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The Sonic Architects of a New Babel 157

cappella version of Bob Marley’s One Drop. The words he chose to high-
light were “they made the world so hard everyday the people dying. Give
us the teachings of his majesty cause we no want to Devil philosophy.” He
then began the Bob Marley song, welcomed his audience for tuning in—a
diverse group, ranging from youngsters, civil servants, bank tellers, store
managers and personnel, and visiting tourists—and then added that this
song was dedicated to those Haitians on rafts that political leaders would
have us forget. How could the U.S. authorities refuse mothers and young
children risking their life? In that hour he continuously criticized the polit-
ical establishment in the United States, but also those in Haiti who he felt
were to blame for this human disaster. He played songs that added truth
value to his claims and let his audience speak out on the matter.
What was also interesting is how he tied the local to the extra-local and
made sure not to ostracize the visiting tourists. He made it clear that the
policies of the U.S. government bore some resemblance to the comments
of some fringe local politicians who wanted to make distinctions between
SXMers. The logical outcome of such distinction making was the disaster
that was taking place off the coasts of Florida. Like the majority of the
SXMers who did not follow these political radicals, he saluted the American
citizens who also showed great solidarity for speaking out against this
atrocity. The United States like SXM was an immigrant country and
therefore according to him should always be hospitable to strangers.
The only way of doing so was remembering what made us common,
which was our humanity and the supernatural forces of good and evil that
we all contained. This is our moral compass. When we recognized those
forces within ourselves and in other human beings, we would cease follow-
ing crooked political and religious leaders. Only then would the Haitian
boat refugees stop being refugees and become fellow human beings in our
eyes. Persons with the right to move.
This moral lesson was directly followed by an hour of double entendre
Calypsos. The first song he played was a tune about the delight of sucking
Julie mangos, which are mangos with hairs that do not prick or stick in
one’s teeth. This, of course, can also be interpreted, as it often is, as the
sucking of a woman’s vagina. The mischievous Shadow of that hour seemed

oblivious to the plight of the boat refugees. Even when he ended his pro-
gram with DMX, the political was nowhere to be heard.
This was a man, and his colleague Fernando Clarke too, who “know
bout life”: living life in accordance with the capitalist-Christian order of
movement and demolishing of incommensurables—the only life worth
living according to islanders. I often wondered if there was another life, a
better life, and would SXMers embrace such a search? It was wishful think-
ing. “[T]hey know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing