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For those who might have wondered about the absence of my column last week, the Express has decided that it only requires my offerings fortnightly. I had already begun writing when I was told, so I continued.
I’d listened to three episodes of the Corie Sheppard Podcast on Carnival Tuesday. He was speaking with Wendell Manwarren, Roger Roberts and Stanton Kewley, the members of 3Canal, and each one was so riveting that I passed nearly four and a half hours completely engrossed.
Corie Sheppard has been producing these conversations with practitioners of the entertainment arts, and they are significant contributions to the documentation of our history. It is a wonderful project, building our cultural archives. People like him who are taking on that kind of responsibility are to be supported, just as the artistes themselves.
It’s no secret that I think 3Canal has been an outstanding and valuable entity that has done remarkable work over the past three decades. They each mentioned how the song, ‘Blue’, a massive hit in 1997, changed their lives dramatically.
It began by looking up the meaning of the word. Blue: a colour or pigment … you know the rest. But it was the start of thinking through their following presentations by looking for a philosophical centre to underlie them. They chose to base everything around concepts that aligned with their core beliefs.
To my mind, this is what defines the rapso they have given us over the years. Some of the things that struck me during the separate podcasts were intriguing enough to make me want to focus on them.
For instance, Manwarren said his grandfather was his liming partner, and he had lots of books and lots of style, and he preferred to hang out with him indoors rather than running around with his cousins. His father had “a wall of records”, and both his parents played pan. He grew up surrounded by a genuine community, and books were central to him.
Roberts said his mother was the vice-principal at St Joseph Boys’ RC, where he went before going to St Mary’s College. She played the piano, his father the guitar, and they encouraged him into music.
Kewley said his father was a mechanical engineer and he was drawn to what he did, which led him to discovering his calling towards stage design, sculpting, and crafting mas.
Each one spoke about childhood support that let them follow their callings, even when they didn’t know what it was to be. They spoke about the tremendous impact of having mentorship, notably from Peter Minshall, and the value of proximity to Meiling, and Cecelia Salazar. They spoke of the influence of Andre Tanker, and Lancelot Layne’s rapso—what they define as “Representing a Positive Social Outlook”.
Despite that grounding, they have not shied away from blistering commentaries on the state of society; ‘Talk yuh Talk’, followed ‘Blue’. They share common elements. Freedom to be who they wanted to be.
I surmise it to be a function of their nurturing environments. The deep interest in history and society. They couldn’t write such loaded songs without that anchor of knowing about the past.
Whether informal or not, that knowledge is only accumulated and processed inside minds that are crucibles of curiosity. They were not constrained by the woeful education system that has generally condemned its inhabitants to achieve certification without the capacity to analyse.
They have become mentors to communities that do not really have access to formal training. It seems to be the hallmark of the truly gifted in our midst.
I could never have enough space to offer lists, but if you think about it, names will come to mind, and you will find that this is the characteristic that inhabits greatness.
One of the hallmarks of 3Canal is the uncompromising adherence to their principles, their philosophy of life—an unwavering commitment to their values and outlook of what constitutes justice, decency and equity—civic-mindedness of the civilised.
On Tuesday, I looked at the opening ceremony of the 50th regular meeting of Caricom. It went on for four hours (time spent in a transfixed kind of way entirely different from the podcasts).
Predictably, political leaders who spoke touched on difficulties faced by the various members and applauded the fact that the organisation has survived. They spoke of the need to support Haiti and Cuba, and to continue the fellowship that saw aid being dispatched to Jamaica in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.
Oddly, when the Secretary General of Caricom, Dr Carla Barnett, addressed the gathering, she cited the elections that had taken place within the last year, and named those who had come to leadership, but did not mention Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
Photo: UNC.
But T&T’s PM had come prepared to fire salvos and to make it clear that she was firmly embedded in the actions of the USA, regardless of how that affected her geographical neighbours.
I am as sovereign as they are. Let Haiti and Cuba sort themselves out; humanity has no place here. Venezuela is a threat. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are our saviours. No hug-ups from me. Every man for himself.
It left me feeling dishevelled and even more determined to hold on to my concept of patriotism, not based on blind adulation for country, but like 3Canal, a kind based on the notion of patriotism to principles and decency.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
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