BimROCK Magazine Issue #2 New Beginnings | Page 26

Israel Lovell was a working class man, a freedom
fighter and the president of the local division of Marcus
Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association
(UNIA). “We named the foundation after him because
we thought that we should keep his memory alive, he
did so much … and we thought that we would lift his
name up,” Muda Hunte explains.
Lovell was the right hand man to Clement Payne
whose deportation incited the 1937 Bridgetown Riots.
Originally from St. George he had roots in the area
where the Foundation now stands. The history runs
deep. The building housing the Foundation was also
once the residence of the first black Governor General
of Barbados, Sir Winston Scott. There is a lot of history
here and it’s alive.
“Whenever we do a dance or do anything in terms
of music … there is a history lesson that is taught to
us first, because we must understand what it is we
are doing,” music director Corey Bradshaw confirms.
“I would not have known a lot of my history. I would
not have known a lot of our ancestral history if it were
not for the foundation. That goes for a lot of persons
that passed through and a lot of persons that saw our
dances.”
Corey became associated with the foundation
as a student at the nearby Barbados Community
College where he studied accounts and economics.
But drumming became his passion and even when he
went on to the University of the West Indies