... Louis Farrakhan's excellent vacation ...

... Louis Farrakhan is a walking, talking oral tradition, a rousing orator of a testimonial narrative many would forget, minimize or disregard as irrelevant to the present-day timeline ... being aware that mere mention of his name will alienate some readers gives me momentary pause, but won't inhibit my parsing the content and context of his message as it swung by me last week ...

Quote:- "(black people) spiritually we are sick"... "until we heal ourselves spiritually nothing will happen economically"

... the newspaper article said he'd be giving a free address the next day at the multi-purpose Cultural Center, not far from where I reside when I'm in Antigua ... characters like Paulinaire in the dynamite Dominican historical novel Pharcel: Runaway Slave (Alick Lazare) came quickly to mind, prototypical abolitionist agitators travelling the Caribbean furtively fomenting resistance to, and uprising against, the oppressive slave-driven plantation systems of the time ...

Quote:- "you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free"

... but there was nothing clandestine about this visit in this century ... the local brass was welcoming and hospitable, right down to the security-'pon-top-a-security which goes everywhere with this man, giving some suggestion of the passions stirred when he calls attention to the way these territories were populated and socialized ... institutionalized racism and proselytizing religion were primary building-blocks of these western societies, and, pre-industrial revolution Europe itself ...

Quote:-"they cannot educate you to free you from them"

... U.S.A. based Nation Of Islam (NOI), led by Minister Farrakhan, is an organization which looks to the East while continuing the pushback against a past which has shaped our current realities as descendants of colonial families ... what comes across to some as anti-European and anti-Semitic can instead be viewed as pro-African and pro-Islam, a way to recognize people building something out of disadvantage rather than acquiescing to mutually exclusive polarities ...

Quote:- "I am a Christian, I am a Muslim, I am a Jew."

... notorious for ruffling the feathers of Jewish groups and slamming entrenched European privilege, this Calypsonian turned motivational-preacher knows which notes to hit in this sankey ... Farrakhan at the lectern opened with "salaam alaikum" juxtaposed to "shalom aleichem,"... taken at face-value, this was an olive branch from a firebrand forced recently to cut back his workload for personal health reasons ... here, hailing peace goes hand-in-hand with humor aimed at local tastes ...

Quote:- "peace" is a better greeting than the English "hello," because hell has always been low" ...

... Louis Farrakhan's father was Jamaican ... his maternal roots are in St. Kitt's and Nevis, islands I can see in the distance from the front deck of my home, and on this evening there was no doubting his Caribbean flava ... in the auditorium, where I occupied my standing-room-only spot at the balcony railing, near-flawless accents, replete with regional nuance, spoke of a man who clearly enjoyed being received like a son of the soil ...

 Quote:- "you can't let America tell you that you can't have a relationship with Cuba ... to hell with you!"

... namechecks for Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X and particularly Muhammed Ali were sparks to tinder, but every mention of Allah was met with sotto voce murmurs of "Selassie I" from the Rastafarian contingent, noticeably not acknowledged as afrocentric allies despite  much in the way of shared interest ...

Quote:- "all of us are sons and daughters of Africa"

... powerful, pokerfaced, palookas, dressed in the de rigeur NOI tailoring, eyeballed the crowd and Mustapha Farrakhan (a son of) took the Minister's back ... the brother on his right rescued the Holy Qur'an which would go flying during fiery passages, memorably those outlining a connect-the-dots assessment on the spread of  HIV in black populations and poverty-cycles which lead people of color to poor nutrition and hard drugs ...

Quote:- "there's a plot against the black male" ... "they are killing us with our taste-buds and our love for sex"

... as for the females, Farrakhan showed he has personally witnessed a Carnival or two by shifting the theatre to comic relief, even Mustapha curled his lips when Pops let his hips do some talkin', but some women in the crowd were no doubt waiting for the speech to get back to the big picture ...

Quote:- "if a man regards what you show him, your bosom, your behind, he never gets acquainted with your mind"

... the new Burger King downtown got pink-slimed and Trayvon Martin got solemnized (en passant, to his credit) in a show of familiarity with the stories-of-the-day ... references to Haitian-hero Boukman (actually a man from Jamaica) and Antiguan father-of-the-nation V.C. Bird  suggests scholarship and reflects research but Farrakhan always has some special indictment reserved for Churches High and Low ...

Quote:- "Jesus was Jehovah's witness but he never called himself a Jehovah's Witness" ... "if a man treated you as bad as we were treated, would he give you a God that would free you from his whip?"

... more rumblings 'round the room ... "Rastafari, Selassie I!" ...

... beneath "The Skin" ...

... they have fangs, suck blood, creepy-crawl or fly by night,

dress in cloaks, sleep by day, shy from crucifixes on sight,

they fascinate us and seem to be everywhere of late,

books... TV... on Halloween they may even appear at your gate ...

... folkloric characters are found in all world cultures and there's a wide variety to choose from in Caribbean societies populated by slave descendants who have commingled African traditional beliefs with those of European origin, resulting in some pretty gruesome geo-specific ghouls ... known collectively in the region as jumbies or duppies ...

... with such a rich heritage of mythical demons it's somewhat surprising that there isn't more overt usage of demonology in modern Caribbean artforms ... such folklore is largely consigned to oral tradition of countryfolk, archives of heritage traditions, underfunded cultural festivals and nostalgic mention ...

... enter one intrepid husband and wife filmmaking team lending their initials to HAMA productions of Antigua ... HAMA developed a feature-film script centred around the drama that ensues when the dormant malevolence of a Soucouyant is aroused, terrorizing residents of the post-colonial tropical isle ... the small but growing local film industry benefits from those of us with experience in the filmworld at large, and on this fourth HAMA effort, it was a rewarding experience to have assisted in the preparation of the two leading players ...

... yours truly, as the sleazy Detective Morgan, along with Jamaica's eminent Carl Bradshaw (The Harder They Come, The Lunatic, Third World Cop) and Britain's Jeff Stewart (The Bill, Dr. Who) as an obeah man and opportunistic yachtie respectively, add weight to a cast of colorful local performers, many gracing the screen for the first time ...

... the result is an entertaining supernatural thriller-with-a-difference entitled The Skin, a reference to the specific habits of the (female evil-entity) Soucouyant, known by variable but similar pronunciations and other names throughout the diasporic carry-beyond (Caribbean) ...

... just as it takes a community to raise a child, so too the processs of making a film, particularly in places where the infrastructure is embryonic ... The Skin benefits from skills brought by Howard University's Professor S. Torriano Berry who held the camera and augmented the crew with his film students eager to combine an island getaway with an on-set practicum ...

... quid pro quo deals, deferred payments and "favoured nations" arrangements to use scenic locations, combine to lift this one off the page ... actual filming was intense but not without its lighter moments to mitigate early mornings and late nights ...

... well received at an incubatory screening for the Caribbean Tales film cognoscenti in Barbados this spring, The Skin was to premiere at last month's Reggae Film Festival in Jamaica but organizational cross-wiring, of the sort that too often undercuts effort in this region, meant that the grand unveiling took place last week in front of an appreciative home crowd in Antigua ...

... things have a way of working out as they properly should - part of the pervasive mysticism that governs life in the Caribbean ...

... the route of Earl ... hurricane watch ...

... the sound of the surf is louder than usual tonight ... it's been a calm-sea kind of year so far ... great for swimming ...

... when you live on an island you become attuned to the sea ... even if swimming is not actually your thing ... and the wind too, everyone develops a sixth-sense about the Atlantic storms and hurricanes that pick their way through here each year ... tracking one hundred and sixty years of storms on one map paints a wooly palimpsest over the whole region ... from Barbados to Biloxi and Panama to P.E.I. ... right now I'm located somewhere in the lower middle of that cartographic Don King do ...

















... the 2010 hurricane season is upon us now, but my instinctive sense of caution and writer's objectivity are compromised by the fact that I have not ... ever ... yet ... experienced true hurricane conditions ... there've been a few near misses, even some threatening last-hurrahs that made it as far as Metro Toronto, but I still cannot check that box on a bucket list ... I'm a virgin! ... that wasn't easy to say but there, I said it ...

... I'm told of 1995 in Antigua and Barbuda ... a serious year for storms, including the week-apart, one-two punch of Louis and Marilyn ... this season is getting rolling slightly slower than '95 but I see similarities in the patterns and trajectories already ... tropical storm Earl is heading this way following behind hurricane Danielle, now eyeing-up my friends in Bermuda ... the severe weather experts think Earl needs close watching but I'm thinkin' ... "hey weatherdude, what's with the initials?" ...















... if Earl were to become my hurricane tale ... would I come to reference it in the future like ol' time people name-check hurricanes from their past? ... the long remembered Charlie from 1951 ... Hattie which sacked Belize(then British Honduras) in '61 ... Gilbert, 1988 - immortalized in Jamaican song like Hattie before it ... Ivan, 2004 - that mash up Jamaica and all but sank The Cayman Islands ... the answer to that is, yeah probably ...

... having spent most of the day putting up hurricane shutters I suspect that would be one of my primary reminiscenses ... it's not a small job I assure you and there's a quixotic element to the task ... humility in the presence of indomitable nature ... brings to mind the weighty quote "when you think it's peace and safety, it's a sudden destruction" (Marley-"Rat Race"/Thessalonians 5:3) ...




















... collective wisdom cautions me against wishing on a storm ... violent weather can bring misery and inconvenience too, but until I've felt that barometric pressure yo-yo like a mo-fo, seen a coconut tree bend double and witnessed a few random objects or stray animals becoming projectiles, I may feel I haven't lived ...

... in these islands it can feel like dodging bullets on a frontline as cyclones sling off the broad Atlantic divide 'twixt old world and new ... those around me can rest easy though ... my other theory is that I repel these things with nascent serendipity ...

... watch, as Mr. T.S. Earl corrects course and veers away the second he sees me and those formidable shutters I put up ... hah!

... "somebody pass me the bullbud!" ...

... in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue ... so goes the enduring children's ditty ... and the rest is history, as they say, when it comes to the expansionary re-population of western lands known as The Americas and the Caribbean ...

... centuries of European-driven enterprise, enslaved African labour, indentured Asians and the inevitably cross-fertilizing populations of their descendants with more recent arrivals have evolved into societies that reflect blended identities jubilantly ... perhaps moreso than many an older culture ...

... this is a particularly identifiable feature of societies with numerically strong African bloodlines ...














... intra-regional variations abound of course, usually boasting contagious music designed primarily for partying and collective street celebrations ... from Rio de Janeiro to Toronto via The Caribbean and New Orleans, adapted African rhythms and body movement characterise carnivals, Mardi Gras style ...

... I got a taste of the recent Antigua Carnival festivities which were dominated by The Burning Flames ... part of the musical nucleus that supported Montserrat calypsonian Arrow on his huge "Hot Hot Hot" hit from 1983 ... this year's boom tune is the catchy "Bullbud" ... a coinage for a stiff homemade whipping implement fashioned from a dried donkey dong (no photo) ...














... people form themselves into tribe-like troupes for the week of ca na val ... they function like mini-economies crossed with all-inclusive clubs ... for a set participation tithe you get to wave your flag in community for the week-long party ... all day and all night, without worrying where your next drink is coming from ... sleep is the only casualty ...














... jump-up provides an annual opportunity to shuffle-bounce down high street as bare as you dare ... a stage on which a bureaucracy-bound civil servant or a by-rote clerk can release her inner virago ... where a post-partum silhouette cramps no style and reminds you that real-life ratios do not favour the svelte ... as pleasing to observe as the latter may be ...















... women of every description plot all year to assemble elaborate ensembles ... men too seize the opportunity to experience the glam thrill of face paint, glitter, lipgloss and leopard prints ...

... comfortable footwear, that will last the week but you are prepared to ruin, and bloodshot eyes complete the uniform ...














... some seize on the parade for an entirely different type of opportunity ... gettin' on bad ... this paradox of public anonimity provides a controlled outlet for the full range of our human expression ... including the eroto-sexuality which exists in all of us but still can shock and acquire taboo through denial in purportedly polite societies ...

... it's a family show for the people ... bring da kids, they're people too ... and sure as the sun shines, one day when they grow up they'll wanna let off some similar steam themselves ...














... call it Afro-Caribbean vaudeville if you like, musical street theatre ... or you could just regard it as island flava ... the essense of which is a hereditary override of an overseer's set of rules and mores ... a mindset of liberation ... in this case commemorating the original August 1st 1834 Emancipation Day in Antigua ...

... wha' you lookin' at? ... you don't like the holes in my hosiery? ... kiss mi backside! ... den come dance nuh ...













... the first week in August also sees Jamaicans celebrate the 1962 Independence from Britain with official fanfare ... in fact, all over the post-colonial world freedom triggers conscious revelry and unconscious sense-memory ... this is impetus for nation-building and fortification of cultural identity ...

... last lap, the summary parade on the final day makes for myriad photo-ops and embroiders the social fabric too ...














... of course these ain't the old days and somebody's gotta pay for all this ... corporate sponsors, like telecom player Digicel, prominent local and regional businesses from haberdasheries to motor dealerships find, in participation, a way to light up brand recognition and par-tay at the same time ...

... I suspect those that prosper most are the ones that quench the thirst and fuel the fun with spirits (rum) and beverage (beer) ...














... it would make sense that there's a certain amount of costume material re-cycling from year to year ... and ... I would like to believe that no actual peacocks, birds of paradise, or endangered species were harmed in pursuit of plumage ...













... with there being next to no trouble to speak of, it's clear a good time was had by all ...

... note to self ... wherever I'm at in a year's time I'm gonna find me some j'ouvert action ... an' get on bad!