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Chapter 8 Performing Paradise and Making Culture The thing about culture in relation to tourism is, what can we do different? What are we about as a country, as a nation? What do we have to offer? Tourists come from where they come from, and they’re looking for something that’s different. And if we have something that’s different, then why not promote it? (Interview, Director of British Virgin Islands Tourist Board, July 24, 1998) Culture is an asset of significance and can be marketed as a unique part of the tourism product. The diversity of Caribbean and other world cultures existing in the BVI can be combined to produce something unique to offer the international visitor and add to our tourism product as part of our history, sociology and entertainment. The cultural elements of our music, food, dance and otherwise ways of life can add significantly to tourist expenditure in our country. This extra contribution may be realised via an integrated programme of cultural, entertainment and tourist activities. (“Towards Sustainable Development” 2.2.2) In the last chapter I focused on the ways that Festival ’s cultural events articulate and put on display political and social issues in the BVI, primary among them issues that arise in the context of the demographic changes resulting from tourism development. In this chapter I look at the multiple positions that people in the BVI occupy as they produce and perform a culture that evokes a sense of who they are, where they have been, and where they are going, even as it satisfies tourist desire for Caribbean paradise. In particular, I consider the experiences of four BritishVirgin Islanders—Quito Rymer, Elmore Stoutt, Eileene Parsons, and 199 Take Me to My Paradise 200 Jennie Wheatley—although I reference the contributions of others as well. These four individuals have been particularly active in BVI cultural production and performance. In addition to illuminating the relation between tourism development and cultural development in the BVI in the past thirty years, their experiences reveal the negotiations and strategies of BVIslanders as they actively make the world in tourism’s imagined paradise. One of the more notable aspects of tourism development worldwide is that the tourist desire to hear, see, taste, and experience local culture engenders a local preoccupation with culture and heritage (Bruner 2005; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998). Festival is a major showcase for BVI culture. But the places where tourists stay, eat, shop, and congregate are also sites for displaying and performing BVI culture.Tourists staying at the Peter Island Yacht Club and Resort, for example, may be treated to twiceweekly steel pan concerts, sometimes featuring performances by the BVI Heritage Dancers; tourists staying at the Long Bay Beach Resort or dining at the Tamarind Beach Club or at Fat Hog Bob’s on Tortola can hear local fungi music performed by the Lashing Dogs, the Sparkplugs, or the Lover Boys; visitors to Leverick Bay on Virgin Gorda or cruise ship passengers shopping at the colorful collection of craft and tee-shirt shops located just down from the cruise ship pier might catch performances of the BVI Moco Jumbie [stilt dancers]; and bareboaters anchoring in Great Harbor on Jost Van Dyke or in Cane Garden Bay on Tortola are treated to the musical renditions of local musicians Foxy Callwood and Quito Rymer, respectively. Cultural performances such as these can also be seen annually on the Festival stage or in the Festival parade, and many of them were historically part of the fabric of BVI cultural life.Well before the BVI began to develop its tourism economy, for example, musicians playing fungi music (a scratch band kind of music said to originate in the Virgin Islands and also known as quelbe) serenaded from house to house at Christmas time. As BVIslands educator and fungi musician Elmore Stoutt recalled,“The men would come around with all their instruments.You had two, three bands serenading each house.And as the men serenaded, they would drink your rum, your liqueur. Sometimes you had special liquor for certain men because you knew what they drank over the years. Sometimes the men would also carry a bag and they would collect drinks, cakes, and some people gave money, too” (interview , July 28, 1992). Monthly “tea meetings” held in various villages, and Harvest Cantatas held in churches were occasions for singing, recitations, and dramatic performances. And the calypso form upon which Foxy Callwood and Quito Rymer draw traces back to...

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