Maybe we aren’t as smart as we think!
Over half a century ago, in the year 1968 I left Trinidad for the first time.
I was hired by a company in the US Virgin Islands and was sent a plane ticket from Piaco International Airport in Trinidad to St Croix.
There was something of a construction boom taking place; both the Harvey Alumina plant where I was employed and the nearby Hess Oil refinery were hiring workers.
As a result, for the first time I had the opportunity to meet other Caribbean Islanders from places like Aruba and Curaçao , Antigua,St Kitts Jamaica, even Columbia and of course Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
I soon discovered how other islanders particularly from the Eastern Caribbean felt about we Trinidadians.
Though in some ways they liked us and our culture and were influenced by it, they called us “Tricky-dadians” , as in “Allyuh Trickydadians think allyuh smarter than everybody else, with allyuh mouth full of gold teeth “.
This was partly true; back then most of us had gold teeth, including me, we thought it was kinda cool !😊
And we had also exported our share of “smartmen”, “sagaboys” and hustlers, some of whom I knew from the streets of Marabella and San Fernando.
Anyway that was then !
I was thinking about that today as it occurred to me that we Trinis may not be as smart as we think, and our island cousins the Jamaicans may be ahead of us in some ways .
Take two areas, sports and culture.
Why is it that Jamaica seems to consistently produce more and better world class athletes than we do?
I think that they have a system that’s working!
I know that they have an advantage in size of populations but shouldn’t that be cancelled by Trinidad’s stronger more diverse economy?
What are we not doing?
Now let’s look at culture .
Trinidad and Tobago’s steelband, calypso and carnival had achieved worldwide recognition long before reggae music existed, but our opening to the entertainment world was never fully developed or exploited, at least by Trinidadians.
On the other hand much of the growth of reggae music and its artists came primarily as a result of the success and popularity of one Robert Nesta (Bob ) Marley.
And therein lies the difference; though Marley would have been a success in the Caribbean and among the diaspora, his international fame and recognition wasn’t accidental but took work, planning and of course a investment!
Record producer Chris Blackwell, who saw the potential for reggae music gave the Wailers an advance of £4000 to produce an album.
He then took the raw tapes to Island Records where the music was reworked, adding a rock guitar on three tracks, making the music more appealing to rock fans.
This critically acclaimed album was promoted advertised and targeted to the rock community and became an international hit which was supported by a successful 1973 tour.
We Trinis tend to be fatalistic and believe that things happen “just so “.
This isn’t the case; we must learn to be much more proactive if we want to make things happen!
G R JOSEPH 