This Barbadian Life - 09 - "The Birth Women"

Sounds of Freedom III - Esther Phillips - 1 - “Choice Young Negro”

Sounds of Freedom is a journey through the soundscape of emancipation, memory, and hope. In episode one from a new season, host Shayla Murrell sits with Barbadian poet, teacher, and editor Esther Phillips, Barbados’ first Poet Laureate, to explore the making and meaning of her poem “Choice Young Negro”. Drawing on a chilling 1979 instruction manual written by plantation owner Henry Drax for the running of Drax Hall Estate, the conversation unpacks how enslaved Africans were reduced to “units” of labour and profit — and how poetry can turn that language back on itself. Esther’s poem responds to Drax’s demand for “choice young Negroes” by restoring the enslaved as sons, daughters, and freedom fighters from the Coromantee people, whose strength and resistance haunted the sugar empire that tried to break them. Through archive, verse, and voice, this episode situates Drax Hall within the wider history of Caribbean slavery, where historians estimate that close to 30,000 enslaved Africans died on Drax plantations in Barbados and Jamaica. Hear how those lives still echo in Barbados today — not as a mere footnote to empire, but as a living call to remember, reckon, and imagine freedom anew.

This Barbadian Life - 09 - "The Birth Women"

In this special International Midwifery Day edition of This Barbadian Life, we honour the Barbadian “birth women” – the lay midwives who walked cane tracks and village roads at all hours to catch babies long before there were labour wards and diplomas. Registered midwife Michelle Marshall guides us from the apprenticeship days of granny and auntie, through the 1937 riots and the Moyne Commission, into today’s accredited midwifery programmes at the Barbados Community College. Along the way, she recalls home births by kerosene lamp, folk practices like sealing house cracks against “lining cold”, and the quiet, transcultural wisdom passed from one generation of Caribbean women to the next. This episode sits at the crossroads of African-Caribbean tradition and a formal health system that slowly expanded in the 20th century. It celebrates the midwives – women and men – who continue to hold families’ hopes in their hands, blending ancestral knowledge with modern medicine in delivery rooms across Barbados. This Barbadian Life – real voices, true stories, only in Barbados - is presented by Shayla Murrell for Radio Bimshire - the voice of the National Library Service of Barbados

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part nine (final): "Spouge Forevermore"

Legacy only lives if it is nurtured. In the final episode, we visit the Jackie Opel Residency Lab, where a new generation of musicians, visual artists and choreographers reimagine his work for today’s Barbados, proving that spouge is not a relic but a living, evolving movement. Written, produced and narrated by Shayla Murrell Produced with John Downes, Amour Chandler, Lamar Nicholls and Adrian Archer Mixed and edited by Julius Gittens

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part eight: "A Musical Revolution"

What began as a local rhythm became a chapter in Caribbean music history. This episode looks at how Jamaicans like Dean Fraser and regional scholars place Jackie Opel alongside reggae’s greats, and how spouge helped reshape ideas of what Barbadian music could be. Narrated by Shayla Murrell

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part seven: "The Rhythm Goes On"

Jackie Opel’s voice fell silent, but spouge did not. From Wendy Alleyne to the late Richard Stoute and a generation of performers, part seven follows the artists who carried his legacy forward, keeping Barbadian voices on stage and spouge alive in dance halls and on radio. Narrated by Shayla Murrell