EPISODE · Jun 21, 2026 · 6 MIN
Sounds of Freedom III - Esther Phillips - 3 - “Monkey Noko”
from Radio Bimshire Presents · host Radio Bimshire
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 Noko”, she interrogates loyalty, survival, silence and complicity on the plantation, and asks what it cost to gain a white master’s favour in a world built on Black dispossession.
What this episode covers
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 Noko”, she interrogates loyalty, survival, silence and complicity on the plantation, and asks what it cost to gain a white master’s favour in a world built on Black dispossession.
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Sounds of Freedom III - Esther Phillips - 3 - “Monkey Noko”
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