Many of us grew up in a Caribbean where the frequent message, ranging from gently implied to pungently expressed, was that we were a second-rate people. Forty or fifty years ago those messages were all around us – I recall them vividly – and it took migration outside the region for me to gradually realize, from the exciting road of personal experience, how wrong that message was; that in fact the only agent holding Caribbean people back was lack of opportunity. Time and again, in my time in North America, I would see examples of our people, coming out of modest circumstances at home, just rising and shining in these new countries to which they had migrated. For me, and many migrants like me, given our early brainwashing, these examples can come as a surprise, and you question them, but as time passes, and the examples continue, the counter message sinks in: we are a people of substance, and if the opportunity comes we will rise and shine.
Two weeks ago, for example, I played with Tradewinds in Orlando in a fete organized by some Caribbean folks, one of whom is Sam Roberts, son of former GT Crime Chief ‘Skip’ Roberts. For airport pickup, and to move the band around,