Eat a Rum (Cake)



“Drink a Rum” = a Trini Xmas favorite. Composed by his highness Lord Kitchener, but also given various chutney soca parang upgrades, among other countless variations and personalizations.

Another Trini Xmas fave, with even more personal/family/local versions — plus more broadly diffused throughout the (Anglo-)Caribbean — is the rum/fruit cake often referred to as black cake for its dark color (a product of dark rum, dark brown sugar, burnt sugar — aka browning — and dark fruit, including raisins, currants, and prunes — all soaked in rum and sweet wine, Red Label or Manischewitz, and then mashed into a dark, sweet paste).

Wayne&Bex first learnt about black cake when college blockmate like Sly, FLA-raised Chinese-Jamaican, first told us of its wonders, such as that one continually pour or brush rum over the top of it, for the life of the cake, anytime it gets dry.



Having followed the following (more or less — we substituted cranberries for cherries, fr’instance) and sampled the first of four cakes last night, I’m not sure there’s much time for the cakes to really undergo a good soaking, given that ours was nearly devoured in less than 12 hours. Dessert and breakfast, knamean —




— not that the cakes need much more rum poured on them: we let our fruit soak in Gosling’s and Manichewitz for two days, til they were good and bloated (of course, some people let em steep for year).




& as soon as they came out of the oven, we gave them a good brushing with more dark rum.



A sweet tradition for true —



More xmas soca parang ? >>

From that playlist, I&I commend U&U to check Adesh Samaroo’s “EATING MEAT,” one of several parang jams on some ol West-Af 3:2 transplantadapt stylee, cutting a straight a 6/8 w/ some triple twelfness. (Technical terms.) A helluva holiday beat! More cowbell, horse! More meat!