NCF celebrates Kamau

The National Cultural Foundation (NCF) is hosting a webinar to celebrate the life and legacy of Literary Icon, Professor the Honourable Edward Kamau Brathwaite.

The event, Words & Wisdom – Celebrating Kamau’s Birthday, will be held via Zoom tomorrow, Tuesday, May 11 at 5:30 p.m. Zoom ID: 821 7281 9525 Password: NCF 2021. The session will also be broadcast live on the NCF’s Facebook page.

The webinar coincides with what would have been his 91^st birthday.

To honour him, the NCF has assembled some of our country’s finest literary and spoken word artists to read two of his pieces The Dust and Rites. The line-up includes: Winston Farrell, Jack Lewis, Cyndi Celeste, Ayesha Gibson-Gill, Matthew Murrell, Janine White, Irijah Nyzingha Alkins and T’afari Steede.

There will also be a panel discussion reflecting on his cultural influence featuring Poet Laureate Esther Phillips, Dr Yvonne Weekes, Robert Edison Sandiford and Adrian Green.

Professor Brathwaite’s work is known for innovating the “creolisation” of language. He was integral in helping to forge a sense of local and regional identity through the embrace and use of native language.

Brathwaite coined the term “nation language”, which he defined as “the kind of English spoken by the people who were brought to the Caribbean, not the official English now, but the language of slaves and labourers, the servants who were brought in.” Brathwaite, who died at age 89 on February 4, 2020 would have been 91 years tomorrow, Tuesday, May 11.