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, rhythm and blues, even rock, and, always, calypso and soca. They even gave
birth to two distinct musical artforms, spouge and ringbang, though both
suffered short lifespans. They crossed many of the feint lines of class and
race in Barbados, entertained tourists by the plane-loads, and recorded on
vinyl 45s and LPs. A few of these gems have been reissued as compilations but
so much is available only on YouTube, hardly any on radio despite the pleas and
shouts of enthusiasts.
In 2006, for the Caribbean
Media Corporation’s international channel CaribVision’s broadcast of the BarbadosMusic Awards (another bright spark on our national music history), co-producer
Dale Forde and I compiled a brief visual history of Bajan music.
The video piece was built on still photos (filmed and video performances
are virtually non-existent from this heyday era of the 60s and 70s) supplied by
the prolific cinematographer, music impresario and devoted servant of Barbadian
culture, Peter Roy Byer, who kindly consented to give us access to digitize just
a small part of his considerable photo archive, compiled as he was more often
than not present at the creation of Bajan music, from its early days and nights
around hotel pools, cinema stages and dance halls, then radio and records.
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| Peter Roy Byer |
It was ever Roy’s intention to work on a complete Story of Bajan Music. Sadly, Roy passed away in October 2014, and so this remains a dream deferred. For now, I offer this slightly reworked version of the original pastiche of music and image. Apologies for overdoing the ‘Ken Burns’ touch on the photos - this was 12 years ago (I was held captive when his “Civil War” captivated PBS audiences in 1989 while a student in Washington and at PBS affiliate WHMM, now WHUT).
But here, too, is a bit of homage to a visual and cultural historian,
the maker of Jazz, who is still, happily, very much in this world as of the
time of writing and inspires me to do for our culture what he has done for his
own. As I say in this short film, “To be continued….”
But for now, this is for Roy. With thanks.