 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Derek Wolcott Library here at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. We're coming to you live with an exciting discussion with some young panelists as we celebrate National Library Week under the theme, Connecting with Your Library. So this has been organized by the Hunter J. Perssoir Library at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College to commemorate Library Week as part of a slate of activities that the library put on around the island. They visited schools in District 4 making donations of storybooks, engaging young people and getting them to love reading again, all in support of promoting literacy in St. Lucia. What a wonderful job the Hunter J. Perssoir Library has been doing, transitioning to a hybrid, bringing technology into the library and ensuring that we serve the community. So we want to congratulate the Hunter J. Perssoir Library as they end their commemoration of National Library Week. With one more activity next week, we're again storytelling and storywriting has come into focus with a competition called WordUp, Storywriting Competition. After bringing you the WordUp Poetry Competition. It is my pleasure today to start this off. I am not the official host though. My name is Natalie J. Panis. I am the Senior Communications Officer here at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, and I will be introducing the host for this panel. Let me say that it is an indeed a pleasure to have the panel be all alumni of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, young, gifted and black. And that is the name of our virtual panel discussion today. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce the host for today's activity, Mr. Vladimir Lucian, who is a former student and lecturer in the Communication Studies and Literature Department chair at the college. Mr. Lucian is a gifted writer. If you have not yet heard his name, he will be making waves soon at a place coming close to you. But he is a renowned poet, following in the footsteps we say of Derek Walcott. And he's here today to discuss with other panelists how they are now standing on the shoulders of Derek Walcott, how they are making an impact across the diaspora and across the globe. He is a bokeh's prize winner and he will be introducing the panelists today. So ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome Mr. Vladimir Lucian, your host for this panel discussion, young, gifted and black. Mr. Lucian. Thank you. Thank you, Natalie. Can you hear me, everybody? Yes, we can. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. It gives me great pleasure to host or moderate this panel of St. Lucian's extraordinary St. Lucian's who are doing things just in different ways all over the globe. My introduction of the panelists, I mean, you will be introduced to them kind of throughout the sessions. But I kind of will take it from a more personal standpoint as well as speaking to some of the accolades. But you also have the beautiful flyers that Soatha has created that tells you a little more about them. I'm going to start with how it looks on my screen. Asher Small and his I think his name is his moniker is Smalls. Asher is a hip hop artist, a singer, you know, just an artist creating in all kinds of ways. I'm sure it won't stop at hip hop. It will probably go into making videos and all of these things he's based in Canada. He is also interestingly the grandson of Arthur Jacobs and the son of Barbara Jacobs Small, both who have played significant roles in arts and letters and and so forth in St. Lucia. I don't think I knew him very well as a student, but I probably saw him in the corner of my eye rapping somewhere on campus. And that is how I'm acquainted with him. But he is making waves. He I saw a song of his on Instagram and I woke up singing it one day. So I said, I had to kind of have a conversation with him. And then this thing came up and I was happy to kind of have him be a part of this this this this panel. Keio, Philbert Keio Souto, who is like a well known name in St. Lucia, probably better known than mine will ever be. He's probably if I'm if I would make waves, he'd probably make tsunamis. He's been there for a long time. He I know Keio from St. Mary's College. I think we also went to the same primary school, although I don't think I knew him there. But he's been somebody who's talented, pressed me for a very, very, very long time. I don't know if Keio remembers, but a very long time ago, a very young Vladimir Lucian started a small company was trying to get the man who discovered Rihanna to come to St. Lucia actually made contact with him and did not get the support I was supposed to get from the forces that be or the powers that be at the time he was ready to come to St. Lucia. Keio was was going to be a part of that group of artists who would have gotten to perform, but he continues to do his thing. And he's in Canada. He's well, I don't know if he's in Canada now, but he's between Canada and all over wherever else he goes doing his thing. Read the flyer for anything else you want to know. He also has a podcast. So this podcast, which is one of the number one podcast or the number one podcast in St. Lucia right now. So check him out and you'll get to check him out during this panel as well. Canissia Lubrin is a phenomenal poet, St. Lucia poet who has been making, I don't know, waves, tsunamis, whatever. I mean all over the globe. You need to just Google her name. If you type can, it'll probably say Canissia on Google. So you should check out. She's the winner of the Winham Campbell Prize. And I want to point out something very interesting. Canissia is also a Bocas Prize winning poet. And that makes St. Lucia actually the dominant group of people who win the Bocas Prize generally. And also we are the ones who dominate whenever it wins for poetry. So there's something that in terms of us and poetry that just everybody has to give respect to. Canissia's base has been based in Canada for a long time. She's a teacher. She's a poet. She's also a novelist, I think with her debut novel coming out soon. Is it a novel or a book of short stories? I'm not sure. It's a novel, right? Short stories. Okay. Well, maybe there's a novel coming right after that. So welcome, Canissia. I'm very happy to have you here. Chatia Mathre, I came to know during my days as an undergrad at UWE. She was a year or a few years behind me. When I encountered her, she just had this kind of phenomenal energy as someone who was just making movements and really was extremely confident about it. And I later came to understand some of the stuff she's doing, which is multi-pronged. She's a publisher. She started her own publishing company called Wacote. She's also an entrepreneur. She's based very interestingly for me in Ghana, where she's been for a while, I think both engaged in entrepreneurial activities, as well as schooling and just doing everything that she's been doing. I also did work with her once. I did publish an essay in her magazine, which was actually on Derek Walcott. So these are four really phenomenal people we have here. We're lucky to have here. And for the next hour or so, we're going to really get to hear some interesting things about them. I just want to kind of preface this panel by saying this is a panel. When I was asked to moderate, I thought it was a good time to look at how Sintlutions are making strides in the world. It both had to do with my own experience as a recent, I don't know, initiate into diasporic life since I'm now based in New York City, but also an awareness of what it means because so many Sintlutions leave and we're actually encouraged to leave. We go even just over to Trinidad to study and we make waves wherever we go. So I wanted to kind of zoom in on that experience of young people, especially traversing the globe, going into these strange societies, these new societies, and actually rising to the top of it, actually just really being able to thrive, and interestingly, through creative arts, which is not usually what we're encouraged to pursue. So I'll stop there without going on too long. These are our panelists. This is the kind of discussion that we're having, and I really hope that we have a lot of young people in attendance, along with not so young people who probably still have dreams of doing some of what they're doing or just want to listen in. But I'm happy to be here and I'm sure they're happy to be here, and you who are viewing are actually very lucky to be here in their presence. So welcome attendees, welcome panelists. Let's get to know each other. One of the first things I wanted to ask you guys is, there's this book I read when I was in my teens and I always liked it. I kind of called it the portrait of the artist as a young person question. I kind of want from you to, by way of introduction, either you could tell us about an episode in your life or simply just talk about how you came to doing what you do. But it could be just an episode, it could be something you yourself witnessed or your parent witnessed in you and told you about it later. But if you had to give a brief portrait of yourself as an artist or just becoming an artist, or whatever it is that you're doing, Chadia, were you selling lemonade, whatever you're doing? That sounds very American by the way. Maybe were you selling tamarind juice, et cetera. So were you publishing your little scripts? Whatever. I just want each of you, and I guess I'll call on you to give it some order in the way I see you, to give us a portrait of it. I want our audience to get a sense of maybe what that kind of thing looks like or feels like. Chadia, you're the first on my screen incidentally. So coming from Ghana, let's hear from Chadia. All right, good afternoon everyone. It's evening on my end, but good afternoon to everyone. So I would say I started off more of an artist than an entrepreneur. I play a couple of instruments, I play the keys, wrote music, went to Trinidad and to be able to do my undergrad at Santa Gastin, did a lot of worship for a lot of teams over there. But I had an incident in studying international relations at an incident that just made me come to the realization that I don't really want to be a broke artist, to be quite honest. And so it's true that I didn't really want to be a broke artist. I didn't see myself as good enough to be one of the greats. I mean, people have their perceptions of what I can and cannot do. But ultimately, you are the one who have to believe that you can do it. And so I didn't see myself as great enough. And so I ventured into the business end of things, creating platforms for myself and other people to be able to tell their stories. So but I started off as an artist, I think in every facet as a writer, as a musician, I think I understand all of the facets of the business. And so I've now ventured into creating platforms for people to do what we do, which is to tell stories. Thank you very much. And I'm now reaching the point of not wanting to be a broke artist. So I'm kind of lagging behind you. But I guarantee you, I will no longer be broke. One thing I wanted to add before I go to our next panelist is part of the inspiration for this panel is the man himself, Derek Walcott, who I wanted to tap into that part of his life where he was going out. I remember reading once that when he got to New York on a Rockefeller scale, a Rockefeller fellowship, he was at first terrified by the city. And I think he did not even finish the fellowship. He returned to the Caribbean, you know, because how it could hit our sensibilities, sometimes to be in a strange place. But he eventually became a traveler and somebody who basically went into various societies and was respected there. So that is the aspect of him that I think I want to channel here in this panel, this far audience and also for you panelists to get a sense of where I was coming from with this. Asha, let's hear from you. An episode, something, the moment, aha moment, whatever it is. I'd say like I'm somebody like I kind of do the I focus on the like make it happen for yourself, but things happen for a reason kind of thing. So if that being said, it was like, I was inquired for the majority of my life at this point and was in piano longer than that. So by the time I got around to like being introduced to rap in form one by one of my friends and the first rapper was Eminem, thankfully, I think that was a good example to start with. Same. Like, okay, that's what's up. We never really talked about that. Let's go. It's just, I don't know, like right off the bat, I just realized I had a thing for music and words, like those two things, just like really crafting words and seeing how you can like mix, match them and you know, twist them kind of thing. So by the time like I got to form five, because I was, I was a very academic student, like I'd always taught my class and stuff, but I didn't, I was not interested in anything I was doing at school, like no subject, don't get me wrong, I'd get good grades in them because I had to, but I just, I was not interested at all. Music was the only thing I genuinely cared about. So by, by Sa'afa, it was pretty no-brainer like not. This is what you, I mean, given I'm living in my mom's house, I mean, I need to compromise and you know, do the Sa'afa and whatnot, but still like I knew like pretty early, this is what I want to do with my life. Wonderful. And later we'll get into that because you also had the arts thing running in your family. So there's a part of the questions I'm going to ask that will probably touch on that. But yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for that. Yeah, not being interested. I probably went through it as well, scribbling in the back of class and being told, yeah, anyway, I would see what I was told. Keo, let's hear from you. Yeah, I feel in some form or fashion, we all had, you know, similar experiences as far as that's concerned. For me, it was never really like a Eureka moment or anything where it's like, ah, this music is this is that. I find like I was always like, you know, as a, you just really like, you know, crafty and creative and, and artistic, but it always was pretty fluid. It always kind of transcended and transitioned into like different things. So even when I got into like hip hop predominantly, I never like I hated when people would like call me a rapper or something like that because I always tried my best to think outside of just the art form. Not to say that like hip hop in itself as a genre was limiting, but I didn't want to limit myself to just that and still don't. But as my journey kind of continues, that, that, that reoccurring theme is still there where I just kind of go with the wave and follow the path that is set out for me in many ways. And it just always kind of comes down to the same creative platform, but it definitely takes different forms and fashions along the way. Yeah, man. Yeah, completely understood. And that's touching on something I'm very interested in at the moment, you know, I'm thinking a lot about a similar complaint by Kanye West, for example, and many artists now in the idea of being kind of restricted to a particular, even in a creative environment, being restricted to a particular definition, a particular, you know, through words, it's amazing how words could kind of constantly insist on us remaining the same or staying in one box. Exactly. And it's also interesting how like those parallels can be seen throughout society, throughout culture. Like there's always the notion of, of categorization, of, of trying to fit something into something that we could explain, something that we could understand only because of our own limited understanding. I hope that, you know, even this discussion can, can, can, you know, start to break some of the barriers. Yep. Yep. Yep. Can you say what about you, your aha moment when you wrote an epic at the age of five? Well, first of all, thank you Vlad for convening us. K.O. Chadia, Asha. Lovely to be among you. And of course, to all the people at S.A.L.C.C., I don't, you know, I would not offer a kind of originating moment, except to perhaps bring myself into the, what, what has already been established, I suppose, about, about us as a people, as a, as a Caribbean people, perhaps, that we don't have any fealty to silos. You know, I, I, from Jack Mill out in, in, you know, in, in the, in the village, I perhaps was born into an epic. So I didn't have to write one at five years old. My grandmother was a wicked storyteller, just a wonderful, brilliant, generous human being who was always singing and telling stories and such. And my mother was also a theater actress in her own right. She was brilliant. She's actually the first La Uen Coel, certainly, see history making moment there. And I was on stage with her for that. So I was always, I suppose, in, in an environment of rich artistic expression. And my appreciation for growing up in a place where art happens everywhere, and it's not relegated to any high tower is really part and parcel of what I carry with me. And certainly I have Derek Walcott as a guide and teacher. You know, we studied his plays, none of his poems, incidentally, in a high school and secondary school. And I applied to SALCC and didn't get in because I failed math, right. And so here I am on this side of that history. So didn't we all fail math? Yeah. Yeah, I, it doesn't seem we have to go far to find, you know, to find the artistic moment, as I think you pointed out, can you say it's kind of existing around already. You know, I know my dad used to be reading Walcott all the time. And I should mention as well that I never really did Walcott poems in secondary school either. I was a member of the drama club and therefore encountered his plays. But later at SALCC, Kendall Hippolyte taught me Derek Walcott. And then it was on the Cambridge syllabus at the time. But yeah, we don't have to go far. But but your response brings me to exactly what I wanted to ask next. And it's an interesting question because it's actually about community. It's about the communities that you were mentioning, Jack Mill, your mom, your grandmother. It's about the communities we're coming out of. And what was that like, you know, what was the kind of texture of those communities? And I'm using the term broadly here because where I grew up, the neighborhood I grew up in, I don't really consider the communities as like eight, eight houses, people don't talk to each other, etc. But whatever you consider your community in that kind of early moment, what was it like in Chadia? Are you where you're from? I'm from the People's Republic of Library. The People's Republic of Library. I know Kinesia is from Jack Mill. Asha, I don't know where you're from. And Keo, I don't know where you're from. But I kind of, it's not necessarily about the place. It's whatever you want to cover around that word community. But I'd still be interested in hearing something about the place, the groups you found yourself among. How was it for you being in those groups? Did you receive encouragement? Did you receive the opposite of that? Was it a kind of mixture? I just want to hear the texture of that in each of your experiences. Chadia, could you start us off? Oh, for sure, for sure, for sure. Like I said, I heal from the People's Republic of Library. This, reaching intellectual prowess, reaching cultural prowess, very proud Lamourian. And I frequently say that although my parents, my two parents, Marcia and Charles, raised me, that I am very much the product of community. My father was a teacher, very well known in the community. My mother was also very well known in the community. My godparents played a very instrumental role in who I am. Certain people like Miss Lydia, Charles, mine, always ensuring that we had books on my maternal side. There are 84 of us in terms of grants. So I grew up with a ton of cousins around. And I'm one of the youngest ones, most of them are older than than I am. So I had all of that. And he had this very competitive nature amongst ourselves. Like Miss Luverin said, so many storytellers, my grandmothers, both of them, both my maternal and paternal grandmother, they would tell a story like no other. And there are my grandmothers who died a couple of years ago in 2019, but now twice. It's about some of the things she used to say. She would say them in such an unusual and unique way. Instead of all of us, we frequently, we frequently remind each other of the things she would say. My father's mother is important. Also the church, first place I played the keys, which then led my parents to actually investing and sending me off to go and learn piano classically. But I'm very much the fruit of community. Everything that I am is being shipped by the places I've been, the people who have been around. I also attended South of Louis, where I got a lot of space and time to showcase my talents. I don't know if some of you remember me. But yes, wrote songs, wrote poetry, Miss Jacobs class. So everywhere I've been, the people around me, they've shaped me and they've given me opportunities. I'm eternally grateful for. I don't think anybody there taught you Kadia. This is an entirely young staff. They just started, most of them are fresh out of high school, you know, she was there. No, she's definitely fresh out of secondary school. She'd never taught you. Asha, what about you? Well, I was born and raised in Entrypo my whole life. And as far as community goes, I'd say it's pretty much very similar to what Chadia was saying, like as much as my parents and the neighbors in my immediate gap, like influenced how I was raised and how I came up. It was definitely a lot of just between friends and family in different pockets here and there. I mean, I, when I think about the different chapters of my life, because that's how I kind of put it, because there were times where I spent a lot of time, like Larry, there were times I spent a lot of time, Bagatell, just different places through friends and family, right? And I mean, thinking about it, I, for lack of better words, I followed for a long time, but I don't think that was a bad thing because in following, I got exposed to a lot of different facets of life that I would not have been exposed to if I was just to be limited to Point Cedar Road, Entrypo, and never left the gap, you know what I mean? Because as much as our home is on the hill in Entrypo, I mean, Marsha is just down there. That's where most of my friends from schools stay. My other friend, Bagatell, just a lot of, like I got around a lot and got a lot of exposure to a lot of things. So by the time that I developed like my own character and personality, there were a lot of reference points, both as far as like life topics and even musical references, because then that's something to consider as well. I mean, in my house alone, my dad would drop me to Mondo every morning, listening to Neil Diamond. So there was that my mom, if it wasn't jazz, then it's gospel, then the steel pan, like there was a lot of influences. My brother, R&B, my oldest brother, hip-hop. So again, there were just a lot of influences. So by the time I decided like I'm tackling this, there were a lot of places to pull from. Yeah, yeah, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Well, true. My name is Jean-Jacques Mel. But I only spent the first eight years of my life there. I spent the other eight in Moabuia Valley, in Denier, Riviera. I actually went to school, high school, at Clinton Mason Memorial secondary school, right, in Dennery. And that scene that Derek Walcott famously wrote about. Yes, I mean, a lot of what has been said sounds quite similar for me in terms of a venturing, a concept of the place that sort of helped to make my artistic imagination. I started reading before I actually started school by watching Sesame Street. I learned the alphabets there. And by the time I got to kindergarten, and we started doing things on the teacher started doing things on the board with chalk, right, with chalk and blackboard. And I started reading along and she said, oh my God, you can read. And I said, yes, Sesame Street. There was music in it. The sort of appreciation that I have for language is very instrumental. It's the sound of language that sort of resonates in my artistic imagination. And I was in a choir from the minute I started to read, up until maybe 28 years old, somewhere thereabouts. And I play a bunch of instruments. So I've been in the company of musicians, of artists and thinkers and philosophers that you just walk down the road. And Mr. Balance says a thing that is so completely revelatory, or you might pass a homeless person on the street. And they will say something that is so completely revelatory. So I sort of had that appreciation for, you know, existing in the placeness of language and how those things resonate. And then of course, later on, I found the practitioners, the quote unquote masters, Derek Walcott, Shakespeare, Sam Sullivan, Kamau Brathwaite, and John Robert Lee, and Kendall Hippolyte, and others, Jane Hippolyte, and etc. It really wasn't until I found the work of Dion Brand that I really, really, really heard myself, you know. So sometimes it takes a kind of, if I can use a ladder metaphor, it takes a kind of climbing and taking along with you. The things that make you piece by piece. And really, what I've come to appreciate is the kind of the landscape of the imagination that all of these people and those experiences have brought me towards. Wonderful. And similar kind of themes kind of in all of what you're saying, it's very much the mundane reality of the community surrounding that serves as the inspiration. What about you, Keio? Yeah, again, you know, each story kind of has parallels. I grew up in Cicero, Born and Raised, and most of my life there. I had an interesting, you know, experience growing up because I feel like in many ways, like I had a sort of like middle child experience, like I'm the last of five kids, but I'm the only child between my parents and I was the youngest. So while I have a cool relationship with my siblings, my real brotherhoods and my real family relationships were built outside of that. You know, I mean, like the fellas in the yard with me, like, you know, like I grew up next to my cousins, which was cool as well. So that really molded me in an interesting way. And I had this experience where just at the hill, I don't know if you have a head of rain that's falling right now, but yeah, anyway, I'll just be going. Sound effects, right? Just at the hill, you would find like lawyers and doctors and all different people are like that type of walk a life and then come down just a few houses down this hill, you get a totally different lifestyle and then just a few cases down, you get an entirely different lifestyle and I would subway stuff, you know, right in the middle. So even as a child growing up, I had this, I was exposed to sort of like a lot of different people from a lot of different walks of life and a lot of different influences. I took that with me going into secondary school and that sort of molded my relationships and my friendships with the people that I formed real bonds with coming out of school from there too. And even just how like it affected my influence, what influences me musically. The same kind of like why facets of life that I had been like exposed to is the same way I approach music, why I like to take different elements of different genres and different aspects of soundscapes and make what feels right for me, you know what I mean? And I think again it's always been, the common themes is always there was small said about being a follower for so long or finding so much imagination in all of these communities and how the influence is moving forward. I think that's what makes our journey so interesting because of where we come from, it's so culturally rich that we can't help but tell the story of this place telling our own. I think even your last words echoed the same aspiration that Derek Walcott and Dunstan Sentoma had that he spoke about in another life where he was talking about literally, he would not stop until he's put all of this down in words and paint and what it shows you is how immense and endless that source is because we have people several years younger than Derek Walcott who are actually trying to do the same thing which is very interesting. What I really would like you to do at this point as a way of shifting things slightly, I would like each of you to very briefly because we're all based in different places. Kyo I don't know if you're in solution now but I want you to talk about Canada. So we're all in these places, just give us as briefly as you can a picture of your Ghana, Chadia, your Canada, Asher, your Canada, Canissia, your Canada, Kyo. My New York is a bunch of scaffolding, you know it's very very boring, human feces on the sidewalk, very very uninteresting so I will leave mine alone and let's go to Chadia. What is your Ghana? Let me just add one, let me add one thing, when I say your place you know you could speak to it, some of you have been in that place for some time so it's both a sense of giving us a picture very briefly like a snapshot of the place but through your own kind of personal encounter of it, you know it might even be a moment of culture shock that you add into whatever you say but we want a picture for our audience of conclusions around the world kind of sort of yeah. Sure yeah so as I was saying Ghana for me is pretty multi-faceted, I've lived in three of the main municipals, Accra which is the city, I've lived in Tamale which is another municipal and it's predominantly Muslim, I spent a year there, some of the best times of my life and I've also lived in Kumasi, Comerica as they call it here which is Ashanti land, a very vibrant place, how I would describe my Ghana, it reminds me of a of a simpler time in Ziyan, and I would say I think I went to the country with my grandmother for the first time probably when I was six or seven so we walked from library into bands my cousins and my grandmother and Ghana reminds me of an untouched simplicity in Lucia, I went to Ghana about five months after my grandmother passed and I'm usually the pillar of strength in my family and the first time I mourned my grandmother was when I was in Ghana, I was on a bus ride from Accra to Kumasi which is five minutes and I saw this older woman with a head tied just like my grandmother would tie her head and she was walking two kids home from school and it just reminded me of my grandmother taking my younger sister and I was some of my cousins and I from school and the damn broke that was the first time I actually cried about my grandmother dying because Ghana was so symbolic and so representative of so many things that I know of her so Ghana also Ghana has also let me just say this Ghana has changed my perception in terms of what I require out of a meat, the men are extremely chivalrous, extremely understanding of their responsibilities, extremely committed to their duties as men, I know there is this stereotype of African men being not committed but that has not been my experience in Ghana, my experience in Ghana has so much changed me to the point where I walk a door and I no longer touch doors to have them opened and I was quite the feminist who could handle my business before I arrived there so in certain instances yeah I'm definitely feeling Ghana, three years on so this is my Ghana. Thank you, you might cause an exodus from St Lucia to Ghana of all our female population but that's okay that's that's all right St Lucia men take notes, Asher you're Canada you could tell us the city or the cities that kind of mark your Canada and in a brief portrait you're Canada. Well currently I live with my brother in Kitchener but like I frequent Toronto most weekends and my Canada or at least my Toronto I'd say this like it's weird because when I came up to Canada I remember telling like one of the guys in my class like I didn't come here to make friends or like I came here to do my music stuff I didn't really come here to be nice like and then um yeah it's all good and then um I don't know fast forward it just more so than the setting it opened my eyes to like open mindedness right because Toronto is very there's a lot of it's very multicultural like you'll get I mean the Americans the the the Muslims or what like there's a lot it's a melting pot of a lot of different like people from different backgrounds and different perspectives and I find is is it's one of those places if you're open to like being to learning new like new experiences and new backgrounds and you open to having conversations with people you're gonna like be exposed and your mindset is gonna just open up a lot like I find my Canadian experience was a lot more a mental eye opening versus like oh wow I'm in Canada like it was it was definitely because this like the coming from St. Lucia I mean I don't want to bash us but it's we can be like most on the male side it can be very misogynistic and like a lot of a lot of stuff that like really doesn't cater to a healthy outlook on how you should approach like you know life and whatnot and then you come to Canada and like you just you speak to different people about different things and different takes and you realize like maybe that isn't that bad maybe you know I mean just little things like that so that was more my experience in Canada versus like the actual place but the place itself is an atmosphere as well especially at nights I find like I haven't and I mean I haven't traveled that much but I find the vibe in Toronto at night depend on where you are like it's hard to replace that thank you the excellence from St. Lucia continues I think by the end of this conversation we may have to kind of you know hold back the female population from migrating to Canada and Canada and Canada. What about you Kanishia you're Canada in a very poetic poetic and brief portrait well it doesn't have to be poetic a brief portrait well um a brief portrait I mean if anybody who's been exposed to to the the behemoth of empire that is America probably has a good sense a good corollary sense of what you know a metropolis like like Toronto is they wouldn't be far off but for me as as a writer and a thinker and just generally as a as a human being who is very curious voraciously curious Toronto is a place where you know it's actually becoming more and more hostile to poor people it's a it's a really difficult place for anybody to be able to afford rent unless unless it's you know you have some trust fund or or some other means of pooling your your resources to be able to live but I don't live in in Toronto I'm on the I'm on the outskirts right I'm in the suburbs linguistically it's an extremely interesting place you move through languages in an hour you could probably move through 10 15 20 different languages and the cultural richness of that alone I think is is one of the things that makes a person feel hopeful about the world and so you know everything that comes along with being amongst people who are so varied and interesting just puts us back in in in a in a kind of fuller appreciation for the fact that we are a commune we are of tribes of many different stripes and that that can only be really thrilling for a writer I'm just telling you I just got two texts one from a female friend saying she's moving to Ghana and another from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking for Chadia and Asher's contact information just kidding you tell us succinctly your Canada your Toronto or wherever it is that you rep yeah for me my experience with Canada I'd have to divide it into two because when I originally went there I went to Halifax Nova Scotia that's why I studied marketing and then once I was done with my degree I had moved to Toronto my experience with Halifax was one where it felt like big enough and small enough at the same time it felt like a a big city experience but culturally it still gave me that sort of like vibe that St. Lucia gave me that center community that center camaraderie that center there's just a good energy about it that that could be felt um and in Toronto Toronto gave me the experience where it's a much bigger ocean of a city um but my existence in it felt smaller in that because it's such a bigger city I I stick not necessarily stick to what I know but it's easy for people to form their little factions and their little communities and their little tribes within such a behemoth of a of a city because that's how you essentially like you know survive and thrive and and and grow so I found that um Toronto and in that way that's why people have these unique experiences with these places because it's it's so unique because you form these different little connections and relations and everything that's that's so unique and specific to you and your experience and your journey and how you interact with this this environment in this place so that's what it was like for me in Toronto um but the the the vastness of it culturally is what's so so rich and so inspiring and so empowering um it's like you could get a piece of of everything it's it's often described Toronto is often described as a cultural mosaic and it really is a pretty idealic way of of of describing it because you you get to be yourself within this ocean of so much vibes and so much culture and that's what I love about Toronto yeah one of the things I'm realizing is that at least from all of what what what you guys are saying is it makes a difference in terms of the the age at which you you go to these places because my experience I've been in New York since about um like middle of 2019 um and you know I I when I was going to do undergrad I actually was looking at schools here I was looking at schools on the east coast here first before but it really helped me to have like gotten all of that time in the Caribbean before because it could be a very alienating experience very disorienting experience and and and having I guess we're in a we're in a kind of privileged position in a way strangely to say it of of going there having set your feet firmly somewhere else and understanding where you're coming from um I think I just saw Trevor Noah was interviewing uh uh someone who just published a book I don't remember the name now but she's from Trinidad and she was talking about even the differences of being a black person from the Caribbean and one and living as a black American because she lived as both and she moved back to Tobago during the pandemic and was looking in on America now from that perspective because there is you know there are some nuances in terms of um um being a black Caribbean person there and so on I I hopefully we could get around to that but we also have to kind of really audience in I wanted to ask a very just a very interesting very brief poll and then a question um the poll is when you first got to this place what do you think about it culturally what do you think about it professionally what you're trying to do on a scale of one to ten how would you rate the difficulty for you to kind of just enter this place um so I just to make it very brief how would you rate it from like one to ten Chadia you're always our number one probably about seven or eight um the difficulty that's that difficult that's what you say okay so it's okay I wouldn't say ten is very difficult one is piece of cake okay so I would probably say about two or three okay we're about yeah okay what about you Asha anyway it varies from like six to eight okay eleven I would give mine like uh three or four but again I'll be brief here because again it's so unique to your experience because for me I went into university when I went I went with about 20 solutions that went to say very okay and then from there I spent like four or five years in Halifax where I was doing music for some time I had already taught the country several several times before even moving to Toronto so by the time I moved to Toronto I already had relationships I already had a network within me so the transition was a lot smoother yeah but I just like come out the soil and just like suitcase in hand and just let's go I'm you know I'm sure it would have been an entire different experience yeah I'm thinking of my own experience um I live in a neighborhood where there's just um plenty of white women in yoga clothes and small dogs that I have to get off the sidewalk to allow to pass I don't know how to read that on the one to ten scale but that's and I got there I got there just before the pandemic started so I spent a lot of time just in my neighborhood getting off the sidewalk for very small dogs um anyway um so what what I would ask and there's a very interesting question already in the chat which I would have gotten to but I'm glad it was asked but I'd also ask again very briefly because of an experience I had I went to St. Lucia for the first time since 2019 this Christmas um sorry to all the people who I didn't see who are probably giving me side eye right now but um it was an extremely enriching experience for me to go back like I went back with my suitcase full of bay leaf and um but having spent that time abroad now there's a different perspective on St. Lucia you're no longer in the mix of it you're kind of in and out um you're looking at it now for different things different forms of sustenance and so on one do you see St. Lucia as a as a source of sustenance for you to help you kind of maintain your strength or whatever while you're there you know even the experience of coming back you know or even going back in your mind or receiving a package with I don't know a breadfruit in it um from from from your parents or whoever in St. Lucia what how is St. Lucia now a source or is it a source of sustenance for you briefly um to just take us away as briefly as you all can because our time but um starting with you Chadia um so you want me to answer your question or what I see in the chat but no my question will get to will get to what we see in the chat yeah um how is it Lucia a source of sustenance for me or is it you don't have to yeah but certain extent yes it is um I came back home after I'd been in Ghana for two years um and I spent three months at home I think most of most of all I miss my family things are very culturally similar um except for the food Ghanaian food reminds me mostly of beijan food and there's this saying around the Caribbean that beijans can't cook so the food was definitely a difficult thing for me to get used to I don't think I've gotten used to it um I think I'm polite when I go out but it's definitely an acquired taste so definitely for food uh I definitely need St. Lucia uh I had to ask my mother to send me some bar and green seasoning and um um paper uh after about the first year I was here so uh yeah in terms of food yes uh food and family everything else now uh I'm good um all the jollof rice jollof rice anyway these things these things African people know how to hide their stuff a jollof can't touch a pillow that's just my perspective fair enough yes Asha I mean generally home will always be like the like the power source you know what I mean no matter I feel like no matter where I go in life I'll say Lucia will always be like whether I need to physically be there or I need to speak to somebody from there every week or some like I need some kind of call it grounding if you want um in relation to what Chabiya said I'm definitely with you on the food thing like my mom came up in January and for Jab the lady I had to make it stupid all the time like literally all the time um so definitely like I mean food and different cultural aspects like it was kind of jarring um and since I've been to Canada I've only been back home once for like two weeks but even then I mean before I left I'm somebody I'd always be on the beach every Sunday where I go with people where I go by myself so there's little things like that I'm like there's no replacing that you know what I mean like being able to yo it's Sunday let's go in the waterfall down south like there's no replacing that so there's definitely those experiences that like I hold very daily and as far as just staying in touch with people or when I can go back home that kind of definitely it's like a it's a replenishing factor for sure yeah um I just another little Derek Walker anecdote I remember reading somewhere I think in an article written by his daughter about even his daughter who's Trinidadian always talking about him being very Sintlushan at heart um very very much his meal of choice was always the same as me like fish stew with with ground provisions that's kind of that's that's a that's soul food for me um so so even Derek Walker traveling you know eating spaghetti in in in Italy or paella in Spain or whatever he was craving like you were craving your stew pork he was craving fish and provisions and stuff like that um sorry let me just rebook the speaking as well because I find for the most part my accent hasn't changed but then depending on who you speak to it's almost like you have to speak perfect English like proper English for you to be understood and that just like it it annoyed me for so long because it would even be a case where I'm speaking perfect English and there's what do you say what is how don't you understand you know but then but then you meet people that are and this is not knocking Canadians but then you meet people that aren't from Canada from other parts of the world your accent they catch up like nothing African like the Africans have met up here for the most part I speak like a Sintlushan to them like that's all you do you know what I mean but then you start talking to Canadians and whatnot again no slight to them but it's like you have to like okay so I'm vocalized like you have to be very articulate so that's definitely another jarring factor some people will see that's a microaggression I mean I don't even have to think about where Sintlusha lives in in in my in my sense of myself in my sense of my work seems autonomous actually it's just it's simply part of what has created me right and so even when it's not explicit it's there it's there it's there in the language it's there in you know the fact the fact that I need to have a mango every hour of the day and I can't and the mangoes suck in this part of the world by the way well I'm you know I'm lucky enough to live in a place where there are many West Indian grocery stores and I can roll in and pick up some good mangoes you know but again it's it's not the same it's not the same as simply walking out into the backyard and coming back with your mango and your guava yaki right um but certainly the the what alights my imagination even now as I am what a writer does is is we pay attention to the world ceaselessly what is happening now what has happened since I left all of it is is sort of tinged with the with the Sintlusha that's in me you know can't help it I mean it's really interesting whenever this kind of talk comes up of home food is the first thing people go to and I mean we I don't know we have probably some famous chefs and so on but food is something extremely important an extremely kind of tactile form of identity you know just you grew up tasting that that's a very intimate kind of connection that you're sharing and partaking of with the island it's like you're eating at the table with the island when you when you eat you know with your beginnings you know in a way you know a green there's something about a green fig and and bucks that there's we had to meet you you know what I mean I see some people saying amen in the crowd yeah keo um well for me I man I've been trying to skip the winters as much as possible and I've been successful at that for the past I want to say three years um not entirely by my own hand that was largely important to covid but what I found in my time here in Sintlusha in correlation to what it has always meant to me and what it means to me now Sintlusha was always a place of of recalibration of grounding a place where I could come in and find that peace and that balance that I was looking for but I think with everything the longer the longer you have a relationship with something the at some point in time that relationship evolves so while it a while at some point in time it changed from being this place of zen this place of escape and it became this place um that was meant to challenge me um mentally spiritually physically at times you know um so it at this point in time in my journey it means something different to me symbolically but still you know very very important and very profound at this moment in my opinion at least you know yeah it sounds like in a sense you never really leave you know you go but you never really leave if that makes definitely definitely definitely and again I think I could speak for for all of us here where where that um that is seen in the work that we do you know I mean um we we're Sintlushans have this this innate talent of like tapping into damn near anything but keeping that unique essence and that unique signature and it's hard to like you know put your finger on what it is exactly that that makes it so uniquely um Sintlushan the color the sound the the smell just the vibe of it all it influences everything that we do it influences the way we talk the way we walk the way we interact with each other the way we write the way we think the way we receive the world everything this is our jacket our our foundation for that our blueprint and necessarily so I want to go to our physical in studio audience to to take the question from the chat um Natalie are you are you there are you ready to shepherd us I am I am Vlad can you hear can you hear me yes yes I can hear you Natalie great excellent discussion um so far guys um I know the audience couldn't see it well the YouTube audience can't see us all the time I think we're going to get pinned now so this is our small group here listening to you live and we do have a few more people on our Zoom link we have some staff members we have Mr Lee I see Jesse in there so we have quite a few members within our Zoom um who joined our Zoom as well as those watching us live on on YouTube so um I know I didn't get to say hello to all of you all so hi for those of you I haven't seen I'm sure you could recognize those logs dripping there with the gray beard he's going to come on in a in a little while um and I want you to speak to those people as well who have carried the odds for a while themselves but I'm going to get to the question in the Zoom chat now and Vlad it's from from Robert Lee and I'm sure I heard you mentioned him earlier I'm getting old stuff to put on the glasses so thank you so much Mr Lee he says great discussion and his question is how did moving to these foreign in quotes societies increase your awareness of yourself as black people in a hostile racist world okay so how did moving to these foreign societies increase your awareness of yourselves as black people in a hostile racist world and how did you negotiate that challenge if it were a challenge over to you guys Vlad I think you should start it off oh um yeah I'm not going to answer the question really I want to draw the attention I want to put the attention on the panelists but for me I mean I went to a university I entered a university where which kind of seemed like a hip university and I had to wait almost an entire year to get a course that was taught by a black person was dealing with black content I mean there's different things about it but I won't see any any more than that um I mean it's a lovely school in case they're watching it's a beautiful school but um I did have to wait for for my supervisor to get off sabbatical for me to do some black stuff um anyway um Chadia why don't we start with you because yours is interesting you move to a place that's not really like that but it'd be interesting to hear a little bit about the nuances there uh I don't know if I would say that Ghana has increased awareness of my blackness um I've always been proudly black grew up in a household with a father who very much had a pan-african mindset um I lived in New York for a year I never felt racism I when I say that people look at me like I'm crazy uh I think as Caribbean people we're not as sensitive to the microaggressions as Vladimir called them as perhaps black Americans were raised in the US or raised in other metropolitan areas I've never really felt racism I can't say I identify what racism is um if it happens I don't know if that will identify unless it's blatant and overt but yeah I don't think Ghana has increased awareness of my blackness what I have seen is perhaps the the fractions that exist within us as black people I recently had a classmate of mine telling me at the University of Ghana that Caribbean black Caribbean people feel they're better than Africans um but thankfully that statement was based largely on her interactions with Jamaica and Jamaicans and not necessarily the entire Caribbean um but she was of the perception that black Caribbean people feel they're better than Jamaicans feel they're better than everybody just exactly so I had to try to I didn't want to throw my Jamaican brethren and sister in under the bus but I had to let them know okay well maybe it's a Jamaican thing I don't think it's a Caribbean thing I think people are genuine and even with Jamaicans their entire thinking has always been let's go back to Africa uh the Rastafarian movement uh so many of them have been advocating let's go back to the continent so I don't necessarily get where that comes from but yeah it has necessarily increased my awareness of being black it's made me appreciate sitting things um that some of us lacked because of migration from the continent to to hinterland according to the the scholars and the academics um but yeah for example I appreciated my father's brand of manhood uh much better when I came to Ghana uh it's something yeah it's something that you know you live with this guy so he's just lost on you how committed and responsible he is how seriously he takes his commitment to his family um of the belief that you marry this woman and you marry your entire family I think so many of my cousins can see that my dad has played such an influence influential role in shaping them um so I definitely see so many of these qualities in Ghanaian men and so it definitely made me appreciate my father's brand of manhood better um so I'm just going to end here and pass over yeah yeah I would say just to add very briefly on on your thing I actually have had very few um experiences of racism actually one of the few that I could think of happened in Saint Lucia um with people who were Saint Lucia um well technically um so so that's interesting as well it's good to hear these diverse perspectives because I I've not had I've been lucky let's see to not have a a resistant encounter or encounter with a microaggression um here except probably one little thing which I'm not sure was that I don't know but um it was in Saint Lucia and I was I was quite young probably in my teens when that happened so it's everywhere and it's good to hear how diverse it is and and also that it does exist in Saint Lucia as well um smallest um I'll say for me it was like definitely there was the eye opener as far as like certain microaggressions as you say with regards to racism but I don't know it it was still a lot more of a I find myself learning myself more as a Saint Lucian versus a black person in Canada because even in Canada like don't get me wrong you'll meet black people all over the place but I mean with the the the background that I come from there's there's there were minimal like places for us to kind of relate and and it took my like stepping out of myself and let me really learn where you're coming from because otherwise I just we can't like we can't really talk about anything now with that being said I have probably on one hand I can count a number of instances where like I'm pretty sure it was racist and I'm someone like I'm not quick to snap so most of those situations I'm thinking of it was only like after it happened and I went to my like wow that was I think that was kind of racist but in that sense it's still like it's it's one of those things where I'm aware of it to a certain degree it doesn't and like I'm trying to think about what it better it doesn't necessarily rile me up I feel like how it would get the average person like oh you try to disrespect me for some racist stuff but I mean it's definitely it's it I've definitely been exposed to certain certain instances especially coming from back home I mean it's it's more of a colorism thing right not saying that not they aren't other races in Saint Lucia as well but coming from Saint Lucia it's it's more of a dark skin versus light skin versus you come to Canada and it's a black white whatever like you know the case so I think it was more my experience in Canada it was more of the awareness of myself as a Saint Lucia versus the awareness of myself as a black person because I still didn't really I was a black person in Canada but I didn't feel like I was part of a community in Canada I just felt like a black Saint Lucia in Canada right that's interesting and I would just I'll just add probably a little sprinkling on what people see when it resonates but when I think of the encounter I had here that felt a little racist to me it was it was literally at an orientation gathering where I was at a table the only black person at the table and the person who was let's say a professor or somebody of that nature sat at the table and it was actually set up for people to interact with the incoming prospective students to try to get them to come and everybody at the table was spoken to accept me maybe it is racist I don't know but the funny thing is I ended up having a very good relationship with that person afterwards but what I was going to say was that there was a strong sense in my mind of you came to accomplish something and I remember Toni Morrison talks about racism being distraction largely you know because it distracts you to engage with you in an argument that you're you know you're in an argument more with yourself to do what you came to do than you really are with this silly argument about people not liking you for the color of your skin so there was a kind of sense in me of just like you know I came here for something okay this person's racist let's move on on to the next thing and so on so maybe there is an aspect of it especially coming from a place like St. Lucia where you know if you come to these places and you have to contend with what's there and get what's yours there you kind of need to move you know I don't know um Kinesia um Robert thank you for the question it is a huge question and really we we cannot even begin to scratch the surface of of this thing given the time that we have even if we did have two or three out we couldn't but I would just say that everything I've heard already is in fact proof of the insidiousness and the ubiquity of racism of anti-black racism specifically what Chadia said about this apparent quip about that differentiates Africans continental Africans from Caribbean people what Asha is saying what Vladimir is saying about oh I think that might have been racism all of that is in fact racism right and we all live that the climate as Christina Sharp brilliant scholar Christina Sharp says in her book In the Wake on blackness and being she says the very climate of the world post transatlantic slavery is in fact anti-black racist it's it's we live in the weather of racism seasonlessly but um to really have to contend with with that thing uh Robert I will just say that one of the modes of having to deal with um existing in the undeniably anti-black world that European colonialism created in the world um is is in fact the kind of hyper vigilance and it's the same kind of hyper vigilance that's that makes us think was that a microaggression was was that racism and no definitely that was have been called the n-word um you know the fact that um the entire the structure of of the modern world is built on a foundation of anti-blackness um isn't that just it's just it's just the fact whether you're in Saint Lucia Ghana or Australia look at what's happening right now in Ukraine with asylum being denied to black people who are fleeing the war right so anyway that's my two cents yeah thank you for that I think you know what I'm hearing like in everybody is I what can you say yes racism is a reality and based on the person based on the the milieu in which you find yourself you would have different kind of encounters with it I think the question looking in my mind and and I see kind of implicit in some of your answers is how much of a role do we give it um in our lives in terms of that like you know there's a sense of being on a trajectory and what personally I think of it as a distraction as much as it is an issue it's also an issue of distraction and the more I'm trying to understand who I am I find it increasingly necessary not to deny racism at all um but to not argue on its terms but to argue on my terms in terms of what I'm actually dealing with what I'm choosing to to to deal with I mean every day routinely I would walk on the sidewalk and nobody would get off the sidewalk they would walk with their dogs right into me and I would have to get off the sidewalk and I just asked myself the question yeah that's probably something does that bother me no not that but I might take on another battle you know there might be something else that I decide this is going to be my battle but not this because if I'm going to take on every aspect of what happens I will be derailed from whatever journey I've come here to achieve which has nothing to do with my race that's something to do with myself um it has something to do with my potentials which has no skin color um it has things to do with what I was sent into this world to do and in a way I might attitude to it is to not allow it's to deal with what I have to deal with and stand up for self but it's to not allow anything to derail my mind my peace etc as much as possible for me to stay on that trajectory that I feel deeply inside of me um intuitively um it's an interesting topic it's topic as as things you said we could go on for for you just to talk about um KO if I can just what KO goes um I let me just interject here really briefly I'm I'm sure that Botham Jing had exactly the same kinds of appreciations of himself but you do there's a something that's really important to do is to differentiate what is happening on the individual level from the structural reality of racism and so these are two these are very deeply related issues but um the mistake that's being made all the time is is people are constantly reducing the sort of modern experience structure of racism down to the personal and interpersonal it's real it's out there it's out there it's up to each individual to deal with it you know how do you see fit um KO yeah for me both for you all kind of well for me I kind of I tend to agree both for y'all in a sense where um or rather this is how it informs my answer a little bit more that being over there I have experienced racism in the past I wish I could say I hadn't um I I've experienced racism with predominantly law enforcement too and um it's scary scary sometimes very very scary um but I think my experiences have enabled me to acknowledge the structure that is racism and um find my way of navigating through it um that's how I would I would answer that um and again touching on what's most that earlier um my personal experience outside of the aspect of racism in a foreign country in itself um was it helped me um how do I say this it it helped me find my cushionness a little bit more if you will um it made me realize like being before I had left St. Lucia I I did not have the type of appreciation immense appreciation for for how this place has um influenced me until I was over there until I realized the value in that the power in that until I realized how much it differentiated me from the path and and enabled me with something that was um they couldn't replicate you know that that's what my experience was I also felt a lot of that sense of being out an outsider I felt that predominantly in Toronto more so than I did in Halifax um because I feel like Toronto being a much bigger city and there being more of a tendency for people to form their factions if you will by the time I got there everyone was already clicked up with whoever went to high school together whoever came from the same borough together or whatever you know I mean everyone kind of had their their tribe that they were already checking for and all I had as my my tools or my resources was what I could bring to the table and what I could print to the table was unique because I was single because I am single yeah it's an interesting landscape I not could you in the meantime see if we have anything else from our audience I was just going to say that I've actually been watching this show which deals with it in a very interesting way Atlanta if any of you haven't been watching a Donald Glover show yeah which does a really great I mean the last episode came out and it was a really good satire on that kind of thing you know it's very much there and I think you know in reference to what Kenecia was saying I think there's also an importance to not fall into a certain Caribbean smugness that we could have about you know there's a it's a balance you know we can fall into a certain smugness about the issue of race because we come in a sort of privileged way from societies where we've you know you don't feel your blackness in that way but it's important entering these spaces to recognize yourself as existing along the lines just by virtue of your skin with two communities you're both a Caribbean person and as Kio said I think he pointed to a very real example as just a black person you you know they probably stopped if you got the law enforcement dealt with you at least phenotypically what they saw first was a black guy black Canadian or whatever and they were ready to deal with you like that so so I completely understand this is a two this is a kind of complex issue that requires a lot of balance and I think the balancing is part of the the solution for us if there is any solution really but it's the way to navigate it as I think Kio put it in a nice way of understanding that Caribbeanness taking strength from it but also understanding that you have to deal with the politics of a black community existing in that space and that you are part of it whether you like it or not so yes Natalie sorry to you thank you Vlad and I really want to thank Mr Lee for bringing that up it was so interesting hearing Kio I loved your response to that um I don't want to say it's unfortunate we that we appreciate our uniqueness when we leave Saint Lucia but it's a good thing that we do and I'm happy that you're saying that there is a uniqueness about us um so we have an in in-house comment now from the great Boots Samuel so I'm going to hand the mic over to him now greetings Vlad greetings and greetings to all my brother and sister artists in the diaspora um this is a broke artist a broke elder elder artist okay just linking back to how you all started this whole discussion um let me first start by saying offering my appreciation for this discourse um y'all young upcoming artists solution artists out there in the world I am inspired by the level of this of this discourse you know and please don't underestimate how important some of the things that you all are saying there for younger artists in Saint Lucia right now who are facing the very same thing a number of you face before saying that we can't make it here as an artist and we go sooner or later we'll have to go outside and find a way to leave Saint Lucia and so on so a lot of what what you all are seeing there are very very inspirational for the younger artists so my appreciation to you all for this level of discourse I also want to mention um and this is not to um bring down the honor that we are giving to Derek Walcott you know as almost the father of a number of what we are creating here in Saint Lucia today but to mention that especially when I listen to I think it's Calicia mentioning her mom um her mom was the first Laowen Creole our show um director of Focus Center at that time this was our show and there was Calicia mentioning in terms of mentioning artists and artists in influence in her life and has become today first person she mentioned was her mom I knew that I saw her and that lady was a tremendous a tremendous actor okay comedian actor and as well as carrying a lot of the folk the folk art in her she was a she was truly a queen you know and so thanks to Calicia for mentioning her because I just want to mention that there are like Derek Walcott a lot of those Saint Lucia artists who did not make it economically who did not make it around but who are there as our parents as in in terms of the arts and our development as artists you know and even you I mean Brad you mentioned Kendall almost in terms of at Sa'afa when you came to Sa'afa and his influence on you and so on um from lab um what's the library Charlie meant those Republic of Library and she keeps saying it with a kind of a proud pride because library has produced some you know and some very strong community artists artists okay so yes we recognize and we honor Derek Walcott but that that is not to blind and to cover up a number of Saint Lucians whose name is not out there and so on who have remained at the folk level at the country level at the community level who have influence and and may open the way for people like them like you all to be out there and thanks Robert also for the for the identity question because my question is just based on identity to just you know about to exploit because I think you all said a lot about but to ask how much is your Saint Lucianness because you all are Saint Lucian artists out there in the diaspora yes you all are black artists also but how much you all find that your Saint Lucianness is an asset to your artwork out there in that competitive it there's something about your Saint Lucianness that goes into this and make you competitive and push you out yeah boots I I absolutely love the the what you have brought here and I think that's something very important to establish in a panel like this is everybody able to hear me yeah yeah I think it's extremely extremely important because I was actually just working on a chapter of my dissertation on Kamau Brathwit and Kamau Brathwit taught at the school where I'm at now he traveled to Ghana he lived in Ghana he lived in England he lived in Saint Lucia for a year and then went to Jamaica and he and the journey he's talking about in understanding himself and writing from a secure place within himself is actually having to go back and know his family anew his uncle who was a furniture maker his father who he never really took the time to know and he writes about it very poignantly you know about that actually being the call it like the moment where he's really rooting his art and it's poignant because it's happening so late in his career after he had been writing about the folk for many years right I would briefly answer it and put it over to the panelists but I could tell you at least both in terms of like for example my collection Sounding Ground was very much based on my mother's world in a way in that I grew up in a kind of I would call it a suburb kind of bellerosa eight houses neighbors don't talk to each other I didn't have that kind of community thing so much except when I went to primary school in Moshi before I went over to Anglican school in in Castries where I had no community but where I went to that school which is where my mother's family was from had such a great impact on my sensibilities they're almost traumatic for me moving to Castries to attend school that what I think in Sounding Ground I think my I didn't have a great poetic aspiration I had an aspiration of capturing that world again that's why so many of the people in the book are characters that are there and lastly I would say that the biggest thing serving me now in my academic life is the research I did in St. Lucia among practitioners of assistant art that we don't often talk about Obea but but the knowledge and the philosophy that came out of it I'm being very honest here meaning the the vision of the world that people forget the Obea part because my I wanted to look at St. Lucia's and how they really saw the world you know that vision has has influenced almost everything I've done since then so I'll put it over to the panelists but because that I'll kind of repeat Boots' question about how your St. Lucia ness serves you I think his comment and question are very linked so feel free to address them jointly or individually or one and not the other up to you Chadia I'll start with you are you there Chadia oh she might be having some mic problems I'm sorry about that you're experiencing okay okay yes I believe so okay my internet is very african well the past few minutes um how does my St. Lucia ness serve me um I think I've grown to appreciate our unique way of seeing things and um I definitely want that out there um I launched a publishing house in 2017 uh called Wakote Publishing and I don't know if that even remembers uh when I was trying to name the company um I came to him and I asked him what is the quail wood for the neon internet um sorry are you back Chadia yes I'm back okay yes we caught you when you were talking about the naming of your company yeah oh yeah so I think I don't know if you remember but I came to you but I asked you how would one say the wood story teller a story telling quail and um you were the one who said to me uh Wakote from being able to give an account by a quant uh we had this discussion uh yes and that's how I ended up naming the company so uh thanks Vladimir uh for that uh but yeah we had that discussion and I think I always try to uh just let my St. Lucia ness impact who I am what I bring to the table I'm never shy to talk about my culture the things that we do um I'm always open to sharing even here in Ghana uh there are similarities but there are differences and I get to talk to people about it um and I also encouraged the other writers all of whom were trade aliens at the time when we did our first uh set of publications to be to be free uh to use their local palace um and to not be ashamed of it so uh okay um right Chadia you want to round off let me see are you are you back yeah I'll let you all move on I think I've I think I've captured pretty much what I want to say in that I think that we have a unique way of saying things and I want it to be out there so I think you can move on to the next panelists at this point and I just sprinkle by saying publishing house in the Caribbean is a very important thing owned by a Caribbean person I mean I'm published by a British um publishing house and you know there are always these niceties you have to navigate that you may not have to navigate based on um and you know publishing house based in the Caribbean based in the region based at home that allow in terms of expression it's important to kind of continue to to monitor that kind of thing so I think that's a very important and noble initiative um Kenesia you want to go next in terms of how you allow on my screen oh um you know similar to you perhaps uh lad I I grew up quite sheltered I think uh so much so that when I left St. Lucia I didn't even know castries you understand um and so my relationship to my St. Lucia is one of continuous continuous excavation I'm always in the process of getting to know St. Lucia um but unmistakably there is something to um I mean my my appreciation for the the fact that we are made we are sort of conditioned in the world yes we're born into whatever place but we are conditioned and there is a kind of collective there's a kind of commune um in which you can see across the board certain um certain constitutions for things there's just something about having a really high standard for yourself whether it is that you are planting banana trees or you have a dashin bush across the road or you are writing a play or you washing your clothes I that thing of when you do something do it the best way you know how that to me is a very particularly St. Lucia thing in its kind of creolized encounter um with with life with just living life and and having that sort of regard for whatever it is that you're putting your attention on is the most important thing in the world in that moment you know what I mean and so I that stuff I learned and in fact I use Creole in my books I use Creole in my works when I first started to do that people looked at me as though I had suddenly sprouted three heads it's like you're in Canada while you know nobody here speaks Creole and and who's the the market or whatever I had an appreciation for um who who who are the people who existed in the ear of my writing and those are always St. Lucia people there's always black people who of course transcend we transcend and that the level of importance we place on things and doing things at a certain high standard is a thing that transcends even place right and so that's first and foremost my appreciation of all those things the folkloric all of that you you know all of that stuff is in my wood sorry I was muted excellent kinesia yeah yeah yeah yeah asher um I as far as like my St. Lucianess and how it um is reflected in my music I think for for people who like actively listen to the stuff I put out outside of the love stuff because I do a lot of love stuff I won't even lie but um it's I think it does stand out like I try I do try like he was saying I mean being a St. Lucia in Canada is the minute someone hears your accent they're already turning their heads so on top of that like I do try to constantly just reference like where I'm from and the experience of me being a St. Lucia pursuing this somewhere else you know what I mean like that in itself I I think I do a good enough job of like drawing from my background I mean even if the actual spoken words might be more um like a universal sound so people can understand what I'm saying because I do like I and that's something I'm working on as well like trying to see how I could incorporate our like hard accent in rap but it's just it's something like I want to do a certain way so it doesn't just feel like a I don't want to swear like a pash pash kind of you know what I mean like I really wanted to to work out well so I think that's that's something I constantly try and also me noticing that with the friends I have out here for the most part like I said um speaking has always been uh an issue when it comes to people can understand but I noticed that like the friends that I keep really close for the most part they understand the accent so like at that point they their inclination to want to understand where I come from and and learn about where I come from and whatnot that in itself is almost like a reminder like yeah you're like your solutions are dope bro like don't don't ever forget that you know what I mean because and it's little things like I've had a friend I remember when I was coming back home when my friends were like bro how am I gonna talk to you do you guys have Wi-Fi out there and I'm like bro come on like we you know I mean so it's just like educating people that's that's just as satisfactory as like did you think you were in Ghana or something what do you think because it was because not that you can that's Ghana we're talking about this is not a dig at Chadiah it's Ghana's internet we're talking about sorry Yasha go ahead it's all good it's all good but yeah it's just didn't even come from an ignorant place so at that point when you realize like there are people out there that just don't know and they genuinely just want to like know and be educated because they're that interested in like what is like you so different and you're so unique like we've been saying like solutions just have that thing about them whether you can word it but there's just that thing so I think that is a constant like reminder of like yeah embrace your solution is I think what you pointed out is very interesting because the funny thing is that dynamic exists in Saint Lucia as well the idea of speaking a certain way and losing certain aspects that kind of really count ground and routine Saint Lucia is in Saint Lucia as well it's a normal thing in a way you know and it's not necessarily something to be you know something that we have to kind of you know and I think it's very interesting it's a it's very interesting for the to be able to have to contend with these things they help you to as an artist do different and interesting things you know with that dynamic of your experience as well KO tell us about how your Saint Lucianness serves you without getting into an accident yeah you already know the vibe um well I mean Asha definitely hit it on the nail several times um for me again like what I spoke about when I spoke on the whole racism thing is that um I didn't realize how dope it not that I didn't realize how dope it was but I did not acknowledge accept appreciate or learn how to channel um all of those things that made me Saint Lucia into um my art effectively um I could I mean I could only speak for myself here but I'm sure Asha has you know had a similar path where because you know um our genre is rap and rap isn't necessarily a genre that was in dish that is indigenous to Saint Lucia so it took a lot of um self-realization to really navigate through that in itself because my all my reference points weren't Saint Lucia all my reference points were you know the things that influenced me musically the the JZ's the two parts the you know the the Y clefs the Bob Marley's all of that and it wasn't until I went overseas and started to like grow artistically and find myself within that own artistic atmosphere artistic ecosystem that I realized that yo it's all of those things that that I was somehow running away from that makes me who I am that makes what I do so different and so unique and so colorful and so vibrant and so I started tapping into that more um so much so that you know I tried to I tried to add it in ways that that makes sense for me that makes sense to my journey so a lot of like the the interludes that I use I use a lot of Derek Walker's um interviews and and inserts from his poems in in different like soundscapes throughout not only my own music but with the whole um source this radio thing that we're working on it and just really creating like um an ecosystem around the music that is that is dope you know that is immeasurable that like I look at people like um and again I could only speak on my reference points I look at like the drinks and I look at party next door and I look at the weekend and I look at what those artists um did for the city of Toronto it it broke down barriers in ways where like Toronto is is one of the top tier cities for music and that's undeniable and that came from not just great talent coming from the city but that talent immersing their audience into the world that made them who they were who they are through their music you feel me so like when you listen to these types of artists you hear you hear those influences you hear those innuendos you hear those um the little jargon the little you feel me you you feel that source you feel that energy and Lushan Saint Lucia has that same source it's just a matter of presenting it in a way um that is palatable but also given the tools that we currently have so I mean to wrap up being Saint Lucia um is has made me the person that I am the artist that I am and um everything that I do everything that I do right now is inherently for that is to continue to push the culture forward and to continue to create this sort of like ecosystem where eventually people don't have to feel like they have to leave Saint Lucia to make it they don't have to feel like they have to go to Toronto or or New York or Atlanta or anything to be the producer or the the rights or the the actor that they want to be they have the tools they have the resources and Saint Lucia has produced um enough talent to to show and prove that we're well that we're more than capable of producing wonderful wonderful yeah yeah yeah um I was just thinking to myself you know um in academia and I mean some of you are at school and I was thinking about how the language of academia is becoming more and more uniform everybody kind of sounds the same they're using the same vocabulary they're talking all about the same things and so and I remember being you know just feeling like I was swept up in a kind of stream at some point you know joining that and having to find a place to root myself in terms of even doing what I had to do you know within that academic context and one of the things I just had to constantly go back to is any opportunity that kind of fell into my lap to just not to be deliberately Saint Lucia in a cliche way but really just to kind of connect in that way helped immeasurably because it feels like the world is becoming more and more uniform uniform opinions uniform ways of speaking uniform everything everybody's kind of being taught to behave in the same way and actually one of the things that grounds you apart from that elusive concept of who I am is where you come from you know your family the people who when they look at you they're not seeing all of these categories that people see probably when you're there they're actually seeing but I know so I know Vladimir Vladimir blah blah blah blah blah you know chatty da da da da they actually know you you know they don't know you as oh this is a young black male hetero or homosexual this that the other they don't know you by these categories they know you by something much more elusive and something much more profound and that's that's kind of how I see it I think we have a question that looks like she's she's putting the mic up good catch I was doing that so originally we had agreed to 90 minutes I will say that we've gone past that that's probably why Kio now has to drive but I really want to throw this question out I think it's a good sort of closing question Vlad if you don't have one it actually comes from Dr. Jenny Joseph and I'm going to read it for her Dr. Joseph I had to say that and she says Asha referenced M&M and can you say mentioned Brandt as influential on the growth emergence as creatives what legacy would you like to leave for young solutions in your work that's wonderful I will have Asha start and Asha this is connected to a question I wanted to ask about what is your vision yes you're a singer hip hop artist whatever what is your vision but the question is what is your legacy that you want to leave behind so go ahead Asha um that's a big question um to sum it up let me make a long story short I I want people to look at my career and know that you can I mean this is me saying that like not getting to the place that I want to get to yet but when it does happen there's not an if it's a when um when that does happen it's like you can speak your truth and not have to feel any type of way of like oh my friends don't like this oh my family doesn't like this oh my like anybody you know what I mean because for a long time that was the biggest issue with like what I wanted to speak about and my choice of words and whatnot like oh my mom might not like this oh like I've like I've been a group chat I'll send the song in the group nobody responds it's like why don't and then they're not responding you start second guessing yourself but it's like nah you have to know that for yourself like before you send it anywhere you have to know like nah I like this this is my thing is good and like I don't need somebody else to tell me that so I think when people look at like what I've done and what I plan to do I want that to be the stand out like just live your truth and apologetically once you're not like bothering nobody just follow your path stay your path and like also don't don't be afraid to fall because like that's part of the process you know what I mean because because I find a lot of people first failure and it's like oh this isn't for me like nah this is not gonna happen overnight that's just the reality of it so I think that's another thing I want people to take away like perseverance yeah I know I'll show you might have to drop off in a little while but I just want to highlight something for our viewers for this in terms of the answer he's giving please don't forget especially in our St. Lucia where there is this very narrow minded sense of professions people go into this these are all creative people pursuing what they pursue abroad not even in St. Lucia in a place that doesn't owe them anything and they're doing so bravely they're doing so in a way where they're not afraid to fail and they're doing it in something that basically sometimes around you surrounded by people who think that is actually not a profession that is not gonna so it speaks to a need within all of us whether we consider ourselves creative or not to have an expression of ourselves and the best expression of ourselves is creativity giving birth is is creative right it's what sustains us as human beings so I'm just saying deliberately I wanted to have this conversation about people doing what we sometimes think of as impossible or not viable or not feasible and in an environment that doesn't owe them anything where they may not even have citizenship they may be visitors they may be scholars they may be there on a visa that says you have to go back home soon so I just want parents listening to that and what Asha said about self-expression more and more young people have that need to express themselves what they do so at a professional level or not so I just want people to take these things and the context within which you're hearing them you know just take it and think about it so thanks Asha let's go to KO actually because he kind of was nodding I'll just let him take take it off from where Asha left off so he he doesn't have to talk and drive much longer oh you know the vibes um yeah bro um let me just grab my my train of thought real quick um just to pick off on where Asha said just kind of trust the process you know um I think I think that you know everyone's success story doesn't always look the way they envision it at the time you know I mean and in in that frustration of not necessarily getting things the way that you want to get it you might be blocking your blessings from what you truly meant to achieve so um like I've learned along the course of my journey to definitely not be afraid to diversify my hustle continue to educate myself because you know in in this world things are are constantly changing and what you knew yesterday could be obsolete tomorrow um but outside of that the legacy that I definitely want to leave behind with all of this is I hope bigger than me you know um generational wealth for sure that's definitely um one of the main things but generational wealth to art and and why that's important is because um while it may not necessarily be like super tangible at times under the impact that it can have culturally long after you've gone is super important like when you record a song that recording will live much longer than you will and I think as creatives um at least as far as what it is that I do it's important to keep that in mind that that every song every every word that you utter every every vibe that you put out there is being received um by others in in whatever way that they need to receive it at the time good bad or ugly but you're impacting someone's life with with your words and being an artist sometimes can be super selfish because it's coming from a place where um I need to do this for me but the um the residual effect of that is the impact that you can have on others and that's where the the real power is that's where the real legacy is at so yeah that's what I'm trying to do just leave good vibes and righteous meds all the way powerful responses let me give Asha a chance to just say his goodbye to the panel because he has to hop off as you know we went over our time he's going to say a quick bye to our attendees and panelists before we go over to the other panelists so yeah just to you Vladimir thanks for reaching out generally it was definitely a shock I wasn't expecting to be asked to be on a panel like this so appreciate it I definitely think it's necessary especially like the nature of the conversation that we're having like it's it definitely covers a lot of assets um thanks to everyone that's attended um and hopefully we can do something like this in the near future maybe not just necessarily to celebrate one you know time frame but just generally to have the conversation because I think it's necessary um so with that being said thank you very much and I'll see you guys goodbye thank you Asha thank you so much for joining and kudos to everyone else on the panel man you guys have like a great thought processes like I like listening to what do you have to say and you know the the outlooks on life as I like that thank you very much Asha you've been a powerful contributor to the discussion yes so we'll go now to Chariah and then Kanesia all right great so in terms of my legacy with Wakote what I'd like to leave behind is the idea that our stories the way we tell them what we tell they're good enough um and they have a space on the world stage and I'd like that because I've created that space that young people coming up those who are already in the game they understand that our stories are good enough whether it be stories of uh chilling in your grandmother's outside kitchen while she's cooking or drinking water from the standpipe when you're coming from school our stories are good enough and there's absolutely no need first to color them with metropolis so that they're accepted by external parties so that is definitely the legacy that I want to leave uh in everything that I do uh with thanks and and I just want to kind of just emphasize again that Chariah started her own publication company so it's not just about being creative but also making room for your type of creativity as well you know making creating the context for it to happen um as well as part of what we're talking about here yeah Anistia and let me just do some shame shameless promotion before uh mrs. Lubret takes over uh our capstone project which we're currently working on is a digital platform uh specifically for uh books uh pod and just giving it one home so that if people are even remotely interested in looking for African and Caribbean content we've created a space where people can be found uh more easily uh so we're currently building this out um and they're saying by June July we should be done uh the tech team is saying that uh but yeah this is the capstone project and like I said it ties into my legacy I want to create a space for us that makes people from our regions believe that our stories okay all right yeah so so thanks um that reminded me I did intend to have everybody give a sample of what they they do but the conversation how it went the internet is wide and lovely google them and you will be able to find them doing their thing can you see a take us away thank you Chariah what is this miss Lubrin business that's my auntie that's not me that's okay yes fine um yeah I don't I don't have a typical relationship with um with this concept of legacy uh what I appreciate is um being a part of a broader conversation about what it means to be alive in the world to be human in time and space amongst others both human and non-human um and the sort of vast rich history of creative expression that that we inherit and there is you know a certain appreciation for continuance in that and in my place in it is is where it extends the network it extends the broader conversation um I had put together a panel recently and Raymond Antrobus the poet was on it um and and he expressed something that many other poets and creative writers have expressed and he was saying that to choose poetry is a is a kind of act of madness because it is counter to everything that living in a capitalist world um celebrates uh massive endless hoarding of wealth etc whereas poetry is to choose a life of precarity mostly right um and we've said in the beginning already a number of you have said it we don't want to be the the poor artist but I suppose I don't know how we reconcile that with poetry and there are other means of of creating a life that has some level of sustainability in it um and so yeah that's my I don't think any of us really have control over that thing called legacy it's really about how it's received how it's received because I mean look look around and we can see so many great I mean just such great potential all over and people just don't get the same kind of chances and opportunities to do things right and even though um people do get opportunities to do things you just never you never have a sense of how that thing will be received and therefore extended um whether it's you know sesendesca or you know fish alfons or somebody else um there there there is that sort of richness I think that that we can all leap into um and make our own contributions I mean just recently I the the bocas um emerging writers fellowship I think they're they're gonna be announcing the the winners soon um that is something that I contributed towards because again um my appreciation for being part of a broader conversation and I'd love to see that keep going with the next generation and the generation after that I am going to be a rich poet I am going to be a rich poet I know it I feel it in my bones and please remember I said it on this panel all right I'll be a very rich poet and I could pretend to be broke this has been an this has been an immense pleasure for me I I think I even manifested it somehow because even before Kathy asked me to do this I saw Asher's stuff on Instagram and I saw Kail's stuff and of course I had known Chadi's stuff and and and of course Kinesia and I was like I wanted to talk to these two guys about hip hop and then it it just turned into this big thing where I could bring all of these interests I have together um you know things work in the universe works in mysterious ways but it happened and I'm very happy it happens and I'm sure attendees are as well to end I want to see and I think it speaks to boost boost this point that one of the last memories I have of Derek Walcott was a panel just like this which he held at his home and it was John Robert Lee McDonald Dixon myself no John Robert Lee Kendall Hippolyte Jane King Hippolyte myself um it's on YouTube as well another very interesting conversation but one of the things he was I wouldn't say obsessed I don't know that the intensity of it but one of the things he was doing at that time was actually trying to in admiration translate Cessen Descartes um Seymour Doussaphim Wellapen he was trying very hard to really translate that and capture what he thought Cessen did as a poet as a singer as an artist he was trying to capture that and and and guarding it jealously I'm sure if secret is listening she'll remember that very well so it I think it's a good place to end you know in terms of what we seek and where's our source of sustenance in the world as we go out so with that I want to see it's been an absolute pleasure having all of these persons it's been a pleasure having the audience it's been a pleasure being a part of it myself as moderator thank you Kathy thank you Janie thank you Nat for for asking me to do this thank you very much panelists and over to Nat in SALCC studios so you're getting the feedback this has been a great two hours a really just riveting um encounter with you guys that that I'm sure our in studio audience our online audience really appreciated greatly we thank you so much for your time and for your contributions here you are definitely going to remain very very close to us and um I am sure our humanities department our library will be reaching out again for those encounters um because this is remembered in support of of national libraries week and I think it's really in keeping with what the library wants to do with what Charity is doing with Cadicia as a writer with teaching our students our children how to express themselves in the way that they can through KO and ASHA and their app and of course Vlad you know we were looking forward to having a building named after you etc no one is already done that but we'll find a unique place for you so thank you so much very much for agreeing to spend your time with us um all of our panelists Charitya Mathrae um KO, Cadicia Lubren, Asha Small and of course Vladimir Lucien and I want to again congratulate the Hunter J Faswa library for having the foresight to do this and for all of the activities that um they had for National Libraries Week so this is us signing off from the Derek Wolcott Library we'll soon be open publicly but in the meantime you can contact the library to make an appointment to come visit the space here but it is evolving and we'll soon be housing so many of you and we look forward when our panelists visit the inclusion that they make this a stop for themselves it's been a wonderful afternoon please enjoy the rest of your evening and your weekend thank you so much for joining us saying goodbye