Showing posts with label west indian day parade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label west indian day parade. Show all posts
9/6/11
5/11/08
A New Calypso Tribute to Barack
As seen on my friend Lolo's blog IES OUI KANE, there appears to be yet another calypso anthem to Barack. This new one is by Mac Lean Emmanuel and Stanley Humphreys from the group King Short Shirt and it's not so subtly titled Barack We Love You:
Recall Barack the Magnificent by the Mighty Sparrow which Mighty played as early as last year's West Indian Day parade on Eastern Parkway.
The Mighty Sparrow - Barack the Magnificent
Recall Barack the Magnificent by the Mighty Sparrow which Mighty played as early as last year's West Indian Day parade on Eastern Parkway.
The Mighty Sparrow - Barack the Magnificent
9/8/06
Haiti Video Game+ A Father's House+ West Indian Parade
Ayiti Cost of Life Socially Conscious Video Game
- west indian parade - brooklyn - haiti - caribbean
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- Not all agree that video/virtual reality games are a tasteful way of raising awareness on hot button issues (cf controversy on Darfur is Dying virtual reality game). That said, Gary Dauphin explains that a video game is being designed that will challenge players with the day-to-day task of making ends meet for a poor person in Haiti.
- While you're at Gary (aka ebogjohnson.com)'s blog, notice this slideshow of his father's house before it sold in 2003. (The blog post about the slideshow is here.) All well and good, you're thinking. Yes, except if you also read this other post of his months ago where he explained a thing or two about his father's philosophy on economy, aesthetics, throwing things away (or not) and fixing things endlessly. (This set of habits should sound familiar to some of those hailing from Western Hispaniola --okay fancy way of saying Haiti--or places like it. It does to me. Ha!)
- Yes I attended, yes I have footage. No the footage is not ready to post because I plan to use it as an exercise in learning to use YouTube. Yes, there are other sites you can visit that have lots and lots of pictures, namely this page at sakapfet.com.
- west indian parade - brooklyn - haiti - caribbean
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9/19/05
My Jr. Gong Odyssey (Welcome to Jamrock Release)
- So at the Labor Day Parade, I found out that Damian"Jr. Gong" Marley's new album, "Welcome to Jamrock" would be released last Monday atop a free performance. Although the youngest veteran did not sing a single note at the Carnival, his obvious charisma, rave reviews of the album, the video and okay the Marley name piqued my interest. Having seen a very junior Jr. Gong in concert with his brothers over 6 years ago, I still thought of him as that skinny kid jumping up and down the stage, hair that could barely lock, mucho bravado but not much else. I remembered sunny tunes with a clean sound (nonodat vintage Bob ting). Since Bob passed away when I was 6, seeing any Marley live was better than seeing no Marley live back in those days.
- Then I went looking for the award winning Halfway Tree album from 2002. Did Jr. really deserve the Grammy he snatched for it or were naysayers right to suggest he only got it because Sr. didn't? To my surprise and sheer delight (who wants to waste $9 on a whim?) Jr. Gong-with-the-beauty-queen-mom-and-the-rock-star-dad actually has a mind, a style and a sound of his own. (Check out the distinctive Yuh! that opens just about every song on Jamrock.) Halfway Tree was quite the earful what with its heavy dose of advocating for "ghetto yutes." Of course many can't stop repeating that Jr. Gong grew up "above the half" which whatever it means, is not the ghetto. But guess what? Jr. candidly named the album Halfway Tree after that part of Kingston which, like him, is at a crossroads between uptown and downtown Kingston. And as determined as Jr. seems to deliver his father's political message, he can also be light and breezy. There are flirtations with salsa in She Needs My Love, Yami Bolo's Stevie Wonder-like vocals all over, there is the ode to the Paradise Child he "even had to introduce to Cindy" --Mom to him, Miss World 1974 to the rest of us,-- there is even the candor about the fickle torment of being Stuck in Between two very different women. (We knew men had trouble with monogamy but how many freely delve into the logistical --occasionally emotional--dilemma bigamy entails? Ah the Marley magic.)
- Call it curiosity, call it groupie-ism, call it a symptom of the buppy third-life crisis (three years in corporate America can send you running kicking and screaming for kulcha), I made it to the very beginning of the line to see Jr.Gong's free performance Monday the 13th at the Union Square Virgin Megastore, three hours early! At stake was an opportunity to see how Jr. does live and possibly an autographed copy of the album being released at midnight that night. I congratulated myself for beating the crowd, but panic struck when I realized I had neither book nor headphones.
- Thankfully a quick look around proved comforting. There was plenty to take in what with the colorful one-time coalition that showed up and formed a line that curled up around the block. Collegy hotties as scantily clad as groupies should be, some looking like contenders to a "Honey" role in a Hip Hop video, others more rootsy but all connected by either Jamaica hoodies or red gold and green wristbands; preppily dressed boys who looked like what I imagine to be Hillel, St George or Phillips Exeter grads now enrolled at NYU or Columbia; real rastafarians of all ages; the occasional model-like blonde with the dreadlocked boyfriend; obvious reggae diehards; and of course one or two yutes in mesh marinas and diamond earrings who may have actually lived what Jr. describes in the Jamrock single.
- My friend Jennifer finally joined me at 10:30, happy I'd already endured the brunt of the pilgrimage. Since even my sweetie declined to make the journey with me, I wasn't complaining. We could at least yap away during the half-hour between us and Jr. Gong. By 11:00 we were inside the cafe. By 11:15, a promoter claimed Jr. Gong was in the house. At 11:30, Jennifer, hungry and tired, left. At 11:45, Jr. Gong finally appeared, in fitted jeans and a long-sleeved white t-shirt, his locks disappointingly pulled up under a bulging rasta cap, looking tired, shorter and skinnier than I pictured him. (Anyone feeding the boy?) I learned later that a ceremonious kickoff had taken place the previous friday at Kingston's 56 Hope Road and that Jr. had been promoting in DC that morning so I feel for Jr. That being said, I had just waited three hours and 15 minutes of unknown rhymes backed up by a lone turntable were kind of hard to swallow in the moment. At the end of the performance though, Jamrock blared in the megastore as people lined up for their copy. I've been playing the album non-stop since and that somehow makes me feel better about the three-hour queue. I did skip the second line required to get the autograph. Would you line up around the corner for someone who's 4 years your junior? :-)
- Jamrock repeats a lot of the narrative themes from Halfway Tree: someone's descent into junkyism in Pimpa's Paradise; Jr. doing the right thing, reprazentin' for the poverty-stricken ghetto yutes whose plight Daddy shared before making it big and berating the fickle politicians who unleash bad cops. But while Daddy sang about all this, Jr. mostly deejays (i.e. raps dancehall style), too happy to steal the moral highground from fellow uptowner Sean Paul who is more of the bling persuasion. There's the familiar boasting about what the youngest veteran says is his not so Junior sexual prowess. What's new is the nod to monogamy in Beautiful, a Prince-flavored collaboration with none other than Bobby Brown. The sounds are fresh and adventurous: an Ethiopian melody in the background to For the Babies; what sounds like some Nigerian rap on the addictive mantra-like Khaki Suit; the unearthing of Bob's early ska in All Night and of Exodus in the thunderous traditional drumming of Move plus much much more...
9/7/05
Labor Day highlights
Devan bann-nan
- Overall, Haitians should have nothing to complain about as FOUR prominent Haitian bands delivered all the gouyad I needed for the year: Sweet Micky in a flurry of familiar pink flags but surprisingly not in drag, T-Vice, Djakout Mizik in partnership with the Haitian Times and Koudjay a rasin band who delivered great kanaval music and the most original of the 4 floats. (Unfortunately for Koudjay, they were right behind Sweet Micky and although they were no doubt well followed, I would have chosen a different spot.)
- I personally followed the Sweet Micky float on the street and past the library into the park!!! I got to do in Brooklyn what I haven't really done in Haiti: mret nan bann-nan net ale. Bann-nan te cho!
- For once, no complaints from my Haitians friends (hyphenated or not) who all seemed way too busy getting their groove on. I lost Jenny my carnival-crazed sibling early in the game but when she finally caught up to me, she'd already spent several hours with Micky and T-Vice and inspired my own venture into the sea of whining bodies following Micky. A little late in the game (it was past 6, the official closing time) but worth every last second.
- The youngest Marley showed up in a float prominently featuring his American "Welcome to Jamrock" release date. He apparently delivered 90 minutes of a blazing concert in Jamaica last month. Not quite on the parkway. Although his band was hard at work rousing the crowd, by the time I caught him Mr. Marley seemed more interested in looking as stern and studly as his album cover than in actually singing. It was great to see his manly stature in person but it would've been nice to actually h-e-a-r him. When his float reached the end of the parade, I looked for him again but he'd literally jumped ship with half his entourage leaving his deejay alone to rock the crowd. Poor thing is probably on tour and may have had a plane to catch. Whatever the worth of his performance, "Jamrock"s release date--Sept 13-- is now etched in my brain.
- My friend Sarah --decked out in an outfit made of Grenadian flags--spent all week at steel pan rehearsals that culminated into the steel pan contest I missed Saturday. Little did I know then that I wouldn't see any on the Parkway. She and I lost each other after I decided to follow Micky but who knows, maybe she got luckier after I left?
- Trinis did grace us as usual with the most flamboyant costumes. Pictures will trickle in as the week unfolds so come back for snapshots.
- Apparently costumes were to be mandatory this year in order to play mas (i.e. follow bands in the street). After protracted negotiations, t-shirts with your band's colors were declared enough for mas goers, mostly a concession to Haitians and Jamaicans apparently. While the t-shirts were universal on the actual floats, the rule was not enforced on the ground and many played mas without them. The costumeless may not be as lucky next year as those who negotiated the t-shirt compromise promised to deliver sequins and artifice in 2006. (Thank god I played mas this year!)
9/3/05
Labor Day and Katrina
As late as the rest of the world, I started taking in images and information about Katrina yesterday. I'm still processing the extent of the disaster.
I was looking forward all week to counting down to the Labor Day Parade on Monday and to the imminent arrival of a little one in my family. I was talking to my friend Sarah who studies steel pan culture about attending tonight's steel pan contest in Brooklyn.
Now I wonder, how festive can Labor Day be in light of all the sadness and devastation left behind by Katrina? What would Katrina's victims think of floods of people dancing to jolly calypsos as they are flooded by despair and neglect? Mostly, what world is the little one coming into?
Answers to some of these questions seem obvious but others aren't. As sure as life goes on, the trauma of those grappling with disaster will endure...
I was looking forward all week to counting down to the Labor Day Parade on Monday and to the imminent arrival of a little one in my family. I was talking to my friend Sarah who studies steel pan culture about attending tonight's steel pan contest in Brooklyn.
Now I wonder, how festive can Labor Day be in light of all the sadness and devastation left behind by Katrina? What would Katrina's victims think of floods of people dancing to jolly calypsos as they are flooded by despair and neglect? Mostly, what world is the little one coming into?
Answers to some of these questions seem obvious but others aren't. As sure as life goes on, the trauma of those grappling with disaster will endure...
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