rootsandculture

Menes De Griot with Shanto featuring Ama Antoine Cultural expression is a form of resistance. Amilcar Cabral, Cape Verdean revolutionary assassinated in 1973, had this to say about culture while delivering the Eduardo Mondlane Memorial Lecture at Syracuse University in February 1970. "Culture is simultaneously the fruit of the people's history and a determinant of history...[I]gnorance of this fact may explain the failure of several attempts at foreign domination--as well as the failure of some international liberation movements."

From the Margins of History: To Multiracial Equality in Guyana from rootsculturemedia on Vimeo .

by clairmont chung Note lonely lamppost in the foreground (Circa 1871) A few years back, I was standing on the corner of Water and New Market Streets observing a man clad in rags removing a beautiful ornate cast iron post from its base. Until that day, I had hung on and around that post numerous times without consciously noticing its beauty. The man detached one post and was moving on a second when another man stopped him. I could not hear the conversation. But the result was the gas lamppost thief left the area and his booty behind. Gas lighting came to (British Guiana) Guyana in 1870.  But according to The Gas World , November 5, 1892, Page 514, by 1891 most of the lighting had been turned over to the electric company. They used wooden posts. By December 1893 gas lighting operations would cease. So these metal posts had been abandoned for over a century. As it turns out, that forgotten part of Georgetown, Tiger Bay [1] , had benefitted from the first gas street ligh...

I viewed the documentary film “Fire in Babylon”. The fire is so far in Babylon, the fire is Babylon. It’s usually easier for me to be critical than to dispense praise. I plan to stick to form here, but only because of Colin Croft’s appearance in the film and his words which if left unchallenged can leave a bitter lie for generations to taste.  In the film, an unapologetic, former West Indies cricketer, fast bowler, Colin Everton Hunte Croft stated, in relation to his ‘rebel’ tour to South Africa during apartheid, “I guess money is everybody’s god’. If money, capital, can be a ‘god’, It’s an unforgiving god to a people who were themselves money. Croft needs to understand we are the victims of capital: of money and apartheid. Croft and others during that tour in apartheid South Africa were asked to leave trains, bars and restaurants on account of color. Being honorary White did not change their reality. Croft demonstrates and simplifies how he came to th...

By Clairmont Chung All of the three people, who read my blog, counting my siblings, know I have written about the strange decisions of the West Indies Cricket Board and proposed reasons. Now, one of the WICB’s directors, Sir Hilary Beckles dramatically clarified these strange decisions and the WICB’s intentions. The WICB has dropped, fired and maligned some of the best players in the world. Prof. Hilary Beckles, also the Principal at University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, recently addressed an audience in St. Kitts, at the annual Frank Worrell Memorial lecture entitled  “Frank Worrell: The Rise & Fall of West Indies Cricket” [i] . In that address, Dr. Beckles described the attitude some players, namely Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels, exhibit as ‘donmanship’. He said, "Those who follow him (Gayle) and his cohort in the team do relate to him as their don and it is said that he has brought the donmanship into how things operate in the (West Indies) team....