By Raffique Shah February 21, 2010 CARNIVAL Friday night and I am driving to Port of Spain, my mind working like a Pentium computer chip. Which route do I choose to reach St James, my regular liming spot? Over the years I have learned that bumper-to-bumper traffic, not to add a virtual sea of early-bird … Continue reading Carnival: one foot in the grave
By Raffique Shah February 01, 2009 POLITICIANS are wont to making the damnedest statements. This ugly trait is not confined to Trinidad and Tobago’s special breed that litters the political landscape. The recently booed-out-of-office US president George W Bush carved an unmatched record of making the stupidest remarks, maybe of all times. But among the … Continue reading Tourism down, Carnival dying
At Brazil Carnival, Racial Unity a Mask “Nowhere is the vision of Brazil as a racial democracy more apparent than during carnival, when millions of people black and white, rich and poor, press up against one another in an annual party that began Friday in most of the country. But the celebrations mask tensions that … Continue reading At Brazil Carnival, Racial Unity a Mask
By Raffique Shah February 25, 2007 It was not the “best Carnival ever”, as some Government ministers and security officials boasted last week. If they meant that it was the best in recent years, with that I agree. There were more than a handful of good calypsoes. There were a few mas bands that were … Continue reading A Carnival we can be proud of
By Raffique Shah February 18, 2007 It’s the columnist’s perennial dilemma: what topic to address on a Carnival Sunday? Who reads newspapers around this time anyway? Pan “peongs” in their thousands will be bleary-eyed and either celebrating the sound of steel or fuming over the judges’ decisions from last night’s Panorama finals. Many more who … Continue reading Crime will not stop the Carnival
By Raffique Shah April 19, 2025 Kamla Persad-Bissessar will be delighted to learn that her not-so-friendly critic, Raffique Shah, has been moving around in my limited spaces, singing loudly, “When UNC wins, everybody wins.” In fact, when I zeroed in on that jingle, I had no idea that was the UNC’s main audio-visual marketing tool. … Continue reading Critical election for everyone
By Raffique Shah March 08, 2025 This has been a bumper year for Carnival-related cultural art forms. I have no authority, nor do I have any qualifications to intervene in any debate or discussion on how 2025 matches up with 1962, 1964, and so many other occasions when our calypsonians gave us songs that were … Continue reading A good year for calypso
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe March 01, 2025 “Absolute foolishness.” Those were the words the Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow used when he described “the heavy foreign exchange spending on Carnival costumes…He insists that costumes are not investments” (Guardian, February 26). Such statements are “absolute nonsense” and “absolute foolishness” combined in one.
By Raffique Shah February 22, 2025 Now more than ever, I am convinced that this society is so steeped in corrupt practices that no one can claim to not know what has been happening for 50-60, whatever, years. So confident am I in laying this charge of universal theft, banditry, if my editors will only … Continue reading Of crime and cowards
By Raffique Shah February 08, 2025 Old age is a B!!ch. Growing up as a boy in rural Trinidad, I would often hear that refrain coming from the mouths of people who were, well, old. In those times, anyone who had a couple grey hairs or whose skin looked like leather, or who walked around … Continue reading Hiding our inhumanity