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Grenada: Arts & Media

by Strong Americas | Sep 19, 2026

Grenadian literature grew from an oral storytelling tradition into a more formal body of written work over the twentieth century, with writers such as short-story author Wilfred Redhead, children's writer Ricardo Keens-Douglas, and dialect poet F.M. Coard among its best-known figures. A wave of nationalist literature emerged during the Grenada Revolution of the early 1980s, and later events such as the Spice Word Literary Festival have continued to support local writers and poets.

Music and dance hold a central place in Grenadian culture, blending British and French colonial influences with African and wider Caribbean traditions. Calypso and soca dominate popular music, especially around Carnival, alongside older folk forms such as the Big Drum and Shortknee traditions and instruments including the cocoa lute, made from the sucker of a cocoa tree and considered uniquely Grenadian. Dance forms like Kalinda and Bele reflect the island's African heritage and remain part of community celebrations, while Grenadian visual artists work across a wide range of materials, including wood, metal, cloth, bamboo, and carved calabash gourds.

Grenada's media landscape traces back to newspapers established during the British colonial period. Radio arrived in 1955 through the regional West Indies Broadcasting Service, which was succeeded by the national Radio Grenada in 1972; Grenada Television followed in 1974. The two were merged into the Grenada Broadcasting Network in 1990 following passage of the Grenada Broadcasting Act. Grenada's 1973 constitution guarantees freedom of the press, and the country has no daily newspaper but supports several privately owned weeklies alongside a small number of television and radio stations.

Sources: Wikipedia - Culture of Grenada; WorldAtlas - The Culture of Grenada; Wikipedia - Grenada Broadcasting Network; pressreference.com - Grenada Press, Media, TV, Radio, Newspapers
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