Latest news with #Trinidadian
The Citizen
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Citizen
Sandton DJ Desiblue sparks chutney soca magic with Raymond Ramnarine
Sandton resident and renowned DJ Mitesh Prahalath, popularly known as DJ Desiblue, brought his passion for musical fusion to life at Emperors Palace centre court on June 21. DJ Desiblue, founder of events company Fusion Life, played a key role in orchestrating the spectacular evening that featured Trinidadian and Tobagonian singer and songwriter Raymond Ramnarine, famously known as The Music Boss, along with his acclaimed band, Dil-E-Nadan, the world's number 1 chutney soca ensemble. Also read: The 2025 Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Awards winners announced The event was the highlight of the Chutney Fusion Festival 2025, a celebration aimed at blending the infectious sounds of soca and chutney music. DJ Desiblue, alongside his friend and fellow DJ Sanveer Gowrie, was instrumental in bringing Ramnarine and his band to South Africa, making the night a true musical melting pot. Follow us on our Whatsapp channel, Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok for the latest updates and inspiration! Have a story idea? We'd love to hear from you – join our WhatsApp group and share your thoughts! At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
'Sir Alex Ferguson has me to thank for signing Man Utd icon - he fell off his chair'
A former Manchester United player has taken credit for convincing the Premier League giants to sign a star who played a crucial role in their 1999 treble-winning success. Former Manchester United goalkeeper Mark Bosnich has claimed Sir Alex Ferguson has him to thank for signing club icon Dwight Yorke. The Australian was a team-mate and close friend of Yorke's during their time at Aston Villa in the mid-90s. It was the summer of 1998 when Sir Alex made his move to bring the Trinidadian striker to Old Trafford after scoring 97 in 284 appearances for Villa. The acquisition of Yorke for £12.6million proved to be a masterstroke as he instantly made a vital impact, netting 29 times during United's historic treble-winning campaign in 1998/99 However, Bosnich has now revealed that the Red Devils were initially on the fence about Yorke due to doubts about his character. That was until the Australian received a phone call from his former United youth coach Eric Harrison and reassured him of his personal qualities. Speaking on ex-United and Wrexham shot-stopper Ben Foster 's Fozcast podcast, Bosnich said Yorke was stunned when he heard the news. "Eric Harrison originally got in contact with me and asked about him and his character," he said. "At the time, he said there was a debate about whether or not he'd be the right person. I told him, and I told the manager that he'll win you the European Cup and he did. "He was the final piece of that jigsaw. I thought with Yorkie coming in, he's something a little bit different. He struck up a really good partnership with Andy Cole and they were phenomenal that year. "When they were ringing, it put me in a difficult position, because it was like, 'Well, don't say anything to him,' and then I'm going out with him that night for dinner. Of course, I told him and he immediately fell out of his chair." After winning the treble, Yorke also bagged his fair share the following term with 23 goals during the 1999/2000 season. One of his best performances for United came in February 2001, when he scored a hat-trick in a 6-1 demolition of Arsenal at Old Trafford. He scored 65 goals in 152 appearances for the Premier League giants between 1998 and 2002 before moving to Blackburn Rovers. Yorke and Bosnich were reunited in 1999 during the keeper's ill-fated second stint at United. Bosnich said the key to getting the best out of the striker was to adopt a soft approach towards him. He added that he passed this advice on to Sir Alex ahead of Yorke's arrival at United. "Dwight is as tough as they come, but he's very emotional too," he said. "In a dressing room scenario, you have to put your arm around him if you want the best out of him and I told this to Fergie. "It was sort of a love-hate a little bit with him and Ron Atkinson [at Villa]. Then when Brian Little came in, he really put his arm around him. That really brought the best out of him and he was scoring 20 plus goals."
Hamilton Spectator
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Dances at the Bay among happenings in Hamilton
The Dances at the Bay festival is not just about having fun. It is about holding onto the human aspect of life and art that Vitek Wincza thinks artificial intelligence and social media is stripping away. 'It's something which would continue (to) make us feel human and important in this world,' said the artistic director for the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts. Vitek Wincza is the artistic director for the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts. He hopes his legacy is keeping the arts alive in Hamilton. Wincza is leading the interactive festival's second self-produced year after the original 'Dusk Dances' pulled out of the city after more than 10 years. 'We'd been put in a position that we had to make a decision to continue or not,' said Wincza. Now, with the local arts non-profit Incite Foundation sponsoring the event for the second year, the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts Dance and Theatre partnership is bringing dance back to Bayfront Park from Friday to Sunday this weekend. 'We did the first year and (it) actually went extremely well, beyond our expectations,' said Wincza. He estimates it had a turnout of about 3,000 across the three-day festival. Attendees can participate in a Latin family drumming circle and salsa dance workshop, or view a dance-theatre performance, synchronized swimming and a Chinese and Caribbean cultural dance performance. But one of the dance performances is different. Local choreographer and conservatory dance teacher Michael Mortley created a dance called 'Caribbean Sweet' to represent his Trinidadian culture, teaching it to eight people with little to no dance experience. Michael Mortley dances in a Dusk Dances performance in Bayfront Park in 2022. Mortley has created a dance called 'Caribbean Sweet' to represent his Trinidadian culture in this year's performance. 'I've chosen to use very Caribbean esthetics and movement,' said Mortley. The conservatory called out to those interested in March, before rehearsals started in May. The showcase is part of the Fear No Dance! initiative, which encourages regular people to step outside their comfort zone through dance. The performance is more than just a dance to Mortley. 'It has been one of my highlights to be able to make a body of work that represents the culture that I'm coming from,' said Mortley. Another reward was to bring non-dancers together to build connections and learn from them. 'It allowed me to then see the human and be very much in awe of them and know how much they've achieved over the time,' said Mortley. Go to for a detailed lineup. While Hamilton Fringe Festival will headline the next week, here is what else you can do until then: Hardcore bands play alongside a vendor market at downtown club Absinthe (32 Hess St. S.) Saturday. From 2 to 11 p.m., 10 bands perform, including headliner Enervate, Fight On Sight, Bruiserweight, Bad Bet and Spirit of Vengeance. Doors open at 1:30 p.m. Presale tickets are $20, before taxes and fees, on Eventbrite or $25 at the door. A night of folk music is coming to Crown and Press Gallery and Café (303 Ottawa St. N.) Friday. From 7 to 9:30 p.m., five-person band Lo and the High Road and Windsor-based artist Willowbrook perform at the venue. Tickets are $22.73, including fees and taxes, on Eventbrite. Go to for more details. Ferguson Station is transformed into a four-DJ outdoor party on Saturday. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., DJs Geneva, Fazooli, Dakota and James spin records, members of the Defining Movement Dance perform and attendees walk the red carpet. International Village BIA hosts the free dance party. Visit for more details. Hamilton-based Afro-R&B artist Whitness performs for a special summer library music concert series on Monday, July 21. From 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., the concerts happens at Gantry Crane at the waterfront's Pier 8. View for more. Sidewalk Sounds is back with music and a night market Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. along Concession Street (534 Concession St.). Each performance is by a Hamilton artist. This month is guitarist and singer-songwriter Kyle Pacey (at 555 Concession St.), guitarist Eddie Paton (at 526 Concession St.), guitarist Michael McGuire (at 593 Concession St.), and pianist and vocalist Louise Concepcion (at 576 Concession St.). View for more details. Cheyenne Bholla is a reporter at The Hamilton Spectator. cbholla@
Mint
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Writer Gideon Haigh on the foremost rivalry in cricket today
A line cricket fans and writers love to quote is Trinidadian historian and Marxist scholar C.L.R. James' 'What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" James meant that in order to properly appreciate the game of cricket, one has to consider the historical and sociopolitical conditions under which the game is played. No contemporary writer proves this dictum more often or more thoroughly than the 59-year-old Australian Gideon Haigh, author of some of the finest cricket books of the 21st century, including The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket (2001), Mystery Spinner: The Life and Death of an Extraordinary Cricketer (2002), On Warne (2012) and Sultan: A Memoir (2022, co-written with Wasim Akram). A prolific writer who began his career as a business journalist in the 1980s, Haigh's body of work is diverse—several true crime books, a history of the workplace, an account of the legalization of abortion in Australia. Westland has recently published his latest book, Indian Summers: Australia Versus India, a collection of essays covering what has grown to be arguably the foremost rivalry in contemporary cricket. These essays cover nearly a century of Indo-Australian cricketing encounters, starting with Frank Tarrant's touring party of 1935-36 and going all the way till the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy played in Australia. All the big, familiar moments for Indian fans—the 2001 Kolkata Test, the 2003 and 2023 ODI World Cup Finals, the 2024 T20 World Cup game—are covered here. These big-game essays show both Haigh's appetite for the 'it' moments and his full suite of writerly skills. Today, it is common to use the word 'cinematic" while talking about writers who're adept at building dramatic tension with flair and visual details. But Haigh's technique is more akin to classical theatre than contemporary filmmaking (he quotes the Nobel-winning playwright and lifelong cricket nut Harold Pinter in a passage about Indian batter Cheteshwar Pujara). His essay about the 2001 Kolkata Test, for instance, drips with Shakespearean foreshadowing. In a particularly striking passage, Haigh describes the overconfidence of the Australian team after day three of the five-day game—as is well-known by now, at this point, India was still trailing Australia's score narrowly, with 4 second-innings wickets already down by the end of day three. While reading this passage (reproduced below), I could clearly visualize Steve Waugh, Michael Slater and Tony Greig in different corners of a large theatre stage, a spotlight shining above whichever head is talking in the moment: ''It'll be over tomorrow,' commentator Tony Greig said airily. 'More time on the golf course.' The Australians were of the same mind. Waugh eyed his Southern Comfort thirstily. Slater, who had nursed some reservations about the follow- on, playfully drew his cigar under his nose. 'This result is so close I can smell it,' he said, to the amusement of Gilchrist, who had not in his eighteen months as a Test cricketer known defeat." For me, though, where Haigh stands out from the crowd is his clear-eyed diagnosis of cricket's ongoing "Big Three" era, wherein India, England and Australia (and within them, mostly India) have hoovered up the lion's share of global cricketing revenues, hosting rights and programming privileges. Haigh's criticism of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is brutal (Haigh has an acid tongue) and I would argue, relentlessly fair. See how he calmly and systematically dismantles the oft-parroted argument that, as the number one generator of revenue in world cricket, India is in fact entitled to the lion's share (Ravi Shastri recently argued on Sky Sports that India is being underpaid by the rest of the cricketing world): 'As is the case for every ICC member, India in international cricket is the creation of generations of tours and tournaments, of rivalries and reciprocities, fostered by the whole world. No country can accomplish anything on its own in international cricket, and every country contributes. Some, for reasons of economy and demography, cannot offer so much. The objective should always be to put a floor beneath and handholds beside the weakest because from a generally rising standard everyone benefits—I'd call it 'levelling up', had Boris Johnson not, like everything he ever touched, debased it." Haigh is brilliant at pairing cricketing logic with political commentary, and showing us how the dots between the two connect in practice. In December 2023, the International Cricket Council (ICC) objected to Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja sporting an illustrated dove on his cricket shoes during a game against Pakistan— to indicate his support for the children of Gaza. Haigh's report at the time (on the website Cricket Et Al) was a masterclass in skewering hypocrisy. He pointed out the absurdity of the ICC's 'no politics' veneer, given that several member countries' cricket boards are headed by politicians from the respective ruling parties. 'For many years the world's longest-running stage comedy was a farce called No Sex Please, We're British, its jollity deriving from the idea that the more the characters tried to avoid the subject, the more they became implicated, and the greater the comic complications. Cricket has its own enduring counterpart: No Politics Please, We're the ICC. Its hilarious premise is that the International Cricket Council is charged with preventing the game's contamination by ill-defined but somehow always untoward political influence. This has now extended to…checks notes…a fucking dove." Indian Summers is a must-read for hardcore and casual cricket fans alike. It showcases the best of a man whose writings have described the game with wit, wisdom and humility for over three decades now. Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based journalist.
Time Out
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Chef Kwame Onwuachi's Miami debut is a love letter to the Caribbean
These days, it's practically a given that chefs wear multiple hats—they're also authors, TV personalities and culinary judges. In the case of James Beard Award winner Kwame Onwuachi, you can add soon-to-be Miami restaurateur to the list. The former Top Chef contestant and toque behind some of the country's most celebrated restaurants (including Tatiana, named the No. 1 restaurant in NYC by Time Out New York and ranked No. 10 in the city by The New York Times) is teaming up with the crew behind NYC's Las' Lap (partners Vincent Bryant, Bryce Sheldon, Nick Semkiw, Scott Williams and attorney L. Ryan Shaffer) to bring the West Indian concept to The Daydrift hotel in South Beach. Chef Kwame will lead the menu, paying homage to his Trinidadian roots and Miami's diverse Caribbean community with a tightly curated lineup of small plates and shareable dishes—each designed to pair effortlessly with Las' Lap 's tropical cocktails, ideally enjoyed canal-side on the patio or nestled into one of the cozy velvet banquettes. We caught up with chef Kwame during a whirlwind visit to Miami, where he gave us a sneak peek at the nearly finished dining room and shared what we can expect from his first Magic City venture. Never one to slow down, he also dished on a few upcoming projects and the one hobby he's finally making time for. Do you enjoy the construction process of a new restaurant? This is the best part. Putting it all together. It starts on paper and then it gets to where it is now. Your portfolio is incredibly diverse, spanning books, TV and everything else you're currently working on. Do you take a different approach to each project? I try to do everything with intention, even like this space here. I was talking to somebody and they were like, 'Oh, we expect you to be at a large hotel or a big restaurant.' This feels just intentional. Partnering with the Las' Lap team, the brands definitely aligned in the type of offerings. And being in a small niche place, I think, adds some texture to the culinary landscape here. How do you begin a new project—do you have any rituals or routines you follow? I normally start with a story, and that story helps me craft the menu, and that crafts the design, and it crafts the plateware and every aspect. So, it normally just starts with a story. This one is a little bit more unique because it's already something that's established and we're just partnering together. Each time it starts with a story. I think it says a lot that your first foray into Miami hospitality is Las' Lap. Were there other opportunities before this one, and why was this the one? Yes, but I didn't really explore them, honestly. [This] just felt a little more wholesome and felt like it would be impactful in a way. A place where people can come late at night that's off the beaten path, but it's still on South Beach. A place that there is some sort of exclusivity because of the sheer size of it—and there can be some true attention to detail because of that. I think it's a beautiful combination of so many different things that made this really, really attractive. And then I know the partners from New York from frequenting Las' Lap. I think it all just made sense. What elements of your personality will we see at Las' Lap? I would say my attention to detail, both on the service side and in the kitchen. And then, really consulting on everything that has to do with food and service. What aspects of your upbringing and culture are you hoping to honor through this menu? Definitely my Caribbean side. Las' Lap means the golden hour of the last hour before Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. My grandfather is from Trinidad, so some of that culture will be represented here through the food, like escovitch crab claws. I didn't have it with crab claws, but I had it on fish. It's like a pickled situation with carrots, onions and scotch bonnet that I'm doing with crab claws. I'm also making bucatini and clams, similar to Rasta Pasta, but more in the style of linguine with clams from Italy. I'm injecting those Caribbean flavors in a really nice, refined way. Are you drawing from Miami's local culture for the menu? There's an oxtail Cuban on the menu, with jerk beef, bacon, and Swiss on brioche. I'm definitely playing into the Cuban aspects that are prevalent here. There's also a Wagyu griot, similar to the Haitian fried pork dish, that I'm doing with Wagyu short rib, some rice and peas, some pikliz and tamarind sauce. I'm really using the landscape of Miami to tell the story of the menu. I've watched several videos of you where you talk about wings… a lot. Will there be wings on the Las' Lap menu? I talk about wings a lot? Yeah, I'll have some sticky wings on the menu. They'll be smoked, double-cooked—battered and fried and then glazed in a jerk barbecue and chili honey. How does your approach to cooking differ when you're on television compared to when you're in one of your restaurants or at home? It's always a different version. There's always a different story to tell, and a different medium to tell it. My restaurant, Tatiana, is different from my patty shop, Patty Palace, different from Dōgon [in D.C.] or down to here, [Las' Lap]. I think there's definitely a through line with flavors that really showcase my culture, which is Creole, Nigerian, Jamaican and Trinidadian. But it's always telling a different story. I'm really using the landscape of Miami to tell the story of the menu. Do you feel like you give every project the same attention? I'm sure it's a bit like having kids—people say they don't have a favorite, but they usually do. Oh, yeah. I love all my children equally. Everyone gets the attention that they need. Some projects were able to fly on their own a little earlier and some need some more love. It's all about that balance, giving whatever project the time that it needs for it to be the best version of itself. That doesn't even mean walking through the dining room and shaking your head and kissing a baby. It's spending time with the staff. A lot of them come on these projects with my name attached to it. I don't want them to feel like I never see them. You have another opening on the horizon: Patty Palace at Time Out Market Union Square. Can you tell us about that? Oh man, it's going to be great. I mean, it's a truly exciting concept of Jamaican patties on cocoa bread. We have a jerk barbecue, green seasoning aioli and ginger cabbage slaw. That's really, really delicious. I am just excited to bring it there with different flavors of patties. We'll have the existing curry chicken, and we'll have the classic beef and jerk mushroom and potato [for the market.] I'm looking forward to it. What's exciting you about this opportunity? I mean, I think this one's unique. I don't think I like all [food halls], but this is Time Out—they do a good job. It's also a smaller one with only four or five spots, and it's right in the middle of Union Square. It'll add to the options that people have for quick things to eat. I think this one makes sense. Do you have plans to write another book? Yeah, I am. I actually have to hand in the manuscript [for my cookbook] in two days, so yeah, I have to do that on the plane. Finish it on the plane. It's already almost done. I just have to do a couple of final edits. You're non-stop. How do you decompress? For the past year and a half, I have been playing golf. My friend took me out to the driving range and I just fell in love with it. I bought a set of clubs the next day, joined a country club three months later, and I've been golfing ever since. I go at 6 or 7am, tee off super early, and then I have my full day. And then I'm in the restaurant business, so my service doesn't start until 5pm normally. When I travel, I play, and I travel a lot around the world, so it's pretty cool.
