On Cultural Production (20 May 2004)

There's a lot of talk about globalization these days.

We talk about it as though it's something new and potentially dangerous. Globalization is coming, we say, as though it's some kind of demonic force that is going to take us over. And we worry about the free movement of people, our ability to compete in the global job market, our ability to stand up and be counted when it comes to the global scene.

We've got a problem.

Because you see, there's at least one area in which we Bahamians (and all Caribbean people) can compete on a global scale.

It's the area of culture.

Now we've become accustomed to thinking of culture as a series of events, rather like pearls, which are strung out along the calendar. We see it as a financial challenge, but not a source of financial gain. We don't see it as a product that we can market and sell.

And we have no idea how wrong we are. One word:

Reggae.

Think about it. A week ago, a caller on a talk show implied that Bahamian artists were wasting their time trying to research and preserve their own culture. Rake-n-scrape and Junkanoo aren’t what sells; everyone knows that. What the world wants is hip-hop and reggae.

Reggae. The cultural product of our neighbour, of our next-door neighbour but one. Imagine if the Jamaicans had had the same lack of confidence in their music thirty years ago that we Bahamians have in ours today.

The caller has missed the point. What "the world" wants is not simply hip-hop and reggae. What "the world" wants is music that can speak to the heart, to the soul, to the parts of us that haven't had everything we wanted, that aren't overweight and suffering, that don't have designer shoes on our feet and silk shirts on our backs, that swelter in the heat and don't have the benefit of air-conditioning.

And that experience isn't simply limited to American street society and Trenchtown. It's throughout the African diaspora. It's found everywhere that human beings were torn from their roots and forced to forget who they were, and who found ways of remembering themselves through music, through art, and through festival.

It's rake-n-scrape. It's rhyming, the way we Bahamians do it. It's rushing, both in the streets, and around our churches. It's the double-rack, the heel-and-toe, the anthem, the story-song that we use to keep one another entertained. It's that real Bahamian guitar riff, it's the way the stomach jumps when a real bass rhythm is played. It's the rescuing of trash, the conversion of ordinary, undervalued objects like cardboard and paper into works of art. It's the way we laugh when the cowbells start, the way we dance when we hear the beat.

What "the world" wants is stuff that's raw, that isn't over-processed. What "the world" wants is something that makes "the world" remember its own humanity.

And what "the world" wants we have.

In March of this year, I had the pleasure, as part of my new position as Acting Director of Culture, of attending a meeting of the Regional Cultural Committee of Caricom. It was an enlightening meeting, but what was most revolutionary was a presentation on cultural production.

The packaging and marketing of our cultural products, we were told, is the key to economic prosperity in the future. We can't compete with the rest of the world in agriculture; we don't have enough land for that, and we don't have any control of the market. We can't compete in industry or manufacturing; in the Bahamas, certainly, the cost of living is too high. We can offer a tourist product, but if we become boring and predictable, we may lose our edge; everyone is offering tourism these days.

But no one else has our culture.

And culture sells.

Our challenge, therefore, is not to try and become carbon copies of Jamaicans and American urban culture. Our success in those areas is bound to be limited; for we will be simply mimic-men, parrots, reproducers of cultural styles that are not really our own, and the world will know. While we may feel comfortable with reggae and hip-hop, we must realize that that comfort will allow us to be consumers of the styles only; there's limited room in the industry for imposters, and we are unlikely to become major producers of it.

Our challenge is to listen to those styles carefully, and to know ourselves. We must listen to what sells not to copy it, but to analyze it; to see what it has that our music does not. And then we must listen to our music, not just to the people who are popular now, but to our fathers and grandfathers and their fathers, to draw upon all the richness that is ours.

And then we must take what we learn from both, and create — and package to sell — our own.

This decade, it's hip-hop. It won't last forever; it was preceded by rap, which was preceded by funk and R&B. "The world" will be looking for a new sound, a new edge.

It's about time we were ready to give it to them.