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.
Tags: dancehall, haiti, jamaica, penn relays, philly, soca, trinidad
[...] 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 [...]