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As a person who enjoyed the monologue and comedy of Bim and Bam, Louise Bennet, and Runny Williams, to name a few in my native country Jamaica, Caribbean comedy has been a mainstay in my blood.
This has further broadened when, in the early years, while visiting TnT for Carnival, my brother-in-law and his wife would take me to what is called "The Talk Tent". This is usually held the weeks before Carnival to listen to the not-so-famous and the famous calypsonians expressing their political and social commentaries in a very humourous way.
For months after, one would be enjoying the jokes and picong.
The Sunday following Carnival it was a must to head to the "Talk Tent" (in Queen's Park), as this time around it was with stundup comedians doing their shtick on everyone from the President, to the man selling corn soup on the street, to the person getting up for a pee or whatever.
This enforced my belief that this needed to be heard in our Caribbean community here in Montréal. At the time, Mr. Neville Nato Brown used to stage some Caribbean shows, but had stopped for a while.
I decided, with an associate, to continue what Mr. Brown started. Ten years ago we held our first show, at what is now called the Oscar Peterson Hall (Concordia University,...