INDIAN DIASPORA – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Sour Chutney: The Ethnopoetics of Exploitation, Transplantation, and Violence

The feature here is the late Dr. Roi Kwabena’s musical spoken poem, Sour Chutney, from his hypnotic Y42K album, an unrecognized treasure in my view, where every one of his musical spoken word pieces is hauntingly beautiful. This is a remake of an earlier version I posted here some months ago, having produced the first […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

One Year Later: Viva Roi Kwabena!

ROI KWABENA Today is the first anniversary of the death of Dr. Roi Kwabena, someone whose presence in my own work and evolution was fundamental, a mentor and guide, a great example of a publicly engaged anthropologist — completely public, in the sense of not being tied to any academic position, and inspiring some to […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

“The Mongoose,” by Derek Walcott, has a bigger bite than one might think (1.2)

“It’s going to be nasty,” Derek Walcott said, prefacing his war on V. S. Naipaul with a warning. “The Mongoose” was the last of Walcott’s new poems at the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica last weekend [May 2008]. He’d wondered whether he ought to read it, Walcott said, “and then I figured if I don’t […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Monday Morning “Mor Tor”: Wine it up just so…for the Video Notes from the Indian Diaspora, Part 2

Aside from being an installment of “Monday Morning Madness,” I need this video as background for at least two coming posts, especially for readers unfamiliar with Trinidadian or Indo-Caribbean cultures, with their dances, and some of the terminology that is used. This post follows the previous (Video) Notes from the Indian Diaspora. This video, featuring […]