Rapacity has overtaken our country
Every Trini recognises the Carnival thrumming the heartbeat deep in the earth, rising from the sea around us, accelerating with every minstral, babydoll, bookman, Burrokeet, cow band, Dame Lorraine, fancy Indian, band launch, moko jumbie, pan, kings and queens, extempo.
This year’s soca is good, lyrical, slower, and bittersweet, remembering the plague, how people died, how frightened we all were, and how it broke us up in so many places, in so many ways.
I followed a friend frantic for a Trini Carnival rejuvenation to a mas camp.
She was looking for band leaders who shaped our new world identity, and gave our bruised selves back to ourselves, replete and whole.
We found instead a conglomerate of ‘Made in China’. Five ‘brands’ under one roof. Merchandising. I was shocked at what is being called a ‘Mas camp.’ The reception booth was clinical and poorly lit as an emergency room or bank in a hospital manned by bored people through a window. You can pay in US dollars. No, no credit. Only debit.
The only sign of colour (but not life) in these carnival conglomerate rooms were doctored posters of garishly made-up women (you would think by looking at them there were no fat, middle-aged, dark-skinned women in Trinidad, no women with cane rows, or short hair, or rounded hips, or wrinkles).
The conglomerate posters were advertising scraps of cloth, feather primary bejewelled colours more suitable to a cabaret on a cruise liner than representing the heartbeat of our magical islands.
A memory hit me in the gut like something lost forever: Radio days, going around the mas camps asking the band leaders about their themes, their vision.
True mas creators: rows of people on sewing machines, people with cloth, glitter, glue, scissors and feathers, thrumming pan.
Laughter. Children all about.
From research and over the years in radio, I learned of Minshall’s Hallelujah (95) Wayne Berkeley’s Swan Lake, (1991) MacFarlane’s India—The Story of Boyie (2007), George Baileys Back to Africa (1957), and Relics of Egypt (1959) Stephen Lee Heungs China, The Forbidden City. (1967).
We had been drinking the wine of astonishment at how band leaders made continents and millennia to our tiny islands, with such democracy and equality between bands, so a judge could play beggar, and a fisherman, a king.
We come from colonial times, so the gap was always wide, but mas made us equal. Now the joy comes from being separate and superior. The more apart, the more VVVVVVIP, the higher the human wall, the bigger the ego, and the fatter the pride. The age of financial colonialism.
Now in this mas made-in-China conglomerate waiting room, my friend found she paid $5,395 (US$863) for a Bikini; an extra $200 (US $28) for an Upgraded Neck Piece; an extra $175 (US $28) for an Arm Piece, extra $250 (US $40) for Upgraded Leg Pieces; extra $850 (US$136) for a Medium Backpack.
Add a private cart (it’s orgasmic, more privacy to a private band with heavy security–extra $900, please.) The profits will not circulate here.
The tally: $10k (accounting for adjustments and make-up) for a few massproduced bits and pieces of cheap material made in China, a plate of pelau and alcohol for the day. How many ordinary Trinis can afford this for a day?
We read the notice: “Non-masqueraders may observe from the sidelines outside the band. However, they will not be allowed to participate.”
Minshall and true patriotic band leaders who love this country created participatory street theatre: a river of continents, people of all shades winding, wining through our streets.
Check the two separate Carnivals going on. This Carnival Monday and Tuesday, look closely, check the people within the ropes, the people without, looking on. But our festival is alchemy stronger than people parading as mas men selling us out, selling Chinese polyester for a pound of flesh.
Not so fast.
Our festival is a shimmering mirror of truth, so people only have to play themselves for us all to see what’s going on. Rapacity has overtaken our country.
Carnival was transported to the Caribbean by European slave traders who excluded African slaves from their posh balls and who, on Emancipation made it ‘we thing’, and who face exclusion again.
Don’t be surprised by another revolt by people whose culture is being raped or at the breaking of ropes from the ‘sidelines.’ After one time, is two time.