From Cassettes To Culture

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Carry On Friends. I'm your host, Carrie Ann. There's a plastic container that's sitting right by my foot under my computer desk where I'm recording right now. And inside are dozens of cassette tapes. There are sound clash, there are party mixes, they are recordings from radio here in New York, or actually on a couple trips to Jamaica with my cousin, I recorded some of what was on the radio in Jamaica because I wanted to bring it back to New York because I had the hotest ting. I was in Jamaica. Last year I recorded an episode called The Sounds of Christmas, where I talked about all the Christmas songs that remind me of back home in Jamaica. And I mentioned uh I made mention of one of the cassettes and actually pulled it out in the video. There's another storage container that has a whole bunch of CDs, um, stacks and stacks of CDs, CD holders, all the things. And when we thought cassettes were all over, we went with CDs, and um now those CDs and cassettes are very special to me. Coming of age in Brooklyn, when I rhythm drop, my cousin and I, we already knew the tunes. When a new bus ride video came out, if you know, you know, or a video of a big dance in Jamaica came out. We went to the video shop because we had the connect and we catch the latest dance move and we'd be practicing in the basement until we got it right. And of course, we add our own little spin and twist to it. I could tell you which sound, which party, all of these things. Even if I wasn't of age, I was participating in what was important to me, which was the music, what was happening, what was the latest, what had everybody talking for weeks within there. All right. So those containers with the CDs and the cassettes, people call them relics. Like my friend Mikey T commented on the IG post of the video with me demonstrating the cassette. But as we say, all time something comeback again. And I've been reading in the news that there's a trend where the younger

Introducing The CDEM Framework

SPEAKER_00 2:20

generation are embracing older technology. So you see, vinyls are coming back in. But I still keep my cassette them because those cassettes they speak to a moment in time, a vibe, an energy. They still have value. It may not be monetary, but let me tell you, rich, rich in memory, rich in just a vibe, like a time capsule, right? You have the music, the selectors, voices. Let me tell you, there's nothing like a Jamaican selector back in the 90s. And this is what we call anchors. Even though we don't use cassettes anymore, what's on them still connects me to home. Again, it connects me to memory, a time in my life, a part of who I am. Today, we are talking about cultural anchors, the tangible things that keep us connected to our Caribbean identity. So, in this episode, we're going to talk about what are cultural anchors, why they matter, and how they function as lifelines to our culture, especially when we're far from home. So, before we dive in, let me give you some quick context. This episode is part of a series exploring the Caribbean diaspora experience model, or CDEM.

Defining Cultural Anchors

SPEAKER_00 3:43

CDEM is a tool I created through Carry On Friends to help us better understand how a Caribbean cultural identity forms, evolves, and expresses itself when we're living outside the region. The model has six lenses, and today we're focusing on lens three: cultural anchors keep us rooted. If you're just joining us, we covered lens one, where you start shapes the journey. And this covers your migration story and your starting point, whether you are born in the region or you are born in the diaspora. And lens two, how geography and motivation interact to shape your cultural connection. I'll drop the links to those episodes so you can go back and listen to those episodes. For this episode, you don't need to catch up on those episodes, but it's important for you to get a context of the entire model as we go through it. Cultural anchors are something we all experience, whether you've thought about them in this way or not. So, what are cultural anchors? Cultural anchors are the specific tangible elements that connect us to our Caribbean identity. For the Caribbean diaspora experience model, I want to focus on six primary anchors. And those six primary anchors are food

Six Primary Anchors Explained

SPEAKER_00 5:02

practices. We talk about cuisine, cooking techniques, special dishes that define our culture, certain meal traditions, like, you know, growing up, soup cook pan Saturday, and Sundays, rice and peas, and then on Mondays are, you know, throughout the week is like dumpling and all those other things, right? So those are part of what I call food practices. We talk about holiday food. So at the time of this recording, it's Christmas, and so you already don't know. So you have the black cake and you have other Caribbean countries that have their own traditions. We have family gatherings and what foods are happening around a particular time, you know. So for instance, when there's Dediad or Gary, you know, that a goated soup off a run, all of these things. The second anchor is music and dance, musical genres and artists, knowing what's classic and current, whether the songs are traditional or contemporary or folk songs defines aspects of our lives. Um, even dance styles and movements, some of them we don't do now, but how we move our bodies to the rhythms, that's all a part of a cultural anchor. And as part of the cultural anchor, our body recognizes those movements, those rhythms, right? So, I mean, you ever hear a beat or a thing uh like a song pass, and your body just starts to move, right? That's all aspects of music and dance as a part of cultural anchors. The third cultural anchor is language, language patterns, vocabulary, expressions that are unique to, you know, your particular Caribbean country, the accent you have, you know, how Jamaican speak versus Trini speaks, how Bayesian speaks, the, you know, how we pronounce certain words, um, dialect variations, they're all aspects of culture and one of a very big cultural anchor. Another cultural anchor we'll call like ceremonial traditions, right? So this includes how we observe holidays. I mentioned earlier that if someone is past, we go, we have what we call a dead yad, we have gere, you know, some people call it a nine-night, and there's a certain um code of conduct or how things are done for these um ceremonial. I call them ceremonial as a grouping, but you know, whether it's a birthday celebration, whether it's a wedding, a funeral, etc., you know, independence um celebrations or other celebrations that um that center around our history, um, the the way that we recognize them. For instance, you know, Labor Day in Jamaica is very different in how I capture Labor Day in America in my mind. Labor Day in Jamaica is work, Labor Day in America is jump up on the parkway. So, you know, those are very different anchors in my mind. Um, five spiritual practices. Again, I didn't put this in the other category because how the Caribbean does religion and spiritual practices is just very different, and it is part of our cultural anchor. How we show up for our church, synagogue, or you know, um, mosque, you know, faith-based um practices are very important and we carry them with us wherever we go. So definitely a cultural anchor. And last but not least, family structures. This is huge for me. So when I tell people that my cousins, you know, I don't even explain that this is a third, fourth, fifth cousin because how we grew up at when I grew up in Jamaica, it was very intergenerational. We lived in very close proximities with each other. We are living as extended families, and so that's how we end up knowing cousins that are generations removed because we still live within close proximity. Or the my grandparents, right? They have siblings that are younger and they're having kids, especially the male. So you find that my second cousin is closer in my age than she is to my mom. So that's how you find having relationships with extended family members just because of how the birth order and everything. But family structure is very important when it comes to a cultural anchor. I found myself growing up that a lot of my friends were really my cousins because we grew up again in close proximity and there were so many of us. My grandmother is one of 10, you know, my grandfather, one bugger, Bretta, and of course a whole bunch of kids. So you can imagine. So when we think of cultural anchors, we have to think of how they function for us. And they're about four functions. So you think of a sensory connection, think of, you know, the smell of the curry chicken, the curry goat, the fried chicken, the oxtail, the smell of whatever the food is, right? Your body remembers it. Like, you know, I remember growing up, I wasn't big on Jamaican black cake, but I remember the smell of my uncle baking it, right? My favorite was potato pudding because my grandmother used to done it when she met the potato pudding. So I love that smell and it opens up memories for me when I recognize that scent, right? Um, when I think of certain songs, I am immediately transported back to a particular day, a particular time, and it's just it holds memory from a sensory per perspective. The other function that these anchors have is knowledge transmission, right? Um, so the cassette tapes, you know, when when they taught me, you know, lyrics, you know, um the latest slang, cultural references, things that I was just singing back without even knowing. And if I when I play that same music for my niece, my nephew, or my kids, it's telling them something different, right? They're they're learning about a time that everyone talks about, but I'm giving meaning to it because I was there when it was happening. And now I'm on this side. I kind of understand, like when my parents or my grandparents would talk about, you know, music of their time, right? And so you're trans, you're you're transmitting some knowledge, context, you're giving real-time examples because we are living history, right? So, you know, when beanie and bon to the clash

Four Ways Anchors Function

SPEAKER_00 12:05

a sting, yo, when I can tell my niece and nephew what was going on, because my cousin and I could re-recite the whole thing and how everything came together, that's a much different um understanding of culture and the knowledge that went in behind creating certain music, what triggered a clash or which what triggered this tune or this counteraction, all of that is knowledge transmission. And even going back further, when you know, Studio One and all of that, like hearing my, you know, older family members talk about it to me now doing the same, it's it's all about knowledge um transmission. Um, the other function it has is community building, right? So all of us, all of our families, we gather. Um, every gathering has a particular pattern, a particular cadence, you know, is food come out, there's certain music that play before the food come out or simultaneously, you know, food I prepare, you know. It's about how we gather around all of these anchors. This, the anchors that we have, they create a structure for us to find each other and to kind of build community and talk to each other about them. We may not stick to them the way that we did growing up, and I don't even think back home they stick to it the same way. But it's a way for us to gather and commune with each other, even when we're far from home. For instance, language became the way that we recognized each other in spaces where we're few and far in between. And so function four is identity and expression. This is the one we think about the most, right? How we show who we are through our cultural elements. But here is what the model reveals we get to choose which anchors we express when and how. And that choice isn't about being less Caribbean, nor does that choice make us less Caribbean. The reality is some anchors travel better than others. Music, food, and language, these are the most portable anchors. You can take them anywhere. I can cook Caribbean food in Wisconsin, I can play dance hall in my car in any city, I can speak patua on the phone, no matter where I am in the world. But other anchors, they need infrastructure, they need community. Let's take Carnival, for example. Carnival is absolutely a cultural anchor, but you need critical mass to pull it off. You need a community, you need an organization to sponsor the carnival, you need to organize the carnival, you need permits, you know, um, you need mass camps, you need a lot of things to go into our carnival, and not every diaspora community has that. So when we talk about anchors, we have to be honest. Your geography, where you live, will determine which anchors you have readily available. If you're in Brooklyn, Toronto, Miami, you might have access to all of these anchors in full force. If you're in a smaller city with fewer Caribbean people, you might lean heavily into the ones that you can create yourself, which is usually food you can cook, the music you can play, the language you can speak at home. And this is not a deficit, that's just reality. Um, if you refer to the video with Herman Hall, he will tell you the story of how Carnival came to be in Brooklyn. The anchors that can travel music, food language become even more important when other anchors are not accessible. So let me give you an example of how these portable anchors do cultural work when you don't even realize it. When you bring your lunch, go work, right? So let's think about Caribbean food at work and someone asks you, What's that smell? Pray to God enough fish, because we can't save you from a fish smell or warm up in a anybody microwave at work, but I digress. But let's say it's curry or something else that doesn't have as strong of a smell, right? And you're explaining curry or oxdale or anything else that you've brought for your lunch, right? When you think about it, you're not just translating the dish itself, you're telling a story about the dish and the culture behind it. This is how I believe Caribbean food has spread because you bring lunch to work and your coworkers are curious and they want to try it, right? And so even when you bring lunch to work, you sometimes signal to other Caribbean people at work that you're Caribbean and

Portable Versus Place-Based Anchors

SPEAKER_00 17:05

you didn't know it because you worked on different floors or different sides of the office or whatever the scenario is. The food itself creates a visibility and it creates community. And it's it's a conversation starter. And when non-Caribbean people get curious, they want to try it, right? Then they start asking where you buy it, and then they start seeking out Caribbean restaurants and grocery stores, etc. That's the cultural anchor working. It's creating a visibility, it's building bridges, it's teaching people who we are through tangible things that they can taste and smell and experience. So as we wrap up, here's what I want you to remember about cultural anchors. Number one, anchors are tangible, specific elements that keep you connected to your Caribbean culture. They're not abstract, they're things you can taste, hear, speak, and experience. Number two, not all anchors are equally accessible in every location. Music, food, and language travel easily. Others require community infrastructure, and that's okay. Work with the anchors that you have access to. Three, these anchors do work, they create sensory memory, they transmit knowledge, they teach people, they build community, and they let you express your identity. They're functional, they're not just symbolic. Because we participate in them often, we don't realize how much work they're actually doing. So here's what I'd like you to do. Uh I want you to think about your strongest cultural anchor right now. Not the one that you think should be the strongest, but the one that actually is. Is it food? Is it music? Is it language? Is it the way that your family gathers? And then how is that anchor functioning for you? Is it creating a sensory connection when you need to feel close to back home? Is it creating a connection to someone who's no longer here? Is it helping you connect with other people in your city? Is it helping you teach the next generation? Once you recognize what your anchors are and how they work, you can be more intentional about how you use them. So do me a favor, share your strongest cultural anchor. When we start to share these stories, we continue to create a map, a record of how Caribbean people stay connected across distance and time. Not only are we documenting what cultural anchors travel with us when we leave home in the Caribbean, but we also document how it evolves once it gets into the diaspora. So, in closing, cultural anchors keep us rooted. There are tangible elements, music, food. Language, traditions, spirituality, family structures that create that invisible thread back to the Caribbean, no matter where you are. And my plastic container with a cassette them, that's not nostalgia,

How Food At Work Builds Bridges

SPEAKER_00 20:15

that's an anchor. The music on those tapes, they connect me to moments, to people, to a version of myself and my culture that matters. I have cultural knowledge. When people are talking about 90s, I have a little expertise in the 90s and the dance, so I'll come up with all of the things them. Your cultural anchor might look different from mine. And depending on where you live, you might have access to different cultural anchors. But we all have them, and we're all doing work of keeping our cultural anchors active and alive. Thank you so much. My name is Carrie Ann, and you've been watching Carry On Friends. Connect with me on all platforms at Carry On Friends. And as I love to say, at the end of every show, walk good.