BBC Genome project full of Trinidad and Tobago treasures

Online now at https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/, the BBC Genome project offers over ten million listings detailing decades of BBC television and radio programmes.

It’s unclear how many survive in the BBC vaults, and many are lost forever. But over a quarter of a million can be immediately accessed, though there are some unfortunate gaps.

Regrettably, television ones require you to be in the UK but the radio shows are available anywhere. Shows are constantly being taken down with new ones put up. The BBC Genome listing indicates how long each programme is available and gives you a search term so you can prioritise those shows whose availability is ending soon.

There is a wealth of programmes on TT history and culture. More general ones include a World Service piece on Diversity of Life and Culture in TT or a half-hour Artbeat show on Yoruba Culture in Trinidad. There also seem to be plenty on West Indies cricket and the latest Caribbean news.

But there is much to find on aspects of TT culture. If you are a calypso fan, there are a few fascinating pieces. Unexpectedly, there is an extended visit with Kitchener back in the 1980s in downtown Port of Spain, with world music DJ Andy Kershaw. Anthony Joseph, who wrote a “fictional biography” of Lord Kitchener, did a fine half-hour radio show in 2015 about Kitch that is also available. In 2018, on the Windrush anniversary, a Frontrow show featured Kitch’s London is the Place for Me and a new song, After the Windrush, commissioned for the show and performed by UK-based calypsonian Alexander D Great.

In a recent show called Inheritance Tracks, the British folk singer Eliza Carthy explains how she came to sang and still sings the Mighty Sparrow’s Good Morning, Mr Walker and her meeting with Sparrow in Grenada several years ago.

The show doesn’t have her recording of it, but there are performances on YouTube well worth checking out, especially the dancehall mix, complete with muppets! Listening to her version, you might think it was a traditional British folk song with her fiddle-and accordion-led band. Her ability to translate a Sparrow calypso into another medium is amazing and shows the universality of great calypso.

There is a recent piece on Walter Ferguson, a Costa Rican calypsonian who died recently at the age of 103. For many years, he didn’t issue records, but would home-record his songs on cassettes and sold those to visitors. Currently, there is an ongoing effort to find, preserve and make them accessible.

Sadly, many are not available. There were calypso singers resident in the UK who appeared regularly on the BBC in the Fifties and Sixties, like George Browne and Cy Grant. Grant would nightly sing a new calypso on each day’s news events on a TV news programme.

In 1963, BBC radio had a series called From Atilla the Hun to the Mighty Sparrow, with introductions by VS Naipaul. In 1998, there were two series related to calypso, the first called Billy Ocean's Caribbean Sunshine and one called Kaiso! Calypso with Trevor MacDonald. Dare I mention a show from 2004 on cricket and calypso, in which several calypsonians were interviewed by this writer?

Steelpan was featured on BBC radio and television starting back in the 1950s, many with Russ Henderson’s steelband, which featured Sterling Betancourt, who first came to London with TASPO (the Trinidad All-Steel Pan Percussion Orchestra).

None of these is available, but there are a few shows on pan that can be accessed now that are fascinating. There is a half-hour 1994 Omnibus show just called The Steel Band Story, with an exploration of various panyards, including a long interview with former mayor of San Fernando Junia Regrello at Skiffle. Another show focuses on Pamberi and offers an extended discussion with the late Nestor Sullivan. Lastly, there is a half-hour interview with Ray Holman from 2016, focusing on his composing for pan.

There has been a long history of radio plays on the BBC, going back to the Fifties, by TT authors or featuring Trinidad actors, but these are sadly not available to hear. Errol John produced a version of his famous play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl for the BBC in 1958 called Small Island Moon that featured both Trinidadian greats Barbara Assoon and Fitzroy Coleman in the cast.

Samuel Selvon did a series of radio plays in the 1960s and 1970s, but none are available, though the texts were published in a book many years ago. Similarly, none of the radio plays of British-Kittitian writer Caryl Phillips are available on Genome, but a collection of the texts was just published called simply Radio Plays.

A recent radio play by Trinidad performer and writer Elisha Efua Bartels, Water More Than Flour, was broadcast as part of Carifesta 2019 but is not online. But it is available in a new audiobook collection of 13 recent BBC radio dramas called Blessed and Other Stories of Love and Friendship. What is available on Genome is her evocative radio meditation Three Gardens in Trinidad, which is a calming delight full of recordings of birds and celebrating the green spaces around Port of Spain. Bartels was also a host on three episodes of Writing a New Caribbean from 2017 that are available.

There have been lots of readings of Caribbean novels on BBC programmes over the years, though sadly these also aren’t available. Earl Lovelace’s classic The Dragon Can’t Dance was read on air in 1990 by Errol Sitahal in ten parts, then remade with a full cast in 1999. Trinidadian actor Rudolph Walker starred in the latter. He has had a remarkable, long career in BBC TV and radio and is best known for the long-running soap opera East Enders, where he has appeared in hundreds of episodes.

Recently, fiction and poetry by Trinidadians has been getting a great deal of coverage on BBC literature talk shows. Anthony Joseph, who recently won the TS Eliot prize for his book of poetry Poems for Albert, has been featured in many interview and performance shows.

Novelist Kevin Jared Hosein was featured in shows about his novel Hungry Ghosts as well as a reading of his short story, We Do Everything For You.

Writer Ingrid Persaud has been on interview shows and read from her amazing novel Love After Love, but her series of humorous short stories set in Port of Spain, The Chronicles of Burke Street, are wonderful. These are read by Trinidadian Martina Laird, who has had a long career in British stage and film as well as television and radio. BBC Genome notes her appearances in close to 300 radio and TV shows, though only a handful can be heard.

Just go to https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/, do your searches and start listening!