分类： entertainment

On the 89th anniversary of legendary musician Jackie Opel’s birth, a new tribute initiative launched in Bridgetown has reignited calls for a nationwide renewal of spouge, the iconic Barbadian music genre Opel pioneered half a century ago. Speaking at the official opening of *This One’s For Jackie* held at the Jackie Opel Amphitheatre, Barbados’ Heritage Minister Trevor Prescod has pushed for the country’s citizens to reclaim and rebuild this one-of-a-kind musical style, while expressing deep regret that the genre has not seen sustained development over the past 50 years. Prescod framed Opel as a revolutionary cultural figure who forged a distinct sense of national pride and identity for all Barbadians. As the minister explained, Opel’s greatest innovation was a masterful fusion of reggae and soca rhythms that produced a completely original sound, which quickly became woven into the cultural fabric of Barbadian society. “It is troubling that the music of that type – the only type that Barbados has produced in the 20th century – could not continue to be developed by our musicians,” Prescod noted. Drawing from personal memories of Opel’s career, Prescod recalled the musician’s electrifying stage charisma, which regularly outperformed even high-profile international acts. One standout memory he shared was a 1960s performance at the Globe Theatre alongside iconic American soul singer Percy Sledge, where crowd energy ran so high that audience members rushed from the back of the venue to the stage just to touch Opel. “He gave Bajans a sense of pride… that we were equally as capable as any black man anywhere in the world,” Prescod said. Beyond his national impact, Prescod highlighted Opel’s far-reaching influence across the Caribbean music scene. In the 1960s, Opel resided in Jamaica, where he collaborated with foundational reggae pioneers including Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and the iconic ska collective the Skatalites. Drawing from his own early career experience working in inventory management at West Indies Records Limited (WIRL), the region’s prominent record-pressing plant, Prescod also shared personal recollections of Opel’s final weeks before his sudden death in 1970. Opel’s life was cut short by a fatal car crash on Bridgetown’s Bay Street, when he was mid-way through recording a new collection of tracks. “There are so many things that happened around that man’s life that I can only see him as extraordinary,” Prescod added. The tribute event was organized and hosted by the Barbados Postal Service, which spearheaded the initiative to reactivate the underused Jackie Opel Amphitheatre located on the grounds of the General Post Office. Paula Harper-Grant, the service’s marketing officer and emcee for the launch, shared that the project grew out of her own realization that she had once completely forgotten the public amphitheatre even existed. That moment of awareness led her to question whether the broader public had forgotten both the venue and the cultural trailblazer it was named for. Harper-Grant emphasized that Opel was not required to push the boundaries of Caribbean music or create a entirely new sound for his home country, but chose to do so out of his passion for cultural innovation. “We believe that Jackie deserves to be remembered, and we believe this space deserves to live,” Harper-Grant said. “We want another generation of Barbadians to walk into this amphitheatre, see that name, and ask who Jackie Opel was—and we want to be able to tell them.” The launch event featured a full program of live spoken word pieces and musical performances celebrating Opel’s legacy, with supporting partnerships from the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Financial Literacy Bureau and the Barbados Department of Archives.

On a sunny Thursday lunchtime at Bridgetown’s iconic Queen’s Park, a diverse gathering of musicians, dancers, visual artists, and spoken-word performers came together to honor the indelible legacy of Barbadian music pioneer Jackie Opel, marking what would have been his 89th year since birth. Born Dalton Sinclair Bishop on August 27, 1937, Opel revolutionized Caribbean music by creating spouge — the genre now widely recognized as Barbados’ national sound — and built a cross-island cultural footprint that stretched from his hometown to Kingston, Jamaica, decades before his influence was fully celebrated on a national scale.

Leading the tributes was Andrea Wells, Chief Cultural Officer of Barbados’ National Cultural Foundation (NCF), who framed Opel’s contribution as far more than a musical milestone: he was a foundational figure in shaping the island’s independent national identity, she argued. “Today we celebrate the legacy of Jackie Opel, who was an artist that liberated souls through his voice, provoked imagination with his lyrics, and pushed us further in defining our national identity,” Wells told the gathered crowd, which included Opel’s daughter, three grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

To carry forward Opel’s creative influence into a new generation, the NCF partnered with the Prime Minister’s Office Division of Culture to launch the 2025 Jackie Opel Residency Lab, an initiative designed to support contemporary artists creating work rooted in Opel’s life, career, and cross-cultural impact. The residency invited creators across visual art, music, and dance to dive deep into Opel’s archives and even travel to Jamaica to trace his professional connections and artistic influence there. Two emerging Barbadian visual artists, Safia Stoute and Starlight Talma, received residency funding to develop full collections of work inspired by Opel, with several pieces featured in the on-site Rewind exhibition at Queen’s Park. Wells explained that the artists’ work unpacks under-told layers of Opel’s story, from his childhood growing up on Nelson Street in central Bridgetown to his rapid rise to regional fame. “Jackie is Bajan. He was from town. Nelson Street was his stomping ground — the jukeboxes, the people, the energy,” Wells noted.

Wells emphasized that Opel’s 1970 return to Barbados after years working in Jamaica was a turning point for the island’s cultural transition to full nationhood. “His return to Barbados in 1970 seems like fateful ordination. Jackie was sent back to help us transition to nationhood, and this is most evident in the creation of spouge, which is now considered the music of Barbados,” she said.

For musician Justin Taylor, one of the residency participants, Opel’s artistic range extends far beyond his iconic creation of spouge. Taylor has long planned to release a full concept hip-hop album centered on Opel, arguing that the pioneer’s innovation as a soul singer has been underappreciated by modern audiences. “I think that Jackie was so much more than just spouge music,” Taylor said. “He was a top soul singer and really creative… Nobody else was doing that [the track *Tears Are Falling From You*] in the 60s. He was Kutton before Kutton.”

Taylor also highlighted Opel’s widespread recognition in Jamaica during the 1960s, where he recorded at the legendary Studio One and became a regular fixture on popular Friday sound systems. “Jackie was fairly big in Jamaica… He was a voice that was known to the people,” he said. For the residency project, Taylor chose to explore Opel’s worldview rather than rehashing discussion of spouge, and he performed two original works, *They Don’t Know Jackie* and *One More Chance*, for the Queen’s Park crowd.

The cross-disciplinary tribute featured a range of other original works created for the anniversary: spoken-word artist Adrian Green presented a piece drawing from Opel’s life story; veteran musician Desmond Weekes debuted a new spouge track titled *I’ve Got a Mobaton of Love For You*; and dancer and choreographer Keisha Dowridge created *Wharf Boy*, a solo performed by Naiobi Rudder that references Opel’s childhood practice of diving for coins thrown by tourists at the Bridgetown Wharf. Dancers from the Mark Burgess Dance Academy performed choreographed pieces to classic spouge between each tribute, keeping Opel’s iconic sound central to the celebration.

The Queen’s Park event also hosted the Rewind exhibition, sponsored by the Central Bank of Barbados as part of the NCF’s Emancipation exhibition series *Push, Pause, and Rewind*. Following the daytime celebration, events continued into the evening at CARIFESTA House, where the NCF hosted a dedicated Jackie Opel Night to extend the tributes.

Closing the daytime event, Wells reaffirmed that Opel’s legacy continues to resonate across the Caribbean and beyond. “Jackie Opel has left a legacy that stretches far beyond the shores of Barbados, one that we are proud of as Barbadians and Caribbean people,” she said.

Barbados has made history at the 37th annual Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) Media Awards held in Guyana, turning in a dominant performance that secured the island nation 15 total awards and eight special mentions — with the Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS) leading the charge by claiming seven awards and one special honor. The landmark results marked a clear improvement from the BGIS’s 2023 showing, where the agency took home five awards and three special mentions, a progress highlighted by top government officials during a celebratory awards presentation this week.

At the Wednesday ceremony honoring winning teams from BGIS, the National Transformation Initiative (NTI), and Barbados Community College (BCC), Minister of Information Gregory Nicholls pushed the BGIS to build on its recent momentum, setting an ambitious target for future competitions. “This time we converted the special mentions into actual awards along with one special mention,” Nicholls noted. “So I expect by next year we will double in this because you’ve done a little bit of an improvement this year, so next year I’m expecting us to work together. Notice I said for us to leave the gap between you and the competition so far behind that they don’t worry about these awards in 2028.”

Nicholls emphasized that the cross-category wins — spanning digital content, public service announcements, television, radio, and cultural reporting — debunk any skepticism around the quality of state-run media, proving that public media institutions can not only meet but exceed the highest industry standards for creative excellence and factual accuracy. Beyond journalistic quality, the minister framed BGIS as a cornerstone of Barbados’s national identity, positioning the agency as a critical player in the country’s cultural defense against external misinformation and inauthentic storytelling.

“GIS has aided in bridging the gap between the state and citizens,” Nicholls said. “We all grew up hearing a lot of the programmes of GIS almost naturally on the radio and on television, seeing them a lifetime. I’ve been emphasising that the GIS like a number of other institutions in Barbados, the National Cultural Foundation, the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation, are all important institutions in our cultural defence as a people. While other institutions overseas and abroad may offer skill and size and resources that are able to do things more efficiently, they’re not going to tell the authentic Barbadian story. They’re not going to be able to secure any legacy and what we as Barbadian people have achieved. They’re not going to be able to tell us objectively what is fact and what is fiction, what is news and information from disinformation and misinformation.”

CBU President Anthony Greene echoed Nicholls’ praise, noting that Barbados’s top-to-bottom victory is unprecedented in the modern history of the regional awards, and crediting both veteran media teams and first-time entrants for the island’s success. “This is not a statement to overlook,” Greene said. “This is testimony that government information services do good media work, that is to be applauded, that is to be recognised and acknowledged and of course, it, like I said, led the charge of Barbados for the first time in the modern era, the CBU Awards Barbados dominated the regional competition in a number of trophies and certificates won, and it was ably supported by first-time entrants as well.”

Greene specifically highlighted the performance of BCC, a first-time participant that earned recognition in the CBU’s brand-new student reporting category, noting that academic-media partnerships are key to sustaining a strong, independent media sector across Caribbean democracies. “[It] gives me great pleasure to acknowledge the work of the Barbados Community College because academia and media plays a critical part to the continuity of a sector that is critical to our democracies,” he added.

Stein Hansen, acting United Nations Resident Coordinator for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, also extended congratulations to all winning teams, noting that the range of recognized work reflects the consistently high quality of Barbadian media across beats. This year marked the launch of the UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Champion award, created to elevate Caribbean media coverage of pressing global and regional issues including climate action, gender equality, public health, and equitable economic opportunity.

“This speaks to the quality of the work being produced in newsrooms and studios across the island,” Hansen said. “I’m especially proud that for the first time, the United Nations presented the [SDG] Champion award. We launched this award to recognise the stories being told across the Caribbean media on climate action, gender equality, health, and economic opportunity- essential work in service of our shared future.”

A full breakdown of BGIS’s awards saw Paula Harper-Grant and Rommel Cumberbatch take home Best Public Service Advertisement – Digital for *Bees in Agriculture* and Best Public Service Advertisement – Television for *Christmas Praedial Larceny*, while Harper-Grant and Andre Olton won Best Public Service Advertisement – Radio for *Encouraging Good Hand Hygiene*. A team of eight journalists including Mikul Elcock, Aisha Reid, and Andre Olton claimed Financial Literacy Journalism – Television for *Money Matters: Navigating Your Financial Future*. Sheena Forde-Craigg and Tyson Henry won Excellence in Media Coverage of Caribbean Arts and Culture – Print for *Beyond Buns and Flying Fish*, and also earned a special mention for Best News Story – Print for *Tourism, Airlift, Accolades and Arrivals*. Elcock additionally won Best Director – Television, and Olton took home Best Sound Engineer – Radio.

Outside of BGIS, the NTI received a special mention in the SDG Champion category for its digital feature *Interview with STARR Bajan – Janelle Skinner*, and BCC student Victoria Boyce earned a special mention in the new Best Student Item – Digital category for her reporting project *Female Students Stepping Into Male Spaces*. The landmark wins have set a new bar for regional media competition, with leaders across government and the CBU already looking ahead to next year’s event.