AS TOLD TO BC PIRES
My name is Kashka Hemans and, after a real love affair with it, I have a tabanca for Trinidad.
I lived in Trinidad in two stints, 2007-9, at Hugh Wooding Law School, and 2010-16.
But my love affair with Trinidad started as a child.
I read a lot and loved Trinidad because I loved its literature most. VS Naipaul is my favourite author. I loved Earl Lovelace’s descriptions of landscape, Manzanilla and all kinda places.
My Trinidadian wife Tonni Brodber and I have two sons Eli, three, and Noel, one and a half.
My eldest son, Tunde Jamil is in his 20s and lives in Tobago now because I had him, with a Trinidadian woman student at Mona, when I was 19.
Jamaican men love the Trinidad accent. On a woman.
They can’t take it seriously on a man. No man should speak in such a flowery way.
There was a time I would not openly admit that I do love soca.
Jamaican identity is a heavy burden. You’re not allowed to like everything. In Jamaica, there was a certain seeming frivolity associated with the happiness of soca.
At my wedding, I allowed myself to let free with the soca. My Jamaican family looked at me kinda side-eye. “What the hell is going on with Kashka?”
I’ve always been totally fascinated with Minshall, but bossman, I absolutely abhor Carnival. Trinidad Carnival.
I came to Trinidad with preconceived, very romanticised notions based on Earl Lovelace’s novel The Dragon Can’t Dance.
In Trinidad, I felt like I was witnessing the destruction of my Carnival. And I didn’t want to be party to it. A beautiful form had become an overly commercialised, expensive, shallow, plastic licence to inconvenience other people.
Trinis are subsidising the destruction of their own culture.
[caption id="attachment_888902" align="alignnone" width="768"] “I’ve been away from Jamaica since 2002. I’m like a refugee. But I do love Jamaica. And I love Trinidad in the way I love Jamaica. Really deeply and passionately,” saysKashka Hemans.- BC Pires[/caption]
People are making a lot of money out of Carnival and there is a class dynamic at play.
It’s not necessarily the people who created the form or truly know what it means who’re making the money. (They’re not) leading where Carnival is going.
I grew up in an “uptown” area in Jamaica but my family has deep roots in downtown. My mother constantly improved herself. And people fell over themselves to pay for her education. She finished her career at the UN.
My father’s path was markedly different.
My father was from Tivoli Gardens, the inner-city area you see in Jamaican music videos.
My father was murdered and disappeared when I was three. His body was found ten years later, plastered into a wall. When the building was demolished, they found his bones.
My pops was a very rational person. Gifted speaker, voracious reader.
In Jamaica, in that time and area, you catch a vibe on a corner and just a-move, based on that vibe. My father’s attitude was, no, you operate on rationality.
His associates set him up and killed him (over money).
I h
