Radio Bimshire Presents

You set out expecting a fright. You come back thinking about the people behind the stories. In this episode of This Barbadian Life , Julius Gittens introduces an encore of Duppy Trails and Tours , with Shayla Murrell and Jamal Weekes joining the Barbados Museum and Historical Society for a night-time journey through Barbadian folklore and memory with tour guide Klebere Perry. From the mysterious m...

What makes a short story come alive on radio? In this concluding episode of Writing the Short Story , Radio Bimshire explores Timothy Callender’s A Surprise for Agnes , a tale of family expectations, religious respectability and a revelation that changes everything. Following our episode on Dorothy Lovell’s The Shoe , we turn to Callender’s craft to explore gripping openings, distinctive voices, v...

“ The Shoe ” by Dorothy Lovell is the subject of Writing the Short Story , the first of two programmes exploring how powerful fiction can be shaped in just a few pages. Using Lovell’s 1967 Barbadian short story as its guide, the programme breaks down the essentials of memorable short fiction: an arresting opening, a vivid sense of place, believable characters, a focused conflict, strong narrative...

The Lessons Between the Songs is an extraordinary intimate portrait of two masters of the art of kaiso - in tribute to Trinidad and Tobago’s Mighty Sparrow, Gabby offers memories and rare insights in an impromptu conversation, recorded in December 2025. Slinger Francisco - the Mighty Sparrow - died peacefully in New York on Sunday, September 27, 2026 surrounded by his family, aged 91. Produced wit...

The National Library Service of Barbados and Radio Bimshire proudly announce the longlist of 15 finalists in the Patriotic Pen series - the inaugural Timothy Callender Memorial Short Story Prize. The awards will be presented to the winners at a gala ceremony on November 7. Follow the National Library Service's social media pages and Radio Bimshire online at http://radio-bimshire.page.radio for...

In the conclusion of House on James Street , episode six – “Heroine and Enslaver”, we confront the most uncomfortable truth in the life of National Hero, the Right Excellent Sarah Ann Gill: she owned enslaved people. Drawing on wills, property records, compensation rolls and the scholarship of the late Professor Pedro Welch places Gill within the brutal, normalised system of chattel slavery that s...

A special presentation of an history worship service from St Barnabas Church, St Michael, in 2026, marking the Season of Emancipation and the Day of National Significance (July 26) This historic mass features the first Caribbean celebration of the Bob Marley (Emancipation) Mass, composed by Barbadian‑born Anglican priest the Rev Canon Dr Stephen Fields and first celebrated in Toronto. Drawing toge...

In this third and final part of her conversation with him, producer Shayla Murrell sits down with veteran Crop Over bandleader and masquerade designer Christopher "Salt" Williams to talk about his love of Trinidad Carnival; he wades into the art-versus-commerce debate on modern mas' and he shares this nagging idea that maybe Barbadian folk characters become a permanent feature of Kad...

In this episode of This Barbadian Life , producer Shayla Murrell sits with Christopher "Salt" Williams to trace his journey from early mas experiments to “Landship Mas” and the Kadooment band Rough Seas , inspired by the Barbados Landship and its powerful story of unity and survival. Along the way, "Salt" reflects on bus excursions, community heroes, and how Trinidad Carnival h...

Since the 1980s, veteran bandleader and costume designer Christopher “Salt” Williams has been turning sketches into spectacle for everyday Bajans on the Crop Over road. From Browne’s Beach liming sessions to Foreday Morning and Grand Kadooment, Salt’s bands blend bright fluorescent colour with deep cultural memory – inviting people to celebrate Barbados’ premier festival in an authentic, accessibl...

In House on James Street , episode five – “From Ann to Sarah”, a free coloured woman in Bridgetown, Anne Gill opens her home to persecuted Methodists and finds herself at the centre of a political firestorm that reaches all the way to London. White mobs attack her congregation, Barbadian magistrates look the other way, and a reluctant governor is forced to answer to the Colonial Office and Parliam...

House on James Street , episode four, follows the arrival of Moravian and Methodist missionaries into an island society built on sugar, slavery and Anglican respectability – and the backlash that followed. In “ Missionaries, Mobs, and the Conventicle Act ”, we trace how evangelical preaching, British debates over slavery, and fears of rebellion turn Methodist missions into targets for pro-slavery...

We continue the story of how one British family accumulated and protected wealth built on sugar, slavery and the suffering of enslaved Africans in Barbados in this second part of “ Wealth Built on Bondage” . British investigative journalist and author Dr Paul Lashmar joins host Shayla Murrell to explore the modern legacy of Drax Hall Plantation in St George, and how the Drax family’s fortunes rema...

Before she was a National Hero, Sarah Ann Gill was a woman of property in Bridgetown, navigating the brutal contradictions of a slave society. In this episode, we explore the precarious lives of free coloured women in early 19th-century Barbados. The late historian Professor Pedro Welch unpacked how these women — tavern owners, property holders, and political actors — used inheritance, commerce, a...

Wealth Built on Bondage (Part One) traces how the Drax family built and preserved generational wealth from sugar, slavery and land ownership in Barbados and Dorset, and asks what justice and reparations should look like today. When protests over racial injustice swept the world in 2020, Barbados was already wrestling with its own symbols of empire, including the statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson in...

Sounds of Freedom III : Esther Phillips and the legend of Monkey Noko digs into the haunting legacy of Drax Hall Plantation and the unfinished business of emancipation in Barbados. Against the backdrop of one of the hemisphere’s oldest sugar estates, Phillips reflects on growing up in the shadow of Drax Hall without ever being told its brutal history of sugar and slavery. Through her poem “Monkey...

In Episode Two - "Building A Slave Society" - House on James Street explores the roots of the world that would one day define Sarah Ann Gill. Joining us is historian Professor Pedro Welch, who walks us through the 17th-century transformation of Barbados into a laboratory of plantation slavery. We trace how an overwhelmingly African population, brought from the Gold Coast, was systematica...

This episode of Sounds of Freedom III traces the journey of a boy named Odifo and the enslaved mothers who loved – and lost – their children on Barbados’s sugar estates, through the words of poet and former Poet Laureate of Barbados, Esther Phillips. In this episode, Phillips reads her searing poem “Hard Love” and reflects on the emotional terror, brutality and impossible “adjustments” enslaved wo...

Before Sarah Ann Gill became a National Hero, she was a free woman in Bridgetown — navigating a society built on the brutal logic of slavery. In this episode, we step into her world to explore the precarious, complex lives of free coloured women in early 19th-century Barbados. The late historian Professor Pedro Welch unpacked the strategies these women — tavern owners, property holders, and politi...

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...

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 ru...

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 Arc...

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

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

On March 9 1970, at just 32, Jackie Opel’s story ended abruptly on Bay Street. Friends and collaborators remember the night of the accident, the outpouring of grief, and what it meant for a young nation to lose one of its brightest artistic lights just as his career was reaching new heights. Narrated by Shayla Murrell