For more than two decades, Jay­ron “Rawkus” Re­my has moved through Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al land­scape as a DJ, pro­duc­er, broad­cast­er, mu­si­cian, sto­ry­teller and en­tre­pre­neur. But be­neath the dif­fer­ent ti­tles has been a re­mark­ably con­sis­tent pre­oc­cu­pa­tion: what hap­pens to a cul­ture if the next gen­er­a­tion stops lis­ten­ing? As Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month be­gins, Rawkus re­flects on the mu­sic that tells us who we were, who we are, and what we must car­ry for­ward.

It was sup­posed to be just an­oth­er rou­tine flight. In­stead, a ter­ror at­tack on Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 end­ed with 73 lives lost and a re­gion left in shock. As the Caribbean mourned, Trinidad and To­ba­go leapt in­to ac­tion – un­rav­el­ling the plot, ex­pos­ing the per­pe­tra­tors and lead­ing the charge for jus­tice.

There are few things more drain­ing than hav­ing to deal reg­u­lar­ly with some­one who shouts at you, speaks ag­gres­sive­ly, or re­sponds to you with con­stant “ste­ups­ing,” dis­mis­sive sounds, eye-rolling or oth­er ges­tures of con­tempt.

Long be­fore she knew the lan­guage of ma­rine bi­ol­o­gy, long be­fore deep-sea ex­pe­di­tions and re­search ves­sels, it was sim­ply a part of her child­hood. Grow­ing up in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Amon re­mem­bers feel­ing like the ocean was her “play­mate” as she spent much of her time at the beach and in the wa­ter, ex­plor­ing a nat­ur­al world that seemed to of­fer an end­less sup­ply of things to dis­cov­er. Be­fore ca­ble tele­vi­sion and the in­ter­net could trans­form how chil­dren en­coun­tered the wider world, for Amon, na­ture it­self was her en­ter­tain­ment.

When Sun­der­lal Vy­lan Son­ny was born, his moth­er im­me­di­ate­ly no­ticed there were some things about her new­born son that were dif­fer­ent. Ac­cord­ing to Jual­la, he was “a big ba­by, al­most ten pounds, with twist­ed fin­gers and feet and stiff limbs.” It was 1999, and at that time, there was no an­swer to what made him dif­fer­ent, so she ac­cept­ed the re­sponse when she took him to the clin­ic and was told that every­thing was fine. At 18 months old, how­ev­er, Jual­la again no­ticed that some­thing was wrong. Her son was still not at­tempt­ing to turn over or make sounds, which prompt­ed her to go to a clin­ic again for the doc­tors to have a clos­er look. Son­ny was even­tu­al­ly di­ag­nosed with cere­bral pal­sy (CP), with the doc­tors in­di­cat­ing that he had suf­fered a lack of oxy­gen to his brain dur­ing de­liv­ery.

With our brief stay in Guyana now be­hind us, on Au­gust 12 we flew back to Man­aus from Boa Vista on Azul Air­lines. No 12-hour bus ride this time. Twelve days had gone by since we left Trinidad, and we were due to leave Man­aus for Pana­ma at 3.30 am on Au­gust 13. By 5 pm on Au­gust 12, we were back at our base, Casa Dos Frades, where we had just about enough time to or­gan­ise our pack­ing and to step out op­po­site the ho­tel in­to the bright and live­ly San Se­bas­t­ian Park.

From mid­night “zoomies” to bath­room body­guards, our pets have plen­ty of quirks that leave us won­der­ing: why on earth do they do that? If you’ve ever watched your dog sud­den­ly sprint around the house at full speed or won­dered why your cat in­sists on squeez­ing in­to a box that is clear­ly too small, you’re not alone. In this ar­ti­cle, I’ll try my best to ex­plain why many of these be­hav­iours seem com­plete­ly ridicu­lous to us, even though there is of­ten a per­fect­ly rea­son­able ex­pla­na­tion be­hind them.

When God placed the tongue with­in a com­pound guard­ed by 32 sharp teeth, it was not be­cause of out­side threats, but the threat from with­in. For such a small thing, the tongue’s pow­er and in­flu­ence seem un­nat­u­ral­ly out of pro­por­tion.

We take a look at some of the Mighty Spar­row’s most mem­o­rable mo­ments caught on cam­era over the years.

For Tsian John, a love for scent­ed can­dles first turned in­to a hob­by, but lat­er blos­somed in­to a busi­ness ven­ture. Now, five years lat­er, she con­tin­ues to con­coct and ex­per­i­ment with fra­grances in The Scent­ed Lab.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brates Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month, there is no bet­ter way to be­gin the ob­ser­vance than by pay­ing trib­ute to the “Ca­lyp­so King of the World” Slinger Fran­cis­co - the Mighty Spar­row - who was large­ly re­gard­ed as giv­ing the art­form in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal and tak­ing it fur­ther on the glob­al stage.

Call to book a nail ap­point­ment with Tam­my Arneaud, and you might just hear her hus­band, De Ron, an­swer the phone. In fact, this was the case when We Life and Cul­ture reached out to her for this in­ter­view.