Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Com­ing af­ter last week’s col­umn on the hap­pi­ness of the par­ran­deros in their spir­i­tu­al out­reach and the amaz­ing spread and ac­cul­tur­a­tion of their mu­sic in­to all of the T&T mu­si­cal and spir­i­tu­al gen­res (and I was ex­treme­ly buoyed by the re­spons­es of read­ers iden­ti­fy­ing with joy), the ques­tion keeps re­cur­ring in my mind: “Why have we as a peo­ple failed to turn such valu­able syn­cre­tised cul­tur­al prod­ucts, the re­al sources of life, in­to a plat­form, a set of prin­ci­ples, or a fo­cus up­on which to build mean­ing­ful hu­man de­vel­op­ment?”

Is it that we have not un­der­stood the val­ue of our cul­tur­al prod­ucts and selves? Have we not ap­pre­ci­at­ed the ca­pac­i­ty of the art forms to en­rich our lives? Why have we missed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to adapt and utilise the val­ue of the “prod­ucts of our imag­i­na­tion”? Is it be­cause we don’t see such man­i­fes­ta­tions of our­selves as be­ing im­por­tant? Yes, on a sea­son­al or some oth­er tem­po­rary ba­sis, we rev­el in our arts and cul­ture, but it’s a mat­ter of in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tion with­out per­ceiv­ing them as a means up­on which we can build a suc­cess­ful and abid­ing so­ci­ety.

For cer­tain, for those with nar­row sec­tar­i­an pur­pos­es, such as want­i­ng to de­rive po­lit­i­cal val­ue out of cul­ture, the prod­ucts and the artists are used in a de­based man­ner to draw crowds. That process has, among oth­er things, forced up­on the artists a sense of be­ing a ma­m­aguy, used for un­wor­thy pur­pos­es.

I met a ca­lyp­son­ian (whose name I shall not men­tion) months af­ter he had cre­at­ed and lent his mu­sic to an elec­tion cam­paign for a par­ty which won the vote but had not been paid what was promised. He laid on me his trou­bles, in­clud­ing not hav­ing the funds to get the kind of med­ical treat­ment re­quired. And from what I heard, he went to his grave un­paid.

Apart from nat­ur­al scamp­ish­ness (a nice term), those who hired him and oth­ers still alive placed no re­al val­ue on the con­tri­bu­tions of our arts and artistes. On such oc­ca­sions it feels as if we have gone back to the pe­ri­od when our per­form­ing artistes had to hus­tle for shillings and a bot­tle of rum.

Yes, I am be­ing ex­treme in my ex­am­ple, but I am do­ing so to make the point that there is in­suf­fi­cient un­der­stand­ing of the val­ue of our cul­tur­al prod­ucts to de­vel­op our so­ci­ety in all its broad­est con­fig­u­ra­tions and as­pi­ra­tions.

Is it that we can­not ap­pre­ci­ate how and in what cir­cum­stances our cul­tur­al prod­ucts are not on­ly in­tend­ed to mas­sage our souls and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty but crit­i­cal­ly turned in­to eco­nom­ic prod­ucts? There was a pe­ri­od in my ca­reer when the ho­n­ourable Dr J D El­der was a sec­re­tary in the House of As­sem­bly, and he would con­sis­tent­ly grant me in­ter­views on his store­house of cul­tur­al knowl­edge. One of his ma­jor points was to the ef­fect that in ad­di­tion to nour­ish­ing our spir­its, cul­ture had to be used by the cre­ators for their every­day ba­sics of life.

He would de­nounce the ro­man­tic no­tion of the artiste strug­gling to sur­vive. The cul­tur­al prod­ucts must al­so be used, “J D” in­sist­ed, pro­duc­tive­ly and in­sight­ful­ly for eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit to the peo­ple of the na­tion. We are far away from us­ing our pos­i­tive an­ces­tral cul­tur­al prod­ucts as a means of en­hanc­ing and trans­form­ing our hu­man con­di­tion.

In last week’s col­umn I placed the parang cul­ture, which has spread and been adapt­ed to rep­re­sent so much of what we are as a peo­ple gath­ered to­geth­er in the Caribbean from Africa, In­di­an, Chi­na, Eu­rope, South Amer­i­ca with the First Peo­ples, even though we have stu­dious­ly ig­nored the lat­ter, as an ex­am­ple of how cul­tur­al gath­er­ings to­geth­er can re­sult in pro­duc­ing a na­tion of great­ness.

The ques­tion re­mains: why have we not been able to achieve any­thing like our full po­ten­tial as a na­tion? I place a ma­jor part of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on the po­lit­i­cal par­ty cul­ture based on racial sep­a­ra­tion and, in part, ha­tred, jeal­ousy, the de­sire of sec­tions of each group to get ahead in the race for su­pe­ri­or­i­ty and to ac­cu­mu­late the re­sources for self, for eth­nic and so­cial class group­ings and the de­sire to hold the whip hand of one group over the oth­er.

Grudg­ing­ly, there is ac­knowl­edge­ment on oc­ca­sions of the pro­fes­sion­al and busi­ness achieve­ments by In­do-and Afro-Trinidad, the one com­ing out of in­den­ture, the oth­er from slav­ery. So too do we not un­der­stand-or fail to recog­nise–the en­tre­pre­neur­ship of the tiny Chi­nese im­mi­grant pop­u­la­tion–the “Shop-Chi­nee”, Mary and Chin be­hind the counter.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, el­e­ments of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty have been scarred by mem­bers of their own com­mu­ni­ty with the “one per cent” la­bel in charge of con­trol­ling the econ­o­my and ma­nip­u­lat­ing the poli­ty, who are de­ri­sive­ly brand­ed notwith­stand­ing their ex­am­ples of re­al achieve­ment.

And how can I for­get the Dou­glas, the Trav­es­aou, Hak gwai and the half Por­tuguese-African chil­dren who, ac­cord­ing to the Mighty Dougla, are scorned and de­rid­ed as be­ing “nei­ther one nor the oth­er” and so have to shut their “nowher­ian mouths”?

The re­al­i­ty is that we have un­der­achieved giv­en the beau­ty and val­ue of our cul­tur­al prod­ucts and the artistes who cre­at­ed them.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er–free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine– In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.