island conversations
podcast series
Welcome to SICRI’s “island conversations” podcast series.
The aim of these podcasts is to highlight the work of island studies scholars and practitioners who make a significant contribution to islands’ research, arts, and culture landscape.
The podcasts are accompanied by a curated transcript that is edited to read as an independent piece.
"Island Notes" composition in Cretan Flat Mandolin by Christophoro Gorantokaki @"Melody Box"
Welcome to SICRI’s Island Conversations podcast series. This is Dr. Evangelia Papoutsaki, the host of this podcast and SICRI’s co-convener. In this island conversation we hear from Dr Sonjan Stanley Niaah, an accomplished Jamaican scholar, international speaker and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies’ Mona Campus where she was Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies (2015-2021). Sonjah is a leading author, teacher and researcher on Black Atlantic performance geographies, popular culture, and the sacred, and Caribbean Cultural Studies more broadly. She holds international appointments as member of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route Project (UNESCO), Senior Research Associate (honorary), Rhodes University, and Advisor, International Cultural Diversity Organisation. She is the author of numerous publications among them the acclaimed Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto (2010) and editor of Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture (2020) among others, including also our recent co-edited volume on Island Cultures and Festivals. Sonjah’s research and opinions have appeared in various media, among them Netflix, The Guardian, BBC, The Washington Post, NPR, The Fader and Pop Matters. In 2019 she introduced the Sound Culture book series at the University of the West Indies’ Press which is dedicated to publishing original work on Caribbean music including critical cultural and popular biographical content. Sonjah currently serves as Director of the Centre for Reparation Research at the UWI and focuses also on reparatory justice issues in her scholarship on entertainment prohibition, black wellness, human rights and violence as a public health concern.
Sonjah, welcome to Island Conversations! It’s a pleasure connecting with you again.
Thank you so much Valia. This is really exciting. Thank you for having me.
You're such an accomplished scholar and also an activist. It's really difficult to find a starting point in our conversation, and perhaps even stopping it at the end. But let us start on a more personal note. Could you share with us some memories and early experiences of growing up and living in Jamaica and what might be some of the insights you have on how these have shaped your identity and world view?
Well, first let me start by saying that I was born in a place called Sandy Bay by the beach, in my grandparents’ house. [I was] the only person born in my grandparent's house. As I grew up listening to the sounds of the sea, as a child going to the ocean regularly with my family, with my friends and growing up in Montego Bay, where I went to school, it was quite clear to me that we were surrounded by water and we were living on an island, an island which was being traversed by quite a number of persons external to the country.
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I grew up in one of the tourist Mecca's in Jamaica, Montego Bay, which is close to Negril and close to Ocho Rios on the northern side of the island would have been a place very much focused on tourism. So, I grew up in a context where the island, the focus of these islanders was in terms of getting foreign exchange from persons who were visitors and of course building a tourism economy. There are tremendous vulnerabilities around this kind of economy. One of these vulnerabilities would obviously be poverty and the distinctions by virtue of class. They were very much evident to me. Those distinctions became even more evident when I moved to Kingston, became a student at the University of the West Indies, where I eventually did my PhD in Cultural studies and began to focus in a different sense on what this island meant in a geopolitical sense. What became clear in a geopolitical sense, is this post- colonial society. Jamaica functions inside the belly of all sorts of inequalities, so racial inequality, economic inequality, social inequality.​
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I was just recently in a Maroon conference held at the University of the West Indies, where we could even talk about the distinctions between indigenous people in the country and those who don't see themselves as indigenous, but more, persons either of African descent or those who are visitors. Those who came and settled in the country as planters, planter class and so on, or indigenous or indentured workers. So, we have inequalities, even at the level of the citizen. All these began to shape my own consciousness beyond a university student, becoming a scholar, from the days of sitting on the beach with my parents and being totally unconscious of this kind of reality to now being focused on what it means to live on an island where there are these kinds of inequalities. What does a scholar do? A scholar like myself would need to, by nature and compulsory, be interested in writing (or “righting” in the sense of “making it right”?) some of the wrongs of history. Thus, to answer your question, this is where I started.
Doctor's Cave Beach, Montego Bay, Jamaica (Photo source: wikipedia commons
What a rich and insightful articulation or narrative of your islandness in such a unique context. Thank you for sharing that, Sonjah.
In one of your profiles it mentions that you are a Jamaican nationalist and a Caribbean regionalist at heart. Could you speak about that? I think it follows up a little bit from your description of your experiences as a Jamaican. What does it mean to be a Jamaican nationalist, and a Caribbean regionalist?
Fascinating question. Thank you. I've never been asked that question and it's so funny because I've had it in my own consciousness and certainly in the way I operate for some time. At a practical level, Valia, I have been functioning in various capacities at the national level, whether it's representing Jamaica at the level of the International Scientific Committee of UNESCO's Slave Route Project or working in the National Ministry of Culture, Entertainment and Sport as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Entertainment Division. So, I represent Jamaica at several levels nationally and internationally.
But originally, one of the things that really concerned me when I began to reflect on Jamaica as an independent nation and the attempts (to form a) at federation, which in a contemporary context, we could look at the European Union to understand what it looks like. The Caribbean attempted a union in the late 1950s, which was around the sort of most potent nationalist movement in the region. However, it just so happened that the Prime Ministers of Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, disagreed over this federation, this Union, and it did not happen.
Later on, due to the Treaty of Chaguaramas (1973) in Guyana and the Trinidad, Jamaican countries began to engage about this Union. So, the Caribbean community or “CARICOM” in short, is now the Union we have in the region. But what would have happened if we had in fact developed this Union, this federation from the late 1950s? So, I reflect about this and I a regionalist at heart because I look at the ways in which we could have solved so many of our problems negotiating on an international stage as a Union versus as separate countries or bilateral arrangements and so on.
Everyone knows collective wisdom, collective action, collective ways of being, collective visibility, collective strategies. These are the ones that really matter in the world today. Unity matters and most importantly, as islands in the Caribbean, we cannot really live as islands. I think there is a certain level of vulnerability which can be and certainly countered and overcome because of engagement at the collective level. So, I am a regionalist at heart because there is a lot of sense in advocating for and acting in a collective sense, regionally.
​That is fascinating because of course, there are always, two sides of every argument when it comes to islands’ vulnerability and one of them is in favour of regional federation, because that strengthens smaller islands voices as you so clearly articulated and within that context. You were the first to graduate with a PhD in cultural studies at UWI and the fist appointed lecturer in cultural studies. Given that the University of West Indies is a regional university, what do you think is the impact of this on culture studies in the region and on Caribbean studies at large.
Fascinating question again. It’s really interesting Valia. I grew up on an island. And I was in a context when I was in primary school, going through the secondary level at high school. It was only when I got to university that I learned about the important dimensions of Jamaican culture, of Caribbean culture. Τhis is something that I feel sad about because while we are living the [same] culture, some persons/ people in different parts of the island, different parts of the region exposed to different cultural norms, different cultural assets. I am talking now specifically about our indigenous religions. I am talking about our indigenous or masquerade traditions, so around Jonkonnu or around the Carnival in Trinidad. I'm talking about our musical traditions or dance traditions. You may live in Jamaica and not know anything concrete about these cultural practises and this is sad, because it's not routinely taught in our schools, certainly not at the secondary or the primary level. You may see it. You may engage in it. It may happen even in the school that you are attending, but you're not going to learn about it in the classroom.
So, when I got to university and was fascinated by all of this cultural knowledge, it was a no brainer for me to switch in a sense, well, not switch, but certainly deepen/ broaden my geographical interest by adding cultural studies to it. And that's essentially what I did. I married/ matched my cultural studies with the geography that I had studied at the undergraduate level and focused on being the first person to write a significant body of work on Jamaican dancehall culture. You cannot write about dance or culture without diving deep into history. Especially in the work that I did, which required to look all the way back to the African continent prior to colonialism and to engage with the celebratory practises, the performance practises of the people who are now living in this region, Jamaica specifically.
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I did a PhD in cultural studies and easily became someone distinguished in terms of this kind of knowledge. The way in which I engage with that history meant that I was focused on a certain kind of black Atlantic expressive culture. With Dancehall being a fundamental component of that, and of course, looking at the similarities with other performance practises in the global South, the American South, on the African continent and so on. I was engaged with thinking about things that were influenced by dance hall culture and the things that had in fact influenced the antecedents of dancehall culture. Eventually, I became the first senior lecturer in Cultural Studies. Additionally, I was also honoured to be appointed the inaugural Rhodes Trust Rex Nettleford Fellow in Cultural Studies. I want to acknowledge the work of people like Rex Nettleford, who started the Cultural Studies initiative at the University of the West Indies. So, I'm a direct beneficiary of the work of some of these great thinkers in the region.
That’s how it is. I have influenced the ways in which students at university and secondary level can engage with dancehall culture. I get requests all the time, we host workshops and we do all kinds of engagement with students at the secondary level trying to raise their consciousness about the importance of cultural practises.
Sonjah, you are a path-maker in so many ways. Your body of work has already created such a legacy that even if you stopped now, you could be satisfied, I hope. But perhaps you have or I'm sure you have a lot more to contribute knowing how engaged you are and on many different fronts. Let's go back to the book “Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto” which also touches on how dancehall impacted on other entertainment spaces in other cultures. Could you provide some examples of that impact?
Sure. The impact of dancehall is fascinating. Dancehall culture emerged in Jamaica, certainly around the 1950s, with the fundamental sound men, those who created the sound systems, those who are clashing in the dance halls, those who were toasting on the microphone, the mic men, those who were recording music in a time when recording music was just coming into being around the world, really.
So, “dancehall” as a musical genre became more popular by the 1980s and went out into the rest of the world and influenced just about every continent you can think. Here, I want to single out places like Japan, New Zealand, California, places where they were holding reggae festivals and consuming dancehall music in ways that we were not even doing in Jamaica. So, the other spectrum in terms of the commercial end of the business, (as) they were holding large festivals, attracting people from all over the place to just ground themselves in the music.
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I also want to put in the conversation that there are genres of music that have been influenced by dancehall such as reggaeton. One dancehall rhythm, (is) the dembow or the fish market rhythm, which is at the centre of a controversial intellectual property case at the moment. With performers such as Luis Fonsi or Daddy Yankee and others who have reggaeton songs, such as despacito, and major recordings, this is now one genre of music that came from one rhythm created in Jamaica. And when you go in countries like South Africa and India – there are so many countries with so many genres of music that have been influenced by Dancehall music. The last time I checked, maybe there were about 64 of them. We are proud of this, because I talk about Jamaica as being cartographically absent. If you don’t know where Jamaica on the world map, then you can’t find it. It's hardly visible. For a country which is nearly invisible on the global map, everyone in every continent has heard of Jamaica. Even if they don't know where to locate Jamaica, they've heard this word, Jamaica. This is precisely because of/ thanks to our cultural assets, such as dancehall, such as reggae before it. We have this magical thing that we do, it is a kind of creative genius actually the Jamaicans that have the temerity to create and to be confident enough to live authentically with their creation. That is what people are attracted to.
Reggae Artist Lila Ike Perfoming Live at Sole DxB-Dubai, 2019 (Photo source: Sonjan Stanley Niaah)
Reggae Artist Protoje Performing live at Sole DxB - Dubai, 2019
(Photo source: Sonjan Stanley Niaah )
The book was really very seminal. It made a huge contribution into Caribbean studies and music studies, culture studies and island studies directly, I would say. Following up from there, let us talk a little bit on the book that we co- edited on Island cultures and festivals, based on the papers presented at the International Small Island Cultures Conference that you Sonja so generally hosted back into 2019. It was just before COVID and little did we know that after that the world would shut down. Now the book is focusing on island festivals with a big emphasis on festival tourism and festivalisation. Festivals can transform island places from being everyday settings into temporary environments that contribute to the production, processing and consumption of culture concentrated in time and place. A large number of the chapters focus on music, especially coming from the Caribbean region. Jamaica is well known for hosting these music events. What is the impact on the island communities hosting these events? You mentioned that, you grew up on an island. Can you speak to this a little bit more from your scholarly and personal experience.
Sure! I want to start by saying how proud I really am of this book. I want to thank you for being a partner in this process and to say that people are excited about this book because it documents some very important things about not just island cultures, but more importantly the festivalization of these kinds of islands. (As for) Jamaica, one of the first things that I became conscious about as a young girl, was the impact of reggae festivals such as Reggae Sumfest in Montego Bay. This started in 1978. I was seven years old at the time. And soon enough, I was old enough to go with my parents to these festivals. So, I grew up in these festivals. I was very fortunate and very privileged that I grew up in these festivals. We are talking about. 4.3 million tourists that were visiting Jamaica just last year in 2023. That's the statistic we have. And I guarantee you that 4.3 million tourists going to Jamaica, it is because of the notoriety Jamaica has in relation to its music and culture.
There are some (other) staple events that we have while Reggae Sumfest is not on the calendar. It was taken over by Reggae Sumfest and there are major festivals that happen. Just last weekend for example I visited St Anne in the centre of the island where formidable performers, Buju Banton and Beres Hammond held the show, the second time they're staging the show “'Intimate”. Jamaica is known for events. People come to Jamaica for events and in terms of the economy, there is contribution of entertainment to the economy. While we don't have a culture satellite account which isolates the kind of earning, the income potential or the contribution to GDP from entertainment specific and in some cases we have entertainment mixed up with tourism because a lot of the tourists spend is actually on entertainment events when these visitors come to Jamaica.
Reggae Artist Beres Hammond performing live at Reggae Sumfest, Montego Bay, Jamaica (Photo source: Sonjan Stanley Niaah)
A view of the stage and audience at Reggae Sumfest, Montego Bay, Jamaica (Photo source: Sonjan Stanley Niaah)
So, the important thing is to understand that upwards of 70 billion in value on an annual basis can be calculated in terms of the value of entertainment. But we still suffer the indignity of having governments in the region, that think it is more important in our islands to focus on the bauxite economy that's failing, spending money in areas that do not reap the kind of investment or return on investment that we would get from these entertainment events, for example. And while we saw that during the COVID pandemic there was tremendous vulnerability and tremendous loss to creatives and events, you know, ended as the world in a sense was totally shot down, what they did realise at the time was that economy was large. The statistic we have in Jamaica is that there are more than 4000 persons directly employed in music alone and many more thousands who are beneficiaries/ who benefit directly or indirectly from the music.
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So, we're talking about a significant sub sector of the economy. I wish, and this is one of the things that I talk about in my article in the book, that the business of entertainment ought to be taken seriously. That when we think about these islands, Trinidad is a classic example. The carnival is once a year and it's raking in billions of dollars for Trinidad. I don't know what it's going to take, but we, I mean myself and others, the scholars, we continue to document, we continue to advocate and this is why the advocacy in the in the context of the scholarship is so important. I call myself a cultural activist precisely because I use my voice. I use my platform, I use the basis of my scholarship to be able to give voice to those who are voiceless in those sectors, such as the entertainment sector where we have a sort of prostituting relationship. We are fine with trying to extract from those creatives, but never to invest in how it is. They can secure a living from their productions.
Trinidad and Tobago Carnival
(Photo source: https://visittrinidad.tt/things-to-do/carnival/)
You mentioned in the book that the Caribbean cultural footprint provides a rich diet for scholarship in island studies, but it has to be considered within the context of various vulnerabilities. And I think you just mentioned some of them. Can you elaborate a little bit more about these vulnerabilities in the real world and how they are reflected in the scholarship?
I think one of the things that helps us to really see the significance of that, is the way in which every year there's a contribution from, let's say, ministries of tourism or ministries of entertainment, ministries of culture and the very ministries that have responsibility for these cultural assets do not make available resources in order to build those economies. That's something I find quite interesting because, there is a certain level of risk that they refuse to take, and there's a certain lack of political will that allows a minister or ministers to see the value of something, to want to associate with that value, but never to make the investment in that value to have it multiplied. To give you the example of the creatives in Jamaica who only recently gained an insurance policy. This is a kind of vulnerability that we're talking about now as many of the creatives do not have the capacity or have not had the capacity to even have health insurance.
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What would happen? So, at the broader level, there is an infrastructure or let me put it that way, an enabling environment that is absent from this society in relation to our creatives. Think about it carefully, Valia. Jamaica, as I said earlier, is well known on the global stage because of the creative output. The World Bank has identified Jamaica as one country with a with the highest creative quotient, and yet, we are not investing in that kind of creativity. You cannot go to school in Jamaica before university and learn about Jamaica's creative output.
So, there is a gap, there is something missing and I know that there is a stigma attached to the music and our creatives and our creative outputs precisely because these things have come from those people who are the most disenfranchised in the society, who we would consider to be people of little means. People who do not wield influence in the society. But these people have put Jamaica on the global map.​
That sort of I think links to the chapter you contributed to in the book, Sonjah, where you focus on island music by putting music and performance in conversation with the politics of citizenship. You use the sound system as an instrument of the Jamaican nation, a symbol of citizenship, but also in insecurity, security, insecurity and transgression. What stories do island sounds tell about citizenship, the politics of belonging, suppression and identity within all this of vulnerabilities that you mentioned?​
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Absolutely. These stories are profound, because at the end of the day, what I have seen in the context of my own scholarship, as I was trying to explain, is the way in which certain persons in the country have access to that citizenship and its benefits. But there are others who don't, and I am suggesting through my own work that creative work ought to be calculated in that context for understanding citizenship.
That the benefits that accrue to those who build a hotel or build a hospital, start a business for, you know, teaching or a school, they must be seen as persons who have contributed to the nation in the same way that the creatives have. It is high time that we are able to calculate the value of entertainment or the value of creative work in order to allow/ for kids to get insurance.
This is this a very new conversation in Jamaica. A creative cannot go into a bank and on the basis of the creative work, get a loan or with any security. These are things, conversations that are advancing in other places in the world. So, as for the citizenship, for me you can't be at the root of it putting a country on the map, and yet your work not being identified and not valued. This is a part of my own challenge, that, we must find a way to value the creative work, to quantify it, and to be able to have it as an investment for those who need to move forward with their lives in ways that suggest they are citizens of the nation like anyone else. So, regarding citizenship, for me the creative work has to be valued. It is tantamount to the creative work of our national, for the fighters, for the way in which we have Jamaica as a nation. Those freedom fighters, the creative work, the creatives have fought in their own way to have Jamaica as a country recognised by all in the world.​
Trinidad and Tobago Carnival(Photo source: https://visittrinidad.tt/things-to-do/carnival/)
Sonjah, what I love about you is not only the scholarly work, but also your passion. Listening to you and looking at the body of your work, I really understand what it means to be a scholar activist and you do call yourself a cultural activist. You engage with a wider public through your blogs and social commentary. You are known as the culture doc! It's very funny. A few months ago, a former post graduate student of mine from Zimbabwe said “Oh! I've seen that you've done a book with Sonjah Stanley, the culture doc”. So obviously, you are followed across the world by young Africans and or people of African descent.As someone on social culture activism, some of your research interests are on crimes of the state, human rights, gender- based violence, spaces of in/security, reparatory justice/reparations. How do you navigate the scholarly and active in spaces, and how important is it to you to engage as a Caribbean scholar, as a Jamaican culture studies scholar in cultural activism? What are some of the challenges?
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You know, navigating this space has been so easy and natural for me, Valia, it's really interesting. Because if you are an academic seeing the ways in which social problems need answers and social problems need to be tackled in systematic ways, and you can show the evidence of how and why, then, it's a natural outgrowth of the work that you're doing at the scholar level. It hasn't been challenging for me at all navigating this kind of, let me say, dual role that I play. And it's something that I find really healthy, as a matter of fact, let me use the word healthy. Even within the context of my own university, there's an active conversation about a university that is an activist university. This came about in our own strategic plan. Vice Chancellor Hilary Beckles, the architect of that strategic plan along with his team stamped the words activist university into our consciousness.
And so, I see myself as one who is aligned with the work demanded in this region, where social problems, particularly social pathology, such as crime and violence, demand a certain kind of scholar activism. Not only that, as a cultural scholar where some of the things I'm studying are deprecated, are demeaned, are not recognised and certainly, pejorative terms are used about them and they are not accounted for in ways that we understand the nation. It means that my role has to be that I am fixing that. And so, I do that in a very conscious intentional way within/ inside and outside of the classroom as a public intellectual.
I think that this is even more relevant to island scholars based on islands. You don't have the luxury to simply sit and engage only in your scholarly endeavours. You need and you must be engaged with what is happening in the wider society. You are visible as an island scholar on a small island. Therefore, you can't separate yourself from what is happening outside the campus.
Absolutely. Yes, it's fascinating because I, as an Islander, and we Jamaicans in particular, are automatically in a sense connected to the world, because we were always travelling. Our colonial experience has been at the centre of a sort of global modernity. Jamaicans have been cosmopolitans since, time memorial. From the time we were coming across on this slave ships to the immigrant experience; Jamaicans at home getting in touch with Jamaicans abroad, travelling to the United States, travelling to the United Kingdom, whether it was a Windrush generation or before. There's always been a certain kind of cosmopolitanism and a certain temerity to explore in various ways, the other worlds out there.
And so, navigating has been really easy for me. I was travelling out of Jamaica from when I was a little girl. My parents used to send my sister and myself to visit our relatives in North America, and soon enough, as I was a working young girl, I was also travelling outside of Jamaica. So, there's little separation that I have had in my own mind, in my own consciousness in terms of an Islander versus those living on larger spaces such as continents. And I've made it a part of my duty to really soak up the experience of Islandness and the experience of continental living, and the differences between those two things.
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When I go to Cuba, for example, I notice immediately that fruits are of a different size. When I go to Africa, when I go to countries like Kenya to Uganda, there is a way in which things just look different. The continental nature of those spaces, there's something, the feeling is different. There are tangible differences and I almost think that coming from a small place, an island such as Jamaica, puts you in mind of trying to experience larger places, which you know, for some people, it is overwhelming, cultural shock and so on. For me, it is part of the adventure.
So beautifully said Sonjah. Thank you very much for articulating the beauty of being an Islander.
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You're very welcome.
Sonjah, in some concluding thoughts here, I wanted to touch just briefly on your work as a director of the Centre for Reparation Research at the UWI. It's such a big issue. It's a movement right now from colonised islands, the secret operations from a colonial power. What is the role of your work in the centre’s work?
One of the things I never knew and I didn't see was that my work was going to have any kind of impact on a reparatory justice movement in the Caribbean. As a scholar in the humanities looking at popular culture, looking at popular Jamaican culture, looking at, the influence of Jamaican popular culture in an international context, I never had a thought about any Reparatory justice dimension to the work. But it was work that I was doing without knowing, because if you are trying to make visible what has been invisible in the ways that I've talked about, even the work of the creatives in terms of a citizenship conversation, that's a visibility thing. That's a kind of giving it visibility that it didn't have before. And in a sense that is activism. It is an act of repair. It is, moving in a direction that allows for repairing something.
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But more importantly, and more concretely, (is) the work that I was doing around entertainment prohibition. So, in Jamaica 1997 there was instituted a noise abatement act and that thing caused such a problem. I began to look at it seriously, not just from the perspective of those sound systems playing in the night, waking up people, but also from the standpoint of those who are policy makers, those who are residents, those who are, trying to make an income- from a 360 degree (perspective) sense. And I realised that you can't really blame the people at the level. You have to think about those who are leaders, who have not put in place an enabling environment for this kind of creative work. And so, as I engage with things like entertainment prohibition, I realised that there was a reparatory justice element to the work because I was asking no for repair but to look at the ways in which our society is structured to exclude some people who are vital to the construction of the nation, the national economy and to creative work in particular.
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So, in the paper that's published in the book “Island cultures and festivals”, at the end is where I begin to talk about our reparatory justice element. So, I'm talking about cultural reparation. I'm talking about a certain kind of impact that colonialism has created in societies such as Jamaica, where we think about noise and an eradicating noise before we think about a sound economy and creating the enabling environment to have that economy function with the infrastructure that would include entertainment zones and so on.
It's a much different, it's a shift. It's almost a philosophical shift. You have to shift your mind into thinking about the cup being half full versus half empty. And that's reparative. That's what reparatory justice is about. It's about making right the wrongs of history. Some of those wrongs include the ways in which we have perceived even the very creative work that we have as assets in countries like Jamaica.
Such significance in ground breaking work there, Sonjah.
As I said to someone today, I think I maybe have come upon the most important work that I've done, getting into a reparatory justice thinking. I mean, I've done other things. I've been a part of the team creating the Masters in Reparatory justice that now is between the University of the West Indies and the University of Glasgow.
So, there's a way in which I am I'm fundamentally involved also in the way in which the university is expressing itself in a global context. (I am also involved) in relation to reparatory justice teaching, so at the pedagogical level and also in terms of the research and the publications. Also, both for secondary school students, the Centre for Reparation Research is about advocacy, education and of course, research.
So, we are creating materials for secondary school students. Reparatory justice is also in the history curriculum at the secondary level. We are doing fantastic things like an international reparation debate competition. The Centre for Reparation Research is involved at fundamental levels to be able to really support the reparation movement in the region, particularly now within the Commonwealth, where countries are advocating for the removal of the monarch as head of state in several of these, the British monarch in particular as head of state.
I remember when I was at Mona campus during the conference that you hosted Sonjah. I remember going down the main Ave, which was named as Queen's Way or I can't remember now and I was astounded how this colonial remnants were still there, visible every day to today's Jamaica.
I was going to ask you what legacy you would like to leave behind as an islands or Caribbean studies scholar, but you just mentioned, I think where your legacy would like to be, right? It is as a director. As a Caribbean studies, as an island studies scholar, what would I like to write?
What legacy you would like to leave behind, but as I was listening to you about the work you're doing now as a director of the Centre for Reparation Research, I felt that perhaps that might be your biggest legacy.
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Absolutely and I think perhaps one of the things I would say to any scholar listening is that there is value to your scholarship beyond the classroom and beyond the publications. How might you mobilise that into solving a world problem?
I think it's meaningful to think about purpose.
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Absolutely. Sonjah has been such a pleasure having this podcast with you. I feel I could have continued for a few more hours flitting out all these amazing activities. We haven't even touched on your work as a member of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route project among all the other things that you are doing but that could be perhaps an opportunity for another podcast in the future.
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Part 2, yes.
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Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for crediting this wonderful volume on Island cultures and festivals. Thank you again for hosting us for the SICRI conference back in 2019.
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It has been an absolute pleasure working with you. Thank you so much for having me and maybe perhaps one day we will do a Part 2. There's so much more to say and perhaps I could interview you.
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Yes, why not? And perhaps we can have another event at your centre on Islands and reparation in post colonial times.
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Absolutely. Let's make it happen.
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Yes, thank you so much, Sonjah.
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Thank you so much Valia. This has been amazing.
Jamaica within its wider region (Photo source: https://maps-jamaica.com/jamaica-island-map)
References
Stanley Niaah, S. & Plummer, Nicole (2025). ‘Public Dis-Chord’: Popular Music and Gender-Based Violence in Jamaica, in Verene and Bean, Dalea, Gender Based Violence in the Caribbean: Historical Roots, Contemporary Continuities, The Press, UWI, pp. 283-304.
Stanley Niaah, S. & Plummer, Nicole (2025). ‘Popular Music, Entitlement and Gender-Based Violence in Jamaica’, Special Issue on “Gender-Based Violence in the Anglophone Caribbean: Representation and Resistance in Literature and Culture” Caribbean Quarterly Vol. 70, no. 3&4.
Evangelia Papoutsaki and Stanley Niaah, S. eds (2024). Island Cultures and Festivals: A Creative Ecosystem, The Press, UWI.
Stanley Niaah, S. & Evangelia Papoutsaki eds (2024). ‘Island Cultures and Festivals: A Creative Ecosystem’ in Evangelia Papoutsaki and Stanley Niaah, S. (Editors). Island Cultures and Festivals: A Creative Ecosystem, The Press, UWI, pp. xiii-xxix.
Stanley Niaah, S. (2024). ‘The Sound of Citizenship: Performance, Politics and Transgression’ in Island Cultures and Festivals: A Creative Ecosystem in Evangelia Papoutsaki and Stanley Niaah, S. (Editors). Island Cultures and Festivals: A Creative Ecosystem, The Press, UWI, pp. 174-201.
Stanley Niaah, S. (2023) ‘Of Water and the Healing of the Spirit to Fly Away Home: ‘Alexander Bedward, the Prophet of August Town’, Social and Economic Studies, Volume 72, Nos. 1&2, pp.190-200.
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Stanley Niaah, S. (2023). ‘Ganjapreneurship, Hypocrisy and the Jamaican Nation State: A Comment’, Caribbean Quarterly: A Journal of Caribbean Culture, Vol. 69: 3&4, Special Issue - New Approaches to Cannabis Culture, pp. 465-480. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2023.2295571
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Gomez, Michael, Moten, Fred, Stanley Niaah, Sonjah, Shepherd, Verene, Walcott, Rinaldo (2023). ‘The Global 21st Century Research University: Choices, Challenges, and Futures: A Panel Discussion in Honour of Sir Hilary Beckles’ in Shepherd, Verene, Henderson Carter & Ahmed Reid (Eds) Interrogating Injustices: Essays in Honour of Sir Hilary Beckles, Ian Randle Publishers, pp. 1045 – 1068.
Noxolo, Patricia, Patten, ‘H’ & Stanley Niaah, Sonjah eds (2022). ‘Introduction’ in Noxolo, Patricia, Patten, ‘H’. & Stanley Niaah, Sonjah in Dancehall In/Securities: Perspectives on Creative Life in Jamaica, Critical Caribbean Studies series, UK: Routledge, pp. 1-13.
Stanley Niaah, S. (2022). ‘Sounding out the System’: Noise and the Politics of Citizenship’ in Noxolo, Patricia, Patten, H. & Stanley Niaah, Sonjah, Dancehall In/Securities: Perspectives on Creative Life in Jamaica, Critical Caribbean Studies series, UK: Routledge, pp. 130-149.
Noxolo, Patricia, Patten, ‘H’ & Stanley Niaah, Sonjah (2022). Dancehall In/Securities: Perspectives on Creative Life in Jamaica, Critical Caribbean Studies series, UK: Routledge.
Stanley Niaah, S., (2021). “Sounding” the System: Noise, In/Security and the Politics of Citizenship, Vol 8: 1, Journal of World Popular Music, pp. 51-73.
Stanley Niaah, S. ed. (2020), Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture, The Press, UWI (June).
Stanley Niaah, S., (2020). ‘Ritual and Community in Dancehall Performance’, in Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture, Kingston: The Press, UWI pp. 327-340.
Stanley Niaah, S., (2020). ‘Bogle a di order fi di day’, Dance and Identity in Jamaican Dancehall’ in Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture, Kingston: The Press, UWI, pp. 477-490.
Stanley Niaah, S. eds (2019). Of Sacred Crossroads: Cultural Studies and the Sacred, Special Issue of Open Cultural Studies, Vol. 3, No.1, February https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/culture/3/1/culture.3.issue-1.xml
Stanley Niaah, S., (2019). ‘Call the Contractor’!: Humour, Innovation and Competition in Jamaican Music, in Kitts, Thomas and Baxter, Nicolas (eds.) Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humour, Chapter 13 (May 2019), pp. 116-123.
Stanley Niaah, S., (2019). ‘Prime Time’ Geographies: Dancehall Performance, Visual Communication and the Philosophy of 'Boundarylessness' in Caribbean Quarterly: A Journal of Caribbean Culture 65:1, March 2019, pp. 5-26); also longer version published in Banjo, Omotayo, African Diasporic Media: Content, Consumers, and Global Influence, UK: Routledge, 2019, pp. 223-49.
Stanley Niaah, S. (2019). Introducing ‘Of Sacred Crossroads: Cultural Studies and the Sacred’, A Special Issue of Open Cultural Studies, Vol. 3, No.1, November, pp. 539-540.
Stanley Niaah, S., (2018). ‘Can Jamaica Put Music First?’ Caribbean Quarterly: A Journal of Caribbean Culture Vol. 64: 2, pp. 330-347. https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2018.1480319
Stanley Niaah, S., (2011). ‘Beyond the Slave Ship: Theorizing the Limbo Imagination and Black Atlantic Performance Geographies, in 'Being on the Move: Formations of the Black Atlantic, Special Issue of Comparativ Vol 21:5, Eds. Patricia Wiegmann & Nora Kreuzenbeck, Leipzig: Leipzinger University, pp.11-30.
Stanley Niaah, S., (2010). DanceHall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto, African and Diaspora Cultural Studies Series, University of Ottawa Press, July (launched in Hong Kong and Jamaica), 260pp.
Stanley Niaah, S., (2010). ‘Dance, Divas, Queens and Kings: Culture and Embodied Practice in Jamaican Dancehall’, in Making Caribbean Dance: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures, Susanna Sloat (ed.), Florida International University Press, pp. 132-148.