Amazing Grace: Corresponding with the distributors

Not wishing to wait for Galleria Cinemas to get back to us, the National Commission on Cultural Development (of which I'm the Deputy Chair) contacted the distributors for the film Amazing Grace to see what the story is on the release of the film to the Caribbean.Now. Let me make my position clear here, lest people get sidetracked by the politics of the whole thing. I tend to agree with Frances-Anne about the reasons behind the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery itself, although I would go further and say that I believe that the abolitionist movement sprang from a genuine crisis of conscience. The fact that this gained political mileage when it did had plenty to do with power-struggles and economics, and the fact that the industrialists and factory owners who were gaining economic strength in Britain wanted to break the backs of their powerful predecessors, the land-owning aristocracy and the planters overseas. I don't, however, discount the question of conscience.The problem is that conscience is often compromised by prejudices and bigotry, which are often so unconscious that they are invisible to those who practise them. The release of the film Amazing Grace provides a fascinating study in the juncture of bigotry and conscience -- if indeed there are no plans to release it in the Caribbean.This is one fact I'm still investigating.So here is the email sent by me on behalf of the Cultural Commission to the distributors:

Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 3:04 PMSubject: Amazing Grace - Limited Release?I am writing from Nassau, Bahamas, to inquire about the release of the film Amazing Grace in The Bahamas.I currently serve as the Deputy Chair of the National Commission on Cultural Development, a government-appointed group whose purpose is to monitor and oversee cultural activity and development for The Commonwealth of The Bahamas. One of our main foci in 2007 is the Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Countries throughout the former British West Indies are observing this Bicentenary, which has fundamental significance for our populations and for our nations.As part of our commemorative activities, we wish to urge all Bahamians to view the film. However, it is not currently screening here. Inquiries of the Galleria Cinemas, the only distributor of mainstream movies in the nation, revealed that the film is in limited release and is not available to The Bahamas for showing.Given that the Abolition Act championed by William Wilberforce and his Abolitionists directly affected the British West Indian colonies, of which The Bahamas is one, we find the unavailability of this film, which provides an account of his struggle, beyond our comprehension.The National Commission on Cultural Development for The Government of The Bahamas wishes to invite a response from the distributors of the film regarding the screening of Amazing Grace in The Bahamas, and would be grateful for any light you might shed on this matter.Sincerely,Nicolette BethelDeputy Chair, National Commission on Cultural DevelopmentNassau, Bahamas

I received the following response from Roadside Attractions, one of the distributors (there are two - Samuel Goldwyn's the other):

Unfortunately, we don't hold the international rights to the film. Any inquiries about the Bahamas should go to the film's producers Bristol Bay Productions. They can be reached here: www.bristolbayproductions.com.

Amazing Grace Update

I just got off the telephone from Galleria Cinemas.

Several inquiries were received by the Cinemas about the movie Amazing Grace.  Accordingly, I was told the following:

• Although the film is showing in the USA at the moment, and will open in the UK and Ireland tomorrow (March 23, 2007), it is in limited release. Galleria's distributors will let the cinemas know when it is available to be shown in The Bahamas.
• I expressed the concern -- shared, clearly, by the National Cultural Commission -- that the anniversary of the signing of the Act is on Sunday, and that the only film currently available about the event is not showing in The Bahamas, a country fundamentally affected by the Act.

If the film is not intended to be released in the Caribbean at the time of the Bicentenary of the Abolition, then that is a significant lapse of judgement of the filmmakers and the studio. There is really very little to be gained, either for history or for Christianity itself, to show the film in the homes of the people who perpetrated the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and not to do so in the homes of the societies that were created by that very trade.

Something is askew.

edit: It seems as though the film was indeed initially in limited release. Since then, however, the distributors have increased its availability. Whether that availability extends beyond the USA or the North American continent remains to be seen; I am emailing the distributors to find out for myself.

Still More - Amazing Grace

Letter sent by National Commission on Cultural Development to Galleria Cinemas re: Amazing Grace:

ManagerGalleria CinemasNassau BahamasDear [Sir]:

Re: Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolitionof the Trans-Atlantic Slave Tradeandthe Film Amazing GraceAs you are no doubt aware, 2007 marks the Bicentenary of the Abolition by the British Parliament of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.In 1807, following a decades-long struggle in Britain on the part of the Abolitionists, led principally by William Wilberforce, the British Parliament agreed to outlaw the capture and enslavement of Africans and their transportation across the Atlantic to the colonies of the Americas. The Act in question was signed on 25th March, 1807.It was with some interest and excitement that the members of the National Commission on Cultural Development noted that a film had been made, inspired by the life and work of William Wilberforce and the activities of the Abolitionist Movement in Britain at the turn of the Nineteenth Century. Even more than that, Amazing Grace examines the role of the Protestant and Evangelical churches in this movement. Given the strong Christian sensibilities that prevail among Bahamians, the Commission looks forward to promoting the film as an official activity of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.Amazing Grace opened in the USA on February 23, 2007. It is set to open in the UK on March 23, 2007. The official date set by the United Nations for the observance of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is March 25, 2007. However, to date, Amazing Grace is nowhere to be found in The Bahamas. We wish to inquire when your cinemas plan to bring the film to The Commonwealth, and invite you to join with us in commemorating this awesome milestone in the struggle of our ancestors towards Emancipation.We look forward to your response.Sincerely, etcTHE NATIONAL CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION

In Brazil, singers are ministers

For those of you who aren't familiar with either Brazilian music or Brazilian politics, imagine a world where the Minister of Culture is a practising musician, and a world-famous one at that.This story tells the tale.For those who can't read it, here's how it begins:

ON Wednesday the Brazilian minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, is scheduled to speak about intellectual property rights, digital media and related topics at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. Two nights later the singer, songwriter and pop star Gilberto Gil begins a three-week North American concert tour.Rarely do the worlds of politics and the arts converge as unconventionally as in the person of Mr. Gil, whose itinerary includes a solo performance at Carnegie Hall on March 20. More than 40 years after he first picked up a guitar and sang in public, Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira is an anomaly: He doesn’t just make music, he also makes policy.

Amazing Grace

On February 23, 2007, the film Amazing Grace opened worldwide in the USA.For people who don't know (and I'm assuming that there must be many of them here in The Bahamas, for reasons I'll tell you later), this film is, among other things, a look at William Wilberforce's abolitionist movement, the one that focussed Britons' eyes on the inhumanity of slavery, and which led the British Parliament first to abolish the transatlantic slave trade (whose bicentenary we celebrate this year) and, ultimately, to abolish slavery in the British Empire (1834), and to free the slaves (1834-1838).I have to say all this because nowhere is the film showing in The Bahamas.Now I have no idea why this is. One good reason, of course, is that commercial films in The Bahamas are controlled by a single conglomerate: Galleria Cinemas, which owns four commercial theatres in Nassau and Freeport, and which usually decides what the Bahamian public sees or doesn't see. So it is entirely possible that Galleria, looking at the costumes in the movie, thinking about the "dryness" of the subject, decided to pass on the film.This is something they do fairly regularly. As with many purveyors of mass entertainment in The Bahamas, the assumption is made that we are an undifferentiated mass of ignorami, and that no one will spend money on shows or performances that engages thought or reflection. (This attitude is as true of people producing live entertainment as it is of people importing films.) And so many films that I would like to see pass us by. It's one of the reasons that I don't go to the cinema; it's one of the reasons that our DVD collection is so vast. And it's one of the dangers -- a main and looming danger -- of having a monopoly governing commercial film distribution in the country. At least when RND Cinemas were still in operation, you had two sets of people making decisions, and sometimes those decisions would be different. Competition, what.There is, however, another, more sinister possibility. And it's this.The Bahamas Films and Plays Control Board viewed Amazing Grace and decided that it was not something that Bahamians ought to see.Now I don't have time to go into the implications of this. They are, I can assure you, rich with irony and fundamentally alarming. I'll come back to this blog to do this. But I'll leave you with these thoughts.

• Ours is a nation made primarily up of the descendants of slave-owners and their slaves.
• Ours is a nation whose political history is grounded uniquely and solely in the British Empire (yes, our social history is American. For the purposes of this discussion, that's irrelevant).
• Ours is a nation that never tires of referring to itself as "Christian" (even though some of us, who respect and worship the Almighty in relative quiet, would like to take one step back to avoid the lightning bolt when it falls upon us for gross hypocrisy and overweening hate).
• Amazing Grace is a movie about how the British Empire moved towards the abolition of the institution of slavery and the emacipation of the slaves.
• The movers and shakers behind the Abolition crusade were Christians, and it was Christian principles that they used to argue their case and it was in the name of Christ that the battle was won.

Draw your own conclusions.

"Authentic" tourism

Titilayo over at gallimaufry has an interesting post on the edgy side of tourism.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a guy from Argentina and he mentioned staying at a hotel in Brazil and seeing that their lists of activities for guests included a “ghetto tour”, a guided trip through one of the nearby favelas. Apparently slum tours of that sort are moving from being a novelty and becoming a recognised niche product: poverty tourism, also dubbed “poorism”, is growing in popularity amongst visitors to developing countries like Brazil, India and South Africa (although the South Africa tour doesn’t seem to be actively exploiting the poverty aspect as much as the others).

What's interesting to me about this is that this is the dark side of what I've often been preaching here at home, where tourism is controlled by huge conglomerates that cluster along the best beaches and block our view of the ocean God gave us, and where relatively little of the tourist revenue makes its way into people's pockets. I've been talking about the demand for "authenticity" in the tourist product, which is a rising demand, and one that certainly occupies much of the mainstream of the wealthier tourists, so much so that the Ministry of Tourism has begun to notice. I have long criticized our tourist product for being exclusively outwardly-focussed, for misunderstanding and misrepresenting what makes us us, seeking instead safe ways of packaging ersatz bits and pieces of performative culture (Junkanoo in the summer, hello) for "the tourists", and have suggested that what "the tourists" really want is the illusion that they have touched the real life that can be called Bahamian.There's a thin, thin line between "authenticity" and "poorism", though; and the arguments are not easy to resolve. They are uncomfortable -- the whole idea is uncomfortable -- but there's a little more to it; this is a Dalmatian of a problem, not something that's either black or white. You see, "poorism" does for the inner cities of many so-called developing countries what tourism has not yet done -- it puts tourist dollars directly into the pockets of the people who well may need them the most.But you decide.Here's an account from the Globe and MailHere's the comment that titilayo's riffing off ofHere's a completely different point of viewHere's how it's done in the StatesTownship tourism in South Africa

Lynn on being an artist on the plantation

Lynn Sweeting writes a wonderful post on art and the artist in a tourist economy.Some of you may be wondering why I called it the plantation. If you have, you're new to this blog, and you certainly haven't heard of Ian Strachan's book, Paradise and Plantation: Tourism and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean. It's worth a look if you haven't.Here's what Lynn has to say:

It so happens that for ten or fifteen years I was a house slave on the tourist plantation, I was a Maryann sifting sand in a comfortable place. I wrote and published many stories for the tourism masters. Some said I was good at it. I was rewarded with a little public acclaim, and a trophy. I quite forgot I was a slave. I remembered again (or realized for the first time) when a story I wrote for the masters turned out to be a complete lie, and was causing outrage in Exuma. Obediently I had written that this community was happy that a huge influx of foreign yachts was coming through their harbor, thanks to a new marketing campagne. The truth was that these enormous boats were causing an environmental disaster, pollution was threatening to ruin a pristine ecology, and for added outrage, the people aboard these floating hotels never had to set foot in town, they spent not a penny. The islanders were in an uproar to see a story in the paper that erased them so effectively and so cruelly. I was horrified, and ashamed. That was the last story I ever wrote as a house slave on the tourist plantation.

Now, from one point of view, it's important that we tell good tales to our visitors, that we describe the happiness that comes from the five million-plus tourists who come to our shores. The trouble is, as Lynn describes above, we run the risk of obscuring the truth by telling these tales. Worse, the message we give ourselves is that our experience is worthless, our experience doesn't count; what matters is the packaging, and nothing more.I could write about how the Ministry of Tourism often falls into the trap of selling packaging and nothing else, but I've bashed that venerable institution quite enough on this blog. You only have to go back a few months to see the last discussion, and since we haven't moved much further from that point, I'll leave it alone (if you want to find the discussion, just put "tourism" into the search box up there and browse on your own time). This time I'll just let Lynn speak for herself.

What culture's good for -- in real terms

Now this is a radical idea.

All of sub-Saharan Africa receives just over $1 billion per year from the US in economic aid. If everyone in the United States gave up one soft drink a month we could double our current aid to Africa. If everyone gave up one movie a year we could double our current aid to Africa and Asia.We have an even better idea:If every American would buy 10 songs by African Artists -- We would DOUBLE the amount of money the US is currently sending to Africa. This is what we mean by 'Tune Your World'.

The complex law about trademarks, globalized

I found this story very interesting in my browsing this morning. In short, it's the account of the tricky law of trademarking, as practised in South Korea, and it affects everybody's favourite coffee chain, Starbucks.It interests me on two sides of the coin. First, the explication of Korean law is instructive. Second, the information that's gleanable about trademarking and copyright law in general is also instructive. For us, who haven't even begun to categorize and protect our collective intellectual property, it's worth a study.Here's a snippet.

People keep pestering me about Starbuck’s trademark problems in Korea. I cannot tell you how many times people who know me and role as a blogger have said “What’s going on in that Starbucks thingy?” The problem on commenting is twofold. One, my interest in the facts, let alone forming an opinion, is basically nil. Second, this really is about as close to straight-up trademark case you can get, it is what it is. However I thought the announced decision last week by the Korean Supreme Court against Starbuck’s appeal against Elfreya (dba Starpreya Coffee) coupled with announcement by Starbuck’s CEO in Hong Kong last month to vigorously protect its trademarks in Korea has prodded me into posting this.

Barbados Tourism Ad

Why am I posting a Bajan tourism ad, you wonder? Why should I?Well, because sometimes it's good to know what the competition's saying.And sometimes it's good to know that the competition's aiming its ads straight at you.Let me know what you think.

Peter Minshall on the Commercialization of Carnival

Here.

“The Savannah stage has done so much harm,” says Minshall. It has evolved to suit the needs of the bigger Carnival bands (i.e.: commercialism), and in the process, has “cut out the light for anything small to grow.” As the big bands got bigger and made more money, the expression became more shallow, to the point where costumes are now no different from Las Vegas showgirls. “We have sold our soul,” says Minshall sadly, as we pay homage to “the cheapest of the cheap: American standards of entertainment.” T&T Carnival has become a celebrity thing and mas’, in its purest sense, is not about celebrity. In fact, it’s the antithesis of it.

We should take heed. For those of you who don't remember, when Minshall was here, two years ago, he was blown away by the vibrancy of Junkanoo, by the fact that it's a parade created by the participants, by the energy and the people-ness of it all. And for people who don't know, Trinidad and Tobago has closed the Savannah grandstand down for renovation; CARIFESTA was held at the National Stadium, not at the Savannah as a result, and Carnival 2007 will have to find a different venue as well.

In our calls for the "improvement" of Junkanoo, we should look to Trinidad and Tobago not only for inspiration in terms of organization and engineering, design and sound, but also in terms of their mistakes. There's no good reason why we should repeat mistakes that have been made in the past. The reasons will only be bad — powermongering, or selfishness, or greed.

CARIFESTA IX

So I haven't written much on the thing that's been taking up all my time between waking and sleeping for the past two weeks. CARIFESTA IX Trinidad and Tobago has taken place, and it is winding down with far more energy than it began; and at some point, I will write something about it. But I read the following article today (thanks to my husband, who is an inveterate news consumer) and it struck a chord. But it also reinforced what I know to be true: that culture persists in being regarded throughout the region (with the exception of Suriname, who understands what culture can do for a country, presumably) as "light" fare, something not requiring heads of governments.From the Jamaica Observer:

Participation in CARIFESTA 2006, the ninth since its historic inauguration in Guyana in 1972, came from 23 of an originally expected 30 countries of the Greater Caribbean.Hosting the festival for the third time is estimated to cost Trinidad and Tobago approximately US$5 million (TT$30 million), all being borne by the government in Port-of-Spain.Culture and Community Development Minister Joan Yuille Williams had much praise for the "overwhelming responses" from participating countries in the delegations mounted and, as she reflected, "the inspiring performances being provided in various areas of our rich, diversified cultural life..."...Pity, I told her in our telephone conversation, that the region's media, in particular regional television, had not been incorporated by the local organisers and CARICOM's Regional Cultural Committee as an integral partner to ensure live coverage of at least some major events, including the normally very colourful "parade of nations" ceremonial opening of the festival....Apart from the host country, I cannot recall front-page prominence being provided by any of our leading newspapers monitored, even for the ceremonial opening event. When not sparse, news coverage has often reflected an unfortunate parochial orientation in reports on this grand multi-faceted, pan-Caribbean celebration of the ways of life of the indigenous and all "the peoples who came".from JAMAICA POLL, CARIFESTA CHALLENGES - Rickey Singh

I must say that for the first time in a long time, if ever, this CARIFESTA was well supported for The Bahamas by our media. We had ZNS and BIS with us, as well as a reporter from the Guardian. Perhaps the problem, though, is that culture doesn't count as "news" but as "features". That's worth some discussion, I think, but it's interesting.Anyway, Singh's article provoked my thoughts. I don't know whether CARIFESTA warrants the attendance of Heads of Government or not; that's something I'll have to ponder. But if anybody has their own thoughts, feel free.

On Making a Living Doing What You Love

When I was a child and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would invariably answer, "A writer". The responses I got were various. “Oh, that’s nice,” some people said. They didn’t mean it one bit. Others laughed as though I’d told the greatest joke this side of Vegas. Others stared at me as though I’d just said something foreign, as though my tongue had not formed words that were English at all. And one person – my geography teacher – told me, “Oh, no, you’re too good for that. Writing will never earn you any money. Why don’t you think about being a lawyer or something like that?”But a writer I wanted to be.And here I am, all grown up, my answer still the same. What do I want to be when I grow up? A writer. But. Time is running out for me. Writing is a jealous hobby, difficult to do well, arduous when you want to make the right point, time-consuming, greedy. It’s too selfish to be a part-time thing, and I have to make a living.And making a living writing is something that is impossible in this country — at least for those who choose not to settle for journalism as the next best thing — no offence to journalists. I needn’t list the reasons that it’s impossible; I’m sure you can think of several yourselves. It’s the rare writer who can survive off his or her earnings, unless they are in advertising or journalism or the law. For those of us who simply love the language and The Bahamas, there is very little choice indeed.And so I teach others how to write. You know the saying: those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. I have always fought it; it suggests that teachers are failures, second-rate beings who can’t succeed at what they want, and so they teach. But more and more the saying rings true. It’s not that I am not capable of writing. But I cannot make a living doing what I love — doing what, I dare say, God called me to do — in the land in which I was born. And so, because I cannot (through no good fault of my own) write for a living, I teach.And I am not alone. I speak as a writer, because that is what and who I am. But there are hundreds of us, perhaps thousands, Bahamians, who have been gifted with the ability to create new realities out of thin air — people touched with the need to express themselves in movement, in colour, in line, in song, in film, in music, in performance, in the assumption of another character, in illusion, in the written or the spoken word. Only a tiny handful of us can do it, and that handful is struggling. The rest of us have to labour in jobs that are second best for people who do not understand us or what we do and squeeze our talents around the edges of our lives.And so what? You wonder. Why should this matter? Why should being able to make a living doing what you love be at all important?Well, first of all, because you love it, and because it’s not frivolous. Despite what many people imagine, the arts — which begin in self-expression, develop through social commentary, and conclude by illuminating the human condition — are really the foundation, and not the frill, of human civilization. A society that does not express itself artistically is simply a conglomeration of people who live side by side. Because there is nothing concrete to link one to another, they are simply a group of individuals walking down the same road together, but they could as easily be enemies as friends, and there is nothing at all to stop them from killing one another.And second of all, because it is the creative impulse that makes us human. I’ve said it before, but I’m not sure that we have fully grasped the concept yet; we’re too busy consuming what others have produced, and we don’t value either the process or the product of our own artists and innovators. As a result, the humanity of the Bahamian citizen has been compromised. We allow ourselves and our reality to be defined by other people, because we have made it difficult, if not impossible, for our creative artists to make a living doing what they love.In order for us to create a society out of this population we have living within our borders, art, self-expression and creation cannot be regarded as luxuries that can be sacrificed whenever the subject of money is raised. Every civilization worth remembering has made a place for its artists. It has supported them, by commissioning individuals to write or paint or sing for a living and for the state, or by allowing them to support themselves. We do not recall the greatness of Greece or Italy or Great Britain for their lawyers, for their newspapers, or for the number of items their factories turned out in a given year; rather, we remember them for their architecture, their literature, and their art.From Sophocles to Shakespeare, from Michelangelo to Picasso, from Confucius to Soyinka, from Homer to Walcott, the greatness of a civilization has far less to do with the apparently “necessary” professions than we imagine. Without the works of artists, teachers have nothing to teach, construction workers will have nothing to build, and retailers will have nothing to sell. You may counter by saying that others have already done the work for us, and that we don’t have to produce anything original of our own. But that is how we have built our society already, and what we have built is coming apart at the seams. The clothes we have put on were designed for other people, and we should not be surprised when what we have borrowed doesn’t fit us all that well.The time has come, I believe, for our society to place emphasis on allowing Bahamians like me to make a living doing what they love. Of course, this will mean starting to pay one another for their art. It will mean understanding that when we approach a writer to ask for a play to be written, or a director to produce a show for a purpose, or a musician to play somewhere, we will have to pay them for their action; but when we do, we will discover far more about ourselves than we knew before. And we will begin to create a community out of this group of individuals all walking along the same road together; and maybe, after some time, ours may become a civilization to remember.

CARIFESTA Report #1

CARIFESTA IX is taking place in Trinidad and Tobago. I arrived with a group of five people to smooth over any bumps in the road on Monday night. Good thing, too — the first bump was the fact that there was a mix-up in our accommodation, and we found ourselves staying overnight in a hotel that we hadn't booked. Yesterday (Tuesday) we firmed up the accommodation, visiting each hotel the contingent is going to stay in, and touching base with the CARIFESTA Secretariat.Today we're heading out of town to go to Naparima to view one of the theatres in which the play is going to be performed. More later.

CARIFESTA!

Trinidad and Tobago.September 22-October 1, 2006.Check it out. 

Why sun, sand & sea just ain't cuttin' it anymore

Perfect beaches can be simulated. Check out Japan's Seagaia theme park with its Ocean Dome — an artificial, indoor beach with sand of crushed marble that makes it as white as ours.Here's a review.

On Tourism and Sustainable Development

In early June, The Bahamas played host to a conference to discuss tourism and sustainable development.  Now I don’t mind telling you that I found that more than mildly ironic — if there’s one thing you can’t say about the current state of the Bahamian tourism industry, it’s that it’s sustainable.  The fact that the conference was held in the conference rooms of what was once the largest and splashiest hotel south of Atlantic City only increased the irony for me; I can remember the days when, as the Carnival Crystal Palace, the floors used to light up like a rainbow at night while we Bahamians lit candles in powercuts and fanned ourselves in front rooms hot as the infernal hinges.You see, there’s a danger in being some of the oldest hands in the business.  We Bahamians are no strangers to tourism; we’ve been raised for generations to learn to keep the tourist in mind.  The problem about that is this:  it’s the people who have been successful for a long time who have the hardest time changing.And the industry is changing right under our feet. Tourism is no longer considered the weak country’s last resort, the poor land’s friend.  It’s no longer regarded as the ultimate destroyer of national pride and self-worth, the creator of inequalities, the ruiner of environments and the spoiler of morals.  No; tourism is now the largest global industry, and every country on the planet is doing what we’ve been doing for the past two centuries:  inviting tourists home.The Bahamian tourist industry is almost 200 years old, having had its roots shortly after the failure of the cotton plantations, when Nassau was touted as a health resort among British physicians.  When Adela Hart visited the city in 1823-1824, there were already houses on rent for visitors, select tours to be had, and rudimentary entertainment — she writes about her carriage trips out to the Blue Hills and the Pine Barrens, and talks about hearing Bahamians singing.  The first major hotel was built in 1860; and tourism first hit its stride in the 1920s, when Americans descended on Nassau, Bimini and West End in search of liquor and fun, and took off at the end of the 1940s.  We are old hands.  Generations of Bahamians have been raised to take part in the hospitality trade, and most of our development has come hand in hand with tourism.But the trouble is, we’re no longer unique.  Where we once had an edge, selling sun, sand and sea in close proximity to the USA, the spread of easy global communications has turned that advantage into a liability.  When anyone can get anywhere, even the most remote location, by plane or helicopter or boat, when Hollywood TV crews can invade the secretest islands in the Pacific or the heart of the Central American rainforests to create a prime-time game show (think Survivor, people), there’s very little real appeal left in coming to Nassau, with its souvenirs made in China, its straw work made in Haiti and Jamaica (and China), and its T-shirts made — well, maybe in China, with a little red, gold, green and “Hey Mon” pressed onto them for Caribbean flavour.These days, we — some of the oldest hands in the business, with a tourist industry that rivals only the tourist industries of the Mediterranean in longevity — must face the fact that the kind of tourism we practice here is passé, suitable only for the lowest classes of tourists: the excursion visitors, the cruise ship passengers, people with little money and less taste.  Our model isn’t working so well any more.  Though we welcome huge numbers to our shores, those numbers don’t translate into the kinds of profits in the hands of Bahamians as one might imagine.So what have we done about it?Well, we’ve tried to change our image.  Instead of being known only for casino packages and cruise ship dockings, we’ve created resorts that offer more; we’ve got the theme parks of Atlantis and the exclusivity of the Four Seasons as a result. And now, we’re targeting an even more upscale market.  Instead of just selling a few days on a beach and a few nights in a casino, we’re selling marinas and golf courses and second homes to the super-rich who desire luxury living in exclusive locations.It’s been very successful indeed.  But it isn’t sustainable.Sustainability, you see, has to do with the ability of a place or a people to support a certain activity over an extended period of time and under different circumstances.  The official definition, as presented by scholars and policy makers, is this: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.  And if it’s one thing that our current approach to tourism is not, it’s sustainable.It’s not sustainable because it doesn’t involve Bahamians at the foundation.  It depends primarily upon foreign investment, and trusts the investors to make sensible decisions about the impact of their developments on the Bahamian landscape and people.It’s not sustainable because it doesn’t place the uniqueness of The Bahamas — our landscapes, our culture, our selves — at the centre of the deal.  Oh, it sells that uniqueness, rather the way that Madison Avenue sells the features of cars; but we don’t make that uniqueness central to the endeavour, so much so that it will be preserved.And it’s not sustainable because it takes place more or less behind our backs.  We close our eyes at night, and open them the next morning with a new horizon before us.  We have no connection to the tourist product, and the tourist industry has no real connection to us.And so the irony of the tourism conference last week.  But there’s a danger that goes further than any irony can.  Until we can look at the industry as it is, not as it was, and see that the people and the culture and the history of The Bahamas are as appealing to the new tourists as the sun and sand once were — and more,  that while sun and sea can be found elsewhere, we can’t — until we learn to respect ourselves and demand the same respect from the people we let in to do our tourism for us, the development that comes from our tourism may be phenomenal in the short term, but it will never be sustainable.

The vulnerability of small-island states

In case people aren't aware, this week The Bahamas plays host to an international conference (another, yes) on tourism and sustainable development in small island developing states (SIDS). The outline of the conference is here:http://www.world-tourism.org/regional/americas/sem_bahamas/bahamas.pdfIt's an interesting conference. If you look at the outline of the conference you'll see. The first session is on vulnerability and resilience. Tourism can be good or bad; the problem is how we deal with it. The key is policy — the specific commitment of the government to make sure that the potential benefits are received.At the moment, though, we seem to be in a hurry to create a picture-perfect industry, and we are taking shortcuts. We choose to be governed by the agendas of our investors without considering the long-term, the large picture — and we forget (if we ever acknowledged) that the investor's interest is private. It is not the investor's job to make sure that the Bahamian interest is met, or that the development his project brings is sustained over time; it is the government's job. And (to go back to my initial bugbear) if the government has established an agency whose job it is to develop and manage the tourist industry, then it is that agency's job to consider the long-term and the large.But not their sole responsibility. So once again, I'm going to refer my readers to the Draft National Cultural Policy, which seeks to set out some guidelines for the role of tourism in the development or location of culture. Because we need to make sustainability a priority — and this in the face of casinos on Cat Island, Four Seasons exclusion on Exuma, and marinas and speculative second-home developments throughout our Bahamaland. Without policy, there is no sustainable tourism at all.Conference website

A Tourist's Comment

provides some evidence that we are not dealing with our tourist product the best way. Sharmayne says:

I [am] an African-American and spent my vacation on Paradise Island. I could not wait for some local friends or taxi came to take me away from the place. Maybe it is a paradise….for whites. For me it was slightly boring and lacked culture. I will definately not stay there again….my main reason for visiting (my eight time) is to be enveloped in Bahamian culture.

The comment is addresses this post, here.

The buck's gotta stop somewhere

Yes, I'm still on the topic of tourism and culture.

The reason I'm so antsy about this, Idébu (you would say passionate, and you did, and why do you have to have that pesky accent aigu in the middle of your name?) is that there is a prevailing thought Out There that tourism destroys people's cultures. It's a very old thought. It's one of the reasons that our Caribbean neighbours chose in the beginning to reject the tourist industry as a major force for their development, and it was drummed into our heads all throughout school when I was coming up. Tourism is bad for a country because it destroys the culture and turns citizens into servants. Marion Bethel, the Bahamian poet, has even written a poem about it.

But I have always fought that idea. Since they first told me that tourism destroys countries and economies and citizens, I've disagreed. Because in The Bahamas, while tourism did bring several ills, it also brought many good things too; it gave Bahamians access to cash money when all they had was credit in white people's stores; it created infrastructure when there was none, it turned our major festival, Junkanoo, into a parade with pretty costumes rather than a parade with scary costumes, and it educated many people's children.

Now I am Going Back here. The Bahamas is a global pioneer in the tourist industry; tourism in our country is almost 200 years old. Together with the Mediterranean and (strange to say) Switzerland, The Bahamas has one of the few societies whose people have been making money off the tourist dollar for far longer than the industry has had a name.

As that is the case, it is impossible to separate tourism and tourists from the Bahamian self. We have been offering hospitality not only long before we knew ourselves, but literally since the abolition of slavery. Europeans were visiting Nassau for their health and for the winter since the 1830s, and Bahamians were offering them tours of New Providence since then. Tourism on a bigger scale started in 1860 when the Royal Victoria Hotel was built, the pride of the nation, and provided Bahamian musicians and artists with a place to go and make their performances happen. Of course many of the sights have changed -- we don't have the Mermaid Lake anymore, where phosphorescence would light up the wake of the boat and the trails of the oars, and the Blue Hills are being cut down for construction purposes, and many of the homes in which those tourists stayed have been demolished or disfigured, and the Royal Victoria, that architectural wonder, burned to the ground twenty years ago. But the forts are still there, and so are the Botanical Gardens, which were opened in part to provide tourists with a sense of Bahamian flora and fauna.

Tourism even helped fund the Bahamian civil rights movement. That was in the 1950s, during the post-war nightclub era, when tourism created Bahamian performers of world class status. Freddie Munnings' Cat and the Fiddle was a meeting place not only for Bahamian civil rights activists, but for the Americans as well; through Sidney Poitier, Andrew Jackson and Martin Luther King and others met with Lynden Pindling and the pioneers of Majority Rule within the confines of that club. And the fact that Freddie Munnings was independently wealthy -- one of the richest Black Bahamians at that time -- enabled him to help fund the fight for the abolition of the colour bar that prohibited Black Bahamians from entering selected establishments.

And tourism reinstated Junkanoo and made it an arena which was right for the developments dreamed about by men like Gus Cooper and Percy Francis and Brian Gibson and Phil Cooper and Winston Rolle and others.So why is tourism now the reason that all of the above are compromised, stymied, or dead?