to establish them self and gained a decent local following, there should be a fee attached with their service.Some sectors of the Bahamian entertainment industry have established systems in place to cultivate their respective discipline. The burgeoning Bahamian film industry has benefitted vastly from practices implemented by the Ministry of Tourism's Bahamas Film and Television Commission division. The Bahamas film commission has become a excellent example of a system that should be emulated by the wider entertainment and performance industries in the Bahamas.  Film commissioner Craig Woods, and his team actively promote and facilitate the hiring of Bahamian crew for productions that come to be filmed here. They are in intent on continuing the nourishment of the Bahamian film industry through not only promoting Bahamians gaining experience on film productions, but also by providing them with employment on productions that come to town.We as artists and artists' representatives are also to blame for allowing ourselves to be so freely taken advantage of. It's time to effect dramatic change and encourage Bahamians and foreigners alike to regard Bahamian artists and entertainers as working professionals. Throughout other parts of the world, local independent artists are taken seriously for their work.  More closely to home, in parts of the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados, there exists established and organized music industries.  The government, corporate world and consumers alike support their local music scenes. Major artists like Rihanna, Sean Paul, and Sean Kingston come from the Caribbean, are all respected on the international scene, and celebrated by their countrymen. Why can't we do the same in our country?Other Artists' Input"This (exploitation) has been going on for far too long and people are afraid to speak out for fear of being blacklisted, but mainly because we have been conditioned to believe that we as Bahamians are not 'good enough' to make it on an international level".– Margaret 'Believe' Glynatsis (Recording Artist/Producer) "It is insulting when an organizer expects an entertainer to perform for free however charitable the event without saying, we are willing to pay 'x' in exchange for your services - which in turn offers the artist the opportunity to say,  'don't worry about it, I'll do it for free'. If a promoter/organizer is unable to pay you, there should be some exchange, pre-agreed by both of you that is valued at the cost of your performance i.e. - goods or services, event passes, commercial consideration... something.  And I won't begin to talk about Flyers, Press Releases, web-advertising, radio mentions.– Bodine 'Be' Johnson (Recording Artist/Journalist)"How can major international promoters and the local consultants they hire expect to be taken seriously by local (Bahamian) acts, when our performers are treated like second class citizens at events in our own country? I have seen too many major concerts come to the Bahamas and have local artists act as guinea pigs, while sound engineers check levels and tweak the house system during the opening performances in preparation for the headliners!! The local artist are again put in a predicament, when headliners arrive late, and the opening acts are used to "stall" the aggravated audience. For this type of treatment, it only adds injury to insult to imagine our Bahamian artists performing at these events without being duly compensated"– Ian 'Bigg E' Cleare (Producer/Studio) 

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 Talk it, family!

Another View of CARIFESTA

Alissa Trotz makes some salient points (hey, Alissa!!)In the Diaspora : Stabroek News

In a presentation made at the Caricom Heads of Govern-ment Conference in July, Barbadian novelist George Lamming took Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo to task for the following comment “…and now we come to the lighter side, CARIFESTA in Guyana.”There is one way to interpret these remarks, as seeing culture as entertainment to engage in when the real work is finished. It is a view that allows ‘culture’ to fall by the wayside, to be addressed only after the ‘real’ priorities of so-called development are attended to, like building roads and paying off the foreign debt. As Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott observed in his exchange with the President at the opening CARIFESTA symposium, we have heard politicians rehearse these tired arguments for years. Walcott expressed his ambivalence about a festival that asks us to celebrate the wanton disregard for our artists in a region where with few exceptions artistic endeavour is not seen as a serious vocation. Here is the ongoing lie of CARIFESTA, illustrated by the profound gap between rhetorical pronouncements and the woeful state of our institutional infrastructure supporting the arts.

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One Reason why Culture's Important

(but not the only one)Global Voices Online » Venezuela: Youth Orchestra Transforms Lives

In 1975, José Antonio Abreu started working on his dream of creating an orchestra in Venezuela. Abreu and other 8 students, started the Old Music School José Ángel Lamas, which created a program based on new ways of learning and adapting different teaching methodologies that fit with the country's reality. The new system brought together young musicians from around the country, especially from the cities of Maracay and Barquisimeto (two cities widely known for its great music.). The orchestra took the stage for the first time on April 30, 1975. Thirty-three years later, hundreds of children, especially from very poor neighborhoods, have taken part in the orchestra.

CARIFESTA Update - last days

Well, so here we are again, at the tail end of the CARIFESTA adventure, and I'm writing this post on the date I'd originally planned to be my last day working as a civil servant. (Circumstances, as my paternal grandmother used to say, alter cases -- a testament to flexibility from a woman whose circumstances certainly altered hers.) Philip and I are still sharing the hotel room Buddy's assigned us from the beginning -- a huge cavern of a thing, with generous proportions, lots of glass, and a heap of wasted space. This update is unlikely to make it to the web anytime soon -- the connection is unreliable at best, not entirely awful but unpredictable -- I haven't been able to download mail for three days now, though it's coming in as I type.My feelings are decidedly mixed. On the one hand, I'm elated not only that we pulled it off again (the travelling of a pretty huge contingent from one end of the Caribbean to another) but that Guyana has succeeded in making CARIFESTA national, regional and international, laying the ground for the development of a world festival that people will plan to attend. We have an IFD (Interim Festival Directorate -- the regional governing body for CARIFESTA) meeting today, the traditional end-of-festival meeting, where we will discuss the way forward for CARIFESTA; it is likely to by my last such meeting, unless something else takes place between now and December. It's a shame, but there it is.There's so much to share! There's the finishing of the recounting of the Anna Regina trip, which was in every way the highlight of the trip, from its organization to the reception of the play and the players in Essequibo, to the experience of staying at Lake Mainstay and swimming in black water, to the return journey, which was more exciting and efficient than the outward bound one.There's the summarizing of the Bahamian activities, the bungle of the container and its remaining in Freeport, my disappointment that we were not able to see many other presentations, the mastery of the activities in the Grand Market, the glitches we had and the mistakes that we made (by "we" I mean the Bahamian contingent), the hospitality of the ordinary Guyanese, the incomprehensibility of the closing ceremony preparations, the ending of the Fineman reign of terror, the success (at last!) of our literary artists in finding a way onto the programme, the disappointment of the choir (who never sang anywhere they were sent as the places were unsuitable for a choir -- choirs, my people, are HARD to mike, and good ones will not take kindly to being placed before two little unidirectionals which will mess up the balance and distort their sound. Let's get that right in the end), the triumph of that same choir at the final Bahamian country presentation, my disappointment in the second Junkanoo rush-out, the major SNAFU with the Berbice performance, and finally being able to attend someone else's show -- Jamaica's offering of Love Games at the Theatre Guild.And there's the serious discussion of what we need to do, and how, if we want this festival to move forward. But all of that will wait. I fly home on Monday, on the charter (! YIPPEE -- no braving that stop in Trinidad with Caribbean Air!) and on Tuesday I'm back at work, climbing on the hamster wheel one last time to wind down, I hope, my responsibility to the Government. My plan now is to serve out the fall, wrap up the CARIFESTA activities, collect the revenue as well as clean up the container mess, submit a report, wrap up the more long-term projects, like the National Cultural Policy and the numerous draft pieces of legislation prepared since 2003, and move on to more productive activities at the College of The Bahamas.And finally, there's the experience of staying at Buddy's International Hotel, a most interesting establishment. It's always an education for me to travel in the Caribbean as a Bahamian and to experience other (potentially competing) arms of the Caribbean tourism enterprise. More often than not, it highlights what we have done well, what we have mastered. We have our challenges, most certainly, but more than a century in the hotel and resort industry does have its value, let me tell you, and often our experience shows when we travel elsewhere.Unfortunately, our experience isn't the only thing that shows; our arrogance also shows. We are often considered the Americans of the Caribbean -- rich, brash, unlettered, scornful, and ignorant -- and even when we do not entirely live up to that reputation, we behave in manners that are open to that interpretation. If we are to host CARIFESTA well, we will have to address that fact in a serious way.But first things first: finish the reports on CARIFESTA, and then move on.Cheers.

Just a note

Internet connectivity has been really slow over the past couple of days -- none at all yesterday, and slower than dial-up today, so that's why you haven't heard from me.Tomorrow we are scheduled to take the play to Berbice. Time to go to sleep, methinks.I'll be home on Monday, and will post more then.Till then!