Two
significant announcements were made during the course of this week: one by CDF
director about the state of our Flower Festivals; and the other by St. Lucia’s foremost
Music virtuoso Ronald (Boo) Hinkson about the quality of our music!
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| CDF DIRECTOR |
The
announcement by the Director of CDF about the moribund state of our flower
festivals was disappointing but not surprising. Perhaps, if there were
continuity between successive CDF “regimes”, he probably would have realized that
this has been the case for some time now.
The
statement by Ronald “Boo” Hinkson about the emerging daggering phenomenon which
seems to be so successfully penetrating our ‘Soca’ music is like a “cultural hurricane
warning” to St. Lucia; and one - which I believe - we should pay serious heed
to, especially as it has got to the point where some of our so called radio
DJ’s have intimately embraced those songs and they tend to indiscriminately
blast them over the airwaves with little regard to the tender sensibilities of
listeners.
The Dying Flower Festivals
The
unfortunate paradox of the dying flower festivals is CDF itself may have been
an architect of their decline by its own demonstrable lack of interest and strong advocacy
for those art forms. Consider the millions poured into carnival every year compared
to the very little or nothing given to the flower festivals to at least ensure
their survival. In my view, that is an institutional injustice tantamount to
cultural homicide.
Another
contributing factor may well be the lack of airplay of our indigenous music -
you hardly hear La Rose and La Marguerite music on the airwaves. In that
regard, Helen seems to be losing an entire legacy which is incipiently being
supplanted by a new cultural “Twanche” revolution promoting the downgrade of our
thinking from “the brain” to “the twanche”. Our popular radio DJ’s now seem to have an
aversion to the songs with “brain”: double entendre, wit, creativity and poetic
“romanticism”; they only seem to favour the songs that induce “twanche”
gyrations.
Emergence of twanche
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| MAD ELLE: Disciple or inventor of "twanche" |
The
“twanche” revolution probably began with the evolution of what is referred to “studio
rats” who style themselves as DJs. In fact, St. Lucia now has a proliferation
of those un-competitive and untrained DJ’s who - by accident or design - worked
themselves into our radio stations. Their seeming agenda is the unconscionable promotion
of explicit material or the corruption of good music! I can’t recall hearing any
of those DJs playing a single La Rose or La Marguerite song! Only twanche or applied twanche! Perhaps,
they don’t know better!
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| AFRICAN KANDA BONGO MAN |
Applied
“twanche” is very popular on one of our radio
stations where the DJ’s accelerate the “speed’ of the music beyond recognition.
In fact, they equate speed – not rhythm - with quality! To them, the faster the
music, the better it is! And indeed, speed seems to be the essence of twanche! Listening
to the twanche “rhythms”, I get the impression that they are nothing more than “plagiarized”
adaptations of some old or obsolete African Rhythm - usually two semibreves long
looped at unbelievable velocity! That’s certainly not creativity.
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| SESSENNE DESCARTES |
“Twanche”
also appears to have affinity to daggering dancehall music! It has the same
rhythm patterns and characterized by the same naughty, explicit and insolent lyrics.
In many cases, it has the “cadence” of the traditional nursery rhyme/happy
song/Christmas carol, which explains why they catch up so fast with our vulnerable
kids.
When
Exodus did “tjenbẻ brakes” a couple
of years ago, it wasn’t obvious what his motives were; but two years down the
line and with productions like “Calle” etc, the daggering became obvious. In
fact, Exodus’ daggering took a political turn when he recorded “Lorne Tiwe
Chilot” - Bousquet’s flagship 2011 campaign song.
Challenges for the creative arts
industry
With
the indigenous culture dying and daggering increasingly asserting itself, the
question is: what is next for us? Is there a relationship between the moribund
indigenous culture and rise of the twanche revolution? Does that explain the
rise of Country and Western (C&W) Music? Is the rise of C&W music an
appropriate cultural “antithesis” to “twanche”? Are we going to sit down and
let the Flower Festivals die or are we going to begin to institutionalize them using
our schools, our clubs etc? These are some of the challenges for the Creative Arts
Industry, which up this point does not seem to be sufficiently and clearly defined!
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| GEORGE JONES |
Country and twanche
A
certain calypso referred to Country & Western as a weapon of mass
destruction; however, it is largely argued by the country music community in
St. Lucia that the art form is a variation of folk. Perhaps, “Boo” can do an
analysis and inform us accordingly of his findings.
In
our specific circumstances, don’t you see the “twanche” may well be the true cultural
IED; and indeed, the gambling machines installed by the last Ministry for Social
Transformation may well be the cultural WMD! What do you think?
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