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| Before the restored Courthouse with Caribbean colleagues. Phillipsburg, St Maarten. KrisRampersadArchives2014 |
The ruins are all around us making it easy to
imagine the moment when the earth convulses, shudders and shakes and it all
comes crashing down. In less than four minutes, its gone. In less than four
seconds, he is gone. A life, as a civilization. Those who are left
say gone too soon.
Alas, poor Yorick! I
knew him: a fellow
of infinite jest, of
most excellent fancy
The massive tsunami that follows takes down the
remaining structures and floods the land with death and plague, Landmarks of a
civilization, bars and brothels, and a church too, of this buccaneer’s haven,
even the burial ground is buried. Gone
too soon.
The floods over flow over the rum and wine
flowing over a thirsty sailor’s tongue. Casks of it, placed on the streets,
that everyone passing must drink heartily. Gone
too soon.
And
there they lay, and the soggy skies
Dripped
down in up-staring eyes—
In murk
sunset and foul sunrise—
Yo-ho-ho
and a bottle of rum!
It shudders, shatters and silences the merriment
and the bartering and bantering and pirates spiriting away just-gained loot at
gambling tables. Gone too soon.
It disrupts and displaces the trade in flesh in
its many forms. Women, seized from conquered villages and ships and slaves
destined for somewhere else, pirated like gold off galleons to be sold off for
gold, destined for somewhere else. Gone
too soon.
With no hint of its earlier semblance of glory
on this somewhat desolate landscape, structures jot out from the ground like
extensions of nature. From the casual calmness, it takes a stretch of the
imagination to recreate the pulsating life once deemed the richest and
wickedest city on earth.
I am reviewing my video footage of Caribbean
heritage, piecing together my Caribbean story - a journey that unfurls from the
islands of the West Indian archipelago and ripples outward through the
continent of the Americas: through the Orinoco to the hinterland past the Guianas
and the Amazons, rippling across Brazil and Argentina to encompass the sweep of
the Americas - South from Argentina through Central and the Northern
extremities of the Bering Straits, and all in between, through to the
raucous European interlude, and new waves of migrations since, recreated
through multimedia: film, graphics, sounds, texts as the forgotten, ancient
civilisations and the more recent ones that wants to
be unremembered, It’s a story bridge, across a region divided by
water and language and history, and pirates, politicians, opportunists and
urban planners.
Neville York sweeps into the frame’s panorama.
He is standing on the roof of a building, buried more than six feet under by
the massive earthquake, five years before he is felled by a massive heart
attack. Writing this, I think, What sits on this dead man’s chest?
A wind whips up sounds of chaos his musician’s
ear would tune to melody, as I hear Keats’ Ode in his melodies:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those
unheard
Are
sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Pipe to the
spirit ditties of no tone…
At the same time, I am listening to music that
will form the backdrop of my film. Neville has shared with me his music to use
as background rhythms. Its Caribbean flavor is as seductive as what we had
adjudged as the finest Caribbean rum. Sweet
Salt, this album is called, a name that may also describe the shroud of
romance that is settled on what is one of the darkest period of Caribbean
history. This and the music of another of his album, Jazz Flambouyant, interspersed
with others will layer the anticipated quintessence story of Caribbean
heritage. His instrument is our native steelpan in extraordinarily sultry
tones. It is ethereal jazz. It is flambouyant calypso. It is haunting soul. It
blends the indefinable character of the region to my spun tale aspiring to be all
encompassing of heritage and culture, of art, architecture, food, fashion,
literature, dance, music... A celebration for reparation, reclamation,
restoration. A redemption song for restitution of the Caribbean psyche, divided
in vein, in the words of Derek Walcott.
I meet Neville York during a preparatory session
with Caribbean countries on their World Heritage nominations in mid-2012 in Kingston.
Jamaica’s focus of this meeting supported by UNESCO Japan-Funds-in-Trust is its Blue and John Crow Mountains nomination
for World Heritage status, snagged by largely conservation management
shortcomings that, we soon learn, are shrouded in ‘intangible’ factors, over
contentions for respect, community engagement and inclusion.
The scenes before me, this, the once-richest and
once-wickedest city on earth, Port Royal, in ruins of its former vivacity, is
also on Jamaica’s World Heritage agenda, as is the New Seville National Park
for World Heritage which are part of our field explorations to examine the
challenges to conservation and restoration as means of stimulating its resource
and income earning potential.
Neville and I are part of this team we have been
building, of experts in the Caribbean who consolidated to actively enhance the
Caribbean profile on the World Heritage List. A subsequent meeting in Antigua
to similar purpose has since seen the listing of Antigua’s Dockyards and
related sites, admitted in 2016, under the stewardship of our colleague,
archeologist Reginald Murphy. The consistency of planning and actions
strengthen and reinforce several of our efforts as in the successful lobby for
admittance of the sole Caribbean country, the Bahamas, that had not yet
ratified the Convention, but which did so in 2014.
They seem big steps, and we celebrate each with
rounds of congratulations, yet in the scheme of things, they are but small
gains, stepping stones to other goals – that is, fostering and building from
the shared Caribbean experience, sustainable foundations and institutions that
can serve the collective vision of the diverse range of Caribbean
peoples.
This would be the preoccupation of my late
evening phone discussions with Neville York, and how such positioning as on the
UNESCO lists that the Caribbean was so actively pursuing could now be used to
address the deeper seething issues that are entangled with considerations of
Caribbean culture and heritage.
I am preoccupied with how the handling of the
nominations processes could also entrench this which we are trying to escape -
the romanticising of brutality and some of the most cruel deeds in our known
history of humanity; the categorizing of the Caribbean according to its
colonial ‘owners’ and their language– Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese,
British; and labels as island, coastal, continental – subsuming and subverting
significant elements of the story of Caribbean identities, as much as these are
also subsets of such identities. I am searching for not just idiom but form to
encompass and embrace the individual and collective identities of pre-Columbian
and post-colonial development mapped with the island-cultures of the Caribbean,
the continental coastlands and interiors of the Americas where are also hidden
and forgotten treasure chests of our Caribbean story, along with the wider
global grasp of migrant cultures that were transposed since the arrival of the
Europeans and the subsequent movements of free and forced labour from Africa
and Asia: India and China, far Eastern Japan and Indonesia, and later Middle
Eastern Syria and Lebanon and augmented by more recent and more complex global movements.
When I had sounded this as the nature our sense of place in an address to the
UNESCO Executive Board some members of the international community marveled at
the span of this diversity of our region – which is not the image generally
conveyed, divided in vein, categorized according to narrow spatial descriptions
or European ownership, language or ethnicity, and splintered by the
inheritors.
For the Caribbean, heritage with its resonances
of the past into present - whether viewed as a continuum or disjointed foundation
for the future - in many ways is not celebratory, as when viewed through the
superficial touristic lenses. Close examination unearth many painful, even
distasteful, incidents of history that many believe are best left buried and
forgotten.
Emotion is not something one associates with the
cut and dry arena of policy making and institution-building, but for the
Caribbean, where these have taken forms of alien, imported and imposed
constructs, the processes of capacity building to these ends could evoke strong
emotions.
I share with Neville the very raw pain that
surfaces among Caribbean youths in Grenada while facilitating an orientation
session under the banner of ‘intangible heritage’. Through some jostling over
accustomed formulas of selection I am for this youth gathering able to convince
the planners for diminished focus on the Eurocentric labelling of the Caribbean
- French/English/Dutch/Spanish/Portuguese - to treat with the notion of the
Caribbean itself. Another small battle won - what would have been a meeting of
the 'English-speaking Caribbean' was transformed into a 'Caribbean Youth forum'
including from the 'Dutch/French/English/Spanish speaking Caribbean. Hence even
Dutch/French classified St Maarten with other permutations, were among the
participants, for which Neville is grateful.
Youths who may be dismissed as unaware of their
history or heritage, are carrying deeply entrenched hurts, that erupt in tears
and rebellion during explorations of an element presented by the host country
for consideration, pointing out this romanticizing of their painful legacy. The
regional resonances therein signify a chorale of commonality in internalised
and externalised Caribbean experiences, even within the diversity. Such levels of emotionalism is absent in the facilitation for Caribbean policymakers I conducted, also in Grenada, but the uneasiness to treat with heritage was evident even at those levels shows the need for more intense education and engagement. 
Keenly interested in these insights, Neville encourages
me to share my experiences of heritage education in various countries. In
Guyana as elsewhere, it takes the skills of a diplomat to steer some innate machete-wielding
hostilities against imposed, alien international systems to an understanding of
how these can be made to work to meet aspirations and to engage the challenger
so he eagerly returns day after day to become an active and empowered
participant. For St Kitts and Nevis, just about 100 square kilometres, with a
combined population of about 50,000, accommodating the desire of citizens of
each of the two small islands that comprise the nation-state that their
individualism be acknowledged and respected meant separate interfaces had to be
crafted to each locale. In Jamaica, tuning in to the interplay of
self-assertion and submissiveness as survival skills to access resources and
negotiate political and other patronage, in a long tradition of rebellion and
resistance to acquire the means of basic subsistence could loom up as imposing
and impenetrable as the Blue and John Crow Mountains. In Belize, it is tapping
into the milk of collective pride in group identities. In Brasilia it is
restoration through re-visioning and reconstruction. The similarities and
differences will unfurl – for Salvador, for San Andres, for Cuba, for Peru, for
the Dominican Republic, for Barbados, for St Vincent and the Grenadines,
Trinidad and Tobago across and beyond borders, boundaries, insularity and
insecurities, less alluring but more weighty than the booty of sunken treasure
ships that are said to litter our waters.
Heritage is not just about place, size,
location, climate, topography and the structures that have cropped up among
them. It is also about the living and remembered and fossilised experiences and
markers of humanity. In many cases, for the Caribbean, resurrecting the past is
not a whimsical and romantic engagement. Even with a profit motive as is
contained in tourism thrusts - albeit, sustainable - or perhaps especially
because of the profit motive, activating creative or cultural heritage industries
from cultural heritage is not enticing shiny pirate’s gold.
That is why intrinsic understanding of the local
situations and knowledge of how to utilize the international mechanisms to
confluence the layers of cultural experiences and impacts have been at the core
of what have been touted as our successes, however small, to date, which a
single inconsistent intervention can easily derail, as has also been
occurring.
Neville is a musician, wearing the hat, if not
the air of a bureaucrat as the Head of the Department of Culture of St Maarten.
Humble, unassuming and amiable, there is no air of the bureaucrat who fills his
seat and office as itself an accomplishment, but a refreshing eagerness of
moving to action what needs to be done.
I am surprised when, soon after our meeting in
Jamaica, my telephone rings one night from a number I cannot recognize. It is
the end of another long day, well clearly not yet the end of the day. Neville
identifies himself. He is preoccupied with the processes of cultural
transformation in his country. Before him is the task of establishing the St
Maarten National Commission for UNESCO as a national level institution that
could be strategic for engagement with the culture agenda of UNESCO. He has hit
snag and wants to draw from my experiences with UNESCO’s international
processes and regional and local experiences to help him shape this
infrastructure. Should we go this route, or that, Kris? He asks for my
advice and perspective on the operations and the legal framework in draft
before him. Anticipating potential pitfalls, planning and shaping, we
spend hours, analyzing the challenges of such operations, among which is
sourcing management and staff in small islands of limited expertise like ours,
but also the more persistent concerns of crafting from the frames of
European-styled processes, forms that could accommodate the realities of the
Caribbean we know. Within weeks, the St Maarten National Commission for UNESCO
takes shape to be launched few months later.
The establishment of the St Maarten National
Commission for UNESCO follows on the heels of the entry of St Maarten and
Curacao as associate members of UNESCO, which I had witnessed and celebrated
with Caribbean colleagues at the UNESCO General Conference in Paris of
2011. Not present himself, I describe the euphoria we felt to welcome
another of our small island Caribbean nations coming into its own into the fold
of an international community.
He shares the euphoric build-up of St Maarten’s
bid for Independence from its dependency off The Kingdom of the Netherlands. I
had tasted a bit of that euphoria, the excitement of dawning, of newness, of
the renewed sense of nationhood that had descended on Curacao with its new boost
of statehood in 2011, attending a gathering of Caribbean scholars in
Williamstad, already a UNESCO Heritage City (inscribed in 1997), to introduce Research Caribbean. I am
coordinating for Research Research Incorporated the founding of Research
Caribbean as an online
news, funding and ideas exchange facility for Caribbean academia - that would
go the route of most initiatives that require the region to invest in itself
and its thought-production and distribution.
My connections to the ‘Dutch Caribbean’ strengthens.
My second book Through the
Political Glass Ceiling –
Race to Prime Ministership by Trinidad and Tobago’s First Female Kamla
Persad-Bissessar, is also
being read and explored in an intellectual climate for the first time in
Curacao. In its exploration of the region’s changing political landscape and
empowerment of peripheral elements in diverse social mosaics, it captures the ascendency
of the first woman to the office of Prime Minister in Trinidad and Tobago - the
Caribbean’s fifth female head of government, influenced by changing patterns
and perceptions of political leadership which I examine in its overview: Clash of Political Cultures:
Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago. 
Before the picture-perfect postcard vista
of the Historic Area of Willemstad, Inner City and Harbour (the official
Heritage city labelling), I am also putting the finishing touches of what would
be my third published book, LiTTscapes
– Landscapes of
Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago that
would be launched a year later as part of commemorations of Trinidad and
Tobago’s jubilee celebrations of Independence.
LiTTscapes was yet unborn then, as I
was when Trinidad and Tobago unfurled our national flag for the first time. I
am able to conjure up the spirit of Independence from experiencing this new
dawn that Curacao and St Maarten were celebrating as their embryonic statedom,
with some hindsight, as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago prepared for their 50th Jubilee of Independence. Being a witness
to at least part of the Curacao-St Maarten independence journey not only expanded
my Caribbean personhood, it helped inform my involvement as part of a national
cultural team that include masman extraordinaire, Peter Minshall; the now
deceased musical maestro Pat Bishop (who in fact died during one of these
meetings) and other cultural icons – artist Jackie Hinkson and cultural
activist Hans Hanoomansingh among them – to artistically revisit, re-vision and
re-create the Independence experience.
As I basked in their sharing of the wonder of new
birth, in the same – divided - vein, those of us from maturing post-Independent
societies would have choice advice and reflections on the status of our
‘independence’ to share in Curacao in the rich explorations that ensued and
emerged, led by the key note speaker, Silvio Torres-Saillant. Torres-Saillant
is born in the Dominican Republic located in the demarcated island which also
contains Haiti – the physical split of this island is more than metaphoric of
the splintered Caribbean. It set the stage for scrutiny of the challenges of independent
thought-production and culturally relevant actions in the Caribbean and
utilizing the natural and human resources for the same, stymied
by insularity, insecurities, and small mindedness. (See details below).
“The peoples of the Caribbean need to know one
another or at least to acknowledge their ignorance of one another before we can
begin to consider articulating common projects for the decades ahead,”
Torres-Saillant had admonished the academic community at the Caribbean Studies
Association gathering in Curacao. We were not the first. This sense of not
knowing ourselves and each other has been an ongoing lament of Caribbean
thought-leaders from the very many dimensions and perspectives and approaches on
which I could write volumes. And I might, yet, if not felled by earthquake or cardiac
arrest or some other like mishap.
Taking the time and making the effort to know
remains a social deficit.
To address the divisions - what Torres-Saillant
identified as the synecdotal approach – using a part to describe or represent a
whole as is often done in culture - Neville and I are now joining heads to try
and turn the wheels and reverse the process – to not adopt, but to see how we
may utilize the mechanisms before us at national levels, with the UNESCO
instruments to effect that change in bridging thought and action to meet local
level challenges confronting the region.
The after-work night time phone calls become
more regular. There are never enough hours in the day, it seems, discussions
and engagement and lobbying encroach into long after-work hours as well. It is
difficult to hang up a conversation which is, in the broad scheme of things,
only just beginning, and the kind of meaningful engagement towards
implementation for which I have been yearning. Sleep will have to wait. It is
refreshing to share in the optimism and enthusiasm of someone who feels
empowered in helping to shape the destiny of his country, and the region. He is
not jaded and cynical and wary and wearied as many of our bureaucrats wearing
similar office, about what can or cannot be accomplished, who pilot the
philosophy that in the face of enormity of the challenge, ‘the best thing to
do, is to do nothing.’ It’s the advice that have often been hurled at me by
elders whether in quiet discussion or when frustration mounts from hammering on
too many impenetrable structures or screaming into too many impermeable ears.
He is piloting a sector in a newly ‘independent’
country. He is eager to learn, from whatever source knowledge may come. He
wants to use his office to achieve for his country and the Caribbean, what his
music is already doing: smoothing the jagged edges, unifying the tones and
rhythms of disparate Caribbean sounds into a harmonious melody of expressions
and experiences and representations of who and what we are, as Caribbean. So
the phone calls are often.
The formal meetings feed informal networking and
discussions and troubleshooting and support.
Neville and I share concerns about the
distinction that is becoming entrenched as seemingly massive bureaucracies,
between tangible and intangible cultural heritage. I am serving as an expert
Independent member of the UNESCO InterGovernmental Committee on Intangible
Cultural Heritage and am preparing to facilitate the first in a series of
meetings on Intangible Cultural Heritage – the first would be also in Jamaica.
From our work and experiences, that distinction in categorization of culture
seems contrived, yet an entire global system of exchange and interchange is
being built around it, as are distinctions between and among ‘forms’ of
cultural expressions, absorbing resources that could be used to more directly
benefit and affect meaningful change for our cultural communities.
How can the divide be bridged within he contexts
of national and international agendas? It is a concern that other cultural
communities across the region would echo in various temperaments and tones. It
had surfaced among the glitches in the preparation of the Jamaica nomination
for World Heritage status, the perceived sense of marginalisation by local
cultural groups who fear subversion of hard won elements of their living
cultural heritage to the fossilized cultures in ruins, sites of memory, cruel
and painful memories, that seem to be receiving undue attention.
The Secretary General of the Jamaica National
Commission often reminds and commends me that it was this ability to bridge
those gaps from an understanding of the local situations and the adaptation of
international forms to suit local needs that we were able to break ground with
the communities at these close-up sessions labelled intangible heritage which
helped paved the way and remove the roadblocks for Jamaica’s successful
nomination bid for the Blue and John Crow Mountain as a World Heritage site.
This was aided by complementary supportive actions at the UNESCO Executive
Board, the World Heritage Committee and the UNESCO system of field offices,
especially with the push from the Kingston office and the support of colleagues.
Neville would draw, too, on our work at the
UNESCO Executive Board. Following the elections of the new Executive Board in
2013, for the first time the Caribbean had a substantial and visible presence
and the Caribbean with unerring support from Caribbean co-members of St Kitts and Nevis, Belize, Dominican Republic and others from the wider global community, the agenda for culture could get the sounding for redirecting
policy and agenda setting actions at international level that complemented the
work of the regional offices and at local levels from an insider.
There is more to address than just the absence
of Caribbean heritage sites on the list. We all felt the lack of and
deficiencies in not just human capacity to drive change but also inadequate
policy and institutional frames within the region to support our work for
Caribbean heritage as in other areas. There are endemic hindrances that are
conceptual and perceptual fed by limitations in expertise and support systems.
These might be easier to fix than the ingrained habits and systems of practice
that often sees Caribbean decision-makers and implementation technicians working
against themselves, selecting, splintering and dividing, which continue to
plague and gnaw at advances being made.
Neville is an artist whose bureaucrat’s cape is
invisible. He is keen on shaping the bureaucracy into forms that would engage
people into reshaping the system.
He quizzes me on my constant hammering at, and
inclusion in our action plan, the need for active networking, that would allow
for collaborations and support, between meetings, and on times like those
described above, when the days are long and tedious when efforts seem
unproductive in the numerous obstacles that can surface. We explore ways of
strengthening this. He discusses establishment of a foundation.
These explorations feed those areas that are
within his spheres of control, in his development of cultural policy frame for
St Marten’s cultural heritage revitalization. They also nourish the form and
features of the meeting of Caribbean experts for Small
Island Developing States on World Heritage nominations, subsequent meetings on
intangible heritage and drive his own nomination dossier with colleagues’ of
the Eastern Caribbean that facilitated the process of preparation of Eastern
Caribbean Coastal Fortifications for the World Heritage list - as follow-ups to the encounters of
2012 in Jamaica and the 2013 in Antigua.
The night-time phone calls were now more
regular. I am not the consultant or facilitator in his initiatives but a
friendly ear, and informally sharing thoughts on the shape of meetings he is
planning for his national community and the region on World Heritage and
Intangible Cultural Heritage as he was also working on the process to ratify
other UNESCO Conventions – Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Diversity of
Cultural Expressions Convention. St Maarten is facing, too, considerable
challenges with regards to its underwater heritage and trade in cultural
property and he is eager for guidance on fashioning directions. It is our
opportunity to help shape the agenda according to Caribbean needs as we
envision them and craft directions and pitch for the engagements of key
officials, the media and other key targets, and even the use of the informal
time for unobtrusive networking.
We discuss the opening ceremony in St Maarten,
the programme and agenda; the who, the how and the why so the opening ceremony,
the workshop and related media outreach sound the right pitched to the island’s
leaders from its President, line Ministers and other offices and office
holders, with knowledgeable briefs on the purpose, intent and purport of the
meeting. He feeds these into his local planning discussions and with the
regional and international UNESCO offices.
The proud flag ceremony with the flags of all
participants at the opening of the St Maarten meeting on World Heritage becomes
a proclamation of that self-determination and embrace of the subtle elements we
were trying to craft as Caribbean cultural action made in the Caribbean image. Most
significantly, a small island Caribbean government investing its own funds in
cultural heritage development and drawing on regional expertise is indeed
something worthy or flag waving and drum thumping where the norm is cap-in-hand,
external fund-grabbing approach. We are enacting our own reparations. We define
the notes and Neville strum them together into the melody that emerges. Neville
is music.
Despite warnings that it will be frowned on by
the competing bureaucracies of UNESCO each jealously guarding funding streams
on each Convention, we begin to unify the explorations on the Conventions on
Intangible, World Heritage, Underwater, Trade in Cultural Property and
Diversity of Cultural Expressions to feed into the programme agenda for the St
Maarten encounter.
This is also part of efforts of myself and
colleagues to drive the UNESCO Executive Board towards synergies that are now
occurring that are to help meet UNESCO’s challenges of diminishing funding,
achieve greater efficiency in its use of resources, by chipping at the walls
and demarcations established in its bureaucratic structures and carefully and
jealously and competitively guarded territories of notions of tangible and
intangible and underwater, and other designations that we knew only as cultural
heritage. These are attempt to bring the heritage policy agenda closer to the
understanding, appreciation and practice of culture at our local levels.
This is strengthened with the support from the
UNESCO Caribbean office in maintaining consistency and continuity in the expert
participants to build on previous actions and successes – an element that is
often missing in the shifty and slippery sands of Caribbean action machinery,
when invitations to such meeting are regarded and treated as reward for political
or other patronage that begin and end with the flight to and from the meeting.
Here is a bridge, a conduit, a bond to the characteristic splintering, and
there were many efforts to challenge and pull this apart as well.
The consistency and continuity strengthens our
network of colleagues whose complementary range of skills and experiences in
the field were already becoming foundational core cadre of Caribbean expertise,
yet under-utilised for reasons that I will explore subsequently.
From our discussions, engagement and support
from the cultural officer at the UNESCO sub-regional office, Neville directs
the St Maarten experience to draw from learnings of the previous work, yet to
resonate with many cadences all its own, that buoy the shared spirits of the
Caribbean participants – in more ways than one! Because of the consistent
cadre, at each meeting we assess, re-assess and redefine the Action Plan
formulated in Jamaica, as the Kingston Action Plan for World Heritage. We
generate the Pillipsburg Action Plan, along with the Declaration on coastal
Fortifications which drew from participation in the preparation of the ten year
Action Plan for World Heritage in Latin America and the Caribbean Region 2014
to 2024 in Brasilia the month previously and which will inform the subsequent
preparation in Cuba of the five year Caribbean Action Plan for World Heritage
2014-2019. I will examine later in greater detail the plans, processes and
machinery in the contexts of relevance and in relation to the global agenda
setting and ways in which they can be beneficial to various user communities
from practitioners to institutions.
Even with these minor triumphs, we recognize
that more tectonic-type phenomena may be required to effect some of the
transformations necessary as stirring our ships of state away from the mentality
of piracy to investing of themselves – not only financial investment - but
drawing on our own resources to shape our own development paths. This too could
work towards self-generated reparation that is so desperately being sought for
the damages wrought and still evident in the entrenched descriptive and
conceptual divisions, categorisations, labelling and institutionalization of European
territorialism and appropriation of the Caribbean identity, language, and
resources.
Divided in vein, the Caribbean Derek Walcott
calls it, these divisions are evident all around us. In the French and Dutch
‘sections’ of St Maarten which nevertheless also boasts of some 45-plus ethnic
categorization; no different from the French-British St Lucia, the physical
demarcation between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. But it is also within.
Within the face of frames that seem to negate and
advance many of the proposed nominations, these are the jarring edges out of
which our work aim to hammer a melody that will linger in strains of memory
long after we have gone. Neville is Jazz.
… happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new.
The forces that can disrupt the gains made need
less effort and can happen in an instant. Like an earthquake. Or a heart
attack. Forces of nature do not discriminate. They sweep in their wake the
church and the brothel, the doers and the Gone
to soon.
The establishment of resilient foundations
and institutions that can withstand the simple petty wranglings, as with the
tectonic upheavals and losses from the natural course of climate, weather,
earth movements or indeed life, remain our challenge. With limited resources, and human capital, marginalising of limited capacity, or loss of the same, creates more than a void, it can result in reversal of advancements made unless we can find ways of building on the legacies left and harnessing the experiences and knowledge held.
When we stand on the now seemingly stable soil
among the half-buried ruins of the once raucous city of Port Royal that with a
shake of the earth was swallowed up on June 7, 1692. Thousands of lives and a
city, gone to soon.
We know hope – that some future heritage
preservers - as we – will one day rubble through - interpreting the shards and
broken bones, the stains on tea cups, the patterns on worn clothing as a
syllabi of forgotten vocabulary, or a musical strain expressive of the
imagination and hopes and dreams and aspirations of the civilization of us.
We know the shaman’s power to heal and soothe
and bridge the fractures and the rifts and place in remembrance that time, a
time, a tick in the tock of time, when some of us are gone, as sudden as the
rumble of a cone, a quake of an earth, a roar of a wave, or a spasm of the
heart.
Harmonising the skills of the archeologist to
shovel and sift and sort; of the artists to paint and dream and create, we
strum our souls for a song, sweet or salt, or sweet salt, that could blend our
divided yet collective histories. And so, too, we know glory, in the frame in a
segment of film, of a musician, harvesting the wind before it sweeps past him
to whisper to a buried civilization.
Gone. Suddenly, they say. And too soon, they say
too. But sudden or soon are but ticks in the tock of time.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy...
...There was chest on chest of Spanish gold
With a ton of plate in the middle hold
And the cabins riot with stuff un told
As they lay there that had took the plum
With a sightless glare and their lips struck dumb
… And we heaved em over and out of sight
With a yo heave ho and fare you well
With a ton of plate in the middle hold
And the cabins riot with stuff un told
As they lay there that had took the plum
With a sightless glare and their lips struck dumb
… And we heaved em over and out of sight
With a yo heave ho and fare you well
Rest In Peace, Neville York.
Neville Yorke died from cardiac arrest on May 9, 2017.
Intellectuals warned
against insularity at Curaçao conference
By Kris Rampersad
The keynote speaker
at the just-concluded Caribbean Studies Association conference in Curaçao
chided academics and cultural producers for insularity in outlook, definitions
and representations of the Caribbean.
Silvio Torres-Saillant, a professor of English at Syracuse University in the USA, urged participants to move be
Silvio Torres-Saillant, a professor of English at Syracuse University in the USA, urged participants to move be
Santo Domingo-born
Torres-Saillant appealed to his audience of some 500 scholars to value one
another “not only in terms of natural resources and labor power to enrich
Western Europe and the United States but also in the realm of thought
production.”
In his address,
entitled, “Knowledge, Legitimacy, and the Dream of Caribbean Unity,”
Torres-Saillant said this would reduce the need to import knowledge, ideas or
conceptual paradigms.
At the same time,
Torres-Saillant, the founding director of the Dominican Studies Institute at
the City University of New York, reprimanded those who sought to update and in
so doing, diminish nationalist assertions for more neutral post-modernist
postures.
He recognised that
many champions of Caribbean independence “combined nationalism, regionalism,
internationalism, and post-nationalism simultaneously and without
contradiction.”
Torres-Saillant, who
appeared last month on the PBS television series “Black in Latin America,” also
reproached those he called Caribbeanists for a tendency to refer to the whole
by naming only the part.
He expressed fear
that the insular representations of the region could narrow “the lens via which
we look at the region.”
“(It) prevents
Caribbeanists from doing right by the region they study,’’ said
Torres-Saillant, the former director of the Syracuse Latino-Latin American
Studies Program.
‘‘You can imagine the
severe implications of the narrowing for us specialists, who in a way are
entrusted with organising the knowledge of the Caribbean world,” he said.
“The peoples of the
Caribbean need to know one another or at least to acknowledge their ignorance
of one another before we can begin to consider articulating common projects for
the decades ahead.”
His provocative
speech stated charged that scholars of the Spanish-speaking, Francophone, and
Anglophone zones of the region had, apart from ignoring each other, ignored the
Dutch Antilles.
Caribbean researchers
were “scandalously quiet about the history of thought production and artistic
creation taking place for several centuries in Surinam, Saba, Saint Eustatius,
Sint Maarten, Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao,” Torres-Saillant said.
An editor and
reviewer for many journals on Latin American and Caribbean studies,
Torres-Saillant said academic submissions for publication were equally narrow
in outlook.
He said during his
time as editor of the interdisciplinary New World Studies journal published by
the University of Virginia, ‘‘we received many remarkable book projects that
dealt with Caribbean subjects, and in the overwhelming majority of the cases
the insular metaphor dominated their language.’’
‘‘I do not exaggerate
when I say that I do not recall one single proposed manuscript that explicitly
spoke of the region as one that included both insular and continental sites,’’
said Torres-Saillant, who holds both a PhD and a master’s degree in comparative
literature from New York University.
“I find too many
instances in the Caribbean bibliography that give me reason to fear that
authors using the term islands employ it in a way that strikes me as
insufficiently figurative.”
This, he lamented,
was at the expense of the part of the region spanned by the Atlantic coast of
South and Central America, including Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama and
Costa Rica and the towns of Santa Marta, Barranquilla, and Santa Catalina along
the Colombian coastline.
Torres-Saillant
expressed fears that if this metaphoric outlook is not regulated, it will
continue to influence a limited physical/geographic conception of the region,
an approach he described as the synecdochical approach drawn from the literary
technique called synecdoche of referring to the whole by naming only a part.
He confessed that he
initially held this insular outlook and that it restricted his own “awareness
of the human experience of the Hispanic Caribbean to the words and deeds of the
inhabitants of the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.”
Linguistics were less
of a divide for Torres-Saillant, who is proficient in Spanish, Portuguese,
French, Latin, Ancient Greek and English.
Describing his own
initial inquiry into the landscape and the civilisation of the Antilles with
simplistic description of it as “the islands”, despite its references to
“non-insular places as Guyana and French Guiana” that sit on the continental
landmass of South America, Torres-Saillant said he stopped using archipelago as
a term for the region in a recently revised edition of his 1997 Cambridge
University Press publication, Caribbean Poetics.
“I wanted to correct
a language whereby I had reduced the Caribbean physical dimension, topography,
demography, and, consequently, its overall complexity,” he confessed.
He argued that
academics could enhance the meaning of their studies if they included the
continental Caribbean as part of their considerations.
He said, for example,
that a singular focus on the islands reduces the place and importance of the
native populations in the region as whole and presents them in the context of
genocide and non-existence.
He further argued
that considerations of the islands’ discourse on race, identity, intellectual
production, and political empowerment are often laments of past hurts rather
than celebration of achievements.
Such discourse shows
“a stable ethnography that features blacks, mulattos, and whites, with a
smattering of coolies, interacting amongst themselves with varying degrees of
conflict, collaboration, intermingling, tension, and coexistence,”
Torres-Saillant said.
In this view,
Amerindian (pre-Colombian) populations with their languages, belief systems,
traditions, ancient histories and chronicles of resistance throughout more than
five centuries of colonial aggression seldom enter the conversation.
However, he said, “we
find that the Indian has not vanished, when one acknowledges the Amerindian
communities on the Caribbean (Atlantic coast) portions of South and Central
American countries— Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Costa Rica and
Panama, or the Amerindian strongholds in Suriname, Guyana and (French) Guiana.
“As we ascertain that
the Indian has not vanished and that she inhabits the territories of our
concern as Caribbeanists, we see our field becoming more difficult to study
than we had at first envisioned,’’ he explained.
‘‘We now have more
languages, more religions, more cultural histories, more memories of
resistance, more stories of survival, in short, a whole lot more human
experience to account for as we undertake to examine, learn, teach, and defend
the Caribbean world,” he stated.
Torres-Saillant
described the conference’s host country, Curaçao, which became a self-governing
country after the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved in 2010, “as a crossroads
of languages, cultures, and ethnicities.”
Curaçao, as part of
the Dutch Antilles, was an ideal place to broaden perspectives on the Caribbean
and “meditate on and accept the difficulty of our studies as Caribbeanists,” he
said.
The Leeward Island
fits the concept of a “four-storeyed country,” described by Dominican
Republic-born Puerto Rican writer José Luis González.
In González’s view
the first floor comprises the native pre-Colombian population, the second floor
arises from Spanish colonisation, a third from Dutch domination, and a fourth
stems from enslaved Africans.
“To study it well,
one needs to master several languages, colonial histories, and cultural
traditions,” Torres-Saillant proclaimed.
He noted that Curaçan
communities span a large number of ethno-racial identities: blacks, mulattoes,
whites, Arabs, Middle Easterners, Asians ancestrally linked to the South and
the East, indigenous groups of various ancestries, and hybrids of various
strands.
“I insist on the
difficulty of knowing Curaçao as a way of proclaiming the difficulty of knowing
the Caribbean.”
Torres-Saillant also
paid tribute to historian Alfonso Múnera Cavadía who was originally scheduled
to be the keynote speaker at the Caribbean Studies Association.
Cavadia is a former
dean of humanities and associate provost for research at the University of
Cartagena in Colombia, who recognised the connection of the peoples on the
Atlantic coast of Colombia with the rest of the Caribbean, a connection
distinct from Colombians on the Pacific rim and the Andean regions.
Cavadia served as the
Colombian ambassador to Jamaica between 1998 and 2002, which Torres-Saillant
speculated gave Cavadia “privileged access to the texture of Caribbean life as
it is lived in the insular Anglophone Caribbean nation of Jamaica.”
Host of the
conference, the Caribbean Studies Association, defines itself as a non-profit
independent professional body devoted to the promotion of studies from a multidisciplinary,
multicultural perspective by scholars “working on the Caribbean region
(including Central America and the Caribbean Coast of South America).”
The conference took
place at the World Trade Centre in Curaçao from 30 May to 3 June 2011.
Article information
By Kris Rampersad
Publication: --- Research Caribbean
The late
Neville York recognized as the Cultural Ambassador for the Region as tribute
poured in for his home going ceremony on Tuesday.
PHILIPSBURG:---
The community of St. Maarten including representatives from the French side and
neighboring Anguilla along with elected officials from Dutch St. Maarten paid
their last respects to St. Maarten Cultural Icon Neville Chester York (50) who
passed away suddenly a week ago and was laid to rest on Tuesday. At the viewing
and funeral services, Deputy Prime Minister Rafael Boasman sat beside his
colleague Minister Silveria Jacobs, while Minister’s Gibson, Emmanuel, and Lee
all paid their respects shortly after the body arrived at the Methodist Church.
Among them were some Members of Parliament.
Several Caribbean nations hailing as far as Guyana and Suriname sent their tributes to the family of the late Neville York, all of which was read out at the Philipsburg Methodist Church while the viewing took place. All of the representatives from the region described the late Neville York as being someone that was always ready to assist them, offered advice and did everything humanly possible to highlight the Caribbean Culture. They said the late Neville York was full of patience and had a huge passion for culture that he would go out of his way to assist and give advice to anyone who needed it and while St. Maarten has lost a man that had wealth of knowledge on the country’s history and culture, the region would also miss him dearly.
Several Caribbean nations hailing as far as Guyana and Suriname sent their tributes to the family of the late Neville York, all of which was read out at the Philipsburg Methodist Church while the viewing took place. All of the representatives from the region described the late Neville York as being someone that was always ready to assist them, offered advice and did everything humanly possible to highlight the Caribbean Culture. They said the late Neville York was full of patience and had a huge passion for culture that he would go out of his way to assist and give advice to anyone who needed it and while St. Maarten has lost a man that had wealth of knowledge on the country’s history and culture, the region would also miss him dearly.
The late
Neville York who headed the Culture Department also taught music and wrote
several songs and poems. At the home going ceremony, several of his students
paid tribute in song.
The home going ceremony started Monday night at the Emerald Funeral Home where family and friends gathered for the last wake and they got the unexpected when the undertakers at Emerald prepared the body of the late Neville York and had him on display playing his favorite steelpan.
The staff of the department of Education, Youth and Culture dressed in their Cultural wear to honor York while the large York family who loses three family members within a week wore blue sweaters to identify themselves as members of the family. Among them is the Minister of Plenipotentiary Henrietta Doran York.
The home going ceremony started Monday night at the Emerald Funeral Home where family and friends gathered for the last wake and they got the unexpected when the undertakers at Emerald prepared the body of the late Neville York and had him on display playing his favorite steelpan.
The staff of the department of Education, Youth and Culture dressed in their Cultural wear to honor York while the large York family who loses three family members within a week wore blue sweaters to identify themselves as members of the family. Among them is the Minister of Plenipotentiary Henrietta Doran York.
Minister Jacobs' Tribute to Cultural Icon Neville York
Tribute To Neville York – Cultural Icon,
Accomplished Musician, Scholar, Policy developer, Heritage Specialist,
Businessman, Teacher, St. Maarten Legend
“Sweet Salt is about Neville York sharing the
creative memory of the pan basin with us, thereby uniting us through the pan
with the musical experiences surfacing from the depths of the Caribbean Pan
Basin” Camille Baly - Local Historian and former head of the Dept of Culture
and Youth.
Neville started in 1995 as a Cultural worker in
the Dept of Culture and Youth under the leadership of Mr. Camille Baly, who
served as his mentor for many years; sharing his humility, grace and
soft-spoken authority with Neville.
An avid student and a great example of a life-long learner, his enthusiasm for learning and sharing his knowledge and expertise were renowned within the ministry, government, the many local and international organizations he contributed to.
Having grown up in a musical family, known for its pioneer role in the introduction of pan to St. Maarten, Neville was destined to be an accomplished musician. He followed his dream after high school, where he’d already received regional recognition with diplomas earned in Guadeloupe, to pursue his music degrees among others. Last I checked he held Bachelors and Masters in Music, Bachelor in Spanish and Business Administration, and was working on a second Masters in Business; he never stopped learning.
Much can be learned from his voracious appetite to know more and continue to grow personally as well as influence the growth and development of culture here at home, in the Caribbean, and around the world.
In 1999 after the reorganization of the department, Neville became the head of the Social and Cultural Development Department and from 2010 – present due to Constitutional change, he became the head of the Culture Department under the MinECYS.
His research into areas pertaining to heritage preservation knew no bounds. His heritage family around the world highlighted a few areas in which Neville excelled: in character, personality and passion for Culture, Heritage preservation locally and regionally and the promotion of the Arts.
“A true visionary of the Caribbean who sought to build capacity by bringing the region together through tangible and intangible heritage, Neville became the unifying force around the proposed serial nomination for Eastern Caribbean fortifications. He was a member of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) International Scientific Committee on Fortifications and Military Heritage (ICOFORT). Neville was a champion who brought awareness to Caribbean heritage internationally and in the context of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). An acclaimed musician locally and globally, Mr. York was the St Maarten Head of the Department of Culture in the St. Maarten Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth Affairs.
We give God thanks for his life and legacy and wish his wife, family, loved ones, and co-workers much comfort and our condolences.”
Patricia Green -head of CARIBBEAN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE - University of Technology, Jamaica
An avid student and a great example of a life-long learner, his enthusiasm for learning and sharing his knowledge and expertise were renowned within the ministry, government, the many local and international organizations he contributed to.
Having grown up in a musical family, known for its pioneer role in the introduction of pan to St. Maarten, Neville was destined to be an accomplished musician. He followed his dream after high school, where he’d already received regional recognition with diplomas earned in Guadeloupe, to pursue his music degrees among others. Last I checked he held Bachelors and Masters in Music, Bachelor in Spanish and Business Administration, and was working on a second Masters in Business; he never stopped learning.
Much can be learned from his voracious appetite to know more and continue to grow personally as well as influence the growth and development of culture here at home, in the Caribbean, and around the world.
In 1999 after the reorganization of the department, Neville became the head of the Social and Cultural Development Department and from 2010 – present due to Constitutional change, he became the head of the Culture Department under the MinECYS.
His research into areas pertaining to heritage preservation knew no bounds. His heritage family around the world highlighted a few areas in which Neville excelled: in character, personality and passion for Culture, Heritage preservation locally and regionally and the promotion of the Arts.
“A true visionary of the Caribbean who sought to build capacity by bringing the region together through tangible and intangible heritage, Neville became the unifying force around the proposed serial nomination for Eastern Caribbean fortifications. He was a member of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) International Scientific Committee on Fortifications and Military Heritage (ICOFORT). Neville was a champion who brought awareness to Caribbean heritage internationally and in the context of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). An acclaimed musician locally and globally, Mr. York was the St Maarten Head of the Department of Culture in the St. Maarten Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth Affairs.
We give God thanks for his life and legacy and wish his wife, family, loved ones, and co-workers much comfort and our condolences.”
Patricia Green -head of CARIBBEAN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE - University of Technology, Jamaica
“Calm demeanor and gentle smile, always willing
to assist professionally and personally....”
- Ian Constantine - Engineering & Architectural Preservation, Saint Lucia
- Ian Constantine - Engineering & Architectural Preservation, Saint Lucia
“We met only once in 2013 in Antigua and Barbuda
for the World Heritage workshop. Since then, we have communicated over e-mails,
and spoken on the phone so many times. The last call from him was 2 months ago,
informing me about the latest news on the proposed serial nomination for the
Eastern Caribbean fortifications and his intention to re-activate the network.
It was always a pleasure to speak with him, he was dedicated, energetic and
passionate with full of ideas. My deepest condolences to his family and
friends. May his soul rest in peace”
- Sachiko Haraguchi (Ms)Coordinator, World Heritage Programme for SIDS, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Paris (France)
- Sachiko Haraguchi (Ms)Coordinator, World Heritage Programme for SIDS, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Paris (France)
“I met him twice and besides his professional
skills and knowledge of the region, I remember his enthusiasm and everlasting
smile...” – Alessandro Balsamo - Nominations and Tentative Lists Manager, World Heritage Centre, UNESCO, Paris, France
The accolades about this legend from around the
world continue with words such as:
“Easygoing, Talented, humble, gentle spirited, passionate about heritage, his music and the development of the region, kind, generous, direct, driven, fired up, concerned, knowledgeable, tireless and humble, absolutely focused on improving cultural recognition and heritage conservation in his island and dreaming on how to expand that spirit all over the Caribbean – a splendid human being!!!”
All these international voices echo the sentiments of his small staff, colleagues in management, the entire Ministry of ECYS and by now the general population of Sweet S’maartin.
From our initial meeting in 2012 when I first held this post, I sat in awe at the extent of knowledge, research, passion and dedication Neville displayed for Cultural Heritage and the arts, including his vision for its future development. Neville would become as excited as a kid in a candy store if he found someone who shared his vision and passion and was quick to pull out a document related to whichever goal I mentioned as wanting to move culture forward. It was as if he had a treasure trove of research just waiting for the support and funds to push it to the forefront.
Patient, kind and strategic are also words I use to describe this incredible man, whose reach it appears has been boundless.
Neville always sought to give credit to all who supported him and his ideas, and worked hard to bring them to fruition by all means possible, whether with local funding or international funding via his affiliates in the UNESCO Heritage sphere.
“Easygoing, Talented, humble, gentle spirited, passionate about heritage, his music and the development of the region, kind, generous, direct, driven, fired up, concerned, knowledgeable, tireless and humble, absolutely focused on improving cultural recognition and heritage conservation in his island and dreaming on how to expand that spirit all over the Caribbean – a splendid human being!!!”
All these international voices echo the sentiments of his small staff, colleagues in management, the entire Ministry of ECYS and by now the general population of Sweet S’maartin.
From our initial meeting in 2012 when I first held this post, I sat in awe at the extent of knowledge, research, passion and dedication Neville displayed for Cultural Heritage and the arts, including his vision for its future development. Neville would become as excited as a kid in a candy store if he found someone who shared his vision and passion and was quick to pull out a document related to whichever goal I mentioned as wanting to move culture forward. It was as if he had a treasure trove of research just waiting for the support and funds to push it to the forefront.
Patient, kind and strategic are also words I use to describe this incredible man, whose reach it appears has been boundless.
Neville always sought to give credit to all who supported him and his ideas, and worked hard to bring them to fruition by all means possible, whether with local funding or international funding via his affiliates in the UNESCO Heritage sphere.
Some of his achievements within the Ministry
over the past few years:
Neville’s legacy will live on through his
attitude, his research, his writings, his music, his teaching of children and
adults, the lives he's touched.
His spirit will live on with every ping of the pan, every monument restored, labeled and recorded, every spoken and written word archived, every documentary filmed, every song composed, written, recorded and performed, every dance choreographed danced and videographed, every piece of art conceived, created, displayed and sold, every art facility restored, expanded and built.
The sweet salt we reaped, burned our fingers and blinded our eyes, but the yield produced survival!! As we reminisce on the sweet memories and 'suck salt' at your early demise, we pray your spirit guides us to realize your goals and dreams for S’Maatin and the Caribbean. Together we can!
Our prayers for strength and endurance of the Neville spirit in his family, friends near and abroad and to Sxm and her neighbors as we allow him to move on. We pray he knows how dearly we hold him, how high he is esteemed, and how long his name will ring on this earth!!!
Sometimes I wonder, did we stifle the artist by forcing him to write policy, make a dollar out of fifty cents, or was he just that complete; able to bounce between the art world and work of cultural and heritage preservation? Or did his musical forays with his students and in his performances keep him charged up to be able to make the global difference in his day job?
We will never be certain, but what we do know is there was a man, a great man, who lived with a passion for music, culture, heritage and the arts in general who has made a great impact on our lives. Let’s take the lesson of his life along with us on a daily basis, and smile, work hard, play hard, encourage others along the way and make a difference!!! He had passed the baton, may we all have the courage to take it and Run!
His spirit will live on with every ping of the pan, every monument restored, labeled and recorded, every spoken and written word archived, every documentary filmed, every song composed, written, recorded and performed, every dance choreographed danced and videographed, every piece of art conceived, created, displayed and sold, every art facility restored, expanded and built.
The sweet salt we reaped, burned our fingers and blinded our eyes, but the yield produced survival!! As we reminisce on the sweet memories and 'suck salt' at your early demise, we pray your spirit guides us to realize your goals and dreams for S’Maatin and the Caribbean. Together we can!
Our prayers for strength and endurance of the Neville spirit in his family, friends near and abroad and to Sxm and her neighbors as we allow him to move on. We pray he knows how dearly we hold him, how high he is esteemed, and how long his name will ring on this earth!!!
Sometimes I wonder, did we stifle the artist by forcing him to write policy, make a dollar out of fifty cents, or was he just that complete; able to bounce between the art world and work of cultural and heritage preservation? Or did his musical forays with his students and in his performances keep him charged up to be able to make the global difference in his day job?
We will never be certain, but what we do know is there was a man, a great man, who lived with a passion for music, culture, heritage and the arts in general who has made a great impact on our lives. Let’s take the lesson of his life along with us on a daily basis, and smile, work hard, play hard, encourage others along the way and make a difference!!! He had passed the baton, may we all have the courage to take it and Run!
Silveria Jacobs, Minister of Education,
Culture, Youth and Sport 2017
The late
Neville York and Our Cultural Awakening.
Published: 15
May 2017
PHILIPSBURG:---Most
of us knew Neville York as a native son, educated abroad, awesome pan musician,
and head of the St. Maarten Cultural Department for 22 years. Some teachers and
students knew him as the steel drum music instructor at e.g. Learning
Unlimited. Musicians and jazz lovers like himself knew him to be a longtime
advocate and promoter of jazz on St. Maarten, bringing world-class performers
like Arturo Sandoval to the French side’s Le Flamboyant Hotel.
But how many of us knew Neville York as one of the top 10 steel drum players in the world, performing with symphony orchestras in Holland, Europe, and the United States, or touring with Marshall Vente’s ‘Tropicale’ as his band? In Vente’s tribute on May 9th entitled “Neville York’s Passing: A Sad day in Chicago” he says, “Neville’s sudden passing has shocked us here in Chicago, friends, and musicians. A very sad day. I had lunch with Neville in St. Maarten on March 10th; we talked about recording again sometime and his new school of music.....” “And our concerts in Chicago, plus 5 years of concerts with my band in St. Maarten and Anguilla – these will never be forgotten. Neville taught us so much about Caribbean life and culture......”
Does the 237 square-mile capitol city of Chicago, with 200 art galleries, dozens of cultural institutions, historical sites, and 2.5 million people -- know more about Neville York’s persona, range of accomplishments and pursuits than we do here? Do they have a more enhanced perception or esteem for his gifts, and perhaps for the man himself, than we have here at home?
With this unexpected loss, we are starkly reminded of how familiarity can make us strangers, how easily we assimilate and embrace the cultural icons and expressions of others, and how seldom we give our own their just due; that is, until our smiles, appreciation, pride and applause, can no longer be seen, heard, or felt.
Neville York taught Chicago ‘so much of Caribbean life and culture’. Can we ask them now for his voicings of us, for his intoning of our sensibilities, to assert for us that which was uniquely expressed thru his gifts of us? No. In the tapestry of our own cultural heritage and history, WE must -- with love for our individual and collective ‘selves’ -- do the gathering and the weaving. Our artists and their art are the vibrant color, the purifying wounds, the chords of many strings and strains that tell our stories -- symbolically and concretely -- binding our chapters together.
In his conclusion to St. Maarten’s cultural policy Neville says this:
“St. Maarten has developed over the years into a mini-metropolis and as such, it is imperative that we try to maintain a form of equilibrium between progress and our core cultural values; however, it must be clearly understood that “No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive”. (Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi 1869–1948). The accelerated march towards a new constitutional status provides a window of opportunity for the host society to embrace its diversity of cultures and find unity within them. But also realizing that this can only happen if -- and only if –self-preservation is our first priority. To this end, I leave you with this final quote from Gandhi: “.... I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible, but I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”. Neville C. York
Condolences to Neville York’s wife, Veronica York George, his father Chester York, his siblings and all his family, colleagues and friends.
But how many of us knew Neville York as one of the top 10 steel drum players in the world, performing with symphony orchestras in Holland, Europe, and the United States, or touring with Marshall Vente’s ‘Tropicale’ as his band? In Vente’s tribute on May 9th entitled “Neville York’s Passing: A Sad day in Chicago” he says, “Neville’s sudden passing has shocked us here in Chicago, friends, and musicians. A very sad day. I had lunch with Neville in St. Maarten on March 10th; we talked about recording again sometime and his new school of music.....” “And our concerts in Chicago, plus 5 years of concerts with my band in St. Maarten and Anguilla – these will never be forgotten. Neville taught us so much about Caribbean life and culture......”
Does the 237 square-mile capitol city of Chicago, with 200 art galleries, dozens of cultural institutions, historical sites, and 2.5 million people -- know more about Neville York’s persona, range of accomplishments and pursuits than we do here? Do they have a more enhanced perception or esteem for his gifts, and perhaps for the man himself, than we have here at home?
With this unexpected loss, we are starkly reminded of how familiarity can make us strangers, how easily we assimilate and embrace the cultural icons and expressions of others, and how seldom we give our own their just due; that is, until our smiles, appreciation, pride and applause, can no longer be seen, heard, or felt.
Neville York taught Chicago ‘so much of Caribbean life and culture’. Can we ask them now for his voicings of us, for his intoning of our sensibilities, to assert for us that which was uniquely expressed thru his gifts of us? No. In the tapestry of our own cultural heritage and history, WE must -- with love for our individual and collective ‘selves’ -- do the gathering and the weaving. Our artists and their art are the vibrant color, the purifying wounds, the chords of many strings and strains that tell our stories -- symbolically and concretely -- binding our chapters together.
In his conclusion to St. Maarten’s cultural policy Neville says this:
“St. Maarten has developed over the years into a mini-metropolis and as such, it is imperative that we try to maintain a form of equilibrium between progress and our core cultural values; however, it must be clearly understood that “No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive”. (Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi 1869–1948). The accelerated march towards a new constitutional status provides a window of opportunity for the host society to embrace its diversity of cultures and find unity within them. But also realizing that this can only happen if -- and only if –self-preservation is our first priority. To this end, I leave you with this final quote from Gandhi: “.... I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible, but I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”. Neville C. York
Condolences to Neville York’s wife, Veronica York George, his father Chester York, his siblings and all his family, colleagues and friends.
Democratic Party St. Maarten
https://smn-news.com/st-maarten-st-martin-news/25973-the-late-neville-york-and-our-cultural-awakening.html
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Nationhood in contestation with globalisation: http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2017/08/nationhood-in-contestation-with.html
Nationhood in contestation with globalisation: http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2017/08/nationhood-in-contestation-with.html
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2017/08/creating-revolution-through-knowledge.html
my-discoverie-columbus-lost-and-found
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com /from-beirut-to-port-of-spain-how-west.html
The-price-of-passion-awards-and-rewards
Exploring a World Through MultiCultural Lenses https://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2017/07/dr-kris-rampersad-exploring-world.html
my-date-with-narendra-modi-dat-merkel affair
Things-that-make-me-go-steups-stars http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2016/12/things-that-make-me-go-steups-stars.html
The Walcott Files
LiTTscapes for Littribute to the Antilles
A LiTTribute at UNESCO
Inscription by UNESCO of Poems
Small only in Size UNESCO Executive Board told
World in a Fishbowl
A Musical Heritage walk UNESCO Creative Cities
LiTTscapes for Littribute to the Antilles
A LiTTribute at UNESCO
Inscription by UNESCO of Poems
Small only in Size UNESCO Executive Board told
World in a Fishbowl
A Musical Heritage walk UNESCO Creative Cities
Murder She Wrote: Death Written in Stone in Dana Seetahal
Assassination
Creating Centres of Peace in Trinidad and Tobago
The Price of Independence:#DanaSeetahalAssassination
Conceive. Achieve. Believe
Demokrissy: Wave a flag for a party rag...Choosing the Emperor's ...
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice. Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform, Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party - a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won! That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice. Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform, Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party - a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won! That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Others: Demokrissy: Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 ...
Apr 07, 2013
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013
Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2.
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Wave a flag for a party rag...Choosing the Emperor's New ...
Oct 20, 2013
Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an ... Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 10:36 AM ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Carnivalising the Constitution People Power ...
Feb 26, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Envisioning outside-the-island-box ... - Demokrissy - Blogger
Feb 10, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Futuring the Post-2015 UNESCO Agenda
Apr 22, 2014
It is placing increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity, gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies towards eroding these superficial barriers. In this context, we believe that the work of UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the institution best positioned to consolidate the ..... The Emperor's New Tools ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Cutting edge journalism
Jun 15, 2010
The Emperor's New Tools. Loading... AddThis. Bookmark and Share. Loading... Follow by Email. About Me. My Photo · Kris Rampersad. Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant, Facilitator, Educator and Practitioner. View my ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Creating Centres of Peace in Trinidad and Tobago
The Price of Independence:#DanaSeetahalAssassination
Conceive. Achieve. Believe
Demokrissy: Wave a flag for a party rag...Choosing the Emperor's ...
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice. Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform, Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party - a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won! That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice. Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform, Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party - a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won! That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Others: Demokrissy: Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 ...
Apr 07, 2013
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013
Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2.
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Wave a flag for a party rag...Choosing the Emperor's New ...
Oct 20, 2013
Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an ... Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 10:36 AM ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Carnivalising the Constitution People Power ...
Feb 26, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Envisioning outside-the-island-box ... - Demokrissy - Blogger
Feb 10, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Futuring the Post-2015 UNESCO Agenda
Apr 22, 2014
It is placing increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity, gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies towards eroding these superficial barriers. In this context, we believe that the work of UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the institution best positioned to consolidate the ..... The Emperor's New Tools ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Cutting edge journalism
Jun 15, 2010
The Emperor's New Tools. Loading... AddThis. Bookmark and Share. Loading... Follow by Email. About Me. My Photo · Kris Rampersad. Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant, Facilitator, Educator and Practitioner. View my ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
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