(This column originally appeared in the ‘Caricom
Review Magazine,’ July 2013)
We have been at it as far back as 1921, when the Jamaican legislature saw a motion to ask the British Colonial Office to consult the other islands on the idea of a federation – this notion of regional unity, that is. We had gone on to embrace the idea officially in 1947 in Montego Bay with the formation of the Standing Closer Association Committee (SCAC) to draft a federal constitution uniting the British Caribbean territories (the then British Guiana had reserved its position awaiting developments). Our history is replete since with regrets about the subsequent failed West Indies Federation and, in recent years, with securing this elusive regional unity, and to therefore point consequently at such integers of accord as cuisine, cricket and music.
The allusion to what we eat and drink as being one of our areas of commonality appears to be a stretch. Certainly the Caribbean is known for its spicy food, but we differ widely from territory to territory on the specifics. The delicious Jamaican curry is a different delicious from the Trinidad or Guyana versions; jerk cuisine soars properly only in Jamaica, as does stuffed fish in Barbados, pepperpot in Guyana, and fish broth in St Lucia. Guyanese turn up their noses at Trinidadian mauby with its essence emphasis, as the Trinidadians mock Guyanese attempts at doubles. Even our breads are strikingly different –plait in Guyana; hops in Trinidad, hard dough in Jamaica.
In cricket, as well, we remain hostage to the national sinew as each country strenuously pursues its ratio of “our boys” on the West Indies team, and newspaper editors in the various Caribbean countries often tailor their commentaries to stress the part the local cricketer played; Shiv will feature in Guyana, Bravo or Pollard in Trinidad, Roach or Best in Barbados, etc, even in a match West Indies lost. The other burr under the unity saddle in cricket is that the national flags continue prominent at international games, almost, to a degree, identifying if not proclaiming the differences.
Music probably has the most potential for the kind of cultural glue that might emerge in the region to help us come together beyond nationality because, like cricket, it foments across the region, and, unlike cricket, it is not packaged in national colours or emblems. Furthermore, and again unlike cricket matches which occur occasionally, music is a continuous round-the-clock presence, and it exists everywhere – in the homes we inhabit, in the cars we drive, in our entertainment places, and, latterly, in the individual spaces of our headphones or mobile devices. It is always on. It is also in the remote corners of our countries; the Vincentian chopping bananas is listening, as is the Guyanese gold miner, the St Lucian fisherman, or the mother in Blanchisseuse cooking pelau.
The various vigorous musics of the Caribbean move to every corner of the region and find open arms. Jamaican reggae (now dancehall) is popular everywhere, both on radio and in live shows; the same is true of Trinidadian soca and its mellower Barbadian version. Even cadence (now zouk) from the French islands is known across the region, and our popular performers bridge the inter-island gaps with singers such as Machel Montano and Shaggy and Allison Hinds appearing on diverse Caribbean stages, performing to audiences who react to them in an embrace of clear acceptance, if not ownership. Even in the narrower chutney genre, popular mostly in Trinidad and Guyana with its Indian populations, singers from those two countries are constantly combining with each other seamlessly in chutney fetes that draw thousands in a cultural wash that is so natural that it’s not even remarked on.
There are some other intriguing aspects to the potential in music for concord. One is the endurance factor. Of all the performing arts, music is the one that remains most vivid in the lives of the people exposed to it. We form attachments to particular songs, or pieces of music, which are still front and centre for us long after the memory of a film or a piece of theatre has faded. The song stays vivid.
Part of it is certainly the repeat factor – we can continue to revisit the music for years, even decades – but a part of it, as well, is that mysterious phenomenon of the memory of a sound that never seems to fade away. Sometimes, it can even be a riff – as the organ line in Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry; it’s a signature of the song. I remember, for instance, appearing with Tradewinds in St Croix where the crowd erupted in applause at the introductory guitar line of A Little While From Now. Way up there in the northern Caribbean, we had formed a connection through a song.
Also there is an often unremarked commonality in Caribbean popular music in that all of it is rooted in the folk tradition, which is one of the factors underlying its acceptance by the ordinary man and woman in our region. Indeed many of our acclaimed artistes are actually singing about our culture, so that while the nature of the vehicle may vary – reggae with its emphasis on bass rhythms; dancehall with the vocalist reproducing drum patterns; soca with a preference for high tempos – the folk basis is a constant that appeals to us.
To actually propel regional cohesion, however, unification themes, or references, will have to come into the music on the content side to propagate the point. This is not spontaneously happening now. We should divert here to caution the reality for any popular music of any day: the creators in the art form are reflecting society. The widespread assertion that pop songs influence people is largely myth; the writers of songs that become popular are artists who are drawing their themes from their environments. The popular Trinidadian icons such as Black Stalin, Shadow, Sparrow, Rudder, etc, were dealing with the realities of that country. The angry, sometimes violent, songs of the dancehall genre are telling the ghetto life story unadorned and unedited, and that is the basis of its rabid connection to those who know that life.
In brief, those themes, expressed by the artists, and admittedly sometimes overdone, are essentially drawn from how the people feel and behave. The caution is to note that over the years, no popular Caribbean song has emerged on the topic of regional unity. There can be various reasons for this, but it could very well be that the idea itself has not yet found favour with the common man and woman; our tepid reactions to the topic suggest that.
Leave it to say two things: as worthwhile as it is as a cause, the impediments to regional unity are formidable – even in that first federation motion in 1920, the vote was thirteen to four against; that is one reality. However, the other is that if the potential to stir unity now lies anywhere it probably lies in our music. It is a diverse and vibrant force, commonly available to all, that reaches everywhere and speaks to us with both an immediacy as well as an endurance that no other form of the arts can match. The test, however, will be whether such “unity” songs emerge on their own; that will be the sign that we have progressed from choosing to stay in our separate huts and have come to see the worth, indeed the need, for an all-in-one benab. We will know when we have reached that stage; our singers, having heard it in their communities, will be telling us loud and clear. All of us who agonise over the future of the Caribbean have to hope that the wait is not long.
