Calabash spills its guts

Carolyn Cooper, Sunday Gleaner Columnist

Well, not quite. The evasive obituary on the Calabash website discreetly fails to give any information about why this truly grand literary festival has suddenly died a very unnatural death. It's as though the collapse occurred in rather compromising circumstances and the corpse has to be carefully arranged in a posture of casual innocence.

Ironically, the Calabash tag is 'So much things to say'. In the press release announcing the demise of the festival, Colin Channer, founder and artistic director, does have something to say. But not very much. "We had a fantastic run and the festival effectively accomplished what it set out to do 10 years ago, which is to produce a world-class, professionally run literary festival in Jamaica. Calabash has garnered a great deal of attention for Jamaica and the legacy of this exciting event will never be diminished."

But this barefaced statement of transparent fact gives no answers to the screaming question: Why kill the goose that could keep on laying golden eggs? Last summer, as the Dudus melodrama and the Tivoli tragedy played out on the world stage, Calabash helped to salvage Jamaica's reputation. Our society couldn't be completely lunatic - flouting international treaty agreements - if we could still nurture the arts and manage to host a world-class literary festival supported by cultural icons like Wole Soyinka - for free!

Asking awkward questions

In the press release, Justine Henzell, producing director of the festival, makes her own upbeat statement: "We are very proud of the gift that together we were able to give to Jamaica."

Justine, Colin and Festival Programmer Kwame Dawes certainly have every right to be very proud of their extraordinary accomplishment. It took a lot of guts to sight (in the Rastafari sense of the word) and site an international literary festival in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth.

Known as the breadbasket of the island, St Elizabeth might have seemed an unlikely soil for the cultivation of exotic literary fare. But rural Jamaica has produced a remarkable number of talented writers of different generations such as Claude McKay, Erna Brodber, Olive Senior, Velma Pollard, Edward Baugh, Jean 'Binta' Breeze and Ifeona Fulani.

All but McKay (long dead) and Fulani (very much alive and well) have performed at Calabash. And we mustn't forget that song lyrics are literature too. One of the joys of Calabash was that final Sunday afternoon session in which Jamaica's lyrical geniuses were celebrated in communal song.

I once asked Kwame why Ifeona hadn't been invited to read, especially since she was born in St Elizabeth and is a good writer. His answer was enigmatic. At that time, I was a member of the board of directors of the festival and felt entitled to ask awkward questions. Eventually, I resigned when I realised that my role on the board was not to ask questions or make suggestions. I was expected to endorse decisions already made by the triumvirate.

Strains and pressures

In the absence of information, we often resort to speculation. I speculate that the very thing that held the festival together for an exciting decade - the close-knit working relationship of the three principals - is the very hitch that has made the festival unravel. Of course, I don't know for sure, and no one is telling. But in the best of relationships there are strains and pressures that can cloud judgement.

It seems to me that if Colin, Justine and Kwame had got tired of working together on the festival - and, trust me, it was a hell of a lot of work - they should just have taken a break. They could have rested up and come back with a big bang in 2012, the 50th anniversary of Jamaica's Independence.

Instead, the festival has ended with a whimper. Like a great novel, Calabash deserves a much better ending than this. We should have had a grand ceremony on the final day of the festival last year to mark the end of an era. Quite frankly, I don't think the festival needed to be killed off at all. Yes, there were recurrent problems with funding. But last year, after the organisers cried wolf and threatened not to stage the event, support came pouring in from all sides.

Succession planning

But since Colin, Justine and Kwame are clearly not crying wolf this time and have unequivocally decided that they really don't want to continue working on the festival at all, there are other options than murder that they ought to have considered. They should have offered the exceptionally valuable Calabash brand for sale so that some other cultural entrepreneurs could have kept the festival going. That's the kind of suggestion that would have got me into trouble when I was on the board.

Justine sees Calabash as a gift to the Jamaican people. And we are most grateful. But proverbial wisdom warns that when you give a gift and take it back, 'sty wi grow over yuh eye'. The death of Calabash is an excellent illustration of the problem we have with succession planning in our culture. Once you create something, you own it, so you can do anything with it - even kill it off. That's much more satisfying, it seems, than sharing your vision with someone else.

But culture, like nature, abhors a vacuum. The people of Treasure Beach are rallying to fill the void created by the premature death of Calabash. Those of us who have made the pilgrimage year after year to the "greatest little festival in the greatest little district in the greatest little country in the world" know that country people can create their own greatness. We'll be there to celebrate.

Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com or karokupa@gmail.com.