In Plenty and in Time of Need

Popular Culture and the Remapping of Barbadian Identity

By Lia T. Bascomb

SERIES: Critical Caribbean Studies

Rutgers University Press

In Plenty and in Time of Need demonstrates how the unique history of Barbados has contributed to complex relations of national, gendered, and sexual identities, and how these identities are represented and interpreted on a global stage. As the most widespread manifestation of social commentary, the book uses music and performance to analyze the competing ideals and realities of the national culture. It details the histories of prominent musical artists, including the prolific Pan-Africanist calypsonian the Mighty Gabby, the world-renowned Merrymen, Soca Queen Alison Hinds, artist/activist Rupee, and international superstar Rihanna. Using these artists, the project analyzes how femininity, masculinity, and sexuality are put in service of Barbadian nationalism. By examining websites, blogs, and digital products of these artists in conversation with Barbadian tourism, the book re-examines the ways in which commodity, sexuality, gender performance, and diasporic consciousness undergird individual careers and national representations.

A refreshingly vital work! As Barbados flexes its stance, situating itself in the contemporary world, Lia T. Bascomb provides one of the most engaging and enlightening published discussions on the meanings of this process. In Plenty and in Time of Need will be a go-to text for many years. Curwen Best, author of The Popular Music and Entertainment Culture of Barbados: Pathways to Digital Culture

Lia Bascomb’s In Plenty and In Time of Need is a necessary and powerful remix of performance studies, diaspora studies, studies of the nation, studies of migration and popular culture. Her remixes of critical theory, Caribbean intellectual traditions, discourses of the nation, post-independence and postcolonial conditions, along with gender and sexuality provide a powerful account of contemporary Black diasporic connection and performativity located in the geopolitics of Barbados but exceeding the geography of that place to reorient our thinking on the global flows of people, cultures and power. Rinaldo Walcott, author of Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora, and Black Studies

This text is a well-conceived and articulated discussion of the ways in which history intertwine with contemporary cultural performances to construct a national identity. For Bascomb, this exchange takes place in a political arena where not only the personal is political but the political is often symbolic and immaterial. Hunter H. Fine, Communication Booknotes Quarterly

Lia T. Bascomb is an assistant professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

List of Images
Introduction
1          England’s Child, the People’s Nation: Myths of Barbadian National Identity
2          Performing National Identity
3          Caribbean Queen: Afro-Barbadian Femininity, Alison Hinds, and Performing of the Erotic at Home and Abroad
4          “Love You All”: Rupee, Afro-Barbadian Masculinity, Activism, and the Temptations of a Global Pop Market
5          Rihanna, Where Celebrity and Tourism Meet in a Dangerous Crossroads of Representation
Conclusion: Celebrating Barbadian Independence, the Golden Jubilee
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index

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