Barbados' superstar Rihanna - Riri - is now 30 . The world remains enthralled, and rightly so, by the extraordinary, often unparalleled, success of this island girl's dominance of popular music for a decade, studded not only by breaking records set by Elvis Presley and the Beatles but by being honoured in her homeland with the renaming of her home street, Rihanna Drive . It is noteworthy that she grew up in roughly a square mile of urban Barbados that is the veritable hometown of Barbadian pop music and star performers - from Jackie Opel and the Opels to Draytons Two and the Mighty Gabby. That she stands on the shoulders of giants is not in question. But so many of those proverbial giants remain unknown to the vast majority of Rihanna's fans. They are not as terribly well known by today's Barbadians themselves, either, as their heyday was from around 1963 to 1983. Their music-making emerged under the heavy, heady influence of bossa nova , then soul , r hythm ...
Broadcasting, Journalism, Filmmaking & Media Training in the West Indies