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How do we get our brilliant steelbands and their significant numbers of youthful players and supporters back on the road on Carnival days?
The steelbands are a unifying and healing force and are capable of mitigating the divisiveness and socio-economic exclusivity with which the Carnival band scene is riddled.
Carnival 2024 emphatically confirmed the width of division between bands that provide for a super expensive, pampered fashion show strut in decorated thong bikinis and those bands that present costumed portrayals of a chosen theme, which is frequently discernible from what the mas player is wearing.
Members of these portrayal bands refreshingly continue to dance and chip to the music rather than simply strut along the streets.
It is important to emphasise that portrayal mas provides a visual spectacle. It used to draw large crowds of spectators, including many children who would excitedly importune masqueraders for pieces of their costumes and seek to mimic the adult masquerade.
Moreover, as others have also emphasised, Carnival is a ritual of the people and should be for the people and by the people—unmarginalised by powerful elitist and commercial interests. In support of the rituals, artistic and craft skills are put to work in portrayal mas.
Photo: Lost Tribe
Now the spectators have largely gone away. By contrast to the excitement children previously felt at the sight of portrayal mas, there is a flurry of concern about what is on display for them to see and imitate.
There are, however, issues broader than Carnival.
Kurt Allen, aka ‘The Last Bardjohn of Calypso’, advised that what children learn while growing up should be the subject of The First Investigation. But it is difficult to implement this advice without urgent attention to the underlying socio-economic conditions.
Photo: TUCO
Trinidad All Stars Steel Orchestra, in which I am usually a sailor, can be relied on, resoundingly and joyfully, to break the Savannah and television monotony.
I did not play sailor this year (sore feet after much pan, Panorama and J’Ouvert). As a consequence, I saw almost everything that passed on Ariapita Avenue on both days. There I saw some portrayal mas fighting back strongly.
There was, however, a situation in a fashion show band that was plainly offensive to many and represented blissful ignorance of acts symbolic of enslavement. I refer to the one and two-storied carts on which female masqueraders were drawn manually.
(Via Newsday)
Pre-pandemic, I had seen a pickup in a band with two ex-ministers of government in it, displaying the high quality of what they were drinking. I was told at the time that when persons like that ask for things it is wise to give way, because bands need licenses and permits.
Recalling the history of sedan chairs on which pharaohs, emperors and ladies were carried on poles by manual labour, adds to the disdainful flavour of what is being described.
One account states that: “in the 17th and 18th centuries chairs stood in the main halls of an affluent city residences. A lady could enter and be carried to her destination without setting foot in the filthy street.”
Social media contained harsh comments about the appearance of masqueraders on carts. For, example, one person on Tik Tok asserted that the “meaning of Carnival as culture is fading” and condemned “the slavery trucks”.
The physical presence of the persons on these carts also cannot be separated from their body language. Gallerying oneself above the masses is at insensitive odds with the harsher realities of our colonial history.
In this connection, I include the disdainful presence of masqueraders on the upper decks of juggernaut trucks. The divisions in Carnival are obvious and abrasive. Do we have to rub salt in the wound?
Photo: Mark Morgan
Thankfully, some relief was available. At the time I saw Ronnie and Caro and Ombre mas, there were no cordon ropes. Ronnie and Caro have a track record of faithful support for the authentic.
Before I return to commentary on the reality of life in our country, which has been made narco-subservient by connivance, we will think some more in my next column how to support the authentic Carnival by means of getting steelbands back on the road and encouraging the fight back against conglomerate mas.
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