Culture
Main article: Culture of Barbados See also: Music of Barbados, Rihanna, Rupee (musician), Shontelle, and Cover DriveThe influence of the English on Barbados is more noticeable than on other islands in the West Indies. A good example of this is the island's national sport: cricket. Barbados has brought forth several great cricketers, including Sir Garfield Sobers and Sir Frank Worrell.
Citizens are officially called Barbadians. The term "Bajan" (pronounced "beijan) may have come from a localised pronunciation of the word Barbadian which at times can sound more like "Bar-bajan".
The largest carnival-like cultural event which takes place on the island is the Crop Over festival. As in many other Caribbean and Latin American countries, Crop Over is an important event for many people on the island, as well as the thousands of tourists that flock to the island to participate in the annual events. The festival includes musical competitions and other traditional activities, and features the majority of the island's homegrown calypso and soca music for the year. The male and female Barbadian who harvested the most sugarcane are also crowned as the King and Queen of the crop. It gets under way from the beginning of July, and ends with the costumed parade on Kadooment Day, held on the first Monday of August.
In the music business, Rihanna (born Robyn Fenty) is currently one of Barbados' best-known Grammy winning artists. As of 2009 she was appointed as an official Honorary Ambassador of youth and culture for Barbados by the late Prime Minister, David Thompson. Singer-songwriter Shontelle, the band Cover Drive and musician Rupee also originate from Barbados.
Grandmaster Flash (born Joseph Saddler) is a hugely influential musician of Barbadian origin, pioneering hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing in 1970s New York. He began experimenting with DJ equipment as a teenager, eventually developing and mastering a number of key innovations that are still considered standard DJing techniques today.
In the film and television business the iconic actress Stacey Dash is of Barbadian origin as well.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)