Rawle Gibbons: breaking down the Ivory Tower
“The energies of the mas, of steelband, of Hosay, these energies have all been politicised, because they have all been sites of...
Marooned? Guadeloupe’s Jean-Claude Flamand
When Martiniquan Euzhan Palcy’s Rue Cases Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley) appeared in 1983, it seemed that French Caribbean cinema was all...
Do you believe in magic?
Caribbean musicians often find it hard to break into the global mainstream. Last summer in Britain, however, a debut album with Trinidadian...
Rhythm roundup (November/December 2005)
Backstreet bwoys Unknown Language T.O.K. (VP Records, VPCD1711) Forget the bland blond boy bands from MTV: with the release of their...
Caribbean Bookshelf (November/December 2005)
The isles are full of noises The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse ed. Stewart Brown and Mark McWatt (Oxford, ISBN 0-19-280332-8, 405 pp)...
Damian Marley: the name of the son
It’s a sure sign that Junior Gong is doing something right, when the Marley he draws comparisons with is himself. With his third album,...
Have her cake and eat it | Classic | Last word
Everybody thinks their grandmother makes the best black cake. They are wrong, since I can say with all surety that my grandmother made the...
Ibrahim Ferrer: Bolero Ultimo
The voice of a 20th-century Caribbean dream finally fell silent back in August, when the 78-year-old Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer died...
