Of Calabash and Ernie Smith
Published:Monday | February 14, 2011 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
In the January 30, 2011 edition of The Sunday Gleaner, I was drawn especially to two issues. One had to do with the decision to terminate the Calabash International Literary Festival and accounted for a significant proportion of column inches. The other spoke to the Broadcasting Commission's response to criticism from Member of Parliament (MP) Ernest Smith. They were disturbing in different senses.
I found the decision on Calabash worrying, in that it had attracted praise for its success in contribution to culture, community building and tourism. Patrons and the promoters relished what it brought to a corner of St Elizabeth, Jamaica and beyond. Articles by Gleaner correspondent Mel Cooke and columnist Carolyn Cooper did not emphasise failure. Founder Colin Channer himself, in an email interview, described Calabash as "the greatest little festival in the greatest little district in the greatest little country" and indicated that it had fulfilled its destiny. This would have offered little comfort to committed adherents, and others.
Difficult financial times which threatened the 2010 edition, managing the logistics and proud achievements to be savoured as history, rather than prolonged and put at risk in an uncertain climate, might take us on close enough to the substantive explanation. If Cooper's speculation that tension in the leadership could be an element ('Calabash spills its guts', A9) were added, we might inch even closer.
In all this, there might be opportunities for initiatives such as Erna Brodber's 'Blackspace' to fill the void or take up aspects of the slack - even in the absence of the beach, good roads, immediately accessible accommodation, and so on.
Simple annoyance
MP Smith's comment in Parliament that the regulatory body should be fired, because of what he saw as its ineffectiveness in curtailing the broadcast of undesirable musical fare, had the commission firing back through its top brass.
I feel that Smith's remark might have been little more than petulant and was based on insufficient homework and on simple annoyance with some of what he had been hearing.
More-than-casual observers would note that the regulatory body, within the constraints of its powers, has done notable mopping up of aspects of the older, more liberal environment, especially during the past couple of years.
It is somewhat ironic that in the same issue of The Sunday Gleaner, FAME FM apologised in a full-page advertisement for having committed four specified breaches.
A solution to the problem that upset the MP goes beyond the remit of the commission and requires inputs from him and other listeners.
I am, etc.,
PAUL E. MARTIN
Kingston 6