Time to Grow | Green By Nazma Muller | July/August 2020 • Digital Issue In recent years, a handful of NGOs in Trinidad and Tobago have worked to set up community-based agriculture initiatives, both to provide healthier food options and to make local communities more self-sufficient. It’s a movement that has become even more relevant in the time of COVID-19, writes Nazma Muller, as food security becomes crucial
Tobago sends messages of hope to German travel trade By Tobago Tourism Authority Ltd | News & Online Exclusives The Tobago Tourism Agency Limited (TTAL) partnered with Germany’s leading travel trade publishing house, FVW, to launch a digital and print campaign that facilitates a platform for sharing positive, encouraging messages from travel partners across the globe, while keeping Tobago relevant as a premier holiday option for future travel
All that jazz | Closeup By Nigel Campbell | Issue 162 (March/April 2020) Musically, Trinidad and Tobago are best known for calypso and soca, but a thriving jazz scene proves there’s an avid audience for other genres. Nigel A. Campbell profiles Charmaine Forde, Vaughnette Bigford, and LeAndra — three jazz vocalists of different generations whose separate stories make a bigger narrative about paths to musical success
Phagwah: Rite of Spring | Album By Caribbean Beat | Issue 162 (March/April 2020) Celebrated in Trinidad since the nineteenth century, Holi — also known as Phagwah — is the Hindu spring festival, and a time to enjoy the company of friends and neighbours. At the 2019 celebrations in Aranguez, photographer Ziad Joseph captured the joyful free-for-all of colour
Carnival backstage | Closeup By Georgia Popplewell and Laura Dowrich-Phillips | Issue 161 (January/February 2020) Carnival is a time to shine: from performers on the soca and calypso stage to costumed masqueraders in the street and fete-goers showing off their most acrobatic dance moves. But “the greatest show on earth” wouldn’t be possible without the dedication of the many thousands who work behind the scenes — year-round or seasonally — on the organisation and logistics of the festival. Laura Dowrich-Phillips and Georgia Popplewell meet four of the people whose backstage efforts make Carnival happen
Kambule: on morning ground | Snapshot By Attillah Springer | Issue 161 (January/February 2020) Early each Carnival Friday morning, before dawn breaks, crowds assemble at Piccadilly Greens in east Port of Spain for a re-enactment of a key event in the history of Trinidad — and of Carnival itself. Attillah Springer gives an intimate account of Kambule, when the spirits of the ancestors are invoked in a ritual of memory, story, song, and resistance
Look mas | Portfolio By Caribbean Beat | Issue 161 (January/February 2020) Photographer Jason C. Audain’s portraits of traditional Carnival masqueraders record both their intricate costumes and the human energy that powers their performance
The return of the baby doll | Backstory By Amanda T. McIntyre and Jarula M.I. Wegner | Issue 161 (January/February 2020) With a frilly dress and bonnet, carrying a replica of an infant, the traditional Baby Doll is a playful Carnival character with a serious message about the social roles of women and men. A new generation of activists have adopted the Baby Doll as form of feminist intervention, write Amanda T. McIntyre and Jarula M.I. Wegner — like the masqueraders behind the Belmont Baby Dolls band
