Submitted by People’s Democratic Congress (PDC)

Another Crop Over Festival in Barbados has ended, with entertainer  Blood capturing the Road March title from other contenders with the song “Foot on Fire”. And truth be told, had NOT for its own capacity to be made so intensely commercially viable but so wretchedly politically exploitable by a few power-hungry money-grubbing people, this Crop Over Festival would have long gone by the way side like it previously did.

But, like the wider society, polity, and so-called economy in Barbados, this really little, cultural extravaganza, a micro-cosm, is being used by many elites/government functionaries for the primary purposes of aiding in the elite/state political exploitation of the masses and middle classes by ideological financial cultural imperialist means.

So, while there is no longer – as it really was – during the old Barbadian plantation enslavement society  – the burning of “Mr. Harding” to signal the ending of Crop Over festivities and the beginning of “hard times” in between the Crop Seasons then, and while there is no longer in today’s post-independence Barbadian society too – but quite regrettably however – the burning of Mr. Harding to signify the end of the modern day Crop Over Festival, it can be safely argued by the People’s Democratic Congress (PDC) that long since those days when the Crop Over Festival was revived by the Barbados Board of Tourism in 1974, to principally woo more tourists to the island during the so-called summer season in Barbados, following its demise in the 1940s owing to the continuing decline in the importance of the sugar industry to the Barbados economy, there would have been many fundamentally wrong and senseless decisions and policies linking the Crop Over Festival more and more to local Tourism,
a very fickle, culturally destructive industry, to increase its commercial income generating potential.

And, so, yes, having more and more non-Barbadian owned airline flights with tourists to come and savour many aspects of the festival will, et al, bring in greater tourism receipts for the country, BUT will also make many Barbadian citizens and business enterprises acquire more COSTLY imports to supply them with; will also make so many Barbadian citizens and business enterprises more amenable in net terms to their foreign social preferences, information tastes, cultures, etc., and will also make many of our citizens and enterprises subject to the political power decisions of some others outside of our country, whilst at the same time NONE of our CALYPSONIANS are able to get any recording contracts with any of the big overseas music publishing companies; and whilst at the same time more and more of those who contribute significantly to the Festival, Calypsonians, soca artistes, musicians, etc.) will get less and less of the total income spent by such tourists in the country at this time. See the relevant picture, and the below sentence that is used to describe the picture – Tourists enjoying Crop Over in St. Lawrence Gap – to get a clear understanding of the last point made in this paragraph – in the on line newspaper Barbados Today ( on page 3, August 4, 2010).

Also, check the giddy-headed drivel that has been reported to be recently spewed by Tourism Minister Mr. Richard Sealy, and which clearly highlights the very shocking effects of a virulent tourism dependency syndrome that has attacked the Minister: “My point on this is quite simple. Crop Over is our premiere national festival, and we should not rest until it reaches the people where during Crop Over you cant find a single available rental or hotel room” – Barbados Today ( pg 3, August 4, 2010).

But the jury must be out on how many of these  visitors who actually come to see Barbados, come particularly at around this Crop Over time to simply see the country (again), taking advantage of certain things, or on how many of them come definitely to take in the Crop Over Festival or the many Crop Over activities!!!(Whereas many Bajan Yankees or Bajan Brits come to stay with family in their homes NOT in hotels, far less villas, condos, the PDC hardly sees white tourists taking part in Crop Over activities in Barbados)

But, by focussing on its commercial financial strengths, the revivors laid the basis for its historical and cultural foundations to be eventually  dishonourably shaken by many latter day government and private sector organizers of events within the Crop Over Festival – many of whom at this juncture appear to be ignorant of or unconcerned with reestablishing those very important types of foundations, even though they have each been helping to create greater space for greater foreign music and cultural imperialist penetration.

So, NOT ONLY is the NCF – the lead state/country organizer of the Crop Over Festival – looking now more than ever before for its pound of flesh from out of the Festival ( e.g. an atrocious BDS $ 60 to get into Bushy Park), it is doing so in competition with private sector sponsors ( big companies LIME/BNB/Banks), investors ( modern day tent owners, band leaders, event organizers), WHILST there is clearly no one or entity that is right now in a position to revitalize those historical and cultural foundations that would have helped Crop Over survived in those 1970s days/in these more recent times, and, by extension, that would have helped/still now help the country to some extent to protect its moral social fabric against many very negative foreign influences.

Too, NOT ONLY is the Government – via the Barbados Tourism Authority – the lead state promoter marketer of the country’s tourism – that is very much looking to continue to cash in on the very modest amount of tourism revenue that is generated at Crop Over time, it is also at the same time doing so in brutal competition with esp. small hoteliers, restaurateurs, even with stall owners on Spring Garden, etc.; WHEREAS there is clearly no one or entity that is right now positioned to fix tend to those dying historical and cultural roots that helped nurtured life into the Crop Over Festival in the said late 1970s/1980s/in these present times, and, by extension, that helped and still now help put life into the existence of national cultural institutions and identities amid powerful Eurocentric western forces dominating global culture.

So just as Mr. Harding – who many a Barbadian over the years thought symbolized “wicked massa” as well, the Land Ship, the Tuk bands playing calypso music in many communities, the Traditional tent, the traditional calysionian, the main celebrants of the Festival – the masses – the largest group of descendants  of the enslaved that themselves originated Crop Over – and others, have altogether seen their roles systematically vanished from the Crop Over Landscape, so will others like  the King and Queen of the Crop, the Ceremonial delivery of the Last Canes, etc. become that way, and moreso if a certain few euro-centric westernist hedons connected with the NCF have their way, on the basis that Crop Over must more resemble a Trinidad and Tobagonian Carnival, a Brazilian Carnival, and be more appealing to Tourists from so many other countries, esp. Black ones.

So clearly it was a grave and colossal mistake for the Barbados Board of Tourism, rather than the Ministry of Education and Culture in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture then, to have led the way in the revival of the Crop Over Festival. Crop Over should have remained an Agricultural based Festival giving tremendous boost to Agriculture and Agri-business in this country, and thus going onto be an Agro-commercial based festival, and should have also remained this type of Festival, and through which the descendants of the enslaved would have channelled their frustrations, anger, anxieties, energies, programs, etc., at what is still a derivation from the plantation enslavement society/planter-merchant class society, the presently existing oppressive exploitative elite based euro-centric driven political economic oligarchic system while seeking still greater freedom and democracy wealth and material for themselves through the so-called history of class struggles – the dialectics – while still too understanding the importance of agricultural based historical traditions and values to social cohesion and harmony in our country.

But, by the main governmental organizers of Crop Over, and in one particular instance a private sector grouping, seeing Crop Over as a Festival through which certain Black middle class or Black wannabe psuedo-elite people continue each and every year to be pitted, and in many cases, unnecessarily so, against many many people of the masses/working classes, and worse even in many cases of many of the latter classes being made to compete against one another, esp. via music competitions (calypso, soca, sweet soca) via masquerade competitions, for money, for air play, whilst in these particular processes doing great psychological social and material damage to one another personally and otherwise (check the Mighty Gabby vs Admiral Nelson blow up), and whilst simultaneously those money and income costs that it takes to compete spiral tremendously up, whilst they are made to lose sight of who they should really be focussing on and fighting with – to a greater extent – the elites – many of whom are the biggest material and financial beneficiaries of Crop Over, and to a lesser extent – the government – which is used by DLP/BLP cliques to help divert much of the material and financial benefits derived from Crop Over to themselves and a few others, there is no doubt then that with Tourism playing a greater role in the Crop Over Festival that it will become a greater powder keg, or even a greater crucible, or a far more delusionary, illusory and hopeless series of dissonant discordant events, used primarily by many of the local and foreign elites and some of their government  functionary friends for the further disenfranchisement, degradation, marginalization, depoliticalization and manipulation of the great number of the masses and middle classes in this country.