EPISODE · Jun 15, 2026 · 6 MIN
Sounds of Freedom III - Esther Phillips - 1 - “Choice Young Negro”
from Radio Bimshire Presents · host Radio Bimshire
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 running of Drax Hall Estate, the conversation unpacks how enslaved Africans were reduced to “units” of labour and profit — and how poetry can turn that language back on itself. Esther’s poem responds to Drax’s demand for “choice young Negroes” by restoring the enslaved as sons, daughters, and freedom fighters from the Coromantee people, whose strength and resistance haunted the sugar empire that tried to break them. Through archive, verse, and voice, this episode situates Drax Hall within the wider history of Caribbean slavery, where historians estimate that close to 30,000 enslaved Africans died on Drax plantations in Barbados and Jamaica. Hear how those lives still echo in Barbados today — not as a mere footnote to empire, but as a living call to remember, reckon, and imagine freedom anew.
What this episode covers
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 running of Drax Hall Estate, the conversation unpacks how enslaved Africans were reduced to “units” of labour and profit — and how poetry can turn that language back on itself. Esther’s poem responds to Drax’s demand for “choice young Negroes” by restoring the enslaved as sons, daughters, and freedom fighters from the Coromantee people, whose strength and resistance haunted the sugar empire that tried to break them. Through archive, verse, and voice, this episode situates Drax Hall within the wider history of Caribbean slavery, where historians estimate that close to 30,000 enslaved Africans died on Drax plantations in Barbados and Jamaica. Hear how those lives still echo in Barbados today — not as a mere footnote to empire, but as a living call to remember, reckon, and imagine freedom anew.
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Sounds of Freedom III - Esther Phillips - 1 - “Choice Young Negro”
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