Tobago’s Heritage Festival
In the early 1980s, while other islands promoted carnivals and crop-overs, Tobago decided to be different. It already had a traditional (Lenten) Carnival — albeit small change beside big brother Trinidad’s extravaganza — so it made sense to concentrate on the island’s own cultural heritage rather than compete against other destinations on a purely hedonistic basis.
The re-establishment of the Tobago House of Assembly in 1980 had given the island some measure of autonomy. One of the Assembly’s nominated members, Dr J. D. Elder, a noted anthropologist and authority on Tobago culture, argued that there should be a strong emphasis on Tobago’s history: the new festival should not become just another grand party, but a means of reviving customs, ceremonies and traditions which were in danger of being forgotten or diluted into tourist attractions.
Elder’s arguments struck a chord with his fellow assemblymen, and with Tobago’s villages. The response was so enthusiastic that it took some time to settle competing claims to particular events: many villages felt more “authentic” than their neighbours. Instead of a lifeless display of memorabilia, artifacts and photographs, the Heritage Festival was to become an exuberant re-creation of life in Tobago “then” by descendants “now”: an act of self-education and self-realisation, not simply a lure for tourists in the low season.
In the decade since its inception, the Heritage Festival has become hugely popular — and complex. Today, some items are presented only in alternate years, otherwise the full programme would not fit within the scheduled two-and-a-half weeks. Established events – the traditional “old-time wedding” in Moriah, the Plymouth “old-time carnival”, Les Coteaux’s “Tobago folk tales and superstitions” — are performed annually.
Tobagonians being a generous and friendly people, more and more visitors are sharing this “private” celebration with them. There are a few occasions for a little “jump up”, but the celebrations are largely in the form of street theatre or staged presentations, especially of traditional local dances (the bélé, bongo, reel and jig) and music (the Tobago Speech Band, the Tambrin Band).
If you’re lucky enough to be in Tobago around Heritage Festival time, you’ll have a chance to see this proud, friendly island at her best. And to understand her motto: Pulchrior Evenit (She becomes more beautiful).
The Shape of Jamaica – Caribbean Architecture
Travel through Jamaica, and you can travel through time as you watch the different building styles left behind by different waves of people.
Spanish Town was the administrative capital of Jamaica for over three centuries, from 1534 to 1872: it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the Americas. Originally laid out by the Spanish, it boasts one of the finest Georgian squares in the hemisphere. The four structures on the Square were erected on the foundations of Spanish buildings between the 1750s and 1819; one of them, the former palace of the Governor of Jamaica, Old Kings House (c.1762), was gutted by fire in 1925, but its outer frame survives. Old Kings House was described in 1774 as “the noblest and best edifice of the kind, either in North America, or any of the British colonies in the West Indies”.
When the British captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655, they moved into many of the Spanish buildings, and carried out their own conversions. Many 18th and 19th-century buildings survive in towns and villages across Jamaica, including plantation great houses and their associated dwellings. The interaction of pre-Columbian Indian styles with European and African fashion and technology produced a creole architectural style, “Jamaican-Georgian”, typified by steep-pitched hipped roofs, sash windows and wide piazzas or verandahs enclosed with jalousie shutters. This became common-place among all economic groups, and survives in many ways today.
After Emancipation in 1834, a new architectural style emerged which became widespread from the late 19th century. Termed “Jamaica-Vernacular”, it glorifies the Jamaican master-craftsman tradition: you see it in the smaller multi-sided hip and gable roof houses with their profusion of ornate decorative fretwork and open colonnaded verandahs. It lasted until about the middle of the 1950s, although the later buildings became less ornate. Fretwork, termed “gingerbread” in Europe and America, is one of the contributions made to world architecture by people of African descent.
The disastrous Hurricane Charlie in 1951 heralded the mass production of slab or concrete roof houses. The 1950s and 1960s also witnessed the return of Jamaican architects who were trained overseas and were influenced by the emerging “international” architectural style and town planning concepts.
With Independence in 1962, the Jamaican architectural landscape inevitably became very modernistic, projecting the sense of a new independent nation. High-rise offices, commercial shopping arcades, apartment buildings, townhouse and condominium developments as well as pre-fabricated concrete housing schemes have become the norm today.
These days, there is a world trend towards what may be loosely termed “heritage style”, looking back to traditional and vernacular architecture to express a contemporary idiom. In Jamaica, this has been taking place since the 1950s in the resort architecture of the hotel industry. Buildings have incorporated the features and decorative element of an earlier heritage: holiday villas use natural materials such as Iocal timber and field stones, with steep pitched roofs, jalousie windows, verandahs, and natural ventilation. Resort architecture is perhaps the most significant construction activity taking place on the island, particularly with the advent of all-inclusive hotel packages.
Patrica Green
The Bajan Occasion
Crop Over time is coming again. Forget that azure sea and those gently lapping waves a moment: it’s time to “jump and wave”.
Barbados’s Crop Over Festival is a month-long cultural and historic event that celebrates the traditional end of the sugar-cane harvest. Now in its 22nd year, it is both a carnival-style jam and a microcosm of Barbadian culture.
The festival started in the old sugar plantations of the 17th to 19th centuries, and has been revived in modern times as a massive summer extravaganza. The government-run National Cultural Foundation considers it the biggest event on its calendar, and with good reason. Increasing support from local businesses has allowed more events, on a grander scale: last year’s festival drew more visitors than the island’s traditional winter season.
Crop Over used to begin with a symbolic delivery of the last canes to a plantation yard. Last year this took place at a Gala Opening Ceremony at the National Stadium, which amalgamated a number of smaller events into one big one. This year’s event starts with a Decorated Cart Parade; once an event on its own, this welcomes any and everything on wheels that has been decorated. The parade heads to the stadium for the official launch of Crop Over, the crowning of the King and Queen of the Crop, and a full slate of entertainment.
From then on, hardly a day passes without a big event. Throughout July there are fine art, photography and craft exhibitions, youth events, a Promenade, and a day-long Bajan Culture Village. Meanwhile, the calypso “tents” start to sizzle as competition heats up for the national title. Barbados’s recent blitz on the calypso scene means that this year’s competitions will be closely watched around the region, particularly in Trinidad.
Towards month-end the festival heats up further with more calypso events, starting with the Junior Calypso Monarch Competition on July 26.
On the 27th comes Junior Kadooment, a kids’ event adults can’t stay away from. The kids rule the stadium that day; marching about in rich colours, portraying scenes, people, places and events, they jump, prance, wave their way past the judges.
Then, on July 28, the calypso tempo gathers pace with the Pic-O-De-Crop semi-finals; last year, these were held for the first time on the rugged east coast where the hills form a natural amphitheatre. The days wraps with the Party Monarch finals. The Stadium becomes calypso central in earnest for the big Pic-O-De-Crop finals on August 2. After a winner emerges, revellers move straight on to the Fore-day Morning Jump-Up, another of last year’s additions that was a great success.
Don’t plan on sleeping the next morning (August 3), because Bridgetown’s Spring Garden Highway loses its cars and turns into a giant market of culture and food. Sleep well later on, though, because on August 4 it starts again–this time without stopping. Bridgetown Market reopens and you can listen to the Tuk Band and Steel Band competitions. Come night it’s “Cohobblopot”, an exciting potpourri of the best music of the season, and the venue for the fabulous King and Queen of the Bands competition.
Everything culminates in a massive explosion of colour and music the following morning with the staging of Grand Kadooment. Some 30 bands costume up for the judges and trek a five-mile jump-up route from the Stadium to Spring Garden for food, music and more merrymaking until sundown.
Whether you’re a jumper or a bystander, there’s something here for everyone.
Roxan Kinas
Game Fishing in St Lucia
Sports fishing has grown so rapidly in the last few years that most of the Caribbean islands now stage at least one substantial tournament. St Lucia, for example, holds its sixth International Billfish Tournament in September, attracting boats from around the islands and from as far away as Florida; the St Lucia Game Fishing Association boasts that the sport has “truly come of age” there.
An Active hurricane season last year reduced the umber of participating boats from 50 to 32, with 154 registered anglers. The local Blue Marlin Tournament record of 549 pounds–set by Trinidadian Brian Hamel-Smith in 1993 on Melissa Ann–was not broken, but Andrew Llanos, fishing on the same boat, landed a 409-pound blue marlin and won a US$10,000 boat for the heaviest fish of the tournament. A fully-loaded 1996 Suzuki Vitara, on offer to anyone who broke the record, went unclaimed.
Two other tournament records were broken last year, though. Kino Hamu, fishing on the only boat representing the United States, caught a 37-pounds dolphin, breaking the previous record of 33 pounds. Kino, who flew into St Lucia specially for the tournament, won a trophy and US$540 for his efforts. Gary Story, fishing on the Trinidadian boat Hop Scotch, landed a 64.5-pound white marlin to break the 60-pound record, and won himself US$5,400 in the process.
A really good tournament usually has lots of strikes, a few cases of hard luck, and a courageous deed or two. Over three days of fishing, the St Lucia tournament recorded 128 strikes and 97 hook-ups (of which 30 escaped, 45 were landed, 17 were tagged and released, and 5 were released without tags).
As for hard luck, on the first day Frank Armstrong of the Bajan boat Challenge fought a blue marlin for over 12 hours only to have it attacked by sharks. It was landed with a large part of its body missing, but still managed to top the scales at 336 pounds–the complete fish would probably have weighed in at well over 400.
Frank was presented with the “Best Hard Luck Story” trophy. The Challenge team were the overall winners in 1993 and 1994, and Armstrong won a Suzuki Samurai last year for landing the tournament’s heaviest fish, over 400 pounds.
On the final day, Malice of Martinique spotted what appeared to be a log floating in the water. It turned out to be a fisherman clinging to a capsized boat. All the competitors abandoned their fishing to search for his missing companion: Malice found the other man a little later and took the pair to Martinique before resuming the day’s fishing.
Addressing the awards banquet which climaxed the tournament, St Lucia’s Minister of Tourism, Romanus Lansiquot, described the International Billfish Tournament as one of the island’s premier tourism events, along with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers and the St Lucia Jazz Festival.
Kirk Elliott
Heritage-Fest in Jamaica
In Jamaica, the 80-acre Jamworld Entertainment Centre in Portmore, St Catherine, beside the entrance to Kingston Harbour, is fast becoming a preferred venue for international cultural events. Here, “Jamaica’s Festival Village” has a spectacular night-time view of the capital (three miles to the north); the sea breeze and lush surroundings make it ideal for live entertainment. The Reggae Sunsplash festival was staged here in 1993 and 1994, as well as Sting, “the greatest one-night reggae show on earth”.
In October, Jamworld will be the site of Caribbean HeritageFest, which was launched last year to showcase the culture of Jamaica and the Caribbean. The festival offered traditional dances and folk traditions such as Jonkunu, Tambu, Wake, Quadrille, Scottish Reels, Kumina and Maypole, together with skits, plays and storytelling, accompanied by costumed folk characters–Brer Anansi, Papa Bois and La Diablesse. Some of the region’s best handicraft was on show, with a selection of traditional cuisines. There was a National Mento Yard with vintage Caribbean music–mento, jazz, calypso, meringue and steelband.
Encouraged by the successes of New Orleans’s Jazz and Heritage Festival, the organisers have decided to make HeritageFest an annual event, part of Jamaica’s National Heritage Week. This year’s Festival dates are October 12-13 so make your plans!
A glass tower
Last year’s hurricane damage in Antigua–swiftly repaired– has led to at least on striking innovation. When the remodelled Sandals Antigua resort re-opened in January, it did so with a magnificent glass tower over its reception area, rising to 40 feet above ground level.
Created by David Breeden, a Virginia sculptor whose monumental soapstone sculptures can be seen at Negril in Jamaica, the Antigua tower uses five tons of thick dalle de verre glass, hand-poured and set in a mortar glazing.
Stained glass represents a new departure for Breeden. “This thicker glass lends the light through it,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to add colour to my sculptures and this is absolutely thrilling because it lets me immerse myself in colours.”
The project came out of a chance meeting with Jamaican architecture Evan Williams, who was remodelling the resort and wanted to put stained glass panels in a tower but was worried about the structural strength of the glass. Breeden says there should be no worry: the glass he has used is an inch and a quarter thick “and could withstand a coconut hitting it at 150 miles an hour.”
The tower’s four panels depict a beach scene, a sunset, the sea and island vegetation. Breeden worked on the project–which he calls Life: a four-sided proposition–himself, with his two sons. “We feel as if we’ve built a lighthouse for both the land and the sea,” he said. “When the tower is backlit at night, you can see it halfway across the island. During the day when the sunlight comes through, it creates a kaleidoscopic effect around the reception area. When it was completed and I saw it at night, it was a thrill–it made me tingle.”
Breeden is now doing more work for Sandals resorts in the Bahamas and Jamaica.
Stabroek Market
The tower clock watching over Georgetown’s Stabroek Market stands still. But it’s the only thing that does.
Built in 1881 as a produce outlet for small-holdings along Guyana’s coast, the Stabroek Market hall has been a major hub of Georgetown life ever since, and the focal point of road, river and marine transport. Stabroek was the name given by the Dutch in 1784 to the capital established by the French as a commercial centre on the Demerara estuary a couple of years earlier. The name was changed to Georgetown under British rule twelve years later, and Stabroek remained as a city ward.
At Stabroek, flat-bottomed river boats transferred cargo to big ocean-going vessels. All Guyana’s agricultural and rain forest products were loaded here: rice, sugar and rum, timber, gold, bauxite and beef. Today, the market hall, where vendors and hucksters congregate from East and West Demerara and as far as the Essequibo, is a cavernous blend of Third World bazaar and European covered market. Practically anything can be found here. Gold jewellery, spices and herbs, pineapples and sweet potatoes, river and sea fish jostle with imports from Brazil and Venezuela and houseware from China. A traditional watch and clock mender sits imperturbably beside the latest electronic gadget of all kinds. There are halal butchers, suppliers of puja needs, printed fabrics and locally tailored West African fashions, Amerindian woodwork.
The stalls and the market life now extend far beyond the walls of the market hall, providing colour and movement to surrounding streets. Speedboat taxis carry passengers, market baskets and purchases from Stabroek stelling across and up the river. The cries of boatmen and touts echo those from mini-buses and taxis on the landward side, looking for passengers for Berbice, Mahaica or Parika. Personalised with names such as Chico’s or Retarded Development, their vehicles vie to be known for their shine, or the best music set-up.
The economy is on the upswing in Guyana, and who would know this better than the marketeers? Elegance is being restored to the municipal and state buildings along the spacious tree-lined streets nearby; the city fathers are trying to stop the spread of market stalls along Water Street and North Road. But Stabroek Market has had a life of its own for more than a hundred years, and looks like being there still in a century from now.
Sylvia Kacal
Caught in a Krosfyah
Trinidad is still reeling. This year the Bajans came in force, and swept all before them. Edwin Yearwood, Mac Fingall, Natalie Burke, The Troubadours, Red Plastic Bag, Speedy, Zulu Lightning, Viking Thunder, Michael Thompson and Gillo–collectively, The Bajan Invasion–sent local audiences into a frenzy over the 1996 Carnival season.
Yearwood, lead singer with the top Bajan band Krosfyah, was the star of the group. His repertoire–which includes Pump Me Up, Obadele (Barbados’s Party Road March last year), Crank It Up and Sweatin–overwhelmed all but a few local compositions. He didn’t make the Calypso Monarch final, but Mac Fingall, whose Big Belly Man was one of the season’s mega-hits, did. Mac Fingall is actually quite trim, being a physical fitness instructor as well as comedian, but his tune was hot enough to bring masses of big-bellied men out at the fetes to show how they could move. He co-hosted the Spektakula calypso tent in Port of Spain with Tommy Joseph; in Barbados he manages fellow-singer Red Plastic Bag, who had success with Something In The Music and Ragga Ragga in 1995.
Natalie Burke, the lone woman among the invaders, was the Weakness For Sweetness temptress. With her mellifluous, chanting delivery, she has been compared to Jamaica’s dancehall queen, Patra.
The Troubadours, essentially a backing band, produced an instrumental “crossover” smash: Talk, with its mixture of vintage brass, horns, trumpets and saxophones, and a ringbang(ish) drum and bassline, was a winner with audiences of every age.
Speedy also had a good year with Get Yuh Woman and Don’t Jam Mih, but his live performances were, reportedly, not yet on par with the recordings–Trinidadians expect a lot from live entertainment. But the Bajan storm, apparently, has only just begun.
Marcia Noel
Underwater in Barbados
For more than nine years, visitors to Barbados have been able to explore the mysterious underwater world of the coral reefs around the island without even getting wet. The Atlantis submarine, with its guided tours and big viewing windows, has been one of the island’s biggest attractions, carrying half a million visitors.
So successful has the operation been that the veteran 50-foot, 49-ton Atlantis II submarine, which seated 28 passengers, was replaced with a bigger vessel to keep up with demand–the 65-foot, 80-ton Atlantis 3, which carries 46. The new sub has 26 big viewing windows instead of 16, and uses the same environmentally-sound battery power as its predecessor. It takes passengers down to 150 feet for an unrivalled view of the coral reefs and the ocean floor, silent wrecks and swarms of brilliantly coloured fish, and also offers an “Odyssey” tour featuring underwater scooters in a Disney-style presentation.
The Atlantic 3 was one of three big changes made in the operation within a year. The company also introduced the Seatrec, a semi-submersible that cruises over near-shore reefs, and the 65-foot Ocean Quest, a stylish 150-passenger catamaran style ferry which carries customers between Atlantis 3, Seatrec and shore base.
