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Prolific non-fiction author Nasser Khan recently handed over his new book, Celebrating Trinidad and Tobago’s Culture and the Arts, to the schools and libraries of T&T. The text is intended to be a one-stop shop reference guide to the cultural forms of T&T.

At 336 pages, Celebrating Trinidad and Tobago’s Culture and the Arts takes a comprehensive look at the many and varied aspects of T&T’s culture and the arts. From Carnival and its many incarnations to storytelling in its many forms, from picong to mauvais langue, from holidays to festivals, dance, drumming, music, theatre, drama, film, fashion, literary arts, visual arts, culinary arts, Best Village, Sanfest, Borough Days, etc., every aspect of T&T’s culture and the arts is touched upon. There is a chapter called Uniquely Tobago, which Khan said took the book from its original estimate of 250 pages to its final incarnation of over three hundred pages, and was needed as Tobago has its own unique cultural forms separate from those of Trinidad.

The book even touches on art forms which are commonly left out of the national discourse on culture and the arts, such as theatre, including Best Village and Sanfest, and spoken word and the literary arts, which are typically only thought about by those involved. Khan takes into account the history of these art forms as well as their current incarnations and the institutions involved in this history, in an approach that is often missing in local cultural analysis.

The book is Khan’s 19th corporate-sponsored publication and was completed with sponsorship from Shell TT and First Citizens Bank. FCB’s Head of Brand and Marketing Larry Olton said he hoped that students across the country would benefit from the book, in which so much information is gathered. Shell TT’s External Relations Advisor Leslie Bowrin commended Khan for bringing the work to fruition. He said many young people did not know about our traditions and the book would enable them to learn about what is ours.

Director School Supervision and Management Division of the Ministry of Education, Naima Hosein, thanked Khan for offering his book to schools. “ W thank you for preserving our culture in the form of this book that will live on for generations and more. Thanks to the stakeholders, FCB and Shell, for partnering with Mr. Khan to make this book available to all our students, we know they will benefit richly from this.”

In keeping with the mindset of making the book available to those who need it as reference material, Khan said approximately 2000 copies of the book will be distributed to all schools and libraries. “About 125 secondary and 440 primary schools will get three copies each, or a number to be determined by the school supervisory department, for their libraries, as hopefully a reference tool for cultural projects, arts and culture. There will be three each to the 25 NALIS libraries, 30 to UWI, UTT and COSTAATT and 10 to the National Archives.”

Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts, Dr. Nyan Gadsby-Dolly said it is important to preserve our cultural heritage as “it makes us proud of who we are, and why is that important? Why should we be proud to be from T&T? That’s important because proud citizens seek to build their country and when you have the combination of pride and the will to make your country better, that is what combines to make us patriots. The fact that we are able to celebrate our Trinidadianess, our Tobagonianess, our Trinbagonianess, is something that we should not take for granted. A patriot is the person that sees what needs to be done in their country, and is willing to go the extra mile to fill those gaps and to build their country.”

In speaking about his motivation for putting the book together, Khan said “Our culture and heritage influence and are reflected in everything we do and say. This includes our mannerisms, from the way we walk with a “bounce”, to the way we talk with our “sing-song accent”, to the way we cook, eat, drink, and dress. It also includes our dialect, slang and sayings, our music and our dance, and in some cases, even the manner in which we worship. Essentially, our culture and the arts are a celebration of our visual, literary, performing, and culinary arts. From a culture and the arts perspective, T&T is as diverse a multi-racial, multicultural and multi-religious society as one can find, a melting pot of global traditions. However, in the schools in T&T, there are no books specific to culture and the arts. Teachers and students are therefore encouraged to use a variety of resources for assignments related to our culture and the arts. Hopefully, this book will prove to be a valuable resource in this regard, as it attempts to cover our wide variety of culture and the arts.”