Archive for the ‘Caribbean’ Category

Unintended byproducts of the global city

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

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From the moment you land at Heathrow, it’s impossible not to think about London in the context of the global city.  The tarmac is littered with airplanes bearing the liveries of airlines worldwide.  The brilliant cacophony of foreign tongues converges at immigration — from visitors and workers alike.  When it comes to heading for central London, the level of infrastructure is staggering: subway, local train, or express train.  Some American cities are lucky to have a bus.

The citadels of finance buttress the insane real estate pressure — every square inch of vacant land hotly coveted by developers — and a trenchant radical backlash.  But Sassen’s analysis in The Global City is so powerful because it isn’t awed by the structures of transnational trade; rather, it coolly describes them, while incorporating the counterpoint: extreme disparities of wealth.  It takes a vast underclass to serve and service the transient servants of global capitalism.

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Thus is London the multicultural hub that makes it such a fascinating place to visit today.  Quoth w&w, “what an amazing, creolized city.”  I got my taste today at Brixton market.  From Blacker Dread music store (and “reggae consultant” ! or so says the business card) to free-range jerk chicken to Bhangra Burgers to Black Hebrew street preachers to Halal butchers blasting dancehall to the ingredients for callaloo and Irish potato casserole (I made a fine creolized dinner if I say so myself).  It’s no wonder Paul Gilroy theorized the Black Atlantic here.

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My experience had a heavy Caribbean tilt, though it could just as easily be Desi/Bengali over in Brick Lane, or African, or Irish, or Chinese.  But I’m on a West Indian vibe, since I flew all the way across the pond for essentially a long weekend to celebrate the second biggest street party in the world after the Carnaval in Rio with my gracious host and new London resident, Casi G of Flamin Hotz Records.

That party is Notting Hill Carnival, natch.  50 years strong and still reflecting “the heart of black London.”  While “multicultural London” may be a selling point for the tourist bureau, the city definitely did not arrive at this mixed heritage so smoothly.  It was a race riot that gave birth to the Carnival in the first place.  Last year there were several stabbings, and I was warned even at airport immigration to be careful.

But that unruliness is a little exciting — this isn’t an event totally given over to commercial sponsorship and family-friendliness (though the first day is supposed to be more for the littles, as they say).  It’s antithetical, perhaps, to the corporate structures that, through vast demographic and migratory forces, have made this event possible.

Likewise the pirate radio that has been on constant rotation since I got here, my trusty transistor proving that radio really is the most democratic medium.  While heavyweight Rinse FM was blasting the UK funky to get us pumped for Saturday night, much of the daytime hours have me glued to Urban Love Radio: “Bashment, dancehall, and soul with a touch of funky and soca.”  Some rulll lover’s rock on right now for the brunch hour.

Don’t want to get too lulled by the soundtrack, though, there are sound systems a-waiting!  FWD >>> bacchanal.  Catch you post-Carnival, mate.

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Posted in Caribbean, carnaval, festival, global city | 1 Comment »

MIA

Monday, May 25th, 2009

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“In the continuing opera still called, even by Cubans who have now lived the largest part of their lives in this country, el exilio, the exile, meetings at private houses in Miami Beach are seen to have consequences.  The actions of individuals are seen to affect events directly.  Revolutions and counter-revolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player.  That this particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States is one reason why, on the flat coastal swamps of South Florida, where the palmettos once blew over the detritus of a dozen failed blooms and the hotels were boarded up six months a year, there has evolved since the early New Year’s morning in 1959 when Fulgencio Batista flew for the last time out of Batista (for this flight, to the Dominican Republic on an Aerovías Q DC-4, the women still wore the evening dresses in which they had gone to dinner) a settlement of considerable interest, not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogotá and to Paris and Madrid.  Of American cities Miami has since 1959 connected only to Washington, which is the peculiarity of both places, and increasingly the warp.”

–Joan Didion, Miami (1987)

To read this portrait of Miami and then travel there over twenty years later, only to find the same entrenched sentiments about Cuba, Castro, and the American government is, in a way, to think of Miami as akin to Havana: lost to time.  I ventured out into Little Havana and after heaping portions of bistec empanizada, arroz, e friojoles at El Nuevo Siglo, I wandered across the street to a Bay of Pigs monument, replete with eternal flame.  I noticed another statue going up behind it, and when I walked closer an older man came up to me.  Between my broken Spanish and his broken English, we more or less understood each other.  It went something like this:

“Tu es con el Herald [the newspaper]?”

“No, no, yo soy viajante.  Mas yo soy curioso.  Que es el monumento?”

“Nestor A. Isquierdo.  Brigada 2506.  Muerto en combate en Nicaragua contra los Sandinistas en junio 10 del 1979.”

“Su amigo?”

“Si.  Yo soy Gilberto Casanova, Secretario General de Acción Cubana.”

He then showed me an open letter to “Honorable Presidente Boraka J. Obama” (his spelling) en español asserting the need for a hardline policy against Cuba, no compromise, no visits, no tourism, nothing short of invasion.  A quick Google search reveals an Acción Cubana listed as a terrorist organization founded in 1974.  Whether this is the same one I have no idea, nor the biases of this online encyclopedia of Latin American terrorist organizations.  But the very language of it — Cuban Action, Secretary General — strikes me so much as the bombast of communism (the endless titles and proliferating organizations).  Mirror images from Miami to Havana and back.  His wife sat in a lawn chair with a bemused look.  Didion highlights the all-important distinction between “hombres de acción” and men of talk.  Despite the name of his organization, I am not sure El Secretario General is the former, perhaps just one who memoralizes them.

I stopped into a music store on Calle Ocho across the street from the park where the old men play dominoes.  With all due respect to Señor Casanova’s political predilections, in the interest of more exchange à la Presidente Boraka J. Obama here are some bocados cubanos.

Later I went to the other Little Miami neighborhood, le Petit Haïti.  I stopped in a bakery/ice cream shop, where a little French went a long way — from a strong recommendation for the pineapple over the strawberry to what I was really after: a Haitian bookstore.  In turn I was pointed to the remarkable Libreri Mapou, chock full of Kreyol, French, and English language books.  I have a deferred dream of learning Kreyol (my copy of Annou Palé Kréyòl is still collecting dust), which this visit perhaps revived.  On verra, we’ll see.

The day was enough to affirm that Miami is more than just a Latin waypoint, a conduit to the Americas, as a glance at any departures board in MIA reveals in thrilling technicolor fashion.  It is of course a destination in its own right for “Nuestra América,” where Spanish and French and Kréyòl and probably Portuguese if I tried hard enough all commingle in the same day, no need for a passport.  Among other things, it solidified an absolute need to learn Spanish.  Enough faking with portuñol.  Yo gusto de português, mas yo necessito de español tambíen.

But I was headed for Brazil, as always — the passage through MIA a treasured ritual as much as any other aspect of my trips south.  Paul Morand writes in Indian Air, a dreamy travelogue of South America in the 1930s, the dawn of the aviation era, about returning via New Orleans, which once occupied Miami’s role in inter-American transit.  It would categorically not be the same to go to South America from Atlanta or Houston.  No where else does the departure board have to distinguish Barcelona, Spain from Barcelona, Venezuela or George Town, Barbados from Georgetown, Guyana.  I caught the red-eye to Rio, as always, but maybe next time La Paz or Lima, Caracas or Montevideo.  Lingering in MIA late at night, the entire hemisphere is a possibility.

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Ja-Mai-Ca

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

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On a blazing Saturday with Caribbean heat, the 115th Penn Relays really was a carnival.  47,904 packed the 50k capacity stadium at Franklin Field, and easily 3/4 of them were there to support the runners — high school through Olympians — from Jamaica.  Everywhere I turned there was a sea of green&gold.

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As the massive outpouring of fans made abundantly clear, Jamaica is serious about track, a far cry as possible from comedies about a certain bobsled team.  It engenders incredible patriotic pride for a small, relatively impoverished island nation to run toe-to-toe with the USA.  That energy was on display, especially in the USA vs. The World events on Saturday.  I saw Asafa Powell, former fastest man in the world, who unfortunately injured himself in the men’s 4×100, but the rumored appearance of Usain Bolt (now fresh off a car crash, for what else, going too fast) never materialized.  Of course, there were plenty of other rising stars I didn’t recognize who got the fans on their feet chanting “JA-MAI-CA.”  Much to my surprise, there was a sizable American contingent that shouted right back, “U-S-A.”  This despite claims as recently as last summer of track’s fading glory in the U.S. sports pantheon.  The USA dominated most of those competitions, but Jamaican collegiate athletes did score a big win in the College Women’s 4×400 Championship of America, where the University of Technology took first.  Women are less susceptible than men to the athletic brain drain (shouldn’t it be muscle drain?) that sends talented Jamaican athletes overseas, but it was still an upset for UT, making its first appearance at the Penn Relays.  As the commentators deftly noted, they’ll certainly be invited back next year.

Ultimately, though, I found myself not that excited about spectating track and field.  Spectating the spectators was another matter.  The Jamaican scene that invades Philly for the Penn Relays is like a likkle slice of Kingston — or Brooklyn — in my backyard.  Fans sported every variation of Jamaican jersey or t-shirt (my favorite was something like “nobody run fass like wi”), vendors sold beef patties and jerk chicken, and there were dreadlocks and rastafari galore.  Judging by the Washington Post shielding one woman from the sun and the Brooklyn dancehall festival flyers being handed out, the Relays really attract a wide swath of the Jamaican diaspora.  One group bussed up from as far as Atlanta.

Sadly, construction in the area caused organizers to cancel the shutdown of adjacent Walnut Street, where vendors of all kinds set up.  Instead, they were scattered throughout West Philly, with the odd street corner occupied by a table selling Jamaican flags and the like.  One trio of Jamaican women that drove down from Brooklyn in a U-Haul full of Caribbean-emblazoned merch ended up around the corner from my house.  Far from the crowds, but convenient for me.

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I picked up a Trinidad & Tobago football jersey, a small Jamaican flag to wave in the stands, an Usain Bolt button, and a Haiti bracelet.  One stop shop for the whole Caribbean basin!

The jersey would come in handy that night, when I decided to stake out for the West Philly afterhours dancehall scene.  I thought they’d be going strong in light of Penn Relays weekend, but Friday must have been the bigger night, like the Tony Matterhorn show at a swanky club downtown.  By the admittedly late hour of 3:30, the Ibis Lounge and their soca vs. dancehall party was already winding down (which is to say, less winding . . .) and the bouncer was in no mood to let me in, saying you have to enter by 2:30.  A drunk woman of some importance — an owner, perhaps? — was bemused by my T&T jersey, however, and convinced him to let me in.  “The boy say he from Trinidad!  He and his girl just want to party!”  We caught a handful of slow reggae jams on a thinning dancefloor and didn’t stay for long.

Lessons learned.  I’ll plan better for Penn Relays 2010.

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Runners’ Carnival

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Listening to Caribbean Beatz over the weekend and the host called attention to a fundraiser for the Jamaican contingent coming to this month’s Penn Relays track & field meet (which intriguingly bills itself as a “Carnival“).  A Haitian guest started giving the host, himself from Trinidad, a hard time that it was all to support the Jamaicans.  He went off on a tangent about Haiti’s moment of international sporting glory — their 1974 World Cup appearance, where they managed to score the first goal against Italy (then lose that and the rest of their games).  The Trini host brought it back to the point, though: Trinidad sends barely a half dozen athletes to the Relays, but so what.  If the Jamaicans are the most talened, then Caribbean community as a whole should support them.

Not that, as the Heatwave points out, it would preclude Jamaicans from jumping on the soca bandwagon.  And when the track & field carnival comes to town, it’ll be a full-on dancehall/soca/pan-Caribbean affair to support the next generation of Usain Bolts.  Plenty to rival the Mavado show — I stuck with the Guinness.

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Geography of a Soundboy

Friday, March 20th, 2009

In New York especially, it is not news that the hottest Caribbean talent performs and records stateside.  The two heavyweight reggae/dancehall labels, Greensleeves and VP, both have major New York presences.  Scour the message boards, the roti and patty shops, the Harlem or Brooklyn or urban Jersey street corners and you’ll find flyers galore for major dancehall parties and Caribbean gatherings of all (red) stripes.  But Philly is a secondary destination — a smaller microcosm of the NYC melting pot.  That’s not to say there aren’t Caribbeans across the city, especially in West Philly.  A 2004 Philadelphia Weekly cover story on Philly dancehall claims 40,000 Philadelphians have West Indian ancestry, and about half are Jamaican.  Enough, certainly, to support some bumping parties where you can wine gyal wine until the wee hours.

I’ve heard glimpses of that scene on WKDU’s weekend reggae takeover, bringing together fresh fresh reggae, dancehall, soca, and calypso (with some Sunday morning Caribbean gospel for good measure).  They big up parties, a lot of them in Upper Darby, just beyond the city line.  I noticed the same thing on Boston Caribbean radio, where much of the action was in far-flung Randolph.  Slowly but surely, as the city proper becomes less affordable, immigrants are pushing into inner-ring suburbs.  I’m less inclined to head out of the city, but this West Philly party circuit sounded like something I could get into.

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52nd Street is West Philly’s main street, a confluence of bootlegged DVDs, streetwear, soul food, and a sprinkling of African & Caribbean establishments.  I made a roti pilgrimmage to Brown Sugary Bakery awhile back (and gleefully devoured some black cake while I was at it!).  I also stumbled upon a treasure trove of party flyers — the Trini/Jamaicain crossover blending dancehall, reggae, soca, and calypso that WKDU radio plays.  They were linking to sites like Flava Philly, Radio West Indies, and Caribbean Beatz.

My first foray to the Ibis Lounge was a quick introduction to the chronology of a Caribbean party in West Philly.  I arrived at 11:30.  There were 6 people in the bar.  “What time do these parties get going?”  “Usually 1 or 2.”  “Don’t you close at 2?”  “Nah, we go till 5 or 6.”  Oh.  I sipped my Carib and watched soccer on the big screen.

Of course, this is a different West Philly from the safer confines of the UPenn-sanctioned University City District.  I know a girl at Penn who is from Trinidad.  First excited that I had found some Trini chunes, she turned up her nose.  “Oh, those parties.”  Too deep in West Philly for a proper Trini getting an American university education.  But probably the type who would gladly attend Dutty Chutney across town.

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Fluid Nightclub, just off the bohemian-bourgeois strip of South Street, is a safer, more traditional nightlife option.  That’s not to say it’s a disappointing place for a party.  Indians pour in from across greater Philly, lured by bhangra beats from hometown Mumbai clubs.  Expertly mixed with soca, chutney, and dancehall, the music simultaneously bridges the Indo-Trinidadian diaspora and links it up with other African diasporic forms of music from Trinidad and the rest of the Caribbean.  This is not a common feat among two traditionally divided groups in T&T.  Co-promoter Rahsaan of Afrotaino Productions gave me this chutney track to share.

It’s a monthly not worth missing, bringing together a certain cosmopolitan immigrant, a crowd more likely to be studying or working high up in the region’s eds&meds than scraping out a living.  Yet the Caribbean diaspora in West Philly routinely forks over many times the $5 it costs to get into Dutty Chutney to have a slice of Kingston inna Philly, one of their hometown heroes on stage for a night of straight dancehall fever — ecumenical in its own way, sure, but not consciously drawing together across such broad lines (although I wonder about this Jamaicain/Trini cross-promotion).  In any case, it’s coming tonight, where across town I can get a heavy dose of rude boy flava c/o Mavado aka “Gully God” along with Philly’s own Flippa Mafia.

They were originally slated for one such deep West Philly venue, but then I dug up some MySpace claims otherwise. First Lancaster Hall? Then Sherman Mills? Then Blue Horizon? That could be a long night driving around Philly.

Never fear. I caught the El out to 52nd Street to buy my ticket ($35 in advance, more at the door) at Sunday’s Best — there’s something about the restaurant/ticket vendor combination.  An establishment that can sell beef patties and dancehall?  All the comforts of home in one place.  I grabbed a fistful of flyers and confirmed: Mavado will be at Blue Horizon, the legendary boxing venue 1314 N. Broad. Unfortunately, that means no winding until dawn. 8 pm - 2 am according to official sources (although the ticket says party until 3). “Come early,” the guy behind the counter told me, slipping out of patois to address me.  Then he made the hand gesture of shoving forkfuls of oxtail into his mouth — Mavado is going to eat dinner at Sunday’s Best at 6:30 on Friday (right now, it would seem), if I wanted to meet the man himself.  I’ll tide myself over until I can see him on stage.

His 2009 BET-sanctioned hit on the “Unfinished Business” riddim, “So Special” –

Some even newer from the Gully God –

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I’m looking forward to seeing him bring fyah pon di place in a Philadub style.  There are soundboys all over Philly tonight.  But in New York, where it might be a dozen miles from a recording studio in Brooklyn to a hip party on the LES, it’s only a few miles between South Street from North Broad, Fluid from Blue Horizon.  The city is big enough to support simultaneous circles and circuits and cliques of Caribbean beats and I’m grateful to be sampling them all.

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Posted in Caribbean, Uncategorized, bailes, cities, immigration, mpfree | 1 Comment »

Late to the Party

Monday, March 16th, 2009

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I just couldn’t get into Carnival spirit what with the chilly weather (there’s a reason BKN and LDN do it in August — and Philly in June), although I’m already plotting a weather-be-damned pan-Carnival party for next year.  I admit Masala did a damn fine job, what with “mois de soca” (soca month) and “soca pour les nuls” (soca for dummies) to get the juices flowing.  But a quick jaunt last week to St. Martin, however, has finally given me some belated bacchanal fever.  The split French-Dutch island is lucky enough to get two carnivals out of their divided status.  The French side’s already came and went in February, but the Dutch side is preparing for a massive 40th anniversary “jump-up“, to run from just after Easter until Queen Beatrix’s birthday in early May.

They’ll be getting a boost by the carnival crews of Guadeloupe and Martinique, which have finally resolved an eight week general strike over the rising cost of living.  Protests and clashes between organizers and police have tragically led to deaths on both islands.  And the timing couldn’t have been worse, as the strikes washed out this year’s celebrations.  Fortunately, the staggered carnival calendar means that Dutch Sint Maarten is happy to welcome them over.

While in SXM, I stopped in a French side record store and grabbed a couple 2008 carnival CDs.  Here’s a taste of what Gwadeloupe (great blog if you’re a franco- & creolophone) had to postpone from “200% Carnival — 100% Tubes,” a 2000 release.

I can’t import the photos directly, but go ici to check out some shots of the Sénat All Stars from last year’s parade.  This next one, by the irreverently named 12 Salopards (12 Bastards) will raise a few eyebrows for borrowing the melodies of “Doo Wha Diddy,” “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” (?!), and a likkle Sleng Teng all in one track.  Like what you hear?  There’s more on the carib carnival blogosphere.

Heading up the Greater Antilles to Haïti, I also copped the 2008 CD by Kanaval Rasin, which I am guessing is a regular carnival crew (or at least some google.fr and google.ht [!] hits have suggested that).  They’ve already got 2009 on sale, but it’s still worth a petit morceau from last year.  This one is named for the vudoun priest who supposedly inspired the slave uprising that launched the Haitian Revolution.

There are plenty of recaps of this year’s festivities available online, plus le footage chez YouTube.  I was pretty fond of this historical reenactment, where the French whiteman gets his due, in true Haitian Rev style.

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Posted in Caribbean, Uncategorized, blogosphere, carnaval, francophonie, mpfree, music | 1 Comment »

I Want Me Some Hockey, I Need Me Some Hockey

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

My lesson from Black History Month?  Hockey is for everyone.

Of course, there’s still a pretty direct correlation between hockey fandom, northern climes, and pasty whiteness.  But as a hopeful volunteer for the Ed Snider Foundation, which stepped in to keep Philly’s community ice rinks open over the winter when the city budget crisis was going to force their closure, I am intrigued at the notion of hockey as inner-city sport.  If the facilities, the money, the will, and the volunteers are there, why not do it?

I don’t expect West Philly’s basketball courts to be left abandoned any time soon in favor of Laura Simms Skate House, but I do think Montreal holds a lot of promise for minority hockey.  One of my favorite players of the moment is Georges Laraque, who plays for his hometown Montreal Canadiens (his website is out of date), along with teammate Francis Bouillon.  Both are of Haitian descent, as Montreal is a key node of the Haitian Diaspora.  On the beat front of that diaspora, there are plenty of Haitian rappers cooking it up in Montreal, and Monsieur Ghislain Poirier has definitely copped a few musiques Haïtiennes that serve him well.

I wonder too if Haitians could become a new francophone lifeblood for the storied Habs.  As they made their run for the Stanley Cup last year — back when I posted a fan re-work of “Low” that prominently featured a black Montrealer on the mic — I came across a probing piece about the distinctly un-Québéc make-up of the Flying Frenchmen these days.  If young Haitian-Canadians are picking up hockey, however, there’s potential for a new source of Québécois players to liven up both the Habs and the rest of the league.  Last year I asked if there is a kreyol word for “puck” yet.  By now, I’m pretty sure there must be.

At least in Montreal, hockey isn’t just for those who can do whatever they’re white.

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Neg Fondamental

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008


The death of Aimé Césaire back in April passed through with minimal fanfare in the U.S., whereas the French broadcast his funeral live on television. As a poet, politician, and philosopher, he stands immensely tall in 20th century discourse yet hails from a comparatively small place: the island of Martinique. A former French colony and now fully-fledged department (formerly DOM, département d’outre-mer or overseas department, and now a DFA, départment française d’Amérique), Martinique has produced a remarkable number of noteworthy French writers in the last 60 years. Start with Frantz Fanon, then Césaire, then more contemporary authors Edouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphael Confiant, and Suzanne Dracius. It’s an impressive litany of forceful francophone writers from the colonial and post-colonial eras who have dredged their island’s history and its subordinate status to France to make powerful statements about the legacy of slavery, the effects of colonialism, the cultural bonds of the Caribbean, and the global black experience.

Césaire is, as he called himself, “nègre fondamental” (black at the core). The translation is tricky on both fronts. “Nègre” is a stronger term than “noir,” and has carried a derogatory connotation dating back to plantation slavery. It can still be used as an insult, but it isn’t nearly as ugly as English’s own six-letter word. While the hip-hop world has reclaimed that term to the Nth degree, I couldn’t imagine MLK or Malcolm X getting behind it. “Nègre” is something both rappers and writers use. “Fondamental” can be fundamental or foundational, both of which are applicable here. Rather than pick one and exclude the other, I like the notion of “at the core” as covering both the essence quality of “fundamental” and the building block notion of “foundational.”

In Martinique, where he was mayor of the capital, Fort-de-France, for an astonishing 56 years (1945-2001) and deputy to the French national assembly for another 48 (1945-1993), Césaire was the grand homme of the island. While his early days, especially his break with the French communist party in order to found the Parti Progressiste Martiniquais, made for contentious politics, he simply became more revered the more he aged. Supposedly he held court in a square near city hall up until even a year or two ago. It was my surprise to learn he was still alive when I first discovered him back in high school, by which time he was already in his 80s.

While his voice was assured as early as 1939 with the publication of his epic poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a return to my native land), he lived long enough to be criticized. A younger generation of French Caribbean writers saw Négritude and its emphasis on Africa as undermining the uniqueness of Caribbean heritage, which they lauded as créolité (Creoleness). It was a healthy debate, though, and especially upon his death there was universal reverence. Patrick Chamoiseau, himself a founder of the créolité movement, wrote a stirring memoriam (Fr only). Politically, a half-century can surely get corrupt, and the night clerk at my hotel told me he was accused of letting henchmen run the show as he got increasingly old and incapable of managing all the details of mayoralty by himself.

But the signs — literal billboards, posters, and public displays across the island — of appreciation for Césaire were ubiquitous across Martinique, beginning the moment you stepped into the airport, even before passport control. The airport, I should add, is incongruously named after Césaire, something he wasn’t exactly in favor of. Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, pushed it through — two years after Césaire refused to meet him in Fort-de-France for his support of a bill acknowledging the “positive effects” of colonialism.

My stay in Martinique was short, just long enough to give the island a quick pass, stock up on some Antillean books (including teach yourself Creole!) and CDs (francophone dancehall and zouk galore) although I hope to return one day for a longer research effort. But it was enough to recognize the richness — cultural, intellectual, literary — of this particular corner of the francophone Caribbean.

I’m currently reading Chamoiseau’s Texaco, which tells the story of a shantytown on the outskirts of Fort-de-France (built on the remnants of a Texaco facility) as it faces demolition at the hands of the city’s urban reform efforts. In this neighborhood founded by rural exodus, Creole is at its strongest, yet it is here that I found the “Merci Aimé Césaire” graffiti, the largest I saw on the island, written in French but signed with a Creole name. Here that Chamoiseau eulogizes 200 years of Martinique history as they have resulted in the establishment of Texaco but thanks Serge Letchimy, urbanist and now mayor of Fort-de-France, who led the effort to raze the shantytown. The novel won the Prix Goncourt, France’s equivalent of a Pulitzer, catapaulting Chamoiseau, Martinique, and Texaco to fame.

Even après-Césaire, Martinique — and by extension the French Caribbean (most notably Guadeloupe) — are poised to remain a hotbed of literary and intellectual activity. If anything, the outpouring from Martinique’s younger luminaries simply confirms the multi-generational strain is alive and well.

[My own merci to Mylène Priam for her wonderful teaching on francophone literature in the Caribbean. She spoke about her work here, which garnered a bit of blog press in the Caribbean-academico-sphere.]

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Devastation Tourism

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Much ink has been spelled about the unevenness of recovery in New Orleans from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Just yesterday, Bush wrapped up a NAFTA summit in the Crescent City, where the Central Business District (CBD) is intact and a few miles away there is still wreckage everywhere. Despite the platitudes he might have offered, I don’t suspect he made a trip this time to New Orleans’ other half. It’s not far, difficult, or dangerous, and many people I encountered expressed how vital it is for any visitor not to see the city with rose-colored glasses.

I did my best last month to take in something besides the usual tourist axis of the CBD/French Quarter/Garden District, all of which have their charms, granted. But there is an aching, suffering city where the notion of recovery seems intractable. For one, I spied a sprawling shantytown under an I-10 overpass near Tulane Medical School downtown (didn’t have the heart to photograph it myself). American favela?

Like the impulse to favela tourism, visiting New Orleans is an increasingly awkward experience. No one with a conscience really wants to indulge in the Big Easy and engage in willful self-deception about the reality outside the tourist pleasure sites. There’s a Hurricane Katrina Tour, a suspicious enough commodification of the disaster. But going out on one’s own and gawking at the I-10 shantytown, or driving through the 9th Ward, the locus of devastation, what does that do? In Rio, I had research and volunteer work that brought me into favelas to stay and hopefully better the community. Am I no better in NOLA than the favela tourists I scoffed at? It’s surely easier to volunteer in New Orleans than to get down to Rio to do the same if you live in the U.S., and that strikes me as the best answer. But, I’m afraid, circumstances didn’t allow that for me.

The 9th Ward, the worst hit, then. By my rough estimate, I would guess less than half of the homes there appear reoccupied, debris covers countless lots, and the stigma of FEMA spray paint scars nearly every one. Date the house was checked, number of dead bodies, number of dead animals, and condemnation codes.


This house, while chained and boarded up in front, looks reasonably intact and freshly painted, but the morbid tag persists. I saw folks on their front porches, rocking back and forth with the ugly numeration behind them on the wall. Do they leave it up as a reminder? Warning? Public display of wounds? It seems too indelicate to ask anyone about.

One of the bright spots in the Upper 9th, however, is the Habitat for Humanity Musicians’ Village. Among the countless great works Habitat is doing, this one is turning 8 acres into 72 single-family houses to provide a home to musicians who fled the city.




It’s an endlessly admirable (and beautiful) housing project, hopefully a model as the city struggles over plans to raze older public housing. The subject of housing in New Orleans also calls to mind a provocative perspective raised by New Urbanist Andreas Duany that is worth quoting at length:

The lost housing of New Orleans is quite special. It was possible to sustain the unique culture of New Orleans because housing costs were minimal, liberating people from debt. One did not have to work a great deal to get by. There was the possibility of leisure.

There was time to create the fabulously complex Creole dishes that simmer forever; there was time to practice music, to play it live rather than from recordings, and to listen to it. There was time to make costumes and to parade; there was time to party and to tell stories; there was time to spend all day marking the passing of friends. One way to leisure time is to have a low financial carry. With a little work, a little help from the government, and a little help from family and friends, life could be good! This is a typically Caribbean social contract: not one to be understood as laziness or poverty—but as a way of life.

This ease, which has been so misunderstood in the national scrutiny following the hurricane, is the Caribbean way. It is a lifestyle choice, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it. It is this way of living that will disappear. Even with the federal funds for housing, there is little chance that new or renovated houses will be owned without debt. It is too expensive to build now. There must be an alternative or there will be very few “paid-off” houses. Everyone will have a mortgage that will need to be sustained by hard work—and this will undermine the culture of New Orleans.

What can be done? Somehow the building culture that created the original New Orleans must be reinstated…the professionalism of it all—eliminates self-building. Without this there will be the pall of debt for everyone. And debt in the Caribbean doesn’t mean just owing money—it is the elimination of the culture that arises from leisure.

The link to the full article is dead, but more excerpts (including Duany’s proposed solution) here. In Metropolis Magazine, he paraphrased himself by urging us not to think of New Orleans as the worst-managed, poorest American city, but as the best-managed, wealthiest Caribbean city. While Miami usually gets the nod as the American metropolis most tapped into the Caribbean network, one cannot ignore New Orleans’ vital historical role, from the slave trade to fleeing French planters from Saint-Domingue (Haiti). It’s a vital part of the world that made New Orleans, a scholarly approach I’m hoping to dig into soon (thanks w&w for the suggestion).

Fortunately, these Musicians’ Village homes are a start at providing the necessary leisure time to NOLA’s lifeblood. Like this rough-and-tumble old bluesman, Little Freddie King, who I chatted up as he enjoyed a fine spring day on his porch. He was kind enough to show me inside, which had the fine smell of a brand new house. He couldn’t be happier.


That Saturday night on Frenchman Street, I saw a sign advertising Little Freddie King in one of the countless divey jazz clubs. I hopped in and caught a luscious set of funky blues that set the dance floor ablaze. He was glad I dropped by.

Too rich in music to cover much at all here, but I hope New Orleans’ Caribbean leisure time will return enough to allow some more of these sounds to percolate:

Second Line brass bands (parallel to minor samba schools, perhaps?) — i.e. Free Agents - We Made It Through That Water

Nawlins bounce (heavy club choons post-Saints games) — i.e. DJ Black’n'Mild - Beyonce / Work It Out (rmx)

Posted in Caribbean, Nawlins bounce, New Orleans, housing, jazz, second line, tourism, urbanism | 1 Comment »