SINT MAARTEN (COMMENTARY – By Sherritza Peterson & drs. Xiomara Balentina) - Long before academics started talking about changing the curriculum to reflect the voices and realities of people from the Global South, the Caribbean had thinkers singing about a Caribbean way of knowing. These creative intellectuals were our Calypsonians.
We dare to argue that Calypsonians were the people's university, bringing important issues to the forefront. Over the years, Calypsonians have taught us the power of resistance, while challenging us to live authentically as Caribbean people. In essence, early Calypsonians saw what many of us could not yet see and imagined what we could not yet imagine.
Calypsonians were among the first decolonial thinkers in our region. Two Calypsonians who sang so eloquently about decolonizing knowledge (a term created and popularized by the university) were the Mighty Sparrow, in his song “Play My Music,” and Black Stalin, in “Nation of Importers.”
So, what does decolonizing knowledge mean in the Caribbean? It means recognizing that we have always produced knowledge of our own, through our music, languages, food, farming, storytelling, and ways of relating to one another, even amid a history of enslavement, colonization, and exploitation.
In “Play My Music” the Mighty Sparrow makes the case for local music as an essential part of the Caribbean experience. At the same time, he reminds us that foreign is not automatically better. In his song he says, “You have an obligation to feed the nation with good Soca music food. Stop telling local people, local thing ain’t good. Play my music, charity starts at home, not abroad. ………Stop trying to impress me that once it foreign it good.” In doing so, Sparrow not only celebrates our “Caribbeanness,” he also challenges what we might call a colonial hierarchy of values: the common belief that external knowledge is superior to local knowledge.
This brings us to Black Stalin’s “Nation of Importers.” Stalin says, “It work for the English so leh we try it, it work for the Russians so leh we do it. It work in New Zealand so we all can see. So why the same thing can’t work for we? When we goin do something that is we? Something that comes from our hearts with real love and all our energy. And not until we can see ourselves as inventors and creators, then we will always be a nation of importers.”
While confirming that we possess our own Caribbean knowledge, Stalin also speaks to our lack of confidence in our own creations and inventions. By placing the foreign on a pedestal while overlooking the local, we risk becoming exactly what Stalin describes, “A nation of importers.”
Stalin and Sparrow masterfully center Caribbean knowledge without advocating that we reject everything foreign. These decolonial thinkers bring to our consciousness that:
-We create knowledge.
-Our inventions and creations have value.
-We do not need foreign validation.
Authors:
Sherritza Peterson, M.A.Ed., M.A., Community Advocate, Social Worker
drs. Xiomara Balentina, Community Activist, Psychologist, Therapist
About the authors:
The authors believe that knowledge creators and holders exist within the Caribbean, just as they do anywhere else in the world. This means that Caribbean people should celebrate and embrace locally grounded best practices that can strengthen Caribbean communities.
Stay tuned for part two.
