Carnival Come & Gone -- Choreographer's Carnival

February 4, 2008

Carnival Come & Gone

Nowhere in the world can one find the scale, level of creativity, and organization as in Trinidad's Carnival. It is a multi-million dollar industry that involves tens of thousands of people and hundreds of events. Visit the Caribbean Beat blog for information on the winners of this year's National Carnival competitions for Dimanche Gras, Soca Monarch, Panorama, and the King and Queen of the bands. The Carnival also involves Traditional Carnival character performances and regional programs. This year, for example, the Downtown Carnival Committee saw Lennox Joseph's portrayal of "Homeless" and Patricia Goddard's "Ah Could Only See Half Meh Way in Inflation" as the winners in its Ole Mas competition. All of the competitors portrayed an array of themes, but all were social commentary pieces. And this, is really the heart of Carnival.

Carnival Saturday brought the children out in the Kiddies Carnival. Kiddies Carnival is vital to the continuation of Carnival. As a child, my mother made sure that my sisters and I participated in Kiddies Carnival - whether in Trinidad or New York. One year, my father even brought a Kiddies band in San Fernando. Here is a short video clip of this year's Kiddies Carnival:

After Kiddies, I trekked home to get some rest for Insomnia - a morning fete held at Mobs2 in Chaguaramas. Mobs2 is nestled upon a ten acre lot in the rain forest over looking Welcome Bay. Imagine this: Thousands of people are wining and jumping and waving to energetic soca artists at dawn. People are dancing - ecstatically. One man is bareback. He is swinging his long dreadlocks around and around. He stops and begins to shake, shake, shake and then wine as though it is his last time to wine. Another group of men have carried in their own 4-foot cooler filled with enormous bottles of rum and tequila. One of the group jumps into the cooler and loudly says "Aaaahhhhh". A woman is rolling around in the mud screaming. At the same time, the crowd is being wet by three huge water hoses strategically placed throughout the fete.

"Water, Water, Water!", the crowd chants.

The Laventille Riddim Section (whose music I used in a earlier version of 'Fresh Water') is "beating iron"- further sending people into a frenzy and preparing them for J'ouvert. On the right is an Indian man selling coconuts to rehydrate the masses. Everyone, everyone has "gone clear" (lost their minds). This is the scene for Insomnia - a fete that began around 2am and continued until 12pm. 2 hours in traffic and 6 hours sleep later, I open the Sunday Daily Express. Selwyn Ryan writes "...collective ecstatic dancing has therapeutic functions which are not often recognised by those who demonise such behaviour. Danced religions play a reproductive role in many societies; ecstatic dancing also serves to exorcise or attenuate feelings of morbid melancholia and depressions (aka spleen, the vapours, etc), boredom, ennui or other maladies...Interactive joy making likewise plays an important role in bonding, empowering subaltern groups....."

This release; this abandonment continued into J'ouvert morning where I played in "Industrialise Dis" and 3 Canal's "Shine". "Shine" subverted the whole idea of dirtying yourself in black and brown mud by using white paint instead. We screamed, crawled on our bellies, jumped in canals, insulted the Prime Minister and behaved devilishly. I was licked and bitten on 2 separate occasions. (The image to the left is of my J'ouvert mas. Yes, it's a little scandalous. But most of all, I was making a valid point in a country with a 1 in 100 HIV infection rate.) After all the J'ouvert madness - at 10AM - we all hobbled home to hose ourselves off:

I had exactly 1 hour to sleep before I had to meet my Carnival band in Port of Spain.

This is bacchanal!

Monday's mas is like a dress rehearsal. Band members wore the Monday outfit (featured in this entry). We learn our parade route, get to know one another and prepare for Tuesday. (Playing mas could be an extreme sport. Masqueraders chip and dance for 12 hours in scorching heat for miles and miles. It's exhausting. And exhilarating.) And Tuesday? Well! Tuesday was mas! And what a mas it was! I am fortunate that the Carnival experience is so much more than just Carnival Monday and Tuesday, for if so, I would have been decimated by the disappointment of Island People's inability to cross more stages. I love mas. And nothing - not all the food and free Patron in the world - can replace the experience of playing mas on stage. Island People made it to only 2 of the judging points, which caused great bacchanal among the masqueraders. But if you've been reading the blog series you'd know: Carnival is not Carnival without bacchanal!