Carnival defiance

Last weekend provided a good opportunity to sample, in small and large bits, the contradictions of a country said to be under siege from violent crime and social conflict, and the offerings of people bent on defiant creative expression through it all.

The one thing you realise when doing so in T&T is that those intent on challenging the odds do not comprise a marginal, monolithic minority. It seems that for as many who have yielded to fear, there are numerous others interested in claiming earned doses of freedom.

This is, perhaps, the spirit of “Kambule” as expressed by poet Pearl Eintou Springer – a veritable battle of wills between the mighty and the small that has found common metaphorical cause among all of us.

We should know that two Carnival days do not by themselves constitute the most important features of the season. No, “everybody” does not play mas’.  “Everybody” does not like soca and fete. And, though I cannot understand why, “everybody” is not into pan.

Maybe it is that the whole of these divided loyalties surpasses the sum of the variety of discrete, not always harmonious parts. Bits and pieces that somehow coexistent as in an expanding fragmented yet cohesive universe – as my astrophysicist niece Zahra would probably put it.

So, my friends and colleagues all know I do not like Carnival fetes. The music is too loud, and all the soca songs sound the same to me. Yet, there are sensible people who partake.

I also happen to believe that the share of nonsense lyrics and unoriginal music at calypso competitions has always vastly outstripped anything of value – so when they were on competitor number 150, or whatever, at Skinner Park last Saturday, I was on a folding chair in a panyard in the open air not listening, though I tried earlier.

Sure, there has been creative genius along the way, but I am also not keen on most of mas’ and never aspired to be a part of it – save for teenage Jab Jab in Curepe.

I am aware of existential value, though, and would never attempt to diminish the importance of such things. As a fledgling watercolourist I recognise colour and light and movement. The best costume designers can employ all these conditions to tell valid stories.

These are some personal contradictions of mine. You probably have yours too. You may, for instance, do not believe that pan is the greatest thing we do in T&T. That its role in musical expression, social organisation, and economic potential is the stuff of fanciful myth.

So, on Sunday, for me, it was the Medium Band final in Tobago, on television.

Some of you probably missed the fact that pan arrangements have crossed epochal points of excellence at the hands of a new generation of musicians. That for young Kersh Ramsey from Black Rock, Tobago, who arranged for repeat winners Katzenjammers, there is no turning back.

That, at one time one of his mentors, Duvone Stewart, was that “brilliant young man” who was bound for greatness. Preach nonsense about youth disinterest in pan!

So, that was it for me on Sunday. But, on Saturday, I did have the chance to do three Carnival things. First stop was to check in on artist Jackie Hinkson’s Carnival murals in St Ann’s, which was still under construction.

I recalled at the height of the COVID19 lockdown (I think it was 2021) a young lady I know parked her car, put on a costume, and chipped, chipped by herself along Fisher Avenue alongside masqueraders and various Carnival characters frozen in place by Hinkson. She was not to be chained!

Then, when I left Fisher Avenue, I heard music at the Savannah where the Red Cross Kiddies Carnival was wrapping up. No fan of mas’ per se, but a huge supporter of anything positive to do with children, I raced over to the Savannah with camera in hand.

There is an element of child sufferation at such events that turns me off, but there was also a sense of pride and joy on the faces of the children whose parents and guardians had not already whisked back home.

The only thing left to do when I left there was to find myself in the idyllic Supernovas panyard in Lopinot. I had by then noted that everywhere people were not yielding. The defiance of Carnival’s early, indigenous origins was clearly in evidence. There was a liberation being pursued. Defiance, and the hope that drives it. Let’s see what the rest of this brings.