Rex Nettleford Cultural Conference U.W.I. Opening Address

Abstract

Dream is ultimately the foundation of all reality, just as faith is the breath of life in every believer. And that is why I think it appropriate to begin by tracing a geography of voices, which celebrate a curious paradox of fortune that Rex Nettleford describes as 'the plurality of forms whatever the unanimity of feeling'. phrase is taken from his study Caribbean: Crossroads of the Americas, and the full text reads: is no political centre in the Caribbean of which I speak, nor any agreed on cultural kernel such as a common Caribbean language. Therein lies the region's strength to be sure, but also its weakness. plurality of forms, whatever the unanimity of feeling, is evident in other areas as well. It is the same Caribbean plurality of forms, unanimity of feeling, which engages the Martiniquan Edouard Glissant in his philosophical polemic Antillean Discourse (translated by Michael Dash). We cannot deny the reality, Cultures derived from plantations, insular civilisations, social pyramids with an African or East Indian base and a European beat, languages of compromise, general cultural phenomenon of creolisation, patterns of encounter and synthesis, persistence of the African presence, cultivation of sugar cane, corn and pepper, site where rhythms are combined, people formed by orality; there is potential in this reality. What is missing from the notion of Caribbean-ness is the transition from the shared experience to conscious expression. need to transcend the intellectual pretensions dominated by the learned elite and to be grounded in collective affirmation. Our Caribbean reality is an option open to us. It springs from our natural experience, but in our histories it has only been an ability to survive. This present isolation postpones in each island the awareness of a Caribbean identity and at the same time separates each community from its own true identity. One is not Martiniquan because of wanting to be Caribbean; rather one is really Caribbean because of wanting to be Martiniquan. And Lloyd Best, for him as for Glissant: The unit of Caribbean community can only be plantation America, the Antilles Greater and Lesser without exception, and therefore embracing Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the French departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, Araba and the Netherland Antilles, along with Guyana and Belize. That, by culture and tradition, is the primary family group. In an address to the Third Europe-Caribbean Conference held in Jamaica in 1990, the social scientist Bernado Vega ofthe Dominican Republic reminded his audience that the goals of Pan-Antillanism were always very eloquently expressed at the end of the last century when Cuba was becoming independent - expressed by Eugenio Maria de Hostos, and by Betances in Puerto Rico, by Gregorio Luperon in the Dominican Republic, and by Jose Marti in Cuba. More than 150 years ago after multiple invasions, a Dominican priest and poet, and 1 must say mulatto - it is very important, cried out: Yesterday I was born Spaniard. In the afternoon I became French. At night they said that I Ethiopian be. I am English they say today. I do not know what will become of me. But Vega continues: Culturally we know we belong to the Caribbean. Our syncretic music and carnival are a common heritage to all islands. All Caribbean people relate to and see themselves in the work of Pales Matos, Carpentier, Pedro Mir, Cesaire, Brathwaite, Walcott and Naipaul. And in 1979 the Cuban novelist, Carpentier in Havana stated: And so Carifesta 1979 is something more than a mingling of enjoyment and music; is something more than a fete, it is rather a ritual of identification. There may be days of rejoicing, of dances, of merriment; but days which will mean much more, because in these we shall come face to face with what unites us, and what distinguishes us; that which makes us alike, and that which makes each special- the particular, and the general, that which belongs to each, and that which is the heritage of all. …