Big Speech, Small Island: Tobago’s Speech Band in Spoken Word and Oral Traditions

Abstract

The Speech Band in Tobago is a popular folk, theatrical and oratory art form performed in community-based events, cultural competitions and heritage festivals. However, the art form has been critically omitted from scholarship on the genealogy of contemporary Caribbean spoken word. Despite its significance in the cultural production of Tobagonian identities, the Speech Band suffers from epistemic neglect within Caribbean Studies dominated by Trinidadian narratives and print-centric literary standards. In this discussion, I combine archival research conducted at national heritage libraries in both Trinidad and Tobago and semi-structured interviews with cultural practitioners and organizers. I argue that the invisibilization of the Speech Band is symptomatic of a double marginality: the uneven political and cultural dynamics between the twin islands and the peripheralizing of oral traditions within the Caribbean literary canon.