Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, hosted by me, Dr. Alexandria Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics, and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture. Hello everyone, Wa Guan Pan Wata Guan. Welcome back to another episode of Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, where we explore the past in order to better understand the possibilities of the future. Today's conversation is centered around imagination and possibility, specifically how Caribbean futures are being shaped through renewed connections with the African continent and its global diaspora. I am certainly not the first and certainly won't be the last to say this, but one of the greatest facets of the Caribbean is our people and subsequently the culture we've built and produced together. For generations, the Caribbean has been positioned within global systems primarily as a site of extraction of land, of labor, of resources, while its people's creativity and intellectual power have been undervalued or commodified elsewhere. Yet across the region and the African continent and wider diaspora, creative industries continue to thrive, offering new ways of thinking about development, trade, solidarity, especially, that centers people as the most valuable resources. And if you're unfamiliar with the term creative industries, or more broadly referred to as cultural and creative industries or CCIs, they are the economic sectors that combine creative products and commercialization of creation, particularly thinking about, you know, artistic works, whether that be music, film, fashion, etc. This is, of course, you know, making so much tremendous sense to me in terms of the power of our CCIs when, you know, if you have your ear to the ground, there is always a festival going on. Um, you know, carnival, of course. That's a whole that actually is an episode idea that I've I've longed for for a long time to do. So, but we'll we'll circle back on that. But all that to say, um, in this episode, we're exploring how CCIs in areas like music, like film, as I said, and others point towards more intentional, people-centered models, not just for the Caribbean, but for the betterment of African and Caribbean connection. We'll reflect on what it would take to support these futures, what structural changes are needed, and how these possibilities exist within a complex global political landscape. Ultimately, this conversation invites us to imagine what becomes possible when Caribbean and African futures are shaped by collaboration, creativity, and shared vision. I'm really grateful

Meet Alistair Scott And His Roots

SPEAKER_02 3:00

to be joined by Aleister Scott for this very timely discussion. Alistair is the founder of the nonprofit Diaspora Legacy Collective and has several, several years of experience in community development and the passion for, as you guessed it, our creative and cultural industries. So, Alistair, I'll turn it over to you. Why don't you let our listeners know a little bit more about you, where you call home, and what inspired your passion for development, pan-Africanism, and sustainability?

SPEAKER_03 3:31

Thanks, Alexandra. Thank you for having me. Um where I call home. As an uh immigrant in this uh North American land, I am very much very, very Jamaican as I was born, grew up there, came to the US for college a long time ago, and promptly ran straight back to Jamaica after college. Um and then spent another decade working there. So very rooted. I'm a Kingstonian, I'm a Wolmerian, I wear it proudly. Yeah, like that's why I was kind of brought into uh this world of Pan-Africanism through a history teacher of mine at Ulmers, also Walmerian himself, still teaches there, actually, now teaching my nephew. Love that. Um after you know, we suffered through the the kind of content in the textbook, he often would make a deal with us that if he would behave just tolerably enough, he would give us some extra at the end of the class, and that he called, you know, Black My Story as best part of every class. Right? And so I had a good fortune of getting that sort of extra knowledge and grounding up to CXCs, fourth, fifth form, and then in sixth form with the rough introduction to A levels through a more spectacular F for my first assignment. I kind of reset the hype after the CXE grades. But all that to say that opened up the world about how are we connected to the continent, some of the things that we thought were nothing but turn out to be a huge deal, who are some of these characters from the past, um, what's in a name, so many things. And so it sparked, you know, a lifelong love for me. Where sustainability enters the picture is a bit later. So I was as a child, even before. Like, you know, six, seven, I watched Captain Planet. I was all about that. I wanted to save the environment, you know, recycling as I was that child. Um, that tempered in high school. But uh definitely through my studies in college and then through working communities in Jamaica that resurfaced and then was even more uh sort of cemented through my wife's work. She's an environmentalist, and so I learned a lot from her and her work, you know, teaching it, being uh a practitioner in Jamaica as well. And so, like in later life, I've done a lot of my own education, you know, listening to real professionals in the field, reading quite a bit to understand, like, especially for now, you know, climate change, how it impacts us, what we need to do about it, and so on. So that's a bit about just how I've come to these interests.

Choosing A Positive Vision Of Tomorrow

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Thank you for sharing. I wanted us to really start our conversation with talking about visions for the future, as I sort of alluded to in my intro. I think there are a lot of different avenues we could take this, and you know, it certainly changes depending on who you ask. I think for me, you know, there are certain things that are very important, sort of um an understanding of a decolonial way of being, right? That you were sort of also alluding to, um, talking about and you know, what's in a name and all of these things. It can be in gender rights, it can be in climate change, um, and you know, how the Caribbean survives, given the fact that, you know, we are some of the smallest contributors, but are so severely impacted by climate change? There's a myriad of things, but you know, sort of given the impetus of our conversation, especially in terms of the creative and cultural industries, what is your vision for the future of, you know, our people, especially in tandem with our connection to the African diaspora? And how have you seen these sort of you know, current trajectories fall short? Or, you know, maybe there are certain ones that you think are doing completely well as well?

SPEAKER_03 7:37

As you said, there's so much and so many angles, right? My vision, I I've I've forced myself in the last few years to uh craft intentionally positive visions of the future. Um, because the negative stuff is really easy. It's all around us. There's very many very excellent experts who do that work, um, and I read a lot of them. And so I I've I've put effort into well, what does the good part look like if we can? And so for me, that is uh a world in which uh African and Caribbean creativity is exploded and is um properly facilitated by private sector by governments because it is the bedrock of our development. So I say that, say our people are our sort of inexhaustible, most fungible uh resource, right? It's evergreen and it's limitless, not in terms of the number of people, but in terms of what people create, right? So technology is just what we work through, it's us. And so uh a future where we are properly using that to create value, and then we are you know ensuring that people are valued for that is a future I want to see. Um to give you a kind of quick example of how that might be grounded in reality, um, if we think about our um sports, right? Of course, you know, come from Jamaica, we love sprints. But the physical facilities in Jamaica that have allowed us to develop in sprinting, a lot of that came from Cuban investment. We didn't pay for that, right? But we've benefited hand over fist. We could be, and we are in small numbers, training folks from around the world about how to do that. That can be expanded tenfold, even without moving. So Jamaicans can go, like everything else. There's athletes right now filming themselves for their own blogs. We can teach that way, you can market and brand and license it. There's so many ways, right? And it's just our sort of unique addition to the world magnified. And obviously the reverse can occur. And so there's a lot of good work out there uh for these kinds of visions. If we think about our music, there's many ways in which we can, you know, have robust property protections for the intellectual property property where we are keeping the value of the thing where it comes from, um, while allowing people to continue to create and make things. And so, like one of the sort of best ways of that is if we just look at the current music industry, if we look at Afrobeats and how Afrobeats came about, despite you know, an environment that did not facilitate it very well, it happened anyway because of the force of creatives, right, and that innovation and us being able to then expand the thing. And so where this has not shown up well, one of the things that bugged me, honestly, is a long time ago I participated in Jamaica's Vision 2030 planning formally. I was on the Cultural and Creative Industries Committee. Um, we spent six months working on that part of the plan with many of the heads of agencies in Jamaica, people who were definitely gifted, like nobody was paid for this. Everybody was taking time off work half a day, you know, every week for months. And so we did not get to do those same intellectual property protections that were outlined in that document. That whole thing was stifled, you know, in in very, you know, kind of public ways that people are very familiar with with how we kill policy. But that document, even when the work we did was heavily influenced by an older document still, um, which I took as the sort of founding theme of a series of substantial articles I did. So the cultural superstate is from an actual ministry document from 2002 that was guiding uh the Ministry of Culture at the time. So there's so much more we could do, and it's not that stuff doesn't exist, it's right there, we can get it and just implement it. Um but while saying so, there's still lots of good examples on the ground. There's, you know, NGOs working, there's artists doing cool things. Um, we have pieces of the infrastructure that we can use to do a lot more.

The Real Value Of Caribbean Creativity

SPEAKER_02 12:35

You brought up music, and I have written a bit in my own work about CCI. The nerd in me had to pull up a few numbers, right? Um, and so this is coming from an intergovernmental report. Um, so it says, you know, music exports alone reportedly generated, and this is our US dollars 80 to $100 million annually for Jamaica, accounting for at the time, um 1.7% of total goods and service exports. Furthermore, the entertainment sector as a whole generated um about 71 billion Jamaican dollars between 2012 and 2016 in US dollars for our listeners who may be unfamiliar, that's about 500 million um USD. They're stemming those numbers from um over 100,000 event permits, um, events that were happening um during those five-year span. Um, and the fact that, you know, these events not only are generating money, they're obviously, of course, generating jobs subsequently, but that is a massive percentage of, you know, our wealth, you know, and to your point, right? This also goes then to the the wealth and importance of our people and of our culture, right? And so when we talk about Caribbean futures and, you know, really building greater connections between the Caribbean and our diasporas, what does it mean for us to really treat creatives, you know, are these people that we're talking about, um, treating creatives, cultural workers, entrepreneurs, and storytellers as our most valuable resources rather than just, you know, people that are a part of who we are, which is it is what it I think one of the most, again, beautiful things about us is we just create, we just do the thing and put it upon TikTok, Instagram, what did and and then it's not only that it becomes so massive and important for us culturally, but it extends out, you know, amongst various other peoples and becomes like a you know, people are like, whoa, you know, I've had people come up to me and be like, Oh, I heard this Jamaican song on TikTok and you translate it for me and all of these things. So I just really want us to sort of um cement this understanding in the value of our people in creating, um, because I think when you look at the numbers, it it gets tricky and complicated, right? Because when I quote a number like, you know, we made $500 million USD between 2012 and 2016. Somebody could I look panda and say, wait, then who did it go to? Who, you know, and it it begins the whole conversation about these structures, intellectual property rights, as you were alluding to earlier, and several things. But I I just want us to hone in on um these challenges and perhaps how we can better reshape and redefine the the importance of our people because I think in a lot of ways it's not always seen in the moment, right? Like if you take somebody like Miss Liu, Miss Liu is a tremendous figure in our understanding today, right? Right. But was she given that same respect and you know, understanding in her time? That's a whole nother conversation, but all that to say.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Yeah, I I think if we knew our past, this would be a no-brainer. We wouldn't be discussing it, right? It's because we've been cut off, because that is exactly what our people um have done for millennia. Um, it makes me think about not just the role of uh, you know, what the the French kind of mistakenly call grills, right? Or other such people who are, you know, historians using music strategically. Uh jollies who are more kind of deep historians, but also like a conscience for uh societies, right, and rulers. But also if we look at how artisans were regarded, they were very central and very important. So to put into context, I'll never forget just the look on my face, like to myself, when I learned about uh African metallurgy in like you know, clean six, seven hundred years before Europeans got their heads around it, which was better for the environment, better quality metal than Europeans produced centuries later with so-called lower tech. Our people have a long, long, long, long, long history of centering the people who create that was always the engine of our societies. And so if we understand that, we see those same people today walking around, they're creating. What we are doing, or what we have done, is to keep stopping those people from creating and creating value for all of us that we can then benefit from. What we see is what it looks like at the bare minimum, right? It's just what people have created in spite of the barriers. What would have happened if um we had put Bob Marley here today? I don't know how much money that man would have made, would have been obscene. Right? Um and he's just like your most kind of common garden variety example. But to your point about just like the the numbers and how this kind of can uh tally up, if we understand the value that people bring when they create, and the fact that they are creating things that unlike food, it lasts, you know. After you've digested it, it keeps giving. Right? And so you keep having value on top of value, which increases the value of the thing as more and more people consume it. Unlike oil and so many other things, you know, that are so tangible. Um, so just economically speaking, it's a no-brainer that you have these elements that take very little comparatively to produce something that can add value for decades conservatively. That's kind of one angle of, you know, looking at it. It makes me think also about how this thing can uh expand. In watching like vloggers and you know artists and so on. I was fascinated a few years ago during during the pandemic when we all were stuck to our screens. You know, I was watching a Jamaican vlogger, and I was watching him kind of cultivate his audience over time, and I see how he'd bring on different people and kind of give them a platform. And then over time, I saw him, you know, bring some people on, then those people could grow. Some of them surpassed him in value, right? Didn't stop them from doing work together. And then that pattern kept repeating to kind of bring it home today. I watch Asafa's content online, right? And I'm part of the car guy, so I like the car stuff.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

I'm a meet the Mitchell's girl, admittedly. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Right. I went to school again so I can get it. Yeah. Those people on the back end, they are meeting, they're sharing equipment, they're sharing space, right? Um, and they use it to create more things. So there's a there's a Ghanaian vlogger I love to watch, who is always featuring the African continent and business opportunities and all the positive stuff. And that Jamaican vlog I was watching years ago, remember when that young man went to Ghana, this much more popular Ghanaian YouTuber took him around. Guy stayed in his house.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

I've seen that.

SPEAKER_03 20:42

Yeah, there you go. For a solid month, creating videos at the same time. And so these guys are monetizing off YouTube, each using the same thing. That's efficiency, right? And then now I see Asafa, you know, get pulled into this little group of vloggers, right? Which then produces more money for everybody involved. Come to this uh Hurricane Melissa thing, I see this vlogger come in, he gets in Asafa's car, they go deliver some stuff down a Cent. Right? You can't put a money, you can't put a value on that part. The guy was here, he was in Jamaica for about 48 hours, and that's what he did with his time, right? And that's just like a small example. Um, so if we center our creatives, we are centering a big chunk of our economic engine. We're centering uh an essential piece of who we are and ensuring that we respect it and pay it forward.

Policy That Treats Culture As Investment

SPEAKER_02 21:47

I think to that point, there are a lot of people who are talking about our CCIs, right? It's not like we're just having this conversation in a bubble. Most of us have certain ministries of culture. In whatever you know we call them in different forms. Um, there are scholars talking about this, of course. You know, I think of scholars like Keith Nurse, Susan Burke, Deborah Hinkling Gordon. Um, I can keep going. Um but also, as you're saying, right, creatives who may not necessarily be using the the this terminology in terms of CCIs, right? But they are steep in it, and this is the work that they're doing, and trying to figure out how to make livelihoods, generate incomes, and generate, you know, generational wealth also in that. But I think as you were also sort of pointing us to, there are definitely some issues in how this has been substantiated, or maybe a lack of support might be a better way of framing that. Um, and that's not to say things are aren't evolving. I believe just last year um in Jamaica, the ministry, our ministry of culture changed to, I believe it's like there's like a new form of health insurance specifically for creatives who are registered within our CCI framework, right? Which, you know, to me sounded like an amazing idea because you can think of if you're an independent, right, if you're an independent entrepreneur, um, not having that safeguard, anything that happens to you, your family, whatever is straight out-of-pocket costs, right? And so to me, that I I just sort of wanted to gauge from you what are some of the structural changes, um, be that policy, funding, you know, IP, as we were talking about, intellectual property, educational investments, et cetera, that you really feel like we would need to make to certainly affect greater change and really allow for these creative collaborations to truly flourish as you were talking about.

SPEAKER_03 23:52

I think there's some key changes. If I start with what I think we in the Caribbean and even in African countries can do ourselves without external players, there's a mindset piece, which is the biggest, there's a big policy piece, and then there's some operational stuff. Um, the mindset one is to switch to understanding that we are investing in ourselves. And if these things are investments, it means you're putting in today to get more tomorrow from the thing. You're not looking to extract the value, to deplete it, right? You're looking to build it. Um what this would mean in practice is that take intellectual property, for example, one of the big barriers for um Jamaica, if, you know, in terms of like, you know, the indicators, the GIs, um, and like securing different brands or colours, blah, blah, blah. It's simply that there's just too few lawyers in that, you know, um, intellectual property office, right? And part of that reason is okay, you can't afford to hire more. And uh to me, that's silly. Those people, if you hire more of them, we will gain so much money from hiring them that it will pay for them very quickly and create a revenue stream into the country. How do we know this? Ask Puma. Long before you know the recent things with you know them doing the stuff. I remember 20 odd years ago seeing Puma use our colours in big, huge billboards.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

I do too, but there you go.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

With some grandmas in them church clothes clock up. Yes. Right? Ask the Marley family when they carry whoever to court, it'll pay for itself easily. It's what? Like if you invest in, put the resources out front, you'll reap. Um two is in terms of policy, we have to create literally new policy and new modalities to do business, especially across um the diaspora. Um, I remember writing a blog about uh something I termed, I didn't want to call it Pan-African because I know especially people in the Caribbean don't like that term really. So I call it, you know, trans-African uh partnerships and trans-African businesses.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

I would ask you to say more, but I don't want it to cut off itself.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

Oh yeah, oh, cause that would get yes. I have so many things to say on that. Um, you know, and that's just like a bit of myopia on our part. But we need structures that enable us to connect and do business and do life together. That's your your visa regimes, that is changing how we think about language. Um, so I admire Haitians because they teach their language, and it doesn't stop them from learning French. My roommate in college, Kenyan, you know, we both did A levels, but what? He comes, he did his A levels, but he spoke three, maybe four languages coming into college. Right? Me, I was stuck with this, you know, in my head about speak proper English as all that was in my brain at the time. Huge disadvantage. So with our increasing facility, we can open up a lot just by doing that. So in the region, for example, we should all be learning some African lingua franca. It doesn't have to be uh a Swahili at all. It can be many other things, you know, your household, whatever. It can be a tree language since so many of us, definitely in Jamaica and in like Eastern Caribbean, so many of us do have you know um hereditary from Ghana and surrounding areas. But we should all be learning Spanish. And I didn't like Spanish in school, hated it, but it's common sense. Right, and so by changing those things at the policy level, we'd open ourselves up. But in terms of the types of businesses, it means that we need to have modes of business. Like literally, when you go to the company's office to register a business, you need different types that would say, okay, you are doing this partnership with um somebody in Haiti for this purpose, you're doing another kind of thing, you're doing a licensing agreement, and there's a form of business that allows it and brings down the barriers to trade because we should literally be marketing and branding akey that is that is produced in Ghana, right? And ship all that come here so we don't have to you and I don't have to spend $17 a tin. We could be spending nine. It's that. So those modalities are the things that internally we can do if we think differently about these things.

Pan Africanism Myths And Missed Lessons

SPEAKER_02 28:56

I'm going to push back on that point because I do, if you'll entertain me a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Um well I I sort of do want you to to name what you've seen as the issues with people's understanding of or you know, acceptance of Pan-Africanism. Because, and I say that because I think in a lot of ways, what we're talking about builds on or potentially could build on um older Pan-African and diasporic connections and the ways that we've been able to build together, especially as we move across, you know, nations and and extend our diaspora out, the way that we've been able to not only live and survive, but thrive and build certain communities, whether that's in England, in Toronto, it you know, it goes on and on. And that's just me from an Anglophone speaking Caribbean perspective, naming those places. And so, one, what what do you see as that issue with with the framing of Panafhrinism? But more directly to our conversation, how do us sort of reorienting our understandings of the potential for our um cultural and creative industries, you know, create new models for us to, you know, trade and build economic cooperation and also build on these older frameworks that we might not even be intentionally thinking about because they're so innate to us. Uh not too long ago, and this is just to give another like smaller example, not too long ago I had a conversation talking about Padna. Like the way that Padna has sent people to school, has built hoses, right, has you know sent people to med school, etc. Like is a is a very important part of our culture and still is. And so if we are sort of understanding the impact of um where we've come from and you know turning it on its head a little bit, obviously, because new technologies, etc. But what are what are some of the potentials that we have um to create change and greater economic prosperity for us in unity together?

SPEAKER_03 31:12

Yeah, those are all exciting things to meet because as you said, there are so many things in our culture, in our history, that we can bring forward or that we can magnify so that we can all thrive. But we have first have to value self. And so we have to literally, uh as some people, it's like decolonize our tongues. We need to get this stuff out of our heads. Um, and so a lot of the disinformation around, say, one of my favorite people, disinformation around Marcus Cari, for example, get out of the head because then you start to see some common sense things. So if you take his most maligned idea with the ships, right, and see why Kwame Nkrumah wanted that thing in the middle of his national flag, it is clearly because if you look around for centuries up to this very day, everybody has ships making a ton of money moving things. So obviously, shipping is a good idea, right? And then if you have people being able to crowdfund a shipping company, this also is a very good idea because we all aspire to you know put money in the stock market and get rich tomorrow. Um, it's also a good idea recognizing all the different places we are, and okay, you you stop, stop, and you drop off, and you pick up. This is elemental trade. So the concept seems to be quite common sense. The execution, much to be desired. But we've been sort of grown up to you know goof out those things. You know, I was a little dart man thinking silly, right? And so that's the stuff killing us. Um, because we've been doing these things. I was listening to uh Trevor Fonnow uh interview me and Motley recently, you know, Time Sabados, and they were talking about the same partner, right? And I made me think about companies like Susu, which have built a nice, you know, digital enterprise out of it. And so that's the point. All those things in our heritage we can bring forward and remix and make into powerful uh things. Um, I think literally to come back to say Haiti, Haitians can be the gateway for the Caribbean and for West Africans, French-speaking West Africans, into the US market, for example, because they straddle not just the language facility, but unlike, say, Jamaicans or unlike Trine's, they're more like uh Brazilians in a sense because they embody so much more, you know, recognizable African culture in their ways of knowing and being still. So they're far better interlocutors, right? Um, so there's opportunities there. So I think if we understood our people and understood that period when Pan-Africanism was going on, what they were trying to do, we would far more understand where the opportunities are. Because if we look at each other without the middle person, then you see that no, there's some stuff here. Last example I'd pull on is I've come to really admire both of the women Garvey uh married, right? So we know Amy Jake wrote all the books, ran the businesses, kept everybody sane. One one incredible, cuts off to this woman, right? But the other lady, all I learned in high school was that okay, they were married for a few months and I'm separate and she still worked in the thing.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

And they mix up, it mixed up, and that is why it was a very recent episode, strictly. Because it nothing the mix-up is the story, and it's not the mix-up that should be the important part of the story. But anyways, me vex about it, but it's alright, career.

SPEAKER_03 35:04

Here is one lady who went around the world building and selling Pan-Africanism and making all the connections. She got to travel to the continent several times where he never go. Right? She got to meet stars, you know, connecting everybody and moving stuff forward in the background, right? That tells us just literally just the role women play in our societies culturally as well. You know? If you're talking about either to stop around the men and be like, come get it, get yourself together, let's get this thing done. Or that person stitching together and managing and moving and pushing, right? Using the brain power to push an idea, um, these are all old things. And so that to me is the power of Pan-Africanism. But we have so much space between that and the misinformation that we all digest so often, you know, that it becomes a thing.

Pop Culture Proof Of Caribbean Influence

SPEAKER_02 36:03

There definitely needs to be greater orientation around our education. And whether that be, you know, in the classroom, which of course for a lot of people would think is the most, you know, direct change, but also education outside of the classroom too. Um, I think there's definitely sort of a mythos and misunderstanding of a lot of um art history generally. But I think what's been most puzzling to me, and this is just off a tangent, is that the 20th century was wedia, you know. It it would be one thing maybe if we were talking about the 1800, the 17 and 1800s under so long ago. But like we're talking about my grandparents' time that my you know, but all that to say, in our conversation, we have given so many examples of you know, ways that our pop culture is definitely evidence of the impact of our cultural and creative industries. I have one that I'm going to reference, but I definitely wanted to ask you what are some of your favorite examples of the wealth and possibilities of our CCIs as they show up in Caribbean popular culture.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

As a 90s uh person, right? But in the 80s, coming of age in the 90s, there's still something, there's always uh things that will stick with me, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Nothing like 90s dancer, nothing like it.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

Um I like how it's you know spawned so much. It created regular ton. One rhythm. Right? They didn't even understand what the rhythm was about, and it still spawned a whole other genre of music. That for me is is really powerful. It's a really powerful example. But also, if I think about other types of, you know, creative endeavors like food. Um, I remember when I learned that for the the UK, you know, curry, you know, the most popular, you know, lunchtime dish. And I'm like, okay, it's this mashup between obviously Indians, Pakistanis coming with the curry, but a lot of it's Jamaican curry too. And so that ability, there's something there with how well we are able to literally, you know, like because we said colonization reverse, right? But we literally are. We do that, we transmit ideas powerfully, and we are really good at it to the point where I know I forget who it was, but like some Nigerian guy, I was at some conference and he was like, you know, grew up in England, he's like he's so influenced by Jamaican culture and by carnival culture, and you know, Nigerians are pretty uh, you know, adamant, you know, and strong about their thing, but still it's like it's overwhelming, right? So there is a the extent to which Caribbean people in any space rub their culture off on the people around them while usually keeping their own is a thing. And so like that I marvel at. And there's a lot there that we can and should be doing with that. I think the other big thing I I look at for you know Caribbean culture writ large and just how it goes out into the world is if I think about just Jamaica as a group, you know, I have not met anyone. And like, you know, we've been in US for a decade, and even for like my good friends who travel a lot more than I do, never met somebody who never heard of Jamaica. Hasn't happened. They may not know exactly where it is, but they know about it, they know they like it, even if they don't know why they like it. But they're for it you must be able to build on that right in so many ways. And it's not just about the money, but that sort of uh cultural capital is is too real to ignore.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

I thought of very sort of similarly in the same lines because I was there at the show, um, was that December 2022 now when Burnaboy performed in on that national stadium. Um and now to Born Burnaboy's credit, he did not just come to Jamaica, he went to various other islands in the Caribbean. So it was it was a very pan-Caribbean tour, right, to bridge. I mean, I'm not trying to get into a favoritism argument, but but all that to say, right? The fact that, you know, there are these moments, especially in popular culture like that, that demonstrate, as you were saying, the impact and influence, right, for him and PopCon to do a song together that hits charts, right, globally and all of these things really demonstrates the power of not only who we are and our abilities to build, but I remember standing in the stadium and you know, obviously I'm part of the show, I'm singing along, etc. But to some of the points that you were making on language earlier, I know how half the people that there probably never spoke a lick of whatever, right? But everybody figure everybody very quickly figure out what Igbo and Shio and all the things meant, right? And so there is a a way that, you know, when we work together um and sort of building in this framework of Pan-Africanism, as you were saying, allows us to solidify ourselves from like a psychological perspective, of course, an economic perspective, um, building cooperation, but there are there are just so many possibilities there, and I wanted to for us to give space to that.

A Practical Model For Shared Development

SPEAKER_02 41:55

I'm going to ask one more question because you know, I feel like we could go on and on. Um, but you know, looking forward, what might a future of Caribbean and African development sort of in a model sense look like? Um, in your view, if we were really to intentionally build around this creative labor and our shared histories and you know, well collective well-being really as the foundation of our sustainable development?

SPEAKER_03 42:24

Well, I think there are a lot of pieces in place that can pretend to be really good. By that I mean so we are already the sixth region for the African Union, which is huge. Right? And that is, you know, the whole diaspora. If we were to really use those things and especially look at each other without that middleman, then we can have a future where we are part of the fastest growing, most dynamic trading block, where we are um the most diverse set of like uh connected people because the African continent has the richest diversity in most measures, you know, languages, stuff under the ground, the people there, blah blah blah. Never end. If we were to make sure people can move, and it's a point that me and Matley was making the other day as well, if we ensure people can move, the ideas will move, the money will move, we can have a society where we are far more integrated digitally, educationally, culturally, because for all of us who live somewhere else outside of the Caribbean, we meet other people of African descent, we know it's our people. Right? It's in the look in the eye, you drop our shoulder, all the things, you kiss it eat, whatever you want to pick on, how we like with food, it's our people. We know that. And so we can build economies that understand that and sort of thrive on that connectivity. Um to put it into brass tacks, I can imagine where we have integrated educational systems, right? Where you know a teacher in St. Vincent doing a geography lesson um on, you know, uh, say the Aldevi Gorge and the valleys around it, you know, those kids, it could be a digital classroom, or where the kids are like in a WhatsApp group with kids in Kenya and Uganda. What the name of that something there? Da-da-da-da. Right? Like, show me a picture, da-da-da, your parents tomorrow in dear, yes. That'd be awesome. Um, we can have a situation where we are all multilingual because our economic arrangements and social arrangements require that, which makes us stronger even outside. Um, so there's a lot of room for that in a kind of growing part of the world that's super dynamic, where we can use the technology to have a society that is very people focused, that is a fun place to be, um, and that is very stimulating and creative, all very possible. And better food.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

That's wonderfully said. I I definitely agree. I, you know, I started off with this point of Caribbean futures because I think sometimes the realities of where we are um are so pressing, and I'm not taking from that, but the reality is sometimes so pressing that it's hard to sort of imagine what that looked like, what that might look like in practice, right? Or um we say sweeping things like decolonize our knowledge, right? But we don't we don't know what that might look like. But to your point, right? It could be a a WhatsApp group with kids in Kenya and kids in St. Vincent. So there are so many possibilities.

Where To Follow And Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_02 46:15

Um there, I thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I think we've been able to cover such a rich discussion of you know what the future of you know the Caribbean might look like and also the future of Caribbean and African diasport connection might look like as well. Um, for our listeners who are tuning in, I hope you enjoyed this episode. We certainly do. Um, if you want to follow along more with um Alastair, he is a phenomenal writer, I will also say. Um, and I will link his blog in our show notes if you want to check out more. So big up to him for that. Um, but yes, overall, I think you know, our cultural and creative industries are definitely a place for us to further tap into. Um and so if you have thoughts, you know, if you enjoyed this episode and want to want to hear more about, you know, other possibilities for our CCIs, definitely send me a message and you know, we can bring further conversations about the CCIs to the fore. Till next time, everyone. As always, look more.