Ready for Mas Again
I picked up my mas costume from
Sonia Mack's boutique in
Diego Martin the other day. A whole week before
Carnival! Pictured in the photo above, is the complete setup to play mas on Monday and Tuesday. In the box, are the costume arm and leg pieces, belt, bra and shoulder piece. Right above that is our
Black Widow spider cape. Also pictured is the headpiece and goodie bag filled with things like a rum cup, whistle, Tylenol, a purse, the obligatory flag for waving, and an address book for all the new friends you make during Carnival. We also received a guidebook with the parade route, contact numbers, food and drink menus, locations of the portable toilet facilities, and shuttle service schedule.
Island People was very organized and redeemed themselves from
my earlier experience. They really set you up nice for mas on Monday & Tuesday. (The band is all-inclusive, which means it includes food and drinks and an array of services.) In Trinidad, masqueraders do not wear the full mas costume on Carnival Monday. Instead, band members may wear band t-shirts and a specific color. For Island People, we will wear the cowboy hat, the bra top, and the silver shorts seen in the picture. The ENTIRE band will wear this on Monday, creating a unified presence before we split into our individual sections on Tuesday.
"
We're playing pretty mas", my sister laughed as we stood in the pickup line.
Nonetheless, on Tuesday the Black Widow section is the first chapter in Island People's "Animal Instincts" presentation. Road music will be provided by Trinidad biggest soca artist,
Machel Montano along with Patrice Roberts (the 2006
Road March winner). I can no longer write about Carnival without sharing the infectious music that drives it: soca. In this clip, I've started with Machel's "
Wining Season". This is followed by my personal favorite for 2008 Road March, "
Breathless" by Blaxx and then Faye Ann Lyons' "
Get On". As you are listening, feel free to
take a wine.
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The Water Cycle
the water cycle has no starting pointI can get from my home in Brooklyn to JFK, thru Miami International Airport, into Piarco in Trinidad, and finally to my apartment in Port of Spain with my eyes closed. I've done that trip so many times....
I set off this round with the re-launch of
Caribbean Beat Magazine at Queen's Hall. Followed it up the next day by shooting a 2-minute t.v clip for Gayelle's
New Voices. The host, Attillah Springer, did a show entitled "
Carnival as Resistance" and I was glad to put in my two cents
about wining. The television program also included Calypsonian Hollis
"Chalkdust" Liverpool (also an Assistant Professor at University of Trinidad & Tobago),
3 Canal (one of the island's most highly regarded rapso groups), Anne Lee (Professor at the University of the West Indies), and the iconic
Blue Devils of Paramin (who were featured in
last week's entry on J'ouvert). Great company to be in.
the earth's water is always in movementGoing forward - I am developing the
FreshWork Series, a 5-part programme of workshops around the making of 'Fresh Water'. The series will engage 15 artists in a cross-disciplinary collaborative process in Port of Spain. This workshop series will provide the space to explore group versions of the work - something I wrote about in
Continuity & Callaloo. (For information on how to participate in the FreshWork Series, please email
info@makedathomas.org).I've continued to develop '
Fresh Water' as an intuitive, non-linear flow, and have made many changes to the work:
The most recent version of 'Fresh Water' is a solo for five. This reflects the influence of Oxum
- Orisha goddess of sweet, fresh waters - whose number is 5. 2008 is
the 5th Anniversary Season of Makeda Thomas/Roots & Wings
Movement! "Solo Para Cinco" is also the title of a well-known work by
Mozambican choreographer and friend, Augusto Cuvilas, who recently passed on. In this way, the "Solo for Five" is also in remembrance of him and marks the time(s) in which this work was made. Next week's post will feature 'Sydenham Solos", a video of some of the choreography I've been working with.
The oceanic waves of the GALVANIZE version of 'Fresh Water' has since been re-edited. The music now more accurately reflects the major themes of the work. For example, Gyptian's "My Faddah Seh" reflects the impact my father's death had on the experience of returning home. And The Mighty Dougla's "Split Me in Two" represents my dyadic freshwater reality. Listen to an excerpt from an earlier post.
The video from the GALVANIZE performance has also changed significantly and, in many parts, been replaced by more costume and set design elements. I've removed the personal stories I'd included in the work, instead
choosing material written by others. (o.k. So, maybe I might use 1 personal story.) In this way, I feel I can
actually get more personal with the work; that by removing my self I
can see the work more clearly. Click here to read some of the written material, featured on the Roots & Wings Movement! blog.
The experience of having to write down these thoughts (which are always flying through my head at break-neck speed and completely out of order) has been instrumental in moving through this work. Not only has the weekly series helped me maintain a pace, but having to articulate the process has made it unfold more clearly. Both writing and dance are so fulfilling in this way - the constant editing, pruning, becoming, cleaning, until you have expressed what it is you must express. Like life....
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J'ouvert !
I don't know where the time has gone, but Carnival is in two weeks. Two weeks! Yes, I've been focusing on making a new work '
Fresh Water'. But Carnival is coming! And first on the order, is
J'ouvert.
The photo above was taken by Stefan Falke, a Brooklyn-based German photographer and author of Moko Jumbies: The Dancing Spirits of Trinidad. I first met Stefan in 2006, while playing mas with legendary mas maker Peter Minshall's The Sacred Heart.
J'ouvert in Trinidad begins around 2am on Carnival Monday morning and is the highlight of my Carnival. I consider J'ouvert to be the most authentic Carnival experience to be had today. J'ouvert is absolute freedom. For j'ouvert, I let go completely. I "break away". Music and rhythm fill my entire body. And it takes over, takes control. It is beautiful. It is out of control. It is grotesque. J'ouvert is mud, paint and powder in all colors, fire blowing devils, music, drums, black oil, tamboo-bamboo, whistles, water, iron, bold political and social statements, and the color blue. It is hell! And it's fantastic!
Watch this short video of the blue devils of Paramin - Carnival icons. The Blue Devils of Paramin are the subject of "Jab!" - a movie I've seen three times, most recently at
Trinidad Theatre Workshop.
Talk about getting into character! I cannot wait to perform this J'ouvert! I have
yet to make my costume of plastic bags for "Industrialize Dis" - the environmentally conscious J'ouvert band I'm playing with this year. (I'll post pictures of my costume as soon as I "catch myself" sometime soon after Carnival.) Here is the very official description for "Industrialize Dis", which is being produced by Alice Yard, Muddy Angels, and Rights Action Group:
The notion of industrialization and whether that means putting up plants with a limited shelf life or whether that means developing the social, ideological and creative potential of a society, is a question that hangs unanswered as we hurtle towards Vision 2020. This is one of the statements the band will pose on Carnival Monday morning. A development themed band is timely and topical and fits perfectly in with the idea of Carnival, particularly jouvert as that time of confrontation, subversion and liberation. Revelers are invited to create their own traditional mas costumes, with or without a placard made out of their own materials: plastic bottles, cans, newspapers, etc. This directly ties to the root of the mas, using whatever materials are available in your surroundings to create a new persona for the Carnival. It also makes the dual statement about the literal value of recycling materials and the figurative recycling of ancient mas forms to some current relevance and resonance.
Big tings ah gwaan for J'ouvert! Translation: It's gonna be sick!
At the end of the night (which is technically Monday at lunchtime), all the exhausted, hoarse, dirty, drunken J'ouvert-ers make their way home to transform into mas. (
What's mas?) There has been many a J'ouvert where I jammed so hard that I never made it into Port of Spain for Carnival Monday. The throbbing in my head and feet did not stop until it was time to play mas on Tuesday. Carnival Monday and Tuesday are really the END of the Carnival season, which is prefaced by months of costume making, competitions in steel pan,
stick-fighting, calypso, fete, and bacchanal that provides brilliant source material for social and political commentary. On Ash Wednesday, the people make their way to beaches like
Maracas, Manzanilla, Las Cuevas or head straight to
Tobago until the following Monday. What glory! I could really do with a dose of this incredibly unique and infectious creative energy right about now.
Click here to read "Ah Feelin' to Wine on Something", with features my mas costume for this year's Carnival.
The "Industrialize Dis" mas camp will be set up at Alice Yard. Every Friday night, at Conversations in the Yard, mas practitioners and potential players are invited to come to the yard and create their costumes and also talk about the process. Alice Yard then acts as the creative barrack yard. It then takes on a new kind of value in that it provides a space for people to create their own mas and also to share ideas about the experience. Alice Yard is located at 80 Roberts Streets in Woodbrook, Port of Spain. Read the Alice Yard blog.
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Ah Feelin' to Wine on Something!
The 'Black Widow' Section of Island People, with whom
I will be playing mas for Trinidad & Tobago Carnival 2008
Carnival is the best known example of contemporary culture in Trinidad & Tobago. In a recent
Roots & Wings Movement! post,
"too young to wine", I shared an experience with the dance that defines Carnival: Wining. Wining is the principal dance of Carnival, but there are other roles of wining. Wining can be an expression of sexuality. Wining can emphasize a verbal statement. Wining (with a skirt pulled up over the head) is particularly useful during a 'cuss-out' - a sweet, verbal warfare. Wining, as in Daniel Miller's 1989 paper "Absolute Freedom in Trinidad", is also seen an expression of Trinidadian freedom; to demonstrate one's rebellion to an idea or standard. Well, Carnival is coming (4-5 February). And ah feelin' to wine on something!
I want to wine on TSTT
(for not fixing my wi-fi!)
I want to wine to that wicked Machel song
Lawd, dat boy does send me mad!
I want to wine on Manning!
(for clearing away 1,000 beautiful acres in Union Village to erect. A smelter plant).
Take dat! Wine!
I want to wine on myself
(for
paying $645 to play mas with Island People)
Dat is madness!
Is Bacchanal!
Is Carnival!
Wine!
ahahahahahahhahahahaha. I like ting!
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Free Falling
Family faces are magic mirrors.
Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future.
~Gail Lumet Buckley
I agonized about whether or not to publish these notes.
And that is because I feel exposed. That my thoughts are being revealed. Vulnerabilities and confusion revealed - albeit a simple version that basically serves as the starting point for what I
really think. And for how deeply I really feel. For three days, I kept going back and forth: Publish it. Forget it, it's too confusing. It can all change. And then what would be the point of that? Publish it. You're sharing the 'process'. Don't publish. The 'process' should be writing this post! Back and forth, back and forth.....
I was "spinning" (as we say in Trinidad).
Recent personal events left me in need of some TLC and I returned to New York for a short visit. While from the start of the creation of
'Fresh Water' I've been thinking about family, lately I've been thinking about the breaking of cycles. And legacy. About how to hold on to your grandmother's strength while ridding yourself of your grandfather's ignorant ways. Of how to balance the presence of gender violence, drug and alcohol addiction, and destructive anger in a history that is also filled with woman power, limitless talent, invaluable knowledge, and beautiful love stories. And how to let go of it all and.....free fall.
It was during a recent Trinidad-to-New York Skype chat that 'Fresh Water' collaborator
Elspeth Duncan commented that the 'old' Fresh Water brought forth images of the sea. "The sea doesn't allow you to see your reflection," she wrote. "The new Fresh Water," she continued, "seems very small. Like a pond."
She then asked me whether or not I had posted the notes.
"No. But I will."
She sent me
this link to the PostSecret blog.
"It must freeing to publish your secrets," she wrote. "Maybe you emerge from the sea to look at yourself in the stillness of the pond."
So I published the notes.
Click to Enlarge
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