Independence, Culture, Identity: power, neglect and disrespect

The punchline

I'll tell you a sick joke. All my adult life, I've been a taxpayer and a law-abiding citizen, and all my adult life, the things that mean the most to me—knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and creative endeavour—have had no place in the society our politicians have assembled.A year and a half ago, I had a personal encounter that promised something different. I ran into the man who is now the Prime Minister, and he announced, as his manifesto did before that moment and as his maiden speech did after, that a Bahamian government would at long last take our culture seriously enough to give it an agency of its own. A stand-alone ministry, he promised. My response? I laughed. I've heard it all before.Turn back the clock to February 2006. There is a cultural conclave going on, a gathering of the Bahamian cultural community to discuss two main things: the preparation of the National Cultural Policy and the hosting of CARIFESTA X in The Bahamas. The culmination of this event is a speech given by the sitting prime minister, who announces two things: a cabinet shuffle, by which he will become the substantive minister of culture, and by which culture will be moved into the Office of the Prime Minister preliminary to the creation of a—you guessed it—standalone ministry of culture.And so the cultural affairs division moved, in name and in person, out of the top-floor offices on Thompson Boulevard. There was no place initially to which to move; the officers and staff of the division were given a day to pack up and leave, but had nowhere to go. Eventually, after some nomadism, we ended up being housed by the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation. The excitement of the announcement fizzled out when reality set in, and politics, as it often does, took over the actual service of the actual people. Then, as now, words were said. The reality was something fundamentally different.My response, when Dr. Minnis waxed enthusiastic about the standalone ministry of culture, therefore, was laughter. I knew better than most of the political hopefuls what exactly that promise would mean. I knew, because in 2006, I spent the better part of two months writing minutes, proposals, and draft cabinet papers that would enable the creation of such a standalone ministry to take place.

The problem

The basic problem is this: there is no such thing as a department of culture. The entity that governs Bahamian culture is quite simply a division––a collection of civil servants under a particular unit head served by a director. But the director of cultural affairs is not a substantive director. There is no budget head that is assigned to cultural affairs; the director of culture controls no actual money; all that individual has the authority to do is advise the permanent secretary and the minister on actions that might or might not make sense. In order for any work to get done, the cultural affairs division needs to be housed in a ministry, as it has no accountant, no registry, and no human resources officer assigned to it. Money cannot be released on the director's signature alone; the permanent secretary and sometimes undersecretaries can sign off on budget line items that are assigned to the cultural affairs division without the consent or even the knowledge of the director. I know, because it happened to me often enough. There is no career path for cultural officials, despite the fact that the division is one of the oldest in the government, having been established before independence, in 1972. There is no permanent location for the division, and the achievements of the division have been lost in time, because every time the division is moved somewhere new, its closed files do not travel with it.The road to a standalone ministry is a lengthy one. It requires the creation of an actual department of culture, with a budget head, which is controlled by a substantive director. It requires the creation of an accounts department, a registry, and a human resources department. It requires the identification of permanent offices. It requires the creation of cultural career paths which will allow those individuals who are hired to work in the division the opportunity to gain promotions throughout their careers. It requires thought, and it requires investment. It may require legislation.As I listened to Dr. Minnis, I held this knowledge in my head, along with the equal and opposite knowledge that the history of the Free National Movement has not been kind to culture or cultural activity; indeed, in 1997, the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture was disbanded altogether, and the cultural affairs division began its long trek through peculiar ministries, such as Public Service (and Culture).I also held this equal knowledge in my head: that the time for a standalone ministry of culture has long passed. Ministries of culture are a twentieth-century innovation, a holdover from a time when culture was a simple matter of creative expression, something that was relegated to the sidelines of society, and not integrated into the economy at all. Ministries, which are political entities fully funded by the central purse and dependent on it, are not the medium by which most cultural activity is generated or delivered throughout the Caribbean today; most Caribbean nations have created quasi-governmental corporations to manage and develop their culture. So even the idea of a stand-alone ministry of culture is dated, to say the least.

Culture, globally

In the twenty-first century, culture is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy, and ministries of culture are too slow and too heavy with political baggage to meet the needs of the new century. The impact of culture on the economies of all nations goes far beyond the expressionistic today. Creativity is the currency of the digital age. Cultural activity, its gatekeepers swept away by the expansion of the internet, is one of the most resilient and active of all economic sectors. As manufacturing shrinks, culture grows.This is even true in The Bahamas. I would guess, though no studies have yet been comprehensively done, that culture is one of the fastest growing sectors of the Bahamian economy. It is supremely under-recognized and ludicrously under-supported, but that has not stopped a generation of twenty- and thirty-somethings from going into professions that did not exist in The Bahamas for previous generations, like mine. Writers, filmmakers, artists, musicians—these are professions that have traction in our nation despite the complete neglect of the cultural sector by lawmakers and politicians.It is in this economic sector that the greatest potential lies for increasing revenue for our nation. The primary resource required by the cultural industries is human creativity, which is both unique and infinite. Secondary resources (which we do not have) include training centres, schools of the arts, investment, incentives, and proper cultural grants (the $1 million set aside is a pittance in this regard, especially considering the kinds of investments, the millions spent both in concessions and real money on attracting foreigners to set up businesses in this nation).Beyond the economy, cultural activity is critical to human survival. Despite our deeply ingrained belief that culture is something that children can indulge in, but that adults grow out of, despite our assumption that spending one's time in cultural activity is a luxury that many cannot afford, the reality is that to build a strong society requires the investment and support of writers, composers, choreographers, directors, actors, artists. These people are the translators and the creators of individual, community and national identity. In societies where art is not recognized, there can be no greatness, because there is no coherent sense of self. And we live in a society where, forty-five years after independence, we still have no national library, no national museum, no school for the arts. Need I go on?

Despite it all

But despite this all, the Bahamian cultural community, like the global cultural community, is growing. What's more: it is vocal, it is conscious, and it is fierce. It stands against the traditional xenophobia and misogyny of our society; many of our most outspoken activists are also creative workers in one realm or another. Bahamian art, plays, film and music do not accept the local status quo, and challenge long-held prejudices and habits. They make many feel uncomfortable. Discomfort is often a prelude to necessary change.And so. Promises notwithstanding, there is no standalone ministry of culture, outdated as that concept may be. Instead, the agency that does exist is now headed by a lawyer who has, as far as I know, no knowledge of or connection to the cultural community of The Bahamas (or, for that matter, to the sports community either. I cannot speak for youth).And the media is complicit. As it announces that for the first time our country has a female minister of youth, sports and culture, it lets pass the equally historic fact that for a year, for the first time, we in the cultural community had one of our own, a professional poet, writer, and actor, to serve us. The media speaks about sports, but neglects to consider the power of culture, both here and abroad, and fails to analyze the message that this cabinet shuffle has sent, loud and clear, to the Bahamian cultural community.This recent appointment demonstrates a deep disrespect for the cultural community, for Bahamian identity, and for the benefits, economic, social, and human, of investment in creative life.Further, as the appointment occurs the week before we limp into the ceremonies that recognize our 45th anniversary of independence, it reveals an abiding disregard for, and neglect of, the citizenry of this nation as a whole. Nations are built by artists and writers, who capture critical moments for their fellow citizens and translate them beyond the ordinary into forms that inspire reflection, discussion, and change. Nations are built by composers and choreographers who take beauty and turn it into movement or song. They're built by actors and directors, who use the palette of human emotion to reveal to citizens who collectively they are. Artists and cultural workers are the lifeblood of nations. The time is long overdue for us to have appropriate representation at the most powerful table in the land.This appointment? It gives us no such representation. It doesn't provide the cultural community with a potential champion, someone who understands and can fight for us, crafting legislation that builds up our common life, creating programmes and institutions that serve us. Instead, In fact, it's little more than an exercise in power. it shows us all that cabinet posts exist not to serve the citizenry, but to reward allegiance to the leader of the party in power.

Nothing new

The saddest thing of all is that there is nothing new about this disregard. It's not unique at all. It is merely a continuation of our governments' permanent official and political disregard for the core of what is Bahamian.We are masters of dissing our culture. We must be; we vote again and again for people who excel at it. But make no mistake here, my fellow Bahamians. By dissing our culture, we diss our selves.

Junkanoo, Carnival, and Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival

First things first.

Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival is over, and it was a rip-roaring success. As happened in Grand Bahama, in Nassau thousands and thousands of people thronged the festival site, hungry for the new experience, and for the first time ever The Bahamas entered the twenty-first century world of festivals, productions and events. For the first time ever, too, the government of The Bahamas understood and supported the need for real economic investment in bringing something like this off; the committee that was appointed brought local financial and production expertise to the table and ensured that the execution of the event would be top-class; Bahamians and international performers were hosted on the same stage and that stage was beamed to the world; and at long, long last the Fort Charlotte/Arawak Cay arena has been turned into the kind of festival village that has long been dreamed about.

Throughout the world, the twenty-first century has brought with it a hunger for the festival experience, and, together with tourism, the cultural economy is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. To say we have been slow to capitalize on that is to understate the reality. There are many festivals throughout The Bahamas. They have been happening for years, but none of them have been able to  tap into the global economy the way Junkanoo Carnival was able to for many reasons. They are run like petty shops; they are overly politicized; they rely too much on government handouts rather than focussing on economic generation; they are poorly advertised; they are treated like backyard get-togethers rather than businesses. This homecoming culture, as one might call it, has not taken advantage of any of the things that the twenty-first century has to offer with regard to linking culture and tourism and participating wholly in the global cultural economy. Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival has changed that game entirely.

In the months leading up to this event, many people asked me for my opinion of Junkanoo Carnival, and wondered if I would speak publicly and critically about it. I did not. I didn't join the chorus of people criticizing the concept for the simple reason that I fundamentally agree with the need—economically and socially—to shift the government's focus and investment from old, mid-twentieth century economic activity to the cultural industries. I fought for an event like this when I served as Director of Culture. The festival model that was put in place here is in many ways a mirror image the festival model that was put forward by Keith Nurse in 2004 when he was engaged to lead a task force on the transformation of CARIFESTA. It's something you will hear me talk about if you download and listen to the podcasts on CARIFESTA, which were produced back in 2008 when we were hosting and not-hosting the festival. Those of us who fought for the inauguration of a festival culture in The Bahamas have all been vindicated. I could not oppose what I fundamentally support.

But I have always resisted the linking of this transition from homecoming culture to festival culture with the name and form of Carnival. I have always believed, and continue to believe, that we missed a major, major opportunity to put the whole of Bahamian culture squarely on the world stage by choosing to make our mega-festival in the image of the Trinidad carnival rather than studying the ways in which Carnival were monetized and working out how we could do that with Junkanoo.

I am not convinced by many of the reasons spouted to justify spending money to bring in Trinidadian consultants to produce a cookie-cutter event. No one has yet explained to me to my satisfaction why it was necessary to import a Trini-style Carnival (when we could have turned to Brazil, whose Carnaval is even bigger and more lucrative than Trinidad's, and whose production is far closer than to what exists in Junkanoo today) rather than investing in the time and energy required to make Junkanoo the centre of the experience. Now I have worked with Junkanoo for almost all of my adult life, and I know as well as anyone who has done so how unbelieveably difficult it is to work with the Junkanoo community; how obstructive that community can be; how unreasonably protective they are of their vision of Junkanoo; how ignorant many of them are of the history and significance of what they do; how petty their differences; how slow they are to change.  Any one of these arguments would have brought agreement from me; but I still would have demanded that the new festival at least consider ways in which our own aesthetic and traditions could be honoured, rather than supplanted by those of another territory. But the ease with which our leaders were able simply to import a ready-made festival was troubling, to say the least.

The whole process behind this festival revealed, once again, how deeply people who sit in positions of authority in our country distrust what is ours, how ready we are to push aside what is vibrant and indigenous when it is unformed and messy in honour of what is foreign and nicely packaged. What we did with the festival itself is akin to what we do with our houses, our fruit, and, in general, our national development. We build Florida boxes that hug the ground, have no cross-ventilation, and which bake in the heat and flood in the rains, when we have a perfectly good vernacular architecture that developed to handle our environment. We buy mangoes and avocadoes and bananas and oranges with "Dole" and "Sunkist" and other US stickers on them when the same fruit are growing in our back yards and on our islands; and we have come to regard the solution to all of our local issues as being the outsourcing the problem area to the most convenient foreign direct investor.

Countries don't grow by outsourcing. Corporations may do so, but citizens are not commodities. And cultural expressions are not interchangeable. What is most troubling about the whole exercise is the narrative that has emerged, that local expressions of culture cannot be monetized, that Junkanoo cannot be improved, that Junkanoo has "served its purpose" and needs to move over to make room for Carnival. This discussion, this argument, which I have seen flourish on Facebook in too many places to be believed, is part of the reason I am weighing in on this now, after the fact.

Let me be quite clear here. I do not believe for one moment that the reason this weekend was successful was because we were celebrating Carnival and not Junkanoo. The greatest success took place at Da Cultural Village. Even though many people took part in, and enjoyed, the Road Fever, the real achievement lay in the hosting, the production, and the presentation of the concerts on Fort Charlotte and Arawak Cay. The real value of the mega-festival lay in the promotion of Bahamian music, and in the development of our event management skills. It was connected also to the recognition/admission/understanding, at long last, that we exist as part of a wider pan-Caribbean world and that our music has a place alongside it on the global stage. The success that was achieved lay in the marriage of industrial standard production values—and international-style expenditure to achieve those values—rather than in any shift to the celebration of Carnival. Let us keep that in mind as we carry this discussion forward.

But let me be equally clear. The most disturbing thing that has come out of the weekend has been the fact that we have now set the carnival in opposition to what is ours—and that to do so, we have spouted the most arrant nonsense about carnival, Junkanoo, and what they mean to us. I have seen people try to argue that Carnival and Junkanoo are basically the same thing. I have seen people suggest that for us to move on from Junkanoo to Carnival is some sort of inevitable cultural evolution, in complete ignorance of the cultural evolution that has got Junkanoo to where it is today. Rather than incorporating the Carnival as a celebration of our Caribbean connections, which we could have done to the same effect, we have set up an opposition that pits Junkanoo against Carnival.

Finally, here is my deepest concern of all. Much has been made of the fact that a study that I oversaw has found that Junkanoo does not turn a profit. People who have never looked at that study, who have clearly never even heard me explain what that study did and showed, have been all over the airwaves using that study to justify why we should invest in Carnival and not in Junkanoo. We have bought into the idea that Carnival is an economic engine for development and Junkanoo is a drain on the public purse. I will go into far more detail about that study in a later post, but let me just say this: Carnival could not have happened the way it did this year without the participation of the Junkanoo community; their artistic and costuming expertise was hard at work in many of the Carnival companies. Many designers and builders participated in Carnival as a means of making money out of the event, as a means of turning what they do every year for love and the nourishing of their spirits into a means of making a living because they have not been afforded the opportunity to make that living out of Junkanoo. Whether Carnival offered them the economic returns that it promised has yet to be seen. For me, the real value of this event will lie in its ability not only to allow at long last the chance for musicians, dancers and producers to make a living doing what they love, but also to bolster the growth of Junkanoo, a festival that we Bahamians have already developed. And that success still remains to be seen. 

If: Prepping

So my part of the exhibition Margot and I are calling "If" has been done: I provided the words, most of them. But not all. If you come to the exhibition, you may, if you look hard enough, find words written or composed not just by me but by any one of our family, the living or the dead. We are re-assembling the elements of a house that was taken from us, and fighting that addiction to destruction that we Bahamians have begun practising daily.Margot's part is construction. And here is where the two parts meet: we get to write my words on her walls. This is what we did today, with a little help from the next generation: thanks, Christi![metaslider id=3607]

If: My God Shall Supply

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If: Assemblage & Poems

If: assemblage & poems.Transforming Spaces 2015 #ts2015National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. @NAGBahamas

"IF" | transforming spaces | National Art Gallery of the Bahamas

"If"

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In February 2005, I drove past my grandmother’s house on East Bay Street to find a bulldozer sitting on top of it.

We had not booked any bulldozer. We had no intention of demolishing the house. My cousin Margot and I had in fact begun the long, slow process of renovation. The house had been demolished “by accident”. It is an accident that will never be repaired.

My cousin Margot Bethel and I are creating an installation that weaves words and images, poems, plans and models, to commemorate, to reincarnate, the house that was destroyed. We call the exhibition “If”, in part because that little word expresses longing, wishfulness, hope and regret. It was also used by our family as a means of expressing emphatic agreement, as in: “Did it hurt?” “If!” or “Did you look fabulous?” “If!”

We see it as the beginning of a long-term project of reclamation.

•••

an excerpt:

The Granddaughter Fixes Lily's Roof (1988)picture now a tall girla bald girlnonot quite bald a blondblack girl who’sjust come home &just come outwho’smade herself a carpenter &’sfixing Lily’s roofnot the tall roofnot the roof of the houseraised high on blockswith four feet of spacebeneath its floor it'sthe roof next doorto the shop whereLily sold bread & Lilysold candy& Clement taught piano& all the childrenplayed just once*transformingspaces | National Art Gallery of the Bahamas.

Shakespeare in Paradise 2014

The thing about running a theatre festival is how fast things go. Only last week we were opening the student matinees, with our local, age-appropriate production of Romeo and Juliet; last weekend the Ringplay production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf revived itself for four final shows; and last night, Sizwe Banzi is Dead opened to an almost full house in the Black Box Theatre at the Dundas.It's a pretty busy time for me. For us in Ringplay Productions and for all of us at Shakespeare in Paradise. Ringplay has inherited a theatre, and the festival has developed a reputation. When we started, we had difficulty selling the idea of a Shakespeare festival to teachers and the schools. Not to all of them, you understand; but especially to the teachers in the government school system. Shakespeare had his own reputation--of being unintelligible and impossible to teach. We would get responses from teachers or, more often, from administrators like: "Our kids won't understand Shakespeare" (what they really meant was we don't understand Shakespeare) and "We're not studying that play so it's a waste of time for our students to be released". But this year? Our student matinees are pretty well sold out, and we have eight of them. And they're not just sold out to private school children. And the schools are not just bringing a single senior class. Schools--public schools and private schools--are booking sixty or ninety seats at a time.Of course, that could simply be the impact of Romeo and Juliet, which EVERYONE studies at some point in their lives, or it could be the residual effect of last year's The Legend of Sammie Swain.  I'm hoping it's something more, though. I'm hoping that the fact that the festival is here, the fact it exists at all, is changing the culture of these students' world just a little bit.I happen to believe the idea that theatre and democracy are linked. The acting process itself is an exercise in empathy; you have to put away who you are and step into the shoes of another person. To do it right you have to inhabit that other person's world, at least for a time. You have to shoulder that person's burdens and endure that person's pain. And the process of being in a live theatre audience requires less passivity in theatre than it does for television or cinema; as an audience member, you share the same space and time as the performers, and there is an electricity that is generated when the theatre is good. A bad night out at the theatre is far worse than a bad night out at the movies because the engagement is different, and a good night out at the theatre is, as the Greeks understood, transformative.I'm hoping that that's what's happening for at least some of the students whose schools understand the wisdom of letting them attend the matinees.And so. Shakespeare in Paradise 2014 slides towards its second weekend. Sizwe Banzi kicks ass; For Colored Girls moved people to laughter and to tears; and the teenaged performers in Romeo and Juliet have come into their own, and are making their peers laugh out lout and, maybe, cry just a little. And I hope, I just hope, we are changing the world a tiny bit every time.

Today's the day

Shakespeare in Paradise 2014 soft-opens today with the first student matinee of Romeo and Juliet.I'm juggling many plates! Keeping them all in the air is challenging at the very least, and the beginning of October is the time when they all fly up and some of them come crashing down. The one I always have to catch and keep from shattering, though, is Shakespeare in Paradise.This year's festival opens on Friday coming, but Romeo and Juliet goes into previews with four student matinees. Our matinees are sold out--high schools from all over the country (I kid you not!) are sending students to see the production.  Really. There is a school group flying in from Inagua, with Morton Salt's help. Our festival has hit the (mini) big time.That's the main reason I haven't posted as I would like here. I have scores of ideas but sitting down to write them requires an hour here and there that I can't always find. Still -- take advantage of what you have, Nico, so here you go.SiP 2014's train's a-rollin'. And I'm rollin' right on with it.