THE EDITOR: To any young person under 25 who may somehow be reading this, please look carefully at those of us over 40 and kinda pattern your life doing the exact opposite of whatever it is you see.
Because, listening to some callers to Power 102 and i95.5fm the morning after the passing of Makandal Daaga, one has to wonder why we bothered changing flags in 1962.
Continue reading On the Chief Servant Makandal Daaga….and latent ignorance
THE EDITOR: So, the reactionaries have only recently ‘discovered’ that scores of youths are leaving Trinidad to fight with ISIL. Predictably, they react by talking about blocking their re-entry, jailing them, etc. In other words, pretty much the same punitive measures they insist on applying to gang violence and school bullying.
Continue reading Re Youths and ISIL
THE EDITOR: Last weekend I looked at a photo of Coast Guard ratings bearing the body of Harold La Borde and wondered if I was the only one who felt it was just a shallow, hypocritical charade.
I mean it’s not like the La Borde’s amazing achievements of sailing around the globe in a litte yacht he built right here meant anything. In other countries – y’know, those where self-contempt does not run as deep as it does here – what Harold, Kwailan and Pierre La Borde did would have been held up as models of inspiration for fellow countrymen and women. There was so much they did that spoke to the power of imagination and perseverance.
Continue reading Don’t Mourn for La Borde Now
THE EDITOR: As the United States and the rest of the world said farewell to “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, I kept wondering how many libraries and schools across the country bothered to put up displays to educate our very young people who was this giant of a personality.
Continue reading On ‘THE GREATEST’ as a model
By Corey Gilkes
February 29, 2016
Soooo
There was a major tragedy averted in a school
And another one on St John Road, St Augustine
And the talk came round once again about violence in schools
Continue reading Allyuh Still Blaming Ghetto and Music?
By Corey Gilkes
February 13, 2015
In the article “Things I Don’t Understand About Feminism” by Shastri Sookdeo, one of the articles he referenced was an interesting one written by one Bill Flax in the prestigious Forbes Magazine. “Interesting” because if these are the kinds of views held by many often considered elite academics – and let’s face it, that IS often the case – then it is important that those who advance counter-narratives be more openly direct in showing these kinds of writings and journals for what they really are: racist, chauvinist, pseudo-intellectual, hubris. This is especially important in my opinion because to a huge extent, many in the Caribbean still see the North Atlantic as the fountainhead for all wisdom and understanding. Reading through some of the newspaper columns and listening to certain talk-shows such as the Power Breakfast Show on Power 102fm or those on i95.5fm, Forbes is clearly one of those highly regarded sources of information.
Continue reading Article on Feminism Owing Capitalism: My Ramblings on It
By Corey Gilkes
January 11, 2015
Doh believe what foreigners do/ is better than you/cause that eh true
Is a mental block/that hard to unlock/it hard like a rock/with it yuh doh wuk (that true)
Yuh go live an illusion……..trying to be another man
Doh believe what foreigners do/is better than you/because that eh true
Profound words by one of our rap(so) pioneers (Yeah, I did that on purpose, hope it got you thinking) echoed over the years by different singers and thinkers. Last year the forever-robbed Heather Macintosh reminded us of our deeply embedded self-hate and self-doubt when she told us how we don’t see anything good in Trinbago till some foreigner say so. But didn’t Harry Belafonte and the recently departed Pete Seeger, huge cultural icons in the US, marvel at our kaiso and pan respectively years ago? In 1968 Belafonte went so far as to use selections going back as far as the 1920s to articulate the rioting and turmoil sweeping across the US and Europe in the wake of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, the assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the heavy-handed actions of the police and FBI within the US itself. And yet, to this day, we treat our artists and artistes, our panmen and poets with scant courtesy. Kaiso seems to be forever a quaint folk song, sung around Carnival time to amuse the tourists and pan is still “a noisy instrument.” Not even when we do oddah people ting and sing reggae and pop/rock we hardly give that any more respect. So I eh sure about Jointpop and Orange Sky go fare any better than Wildfire and Kalyan before them. What is certain is that in the “logic” of our self-contemptuous thinking, none of these disciplines have any relevance when the question of transforming our society comes up.
Continue reading MY KINDA FOLLOWERS
By Corey Gilkes
September 04, 2014
I come to pelt jep nest again. In a few days school will be reopened and in light of all the various bacchanal going on, in and out of Parliament, it isn’t surprising that many may have forgotten that the Ministry of Education is supposed to be embarking on a revamped programme dealing with sexuality, relationships and sexual health aimed at schoolchildren.
Continue reading What About Dat Sex Ed Ting Jred?
By Corey Gilkes
August 06, 2014
Years ago, the late economist and social thinker Lloyd Best pondered over the question of how does one save a culture from itself. This is a question we have not collectively dealt with as we continue to entangle ourselves more and more in the destructive aspects of this culture that we’re partly responsible for creating. Somewhere along the line, Emancipation, understood as “freedom” – and I’ll come back to that later – was hijacked to become something that was tolerant of mediocrity, the spurning of ambition, industriousness and intellectual pursuits. Small wonder some people say “dey should bring back de white man” because we’ve made a mess of our Independence (and our Emancipation). I don’t necessarily subscribe to such a self-loathing sentiment but much of what we’re doing to ourselves and our space certainly gives credence to it.
Continue reading Emancipate Yourself from … Yourself
By Corey Gilkes
May 15, 2014
How nobody eh pick up on this one, jred? Or maybe someone did and I jes eh see it. So much things going on eh, I almost forget this gem of an article that came out in the Jamaican Gleaner on March 30th. I had to read it several times just to make sure the writer, one Milton Wray, wasn’t using irony – a dying skill in vocabulary of late I gather.
Continue reading A Wray of Light into Ideas of Male Entitlement