On Culture and Trade

FTAA. WTO. Globalization. These are all words that we're becoming familiar with. But what do they mean?

This week I had the fortune of attending a meeting of the OAS that looked at the economic implications of culture. Turns out that the world is suddenly waking up to the fact that culture has an economic existence. The trouble is, it's also a world that's embarking on adventures in free trade.

What does this mean? Well, three things that are most relevant to us here in The Bahamas. The first is that culture is no longer considered a luxury that eats up money and gives back little in return, which is how most countries in the world have regarded it for many years. Rather, culture is regarded as an engine of economic development, a means for the eradication of poverty. And this view isn't coming from cultural practitioners alone; economists are also pointing this out.

In Mexico, where the meeting took place, for instance, culture accounts for 6.7% of the Mexican GDP, which is a serious chunk of Mexico's economy, which focusses on manufacturing and industry as well as tourism. In Brazil, culture generates 6% of the GDP, and 5% of all jobs. In the USA, culture produces 7.75% of the GDP, and is responsible for 5.5% of jobs. Whether or not culture is valued or supported, it generates income for its country.

The second is that, at the same time as countries are beginning to recognize the economic value of culture, its contribution to the wealth of a country, the principles of free trade are threatening to weaken local cultures. This is because at the moment, the principle of the free market includes cultural products. Under the WTO agreement, and under the FTAA which follows WTO principles in the main, countries do not have the right to pass trade laws that give preferential treatment to their own citizens.

To bring it home, what that means is that (for example) if The Bahamas signs on to the FTAA or the WTO, it will not be legal for the government, or any Bahamian artists to place limits on, say, the importation of foreign music or musicians. Limiting foreign acts because they are foreign will not be an option. Bahamian musicians are already marginalized in their own country, a nation that welcomes more than 4.5 million tourists annually; only a select few are able to find work in their own professions. The implications of free trade in cultural goods and services are such that their ability to do so will be even further curtailed.

The third is that free trade implies a sort of open season on Bahamian products in the marketplace. Unless we are very careful and vigilant, things that we consider fundamentally and uniquely Bahamian — which may also be things that could be profitable in a free market — are vulnerable to being patented or copyrighted by people outside of The Bahamas. In the worst case scenario, we Bahamians will have to make, use or sell those things that we consider traditionally ours; in the best case scenario, we will not be positioned to make money from them in the international arena.

Take the example of the Trinidadian steel pan, traditionally handmade in Trinidad, and a sizeable industry. Not long ago a company in Germany or Japan obtained the patent for the mass-production of steel pans, thus earning the right — in the global market — to produce Trinidadian steel pans in factories and thereby to corner the European market. While Trinidadian panmakers may still benefit from their hand-made pans, they have no claim to the profits that are made off the factory-produced instruments whatsoever.

In the Bahamas, we are very cavalier about our cultural products. From those consumers who say that there's no value in Bahamian music, choosing instead to invest their money in American hip-hop or Jamaican reggae, to the people who regard all of our indigenous cultural wealth, from Junkanoo techniques to the various styles of plait, we have a healthy disregard to the wealth at our fingertips. Young people are not interested in mastering the traditional ways of doing things, opting for the faster, the easier, the flashier; straw vendors prefer the fast turnaround, buying mass-produced bags from China instead of supporting local Bahamian straw-workers.

But know this. While we may not be aware of the potential monetary value of Bahamian culture, be sure that Americans and others are. If we are not careful, we will find ourselves like the Trinidadian panmakers — our Junkanoo trademarked by an American, our drums mass-produced in Pennsylvania, our straw-work marketed out of Miami. And the money from these things will be lining the pockets of others, and not of ourselves.

So we need to wake up. We need to recognize the economic value of our cultural products. We need to find ways of preparing for the free market by protecting what we have, trademarking and patenting and copyrighting what is ours. We need to become more active on the international scene, negotiating, with other countries, for the exemption of cultural products from the free market.

We need to know who we are and what we're worth. And we need to take the steps to let the world know we know.

On Performance

The recent visits of the Jabulani South Africa Troupe, which was well received by Bahamians in Nassau, Freeport and Harbour Island, and by the Yangzhou Chinese Puppet Troupe has put me in mind of a fundamental, and often overlooked, reality.

Bridges are built by means of performance.

Think about it. Here we had two groups of people from lands far away from our own. They mounted productions that they performed in pubic spaces, and the messages that they got across were understood by many in the crowd. In both cases, they were messages of joy, of pride. The Chinese shared with Bahamian audiences, the vast majority of them in Freeport, their ancient and complex culture, while the South Africans communicated their ride and joy in this their tenth year of democracy.

And we understood them.

Human beings, you see, have a universal language. It's a language that's currently underused here in the Bahamas, but it's rooted so deep within us that we can't escape it. It's the language of performance, and it's the one language that can be understood around the world.

The language of performance is the language of human beings standing up before others and communicating their emotions, their thoughts, their philosophies, by the way they move in space, the way they face their audiences, the way they possess the stage they inhabit. Performance is the place where music, art, movement and literature can come together in such a way that together they communicate to large groups of people. To some degree, music and art and literature on their own are merely objects, commodities, unless they are accompanied by a person who delivers them. CDs, books and paintings, divorcable from their contexts, provide some insight into the people, the societies, that surround their creation. But when that message is delivered by living human beings, then it can be appreciated in its fullness.

Now we Bahamians come from a society and a culture that is fundamentally rooted in performance. Only one generation has passed since children on the Family Islands would be entertained on a nightly or a weekly basis by ol' story told to them by their elders; not even that long stands between Nassauvians and their traditions of school plays, church hall concerts, recitations and festival performances.

One of the greatest benefits of living in a society of performers is that everyone has the chance to demostrate his or her individuality. In performance, no one is anonymous; everyone is given a chance to express himself or herself, to know he or she is alive. Performance provides individuals with a chance to be noticed, an opportunity to be praised.

You'd think every society would encourage its children to become involved in perfomance activities. But oddly enough, performance no longer seems a priority for the parents and elders of today.

It's not that people are no longer moved by live performance. The recent successes of the Independence celebrations, of Michael Pintard's Woman Talk, and of the Jabulani and the Yangzhou troupes, give the lie to that. Even the fact that people are addicted to church services that feature preachers as riveting in their behaviour as any actor, and, at election time, to political rallies, reveals further that we Bahamians respond on a visceral level to orators, actors, dancers, politicians and other performers. But it is equally true that performance is no longer given pride of place in our everyday lives.

This came home to me when the South Africans performed; they often called upon ordinary Bahamians to join them on stage. There was something very remarkable about those who did: they were either Bahamians of a certain age — thirty years old or more — or they were visitors to the islands who came with the intention of leaving inhibitions behind. The few young Bahamians who were pulled into the performance space appeared awkward and shy, and they went through the motions in an agony of self-consciousness that betrayed a longing to return to the anonymity of the crowd.

And where, I ask myself, did this come from? How did we, a nation of natural performers, breed a generation of young people who would rather be invisible than face an audience? And even more important, have we begun to appreciate the level of culture loss that this would seem to imply?

It's important we recognize that this change is not accidental. First of all, we have closed off all performance arenas. Our churches, which at one time hosted weekly recitations in their halls and required every child to participate, have brought that performance into the sanctuary and have turned services into shows in which only the initiated may participate. Our schools, which once put on regular plays, musicals, talent shows and beauty pageants seem to have deemed such activities frivolous wastes of time and money, and leave them for only special schools to do. Television and electric lights have replaced storytelling ; GameBoy and Nintendo have imposed a world other people imagined onto our youngest and most creative Bahamians. Even Junkanoo has changed. No longer is it acceptable to simply rush in the streets. Instead, young people who want to take part must become parts of large groups where their anonymity and passivity is not challenged.

We have closed every door that affords our children the opportunity to face their fears and express themselves in a positive, public, individual way. We have become a nation of spectators. Our children no longer learn how to perform.

It's time, I think, for us to reclaim this bit of our culture. It's time to recognize how fundamental performance is to our self-esteem, and to give it the respect it deserves.