By Johnny Coomansingh
Except on television, I never took the opportunity to view ‘mas in tong’ (masquerade in the capital city, Port of Spain or ‘tong’) in all its glory, gaiety and raucous revelry. Some Trinidadians say all roads lead to ‘tong’ for ‘di carnaval.’
My interest in the Trinidad Carnival was kindled not because I am a reveler, not because I want to experience the sensuality, not because I want to wine, but because I wanted to recapture the pages I missed from reading the carnival ‘text,’ the cultural landscape that was given to me. I wanted to catch a glimpse of the bacchanal, to explore the ribald revelry and raucous riot, the mentality in the creation of mas for carnival; the glorious foolishness that emerges as a plot against the bourgeoisie by the proletariat.
I wanted to experience ‘the culture,’ to understand what I view to be the ‘latent landscape of carnival,’ which remains dormant in the mentality of a people all year long until the joie de vivre at carnival time. According to calypsonian Aldwyn Roberts (Lord Kitchener, the Road March king of the world (deceased), “di road make to walk on carnival day.” Carnival expresses the true freedom of the masses.
One of my goals was to interpret carnival in context of the hunger of the masses for ‘freedom,’ political, as well as financial for the constantly struggling poor, the ones who see carnival as a way of making a few dollars. The bourgeoisie also seek for economic gains. These ‘vultures’ seize the moment for a different type of exploitation of the masses…It’s carnival: anything goes. Carnival in Trinidad is likened unto a mélange; a montage, an amalgam. Carnival is Trinidad and Trinidad is carnival!
Trinidad Carnival exhibits the presence of several cultural elements that comprise the festivity. Four of these elements were identified as contributing to its uniqueness. These cultural elements: calypso, the masquerade, the wining dance, and the steelpan instrument, are themselves unique. It is possible that because of their uniqueness, the Trinidad Carnival stands out conspicuously among the other pre-Lenten carnivals as, probably the most unique celebration of carnival in the world. It is well established that it is the most copied, photographed and imitated carnival in the world.
Although no one can pinpoint exactly the origins of calypso, it is an accepted notion that the art form developed from a combination of musical genres and languages from several countries. Calypso is itself a mélange. The fact was established that calypso itself was created from several elements from different cultures.
The creators of the art form simply borrowed these elements, including language, rhythm, and style, and, in the fires of oppression, forged an amalgam called calypso, the true voice of the masses. Even the names of some of the calypsonians were borrowed. Calypsonian Raymond Quevedo took on the sobriquet Atilla the Hun as a weapon against his calypso opponents in the ‘big yard.’ Today, the sobriquets have been somewhat softened. There is no longer the physical oppression of the slave master (massa) or even the British colonists, but the calypsonian of today faces another form of oppression; an economic one.
In the struggle to survive, as they say in Trinidad, “tuh geh yuh head above di water” (to rise above difficult circumstances), many sobriquets reflect the calypsonian’s economic situation in a jocular mode. The name Scrunter is a classic example. A ‘scrunter’ is an individual who is ‘scrunting,’ one who is poor, needy, and scraping to make a living, or in economic jargon, living below the poverty line.
The word ‘scrunt’ is probably a fusion of the words ‘scrap’ and ‘runt.’ Nevertheless, there are thousands of Trinis and non-Trinis (Caribbean people) who appreciate Irwin Reyes, the Mighty Scrunter, not only for his great music, but also for his sobriquet. From what I have witnessed in some Caribbean islands, many citizens are still ‘scrunting.’ Therefore, injected into the Trinidad Carnival is a facet of the society that for generations has been left unchanged, and becomes highly identifiable during the carnival celebration.
What is true for calypso, is also true for the masquerade, the steelpan, and the wining dance. These four elements are blends created from the cultural components of other places. The excesses of carnival characters, for example, The Midnight Robbers, Fancy Indians, Dame Lorraine, Burrokeets, Baby Doll, Pierrot Grenade, Blue Devils, Moko Jumbies, and Jab Molassies add flavor to the carnival. Locked in the apparent lewdness of the masqueraders is a level of dissent. It is as though, that at least for one or two days, they must show that they should be noticed as individuals of equal stature.
The Moko Jumbies towering above the crowd are significant in the sense that being ‘elevated’ gives the impression of a position of prominence, or as possessing equal status with the upper class. In other words, I am taller than you are so you cannot look down on me. The height of the masquerader compensates for his apparent societal ‘deficiencies.’
The buxom Dame Lorraine has metamorphosed over the years into the carnival goddesses of today who spend months at fitness centers making themselves ready for carnival, ready to wine and out wine each other. No longer are the hefty gluteals required to augment the Dame’s posterior. The desire of female carnival celebrants is to acquire a body that would be strong and fit enough to fete for days on end; to wine, to express themselves just as Dame Lorraine did, but with more gusto and overt sensuality. Women constitute the greater portion of the participants in today’s carnival masquerade and this effect gives them a sense of collective security and dominion in the arena of the masquerade.
With the steelpan movement there is no exception. Looking at the development of the steelpan instrument, one wonders what chances were there in the whole world that there would be discarded American forty-four and fifty-five-gallon oil drums lying about in Trinidad during the Second World War? It is highly apparent that every aspect of Trinidad carnival came to these shores by accident. Did the African slave have the time to say, well, I am going to take my culture with me…and I must remember to take my four-stringed banjar so I could amuse myself in a world full of torment and torture? Howsoever these musical elements arrived, they were taken and honed to the point of perfection in the creation of the steelpan instrument.
Rebellion was the motive behind the invention of the instrument. The steelpan was invented to interpret the rhythm of the calypso; created initially to provide music for the carnival. Names of steel orchestras such as Desperadoes, Casablanca, Invaders, and Tokyo are indicative of the times during which the instrument was created. Adopting such monikers not only reflect the influence of the American film industry, but also portrayed a group of people, members of a steelpan orchestra, who were labeled as dissidents. Not easy to get along with, such individuals labeled ‘badjohns’ were literal outcasts in the society.
The Trinidad Carnival, is definitely a mélange of cultural borrowings. The event is unique. Even the four elements that contribute to its uniqueness are also unique. They are also cultural compounds of several cultural elements. Within the Trinidad Carnival, there are also forces that are imperceptibly operating.
Push forces caused both voluntary and involuntary migration of several peoples and ethnicities to Trinidad. Pull forces such as freedom, employment, and greater opportunities, for example, the coming of the French plantocracy, were also responsible for the introduction of fete champetres and partial development of carnival in Trinidad. Despite the fact that the Trinidad Carnival is an amalgam, it exhibits the phenomenon of both centripetal and centrifugal forces. The coming together of people, and cultures, the formation of an amalgam, a oneness is truly indicative of the Trinidad Carnival, but inherent in the Trinidad Carnival is the insidious juxtaposition of amalgam and individual elements covertly operating in the celebration.
Even though they may be known, not easily identifiable are the metals in an amalgam. The elements spoken of in the Trinidad Carnival are just the same, because the Trinidad Carnival is seen here as a unit, not as a loose combination of factors. Moreover, there is a big difference, the Trinidad Carnival is alive and moving, and, because of this fact, the centrifugal forces which operate in the carnival imperceptibly exposes the presence of ethnicity, skin color, age range, class, economic status, rank and gender; definitely an exposé of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In other words, there are individuals and groups who participate in the celebration who are counted as lesser mortals. It is quite possible that this is what this amalgam is all about; it takes all types of people to create the spectacle of the pastiche that is the Trinidad Carnival.
This pre-Lenten carnival emerged because of the European capitalistic expansionist view of the world. According to Franklin Knight in his book: The Caribbean, the Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism, the inexorable drive was to find gold, to conquer in the name of glory, and, most importantly, to serve God. There was need for colonization hence the need to import labor. However, labor brings with it a culture and despite the best efforts of the plantocracy to silence the voices of the cultures that arrived, the cultures survived, and made the Trinidad Carnival what it is today. Many of the successful elements of the Trinidad Carnival, including the Calypso, the Steelpan (Panorama), the Masquerade [(‘ol mas’ or ‘dutty mas,’ pretty mas, (kings and queens of mas bands)] and Wining, have been copied by several carnivals in North America and Europe.
Carnival celebrations in Trinidad do not stop with masquerading, steelband or calypso. There is an array of other elements, which serve to occupy the interstices in the cultural tapestry. The Trinidad Carnival could be likened to a piece of fabric, a patchwork quilt created by generations, a palimpsest with instructions passed on with delicate care to those who follow.
It is difficult to find a place anywhere in the world that is so keen about carnival. It is as though Trinidad would cease to exist if there were no carnival. The varied aspects of this festival give to Trinidad Carnival its special cultural flavour, because nowhere else in the world would one find such an array of festivities and behaviours in the celebration of any pre-Lenten carnival. The phenomenon of the pre-Lenten Trinidad carnival is an expression of culture across a landscape; culture is spatial.
In actuality, everything that came to Trinidad with respect to carnival came from various sources throughout the world; their cultural baggage as espoused by Wilbur Zelinsky. The cultural elements that came to the shores of Trinidad were borrowed and then modified; these elements formed a mélange by the descendants of enslaved Africans, French Creoles, Mulattos, Chinese, and Indian (South Asian) indentured servants who came to Trinidad. In the Trinidad Carnival, one can see the importance of place that is ‘temporary’ but in another sense is permanent, since the Trinidad Carnival is strongly tied to the Trinidadian identity.
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