Prince Claus award for Chalkdust

The award presentation is scheduled for December 12 in Amsterdam. Chalkdust and nine other 2007 Prince Claus laureates will receive prizes of euros 25,000. Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula will receive the Principal Prince Claus Award of euros 100,000. Linyekula describes himself as a storyteller who uses movements, text, sound and images to communicate the complex experience of living in the violent conflict that has gripped his country for decades, and to help people examine and reconstruct their lives. His work reflects on the painful history of the DRC in order to raise awareness, so that people don’t fail to deal with the past as peace takes hold.

The Prince Claus Fund is a platform for intercultural exchange. It works jointly with individuals and organisations mainly in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean on the realisation of activities and publications reflecting a contemporary approach to the themes of culture and development. This year the Fund has selected Culture and Conflict as an area of special interest and as the theme for the 2007 Prince Claus Awards.

“Culture, for the Prince Claus Fund, is a basic human need. Culture has the power either to provoke or diminish conflict. This year the Prince Claus Awards honour artists and organisations that have worked to counteract the destructive power of conflict by opposing beauty to devastation, opening spaces and forms of dialogue, restoring respect for others and enhancing dignity and self-esteem.”

Other 2007 awardees are:

Patricia Ariza (1948, Colombia), director, actor, playwright and poet.

Augusto Boal (1931, Brazil), theatre-maker and cultural revolutionary Emily Jacir (1970, Palestine), visual artist.

Harutyun Khachatryan (1955, Georgia), filmmaker in Armenia.

Ars Aevi (1992, Bosnia and Herzogovina), initiative of a group of intellectuals to bring art to a public in wartime and to establish a museum of contemporary art.

The Sudanese Writers Union (1985, Soedan), forum for a diverse group of writers and intellectuals in Sudan.

Radio Isanganiro (2002, Burundi), private radio station established by Burundian journalists.

Godfrey Mwampembwa, alias Gado (1969, Tanzania), cartoonist.

Oscar Hagerman (1936, Mexico) architect and designer.

Chalkdust, many-time winner of the Calypso Monarch title, is known for disguising incisive critiques in humorous wordplay, he is a voice of the disadvantaged, expressing controversial issues in a context of deep inequality.

His more than 300 songs include: “The Right History”, “You Can’t Judge Culture”, “Grandpa’s Back Pay”, “The Qualifications of a Politician” and “To Hell with the Ministry”. Committed to developing the root traditions of this unique Afro-Caribbean language, his ‘Calypso in Hospital’ attacks recent commercialisation. He is a former director of the Carnival Institute and is Assistant Professor of History at the University of the Virgin Islands. He lectures in the Caribbean and beyond.

His publications include: Rituals of Power and Rebellion: The Carnival Tradition in Trinidad & Tobago 1763-1962 (2001) and From the Horse’s Mouth: Stories of the History and Development of the Calypso from the 1920s to 1970s (2003).