For some, stick fight­ing in T&T ex­ists in a vague cor­ner of mod­ern con­scious­ness, a rel­ic, rur­al ac­tiv­i­ty of un­known ori­gin.

For some, the dust of the gayelle and the pulse of drum-ac­com­pa­nied lavways (songs of the art form) are dis­tant­ly tol­er­at­ed amid more pre­ferred ad­ven­tures of lim­ing on the av­enue, jostling each oth­er for ac­cep­tance in­to tow­er­ing build­ings of de­vel­op­ment and main­tain­ing so­cial lives to­tal­ly re­moved from an au­then­tic form of cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion.

No Bois Man No Fraid seeks to de­stroy these men­tal bar­ri­ers to a deep­er knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of stick fight­ing by bring­ing the Kalin­da tra­di­tion front and cen­tre as the star of this fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary, di­rect­ed by vet­er­an film­mak­er Christo­pher Laird and star­ring So­ca and Mar­tial artist Kee­gan Tay­lor and Co-Founder of the Bois Acad­e­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ron­del Ben­jamin.

A re­lease from the pro­duc­ers said No Bois Man No Fraid will be screened on Sep­tem­ber 4 at the eighth an­nu­al Caribbean­Tales film Fes­ti­val in Toron­to, Cana­da and again in Trinidad in late Sep­tem­ber.

In the film, these two young, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cer­ti­fied, mul­ti-dis­ci­plined mar­tial artists re-dis­cov­er their roots in this unique Trinida­di­an mar­tial art. In brief, a 'gayelle' is an are­na–a spe­cial bat­tle ground up­on which war­riors from vil­lages across Trinidad and To­ba­go as­sem­ble to meet in com­bat with sticks, craft­ed by hand and blessed by hun­dreds of years of tra­di­tion.

The dance-like mar­tial art was brought to the Caribbean slave plan­ta­tions from the Con­go and An­go­la.

One lin­eage which tran­si­tioned from Africa still re­sides in the vil­lage of Moru­ga, with its own spe­cial his­to­ry and style of stick fight­ing.

Over two years of con­tact and film­ing with some of the leg­ends of Kalin­da in the vil­lage of Moru­ga, Tay­lor and Ben­jamin were ac­cept­ed for men­tor­ship by these liv­ing gi­ants of the art form.

War­riors fea­tured in the film in­clude Con­go Bara, Acid/King David, Kali, King Stoke­ly, Moth­er Mar­va and King Tony, the Danc­ing Prince who holds four Na­tion­al stick fight­ing Cham­pi­onship ti­tles–three of them con­sec­u­tive­ly. With hu­mil­i­ty, re­spect and the to­tal com­mit­ment of the mar­tial artist, Kee­gan and Ben­ji en­ter the po­ten­tial­ly lethal are­na of the gayelle, which to them is like a ring of lib­er­a­tion, the re­lease fur­ther added.

The film pro­duc­ers have en­gaged with an in­ter­ac­tive so­cial me­dia pres­ence on Face­book to en­cour­age all In­ter­net-savvy cit­i­zens to be­gin the jour­ney to un­der­stand­ing and learn­ing about the leg­ends, the art form and the film.

Join the "on­line gayelle" and meet the wise Moru­ga Bo­is­man at Face­book.com/NoBo­is­Man­NoFraid to learn more about stick­fight train­ing.

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