Can’t wait to see this! So happy to have been a part of it! ♥
I am so excited about my first catalog “Town to Town” written by Christopher Cozier, interview by Natalie McGuire and design by Richard Rawlins I love it !!! I haven’t scream out with excitement as yet still don’t have my voice lol (Taken with instagram)
Put Ya Hand In the Air…if you have a sense of humour
Contemporary Barbadians…the concept I am about to introduce is not new to you. It fills our crop over songs every year from RPB’s talks of “Volcanoooooo in the fete” to Lil Rick’s (sorry sorry… Ricky Minaj) “Jones and wuk up”. It is……..the Parody. A noun, wikipedia’s definition of parody is “an imitative work, created to mock, comment on, or trivialize”.
So why am I introducing this term? Because it would seem that the concept is lost on locals, if a recent online news article written about the above video is anything to go by. This crop over tune, released very obviously, (not presumably), by ‘white Barbadian’ musician Simon Pipe and his wife Carlie Pipe, explicitly and light heartedly highlights a Bajan stereotype that is just as common as any other…the Ecky Becky.
Ecky Becky is a term traditionally used to label poor white Barbadians, and like any stereotype, relies on culture practices that help define the category of people. The song “Put Ya Hand in the Air”, outlines some of the activities that could define an Ecky Becky in a humourous way. For example ritualistically going to the night club Harbour lights, and the love of Rallying.
Making fun of your own cultural stereotype is not new, in fact it is probably the most common material comedians use. Look at the famous Monty Python gang. The next layer of this song’s parody though, is actually to make fun of the calypso genre itself. That is clear in the section of the song when Becky and Brett are ‘tutored’ in the art of creating a successful crop over tune. AND also by the overall application of the pastiche element -so often found in calypso songs- to a familiar culture.
So we have a two-fold Parody: that of the Ecky Becky stereotype, and that of Calypso ‘tunes’. If figuring this out “could seriously keep the Faculty of Social Sciences at UWI busy for a couple years”, then I guess I may have just saved them some time.
The real issue here now though….is that a journalist felt that this particular song required sociological study. Why? Perhaps because white Barbadian culture is rarely touched on in Calypso songs….so it appears to be a phenomenon when presented? There is no more social enigma to “Put Ya Hands in the Air” than there is to “Ricky Minaj”. But of course, for a couple of young white Bajans to do a spoof crop over song is controversial. How dare they make fun of their own culture. How dare they create a song that a culturally under represented section of Barbadian society can relate to. It must mean something “seriously worthy of sociological study”.
Or it could just mean that we have a sense of humour too.
Versia Harris, Barbados. Amazing <3
(Source: thisisnotanartshow)
Why am I not there to see this! why!
Hiromi Tango, x chromosone, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
AND THEN THERE WERE JUST HANDS IN THE SAND
….Sort of. As mentioned in a previous post, Keith Arnatt’s politically soaked image Liverpool Beach Burial (1968) would make an interesting comment re-worked in a contemporary Bajan setting. Why? because we are literally trapped in a system where our landscape is pimped out for the tourist economy, and a visual like Arnatt’s fits nicely in an easy-to-engage with manner (unfortunately an essential to breaking in conceptual artistic ideas at the moment).
So armed with fellow art history scholar Yasmine, and some enthusiastic optimism, I set out to create a contemporary version of this scene. What leaves the strongest impression in the resulting images are two things. Firstly, the strain on our participant’s faces as we tried to extend their limbs in an unrealistic way for our aesthetic satisfaction. These people were on holiday, had come to experience pleasure on the beach, yet we had manipulated the same environment so that they felt discomfort, unease, helplessness. They’re perception of the paradise like beach was altered.
Secondly, the image of the isolated hands. They are the Bajans, drowning in the commercial advancement of our natural resources, somewhat losing grasp of our cultural identity to the perception of foreigners. Who are we but just hands in the sand? So much more if we can open our mind to think critically about our cultural environment.
Keith Arnatt Liverpool Beach Burial , 1968
I am so drawn to the morbid layout of this piece. Technically categorized as ‘Land Art’ in the art history books it is arguably just as easily an installation piece - the participants are also the viewers (in the sense they are not the artist), and the work is communicated to them by immersing them physically in their surroundings, forcing a shift in perception of their immediate environment. So much to be said in the portrayal of vulnerability and helplessness…..it would be amazing to re-create a similar scene here in Barbados, as we as a population are somewhat helpless when it comes to decisions of how our beaches are used via tourism….expansive hotels, boardwalks, changes in our environment that are out of our control as a nation.
My literary sanctuary at the moment :) other gems are Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and The Age of Reason also by Sartre.
♥
My article for ARC Magazine on the fourth Fresh Milk event
Lena Dunham is my new hero ♥
Bajan band Cover Drive are doing big things internationally! Heart their new song Sparks and loved photographing their interview with Carlie Pipe last August. A couple of my fave shots ♥
Photographs ©Natalie McGuire 2011
