Cover stories: celebrating 75 issues of Caribbean Beat

To celebrate the magazine’s 75th issue, seven members of Caribbean Beat’s editorial team choose their favourite covers

  • cbeat69
  • cbeat062_cover
  • cbeat61 cover
  • BEAT54 Cover
  • cbeat042_cover
  • cbeat037_cover
  • cbeat033_cover
  • cbeat001_cover

The first issue of Caribbean Beat appeared 13 and a half years ago, in January 1992. This September/October 2005 issue that you’re holding in your hands now is our 75th — a milestone for any magazine, but especially for a magazine here in the Caribbean.

From the beginning, the magazine has tried to do two things: to show the Caribbean as it really is, from the perspective of Caribbean people; and to celebrate the best that the region is, our most brilliant achievers and proudest moments.

In a Caribbean magazine — especially a Caribbean inflight magazine — people expect to read about holiday destinations and to see images of beaches, turquoise water, coconut trees. We’ve certainly featured lots of those; they’re an undeniable part of our lives and our landscapes. But the Caribbean is far more complicated than that. These islands stretching between two continents are home to a sometimes bewildering, always fascinating mix of peoples and cultures and languages and ideas, combining and colliding to create something new and unique. Over the years, we’ve reported on almost every aspect of Caribbean life — music and art, sport and science, festivals and fashion and cuisine — always trying to reflect the richness and unexpectedness of this place and its people.

As with any magazine, our public face is our front cover, the masthead and image that peep over the seat pocket on BWIA planes, and that greet subscribers in the post, that proclaim our presence on bookshelves and coffee-tables all over the Caribbean and elsewhere. Four years ago, in our 50th issue, we proudly published a cover gallery, showing off all the faces, all the images with which we’d greeted our readers: from reggae superstars to rocket ships, beauty queens to batsmen, Phagwah to steel pan. Now, to mark our 75th issue, we’ve decided to take another look at our gallery of front covers, but this time from a personal perspective.

We asked seven members of Caribbean Beat’s editorial team each to choose from our 74 previously published covers an image that was particularly meaningful to him or her — perhaps a favourite cover, perhaps one with a revealing story attached, perhaps one that was simply unforgettable — and to write or talk about that image, what it says about the magazine, what it says about this part of the world. The result, over the next few pages, is a sort of collective meditation on who we are, what we do, and why we do it, by seven people involved in shaping the magazine’s content and look and direction.

But we don’t undertake this task alone. We’ve had the help of dozens — by now, even hundreds — of writers, photographers, artists, and advisers who have contributed to our pages. The magazine would never see the light of print if not for the efforts of our sales and production teams. And thanks to BWIA, each issue of Caribbean Beat reaches tens of thousands of readers from across the region and from much further afield. BWIA also deserves much credit for recognising from the beginning that the Caribbean goes far beyond the conventional tourist brochure stereotypes, and for consistently supporting us in showcasing the real Caribbean. And of course, our readers have also helped make

Caribbean Beat what it is, through their encouragement and commentary, their criticism and praise, shared with us in letters, emails, telephone calls, and face-to-face conversations.

In its own way, Caribbean Beat has always been engaged in trying to define what the Caribbean is, what “Caribbean” does and can mean. The definition is always changing, and so are we. But the great goal remains the same: to understand ourselves, in our own terms, and to share that understanding with the world.

Nicholas Laughlin

Editor


 

Issue 1 Spring 1992

Favourite cover of: Jeremy Taylor, Editor (1992–2003) and publisher

“It set the agenda”

That very first Caribbean Beat cover made the statement that the Caribbean is more than its beaches, more than rum punch and partying, wonderful and liberating though those pleasures are

After 75 issues of Caribbean Beat, I still have a soft spot for the very first cover we published, back in January 1992.

Looking back at it now, it’s hard to see why. The tones are grey, the subject is stiff and formal, and there’s a dated feel to the image. The photo is not even by a Caribbean photographer (in 1992 we could not afford to commission a cover image, and had to make do with a studio PR photo).

Since 1992, many of our covers have been more colourful, more appealing, more popular. There have been beaches and boats, beautiful people, landscapes and seascapes, sports heroes, singers, musicians, Carnival people, striking graphics and paintings. I like them all, and feel proud of many of them. Yet that very first cover somehow managed to announce what Caribbean Beat was going to be all about.

Hardly anyone recognised the Martiniquan film director Euzhan Palcy. Few people had seen her brilliant movie Rue Cases Nègres (“Black Shack Alley”), though it’s a classic of the independent film world. Nobody associated her with the 1989 MGM release Dry White Season, where she directed Donald Sutherland, Susan Sarandon, and Marlon Brando (who appeared free, because he liked what she was doing). Nobody knew this was a woman who had Robert Redford and François Truffaut as professional “godfathers”.

Why (that cover asked) is Caribbean film-making not taken seriously? Why do we think of the Caribbean as a romantic backdrop for other people’s movies, not for making our own?

We saw Euzhan Palcy as a formidable Caribbean woman who had broken through ethnic and gender stereotypes into a notoriously difficult industry and had produced some powerful work. She was interested in making Caribbean films, not perpetuating Caribbean stereotypes. It was exactly the sort of achievement that Caribbean Beat wanted to discover and celebrate.

So that very first Caribbean Beat cover did not depict a wonderful golden beach, or a sunset, or a luxurious villa. It made the statement that the Caribbean is more than its beaches, more than rum punch and partying, wonderful and liberating though those pleasures are. The Caribbean is not just a romantic backdrop: it has successes and achievements of its own, world-class people in sport and science, music and business, writing and the visual arts. And we wanted our readers to know about them too.

When we started, one of our most supportive contributors said, “It’s a great idea, but you’ll never keep it up. There’s not enough good regional material around. You’ll dry up after a year!” Nearly 14 years later, we have a long list of people, events, and trends waiting to be reported and celebrated. That’s why, in spite of the many things we have learned over 75 issues, and many covers which have been more successful in terms of visual impact, I still like that very first one. It set the agenda.


Issue 33 September/October 1998

Favourite cover of: Stacy Lalbeharry, Production co-ordinator

“We are beautiful and strong”

The way her face slants downward and her eyes look up is very striking. It’s not an innocent pose. Most Caribbean people have this combination of cheekiness and boldness

I like seeing people on the cover. You know — Caribbean faces, our identity. That’s why I’ve chosen Redhead, the cover from our September/October 1998 issue. It was a photograph taken by Sonya Sanchez-Arias, and it won our 1998 photo competition. It’s a beautiful and powerful cover.

Over the years we’ve had many covers with Caribbean faces. This one stands out for me, though, partly because it was one of the first issues I worked on, but mostly for her look. It’s bold, kind of saucy, very Caribbean, playful but serious, many things in one.

I think someone seeing this image for the first time will be taken by its sense of strength. The way her face slants downward and her eyes look up is very striking. It’s not an innocent pose. Most Caribbean people have this combination of cheekiness and boldness about them. I think Redhead illustrates it well.

The costume is from Peter Minshall’s 1998 Callaloo Company Carnival presentation, a band called Red. But this is a studio shot, it wasn’t taken on the street. Sanchez-Arias had her in the studio, got Joelle Blanc to do some great make-up, and with clever lighting made the image artful rather than candid.

I like the way the redness fills the entire page and glows on her face. But people who played in this costume on the road for Carnival weren’t done up so elaborately. The make-up was for the studio, and it produces a more powerful image, one full of female intensity. Caribbean intensity.

The Caribbean is its people. I think our natural beaches and great weather are what draw visitors here. But Caribbean Beat isn’t only about that part of island life — it’s also about the people. That is really our main focus. Redhead says something about our power as people. We are beautiful and strong, soft and playful, intense and creative. Provocative too. That’s what I see. That’s why this cover is my favourite. It tells people something about who we are.


Issue 69 September/October 2004

Favourite cover of: Kevon Webster, Layout artist

“I see more than just a cover”

It’s as if the whole magazine is a double LP of the Caribbean’s best sounds, and I can almost lift it and play it

Music is part of our culture. It stretches from soca to reggae to folk songs. Just as we define the Caribbean as an entity through West Indies cricket, our music is regional too, and it has a similar power to unite. It binds us all, it is a part of our Caribbeanness. Sometimes you hear songs from Trinidad with sounds from Jamaica, and vice versa, and people from high up the Caribbean singing soca and calypso — and they have their own styles too. It’s all connected.

Our September/October 2004 issue celebrated “250 great songs from the Caribbean” — the words are right there on the cover. I think this issue did an excellent job. The scope of it was so big, we had to use a wall in the office to lay it all out. It was a huge project. It was impossible to include everybody. We knew there were songs and artists we couldn’t get in. I’m not going to pinpoint any, because most of my favourites made it onto the list. But I’m sure there were many readers who could name someone they thought should have been included.

I believe someone looking at the cover of this issue gets a sense of the spectrum of music we managed to include inside. You look at the text behind the vinyl and you see the names of many of our greatest songwriters and performers. You see André Tanker, the Mighty Sparrow, Roaring Lion, Burning Spear, Beenie Man. I also like the synergy and word-play between two types of “beat” — our magazine’s masthead and the rhythm of music itself.

But, having played a part in putting the whole issue together, I see more than just a cover. It’s as if the whole magazine is a double LP of the Caribbean’s best sounds, and I can almost lift it and play it. That’s why I picked this cover as my favourite — not just for how it looks, but for what I see when I look at it.

Music is an icon of the Caribbean. This cover doesn’t single out one country or one person. It includes the entire Caribbean.


Issue 37 May/June 1999

Favourite cover of: Dylan Kerrigan, Staff writer

“We are not afraid to enjoy ourselves”

As soon as I saw the shot I knew it had to be the cover. All the key ingredients were there — and, well, it was Wendy. Her face looks so radiant, her body glitters with sequins, her smile and eyes grip you

It is hard to choose one favourite cover out of the 75 we’ve published. There are too many I like. An ecstatic Courtney Walsh or a screaming Alison Hinds; Brian Lara cover-driving textbook style against South Africa, or a young Carnival imp, whistle in mouth, red dollar bills in hand, lost in the masquerade; Peter Minshall’s 1974 Hummingbird costume, which we reproduced for a special Carnival issue in January 2004. All are favourites.

I’ve often made the joke that Carnival enticed me into moving my life to the Caribbean (from London, where I was born and grew up). And in all seriousness it did. I’m sure many others have a similar story to tell, because Carnival is a lot like that — it always draws you back. So, in the end, my choice of a gregarious Wendy Fitzwilliam twirling beautifully in her Harts costume while she was Miss Universe shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

This particular issue, May/June 1999, coincided with the 1999 Miss Universe Pageant, staged in Chaguaramas, Trinidad, where Wendy crowned her successor. I hadn’t been in the office for more than a couple of months when the various cover choices were circulated. Perhaps it’s the fact that we choose our covers two months in advance, and my Carnival hangover was still alive and intense, but as soon as I saw Sean Drakes’s shot I knew it had to be the cover. All the key ingredients were there — and, well, it was Wendy. Her face looks so radiant, her body glitters with sequins, her smile and eyes grip you, and the whole frame is awash with colour and feathers. The final shot was actually cropped — there were more people in the original image — but I think it works better this way.

For me, the cover says a lot about not just Trinidad but the whole of the Caribbean. In a world increasingly fraught with tensions, we are not afraid to enjoy ourselves for a couple of days each year, and celebrate life. We are alive with passion to play, to dance, to masquerade, to find joy in our annual Carnival rituals that are so important a part of our heritage.

Wendy’s expression is like so many of the faces you see on the streets of Port of Spain, come Carnival Monday and Tuesday — free. It’s easy to forget she was also Miss Universe at the time. I’ve always thought part of the beauty of playing mas lies in the fact that we all, for a few days, feel like the Mr or Ms Universe of something.

Our covers speak to the Caribbean and the world about the Caribbean. Carnival, Wendy, the masquerade — these are all things we here understand as parts of our community, our heritage, our everyday life. Ultimately, this cover speaks volumes both to those who know our culture and to those new to it. It’s an honest reflection of how we feel, our vibe, our soul. It captures the Caribbean joie de vivre.


Issue 54 March/April 2002

Favourite cover of: Tracy Assing, Assistant editor

“Dreams find a place to shine”

Buxton Spice went up like a flare, illuminating the fact that the Caribbean is full of undiscovered gems bearing their gifts uneasily, having come of age in small spaces surrounded by water

It isn’t often that the image of a living writer finds its way onto the cover of a magazine. But there is the face of Guyanese-born novelist Oonya Kempadoo shining out from the cover of Caribbean Beat’s March/April 2002 edition.

Jim Rudin’s photo seems to capture Kempadoo’s confidence, but you can tell she is not completely at ease in front of the camera — she resists a full “skin-teeth” laugh, and tries to look serious. Sure enough, Simon Lee, in his profile of Kempadoo, says she “looks more like a model than a writer”, but also that “she doesn’t like having her photo taken”.

As Lee points out, in 2002 Kempadoo was already a literary star, though she began writing seriously only in 1997. In 1998, her first novel, Buxton Spice, emerged to instant success. Kempadoo confesses that she is uncomfortable with the idea of addressing writers’ workshops, and doesn’t want to get too involved in the intellectual side of writing. She protests that she has had no formal training in literature. She says, “I can’t even think of myself as a writer. It’s not something you think of earning your living from.”

Still, it didn’t stop her from dreaming.

Kempadoo’s second novel, Tide Running, has appeared since that profile was published, and received glowing reviews. The literary world anxiously awaits her third novel, All Decent Animals. But she has a cool, unhurried approach to her art, and happily proclaims, “I’m excited about the prospect of writing for years.”

For Kempadoo to be given this prominence on the cover of the magazine was, I thought, encouraging to new Caribbean literature and Caribbean dreams. Her Buxton Spice went up like a flare, illuminating the fact that the Caribbean is full of undiscovered gems bearing their gifts uneasily, having come of age in small spaces surrounded by water.

Becoming a novelist is a big dream for a Caribbean girl. There are few success stories for women writers who stay in the Caribbean, but some, like Kempadoo, couldn’t think of creating outside this atmosphere.

And it is not so hard to believe. For you sitting on this plane, going or coming, the Caribbean is a place of dreams — an escape from the world. Within the pages of Caribbean Beat, Caribbean dreams find a place to shine.


Issue 61 May/June 2003

Favourite cover of: Nicholas Laughlin, Editor

“Tell us your biggest hopes”

Is it wishful thinking to see in that stance a hint of the passion West Indians feel for cricket, the hunger for runs that goes far beyond fandom and touches on our deepest sense of identity and history?

It’s almost blasphemous for a West Indian to admit this, much less in print — but I’m not much of a cricket fan. (My grandfather Ken Laughlin, a sports journalist for six decades, the man who in 1937 did the first live cricket commentary on Caribbean radio, must be raising an umpire’s finger in his grave.) But there are five and a quarter million people in the cricket-playing West Indies, most of whom do not share my failing, so Caribbean Beat makes a point of running a major cricket feature at least once a year, usually around cricket season.

Our May/June 2003 issue was one of the first I worked on, after joining the magazine’s staff. It was my idea to put together a feature that looked at the future of West Indies cricket by profiling a team’s worth of young players from across the region, batsmen and bowlers already representing their respective countries in under-17 or under-15 tournaments, and who might just be old enough to catch the eyes of the selectors for the senior team in time for the 2007 World Cup. It involved asking the advice of coaches and officials at all the national cricket boards and at the WICB as well. Tell us who’s caught your attention, we’d say. We collected lists of statistics; compared averages and high scores; asked questions about personality. We finally chose 11 young men (plus a lagniappe, a young woman from Trinidad, to remind our readers that there’s also a West Indies women’s team), and interviewed all of them. Tell us why you like cricket, we said, tell us your best memories, your biggest hopes.

Next we sent a squad of photographers out to the playing-fields where our “next eleven” practised and competed. In a couple of cases, there wasn’t time to set up a shoot, and we had to make do with file photos from local newspapers. But we got some exciting images, studies in determination, flair, modesty, confidence, delight.

We wanted a cover relating to this feature, but how could we single out one of our players? And a group shot was out of the question — they were scattered across seven countries. Then photographer Sean Drakes came back from a shoot in south Trinidad with a batch of transparencies that solved the problem. He’d been preparing to photograph Kavesh Kantasingh; he was adjusting his camera when he glanced at the viewfinder, pointing at the ground ahead, and saw a perfectly framed image of the young batsman’s legs and right hand, padded and gloved and with bat momentarily at rest. The pose said, I’m ready, let’s play. Drakes got the shot. Next day, when he brought it to Caribbean Beat’s office, we knew at a glance this was our cover.

You might say there’s nothing in this image that marks it as Caribbean. Objectively, that’s probably true. But there’s something about the way that sharp shadow falls across the pitch that is, to my mind, distinctive of our light, our heat. And is it wishful thinking to see in that stance — in the jut of that left knee, the angle of that bat’s repose — a hint of the passion West Indians feel for cricket, the hunger for runs that goes far beyond fandom and touches on our deepest sense of identity and history, our struggle to prove ourselves, our pride in a line of heroes stretching back a century, our determination to overcome insularity and discover our common hopes and strengths, and above all the elation with which we’ve retuned the game to our own pitch and rhythm?

But then, as I said, I’m not much of a cricket fan.


Favourite covers of: Russel Halfhide, Designer

“There are a lot of stories still waiting to be told”

If you don’t start creating new images and looking at yourself differently, you are just a part of the mix. You are just an ingredient, you are not the chef

As a designer, how can you define one cover that you think is really the cover? You can’t do it. So I’m going to name four covers. These four are chosen for particular reasons.

But first I think it’s important to explain what Caribbean Beat is to me, so you can understand why I chose these four covers. The magazine must define who we are. We have an opportunity to tell our story, about our people, the way we should tell it. It is a chance for us to talk to international audiences about where we live, and not be stereotyped. We are here to teach. Let people learn what is a moko jumbie, let them learn what it is to “lime”, let them learn our slang.

My first choice is Shalini Seereeram’s drawing from March/April 2000. Many people don’t realise the range of presences in the Caribbean. This is an illustration done by an artist who is familiar with the subject, so it’s personal — it’s not coming out of India, it’s coming out of here. It’s a visual some people may not readily identify as being Caribbean. But it is part of the Blue Tapestry.

My second choice is Urbanimages’ “dancehall kings” from July/August 2003. It speaks to young people and represents Caribbean musicians of this time. For me, this cover with its duotone treatment and its quirkiness and colour represents the digital age. I was raised on India ink — if you cut me you’ll get India ink — but this generation is raised on pixels. These guys, if you cut them you’ll get pixels. This cover is the Caribbean now, the aggressive, abrasive generation of the now. And their music is a response. The image reflects that.

Sean Drakes’s Havana cover from the November/December 2003 issue I chose because Caribbean Beat is still a travel magazine. That image is your tourist shot. It’s a great photograph, with the super-slick, deep redness of the candy-like car, against the battered, harsh building in Old Havana. When you look at it, nobody is telling you this is Cuba, you know it’s Cuba — it resonates immediately.

My final choice is January/February 1999. When this cover appeared, there was a lot of hoopla about “like” and “dislike”. I was trying to define Carnival in a different way. People came to the table with fixed ideas about what Carnival is or should be. This didn’t represent that — it was a drawing of a grotesque face, but it was a grotesque face with the memory of J’Ouvert. It’s not a photograph of a person covered in beads. And the reason I wanted it on the cover was, from Trinidad to L.A. to Boston to Brooklyn to Notting Hill, all the images where Trinidad Carnival is appearing are the same. If you don’t start creating new images and looking at yourself differently, you are just a part of the mix. You are just an ingredient, you are not the chef. And we want to be the chef.

Good, bad, or indifferent, Caribbean Beat has to have a look of its own; it shouldn’t be the organ-grinder’s monkey. You may love it, you may hate it. But how many magazines in the Caribbean are given a chance to reach an international audience so often? And there are a lot of stories still waiting to be told — our way.


For more Caribbean Beat milestones…

Funding provided by the 11th EDF Regional Private Sector Development Programme Direct Support Grants Programme.
The views expressed on this website are those of the the authors and do not reflect those of the Direct Support Grants Programme.

Close