- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 29/Aug 05:51

Banyan archives saved from Trinidad and Tobago

PAOLO KERNAHAN IT’S LIKELY that one of the chief architects of local television production company Banyan, Christopher Laird, would bridle at this headline – or maybe not. Reactions this week to the somewhat shocking news that the Barbados government had purchased the Banyan archives were mixed. Many couldn’t understand why this happened and saw it as some betrayal of TT by Banyan – "someone” sold out the comprehensive record of the culture and intellect of our people. Well, in simple terms, we didn’t want it. It’s worth noting that we’ve been here before. TT was once known as the land of calypso. We let that go too; some of our most treasured artistes died in relative obscurity; others had to find sustenance abroad, where the appreciation for their talents extends beyond one fleeting moment in the calendar year. The steelpan that was invented here was patented elsewhere. There are many clues in our history to just how little we value our history. Several years ago, I bounced up Laird at Maracas Bay on an early weekday morning. He told me about the extraordinarily involved process of organising the archives and his efforts at finding a partner to ensure they’d be preserved for future generations. As the cool water washed around our ankles (it probably didn’t happen exactly like that, but go with it anyway) I thought, this is so important – it also sounds akin to trying to stop an earthquake with a tuning fork or building a real 100-room hotel with Lego bricks. As writer and photographer Mark Lyndersay pointed out in his own reflection on the historic deal – "I am both thrilled and ashamed that the Barbados PM could see in 15 minutes what nobody in TT could understand in more than a decade.” Laird had been trying to get a buyer here at home for ten years, and his runarounds were getting the runaround. Imagine being told by a UWI principal, the premier institute of higher learning in the Caribbean, “I have more important things to think about.” That’s the contempt he grappled with in trying to find a buyer. The Banyan archives are a comprehensive, visual historical record of this country and others in the region. It is the amber around our cultural expression, our intellectual life and ambitions of regional unity. Barbados PM Mia Mottley was immediately able to see how valuable this catalogue of the Caribbean experience is to regional identity. As she rightly pointed out, its availability to younger people will enable and encourage them to continue telling the stories of our people and recording them for posterity. This was, in part, one of the reasons I produced two television series – I felt it was important to tell the stories of our nation, to expose dimensions to our national identity that aren’t widely known or understood. Perhaps there could be some conservation if public passions were sufficiently stoked. Trust me when I say there are far easier ways to earn a living. Some of what I captured for those TV shows – certain cultural expressions, unique architecture, giants in our Carnival culture – no longer exist. I committed both TV series to DVD and instinctively felt that they should be in schools. As such, I know a bit about the contempt meted out to Laird. After working for months to pin down a meeting with the agency that does acquisitions for schools, I was confronted with an unexpected hostility. One woman questioned why I should be paid for the DVDs, “If anything, you should be giving us for free.” She also asked if I would be providing DVD players – that was a massive sticking point. In that meeting, I found myself explaining why providing these materials at no cost to schools is wholly unsustainable; in other words, I was confounded by a kind of idiocy entirely unknown to science. This was not an isolated experience. It went far beyond basic Trini apathy. I found myself contending with public servants and corporate lackeys in the private sector who actively undermined my efforts. Ultimately, that war of attrition prevailed, and I moved on from creating television shows about local culture, heritage and wildlife. What Christopher Laird and so many others who made up the Banyan family have accomplished is extraordinary. Hopefully, others in the region will see the value in learning from the historical record and go on to create their own documentaries, furthering the cause of enlightenment in the never-ending battle against ignorance and division. The post Banyan archives saved from Trinidad and Tobago appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.