By Lincoln DePradine
It’s a dream come true for longtime educator and performing artist, Henry “Cosmos’’ Gomez, who mentioned he at all times had a craving to go to the African continent.
He’ll be collaborating in a convention in Senegal on, “Africa & its Diaspora Contributions to World Civilization’’.
“I’m so wanting ahead to it,’’ Gomez informed The Caribbean Digicam forward of leaving for Senegal and his first African go to.
The Harriet Tubman Institute at York College in Toronto is a co-sponsor and organizer of the Convention, which runs from October 9 – 11.
Trinidad-born Gomez, a former Calypso Monarch of Canada, is a York College graduate and has served as an government member of the Harriet Tubman Institute.
Gomez, in 2021, accomplished a Grasp of Arts diploma at York College. His Grasp’s thesis was, “The Caribana Parade: Storming and Problems with Energy and Management’’.
As a part of this yr’s Black Historical past Month (BHM) commemoration, Gomez spearheaded the internet hosting of a workshop at York College on, “Calypso as Music of Resistance, Change & Empowerment’’.
The free occasion was a collaboration that additionally concerned the Tubman Institute and the Group of Calypso Performing Artists.
The workshop, through which Gomez co-presented with a Barbados-born guitarist and recording artist, Roger “Rajiman” Gibbs, was interspersed with reside music and audio recordings.
As well as, there was intensive dialogue on calypso, its origin and historical past; calypso’s African connection and its hyperlink to French-speaking Africans that have been current within the Caribbean throughout slavery.
Gomez, invited to take part within the Senegal convention, will current on the identical theme used on the BHM workshop, “Calypso as Music of Resistance, Change & Empowerment’’.
Based on Gomez, calypso has been a “crucial’’ automobile “by way of stirring individuals’s consciousness and bringing them to resistance, and alter and empowerment’’.
He referenced songs by performers equivalent to Sparrow, the late Kitchener, Black Stalin, and Mighty Duke’s “Black is Lovely’’.
He additionally outlined the purpose of the presentation that he would make to the convention members in Dakar, the Senegalese capital.
“I would really like them to have a broader understanding of the facility of calypso music,’’ Gomez defined.
“I would really like them to grasp that calypso is just not solely about leaping up, partying and having an excellent time, though that’s necessary; I’m not placing that down. However, I would really like them to have this broader idea of the facility of calypso music and that one of many powers of calypso music is that it will probably open individuals’s eyes and have them resist. For example, resist stereotypes, like in Duke’s “Black is Lovely’’’.
Gomez is scheduled to return to Toronto in mid-October.