Calypso Drift {1}

Personal Traces And How Beautiful Precision In Song-Writing Archives Island History

In 1992, Steinberg Henry left his doctoral work at York University, Toronto, to develop a few policy directions for his country's national broadcaster. Well, he never made it back to York and for ten years immersed himself in observations of Dominica's music culture and what it signified. In 2002, he moved to America and began writing Calypso Drift. By way of the Internet, recollected experiences, memory and a drift metaphor constituted in New York and Georgia, this insightful text returns to the 1970s, crosses resistance movements such as Rastafari/Dreads, the Black Power Movement, troubles arising in an island’s parliament, Caribbean culture by way of popular music, creole discourses, the African legacy and issues touching globality. The beauty in Calypso Drift emerges when a magnificent connection is made strategically between the author’s personal traces, a geopolitical drift of sorts, Dominica’s culture history and Calypso. The rest is pure essence, touching how lyrics sung by calypsonians between 2005 and 2012 archive and reflect island development, island society. Calypso Drift is at times a mythological journey and at others anthropological -- it is a pleasure to uncover your stratified self as you read. It is even more delightful as a Caribbean person and off course,a world educator, to discover value in and of such work to entertainment education in a region blessed with abundant youth talent and creative intelligence. Now global citizen, look into the sketches and leap with the drift!