George Bovell III

Trinidad and To­ba­go is a rel­a­tive­ly new coun­try, with a fresh and unique cul­ture that is a nov­el ex­pres­sion of its di­verse pop­u­la­tion and in­ter­est­ing his­to­ry. Cul­ture is mea­sured by how well a so­ci­ety is able to in­cor­po­rate its unique art in­to dai­ly life. In T&T, we are los­ing ours be­cause we don't val­ue ex­pres­sions of it un­til they are cel­e­brat­ed abroad first; we des­per­ate­ly need val­i­da­tion from out­side. Con­trast this against the rich­ness of Cuban cul­ture for ex­am­ple.

As a coun­try, we are like a six-year-old child ge­nius, lack­ing con­fi­dence in our abil­i­ties, and trust in our own judge­ment, de­spite hav­ing churned out a se­ries of mas­ter­pieces in art, mu­sic, lit­er­a­ture and sport.

Our ge­nius seems to be in the form of sa­vant syn­drome, a type of autism that is as much a bless­ing as it is a curse, leav­ing us un­able to ap­pre­ci­ate for our­selves the beau­ty and great­ness in all of the works that we con­stant­ly pro­duce.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we must re­ly on the en­cour­age­ment and taste of the cul­tured adults in our mi­lieu to con­firm for us, that our work is valu­able, so that we con­tin­ue to pro­duce it. With­out which, we are in­clined to give up our unique style and in­stead seek to make shod­dy copies of what­ev­er is pop­u­lar.

There are so many ex­am­ples through­out our his­to­ry of our in­abil­i­ty to ap­pre­ci­ate our own cre­ative ge­nius for what it is, un­til it is ap­pre­ci­at­ed else­where first.

Charles, the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed trum­pet play­er, and a fel­low Tri­ni can at­test to this truth. He re­cent­ly re­mind­ed me of this as he re­count­ed the sto­ry of Ald­wyn Roberts, the ca­lyp­son­ian com­mon­ly know as Lord Kitch­en­er.

It was on­ly af­ter Kitch­en­er spent years per­form­ing at three Lon­don clubs per night with a dif­fer­ent band in each place, in the 1950s, that word slow­ly trick­led back to Trinidad of this fa­mous Trinida­di­an mu­si­cian in Lon­don. From a Trinida­di­an per­spec­tive, Kitch­en­er had to be cel­e­brat­ed by the Eng­lish be­fore we could ap­pre­ci­ate, claim and em­brace him as ours. It wasn't un­til steel­pan was recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly that we re­alised what we had giv­en to the world and proud­ly claimed it as our own.

This trend con­tin­ues to­day, we couldn't recog­nise and ap­pre­ci­ate the bril­liance of our own Anya Ay­oung-Chee un­til she was cel­e­brat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as the win­ner of Project Run­way. This al­so ap­plies to the writ­ings of VS Naipaul and the art of Christo­pher Co­zi­er, to name a few of the many ex­am­ples of us need­ing val­i­da­tion from out­side.

For­tu­nate­ly we came to recog­nise our own great­ness in the afore­men­tioned ex­am­ples, but re­gret­tably, there are el­e­ments of our cul­ture that have al­ready been lost.There are old black and white pho­tographs of Port-of-Spain ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry that show­case gor­geous build­ings with long eaves, and lux­u­ri­ous dec­o­ra­tive wrought iron bal­conies.

The build­ings are rem­i­nis­cent of the French Quar­ter of New Or­leans, the cul­tur­al heart of the city that is still there to­day, pre­served, ap­pre­ci­at­ed and cel­e­brat­ed; while in Port-of-Spain we have re­placed our beau­ti­ful cul­tur­al her­itage with eye sores in the form of taste­less ed­i­fices.

Even in Shang­hai there re­mains to­day in the mid­dle of square miles of high rise build­ings, the "French Con­ces­sion" where build­ings of this an­tique style, with their price­less his­to­ry can still be found to­day.

They say ar­chi­tec­ture is the high­est form of art and we are los­ing our unique ex­pres­sion be­cause we are un­able to ap­pre­ci­ate it for our­selves, and so we con­tin­ue to make poor copies of an­oth­er cul­ture's ex­pres­sion such as Na­pa.

This back­ward way of think­ing isn't lim­it­ed to our views on cul­ture. I am sure every lo­cal, qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­al will be able to re­late with frus­tra­tion to our in­nate ten­den­cy to­wards the as­sump­tion that a for­eign­er from the de­vel­oped world must be su­pe­ri­or to a lo­cal that holds equal or even bet­ter qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

We are strug­gling with a colo­nial in­fe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex, a lega­cy of our unloved up­bring­ing by our par­ent across the At­lantic.When it comes to sport, if we are un­able to ap­pre­ci­ate our own lo­cal tal­ent and ge­nius for our­selves, by the time it's ap­pre­ci­at­ed abroad first, we would have lost the op­por­tu­ni­ty to claim it as our own.

An­tho­ny Nesty, the first black Olympic Gold medal­ist in swim­ming end­ed up com­pet­ing for Suri­name, de­spite be­ing a born Trinida­di­an. This is one ex­am­ple of us not recog­nis­ing what we have un­til it's too late.It would be a shame to see more Trin­bag­o­ni­ans win­ning medals for coun­tries such as Qatar, that are just wait­ing to recog­nise and nur­ture tal­ent where oth­er coun­tries fail to.

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