 |
|
| ....... |  |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
"Perhaps there was some hidden code inside there ('Raise your hand in the air!') that I missed completely. But I doubt it. Banality is banality and no amount of musical gymnastics can make it otherwise."
It's just Carnival
A Sunday Column By RAOUL PANTIN
TO HEAR some people wax on about it.
Actually, the best book on Carnival I ever read was written by an Eastern European whose
name, difficult as it was to pronounce, eludes me now.
It wasn't about Trinidad Carnival. In truth, I doubt that the writer, from Czechoslovakia,
I believe, ever heard about Trinidad or its Carnival.
He wrote about Carnival in Europe during the Middle Ages, and what struck me about it was
the amazing similarities between those drunken revelries, which is largely what they were,
and our own annual bacchanal.
Bacchanal, taken from the Greek god, Bacchus, good old King Revelry himself, was in fact
the essence of those ancient festivals, which were a rite of spring and very much a fete
of the downtrodden masses.
Key elements in those Carnivals were familiar things like mockery, especially of the upper
classes, very much including the reigning kings and queens and their various offspring.
Queen Elizabeth II probably doesn't know how easy she has it.
But ancient royalty, understanding what Carnival was all about, simply stood back and let
it happen ("let the jackasses bray!"), no doubt with the certain conviction that
come Ash Wednesday, or whatever was the equivalent at the time, the King or Queen would
still be in charge and the serfs would return to being, well, serfs.
There was a lot of sexual innuendo as well; a lot of play on bodily functions, most of it
deliberately vulgar. The more scandalous, or risque, the presentation or costume, the more
popular it was.
Does that ring a bell?
A few European kings and queens were subsequently to lose their heads or their kingdoms,
or both, but that had little to do with Carnival per se and a lot more to do with general
social upheavals and new notions about liberty, equality, fraternity.
But I say all that to try and put our own Carnival in some kind of perspective, getting
away from this perennially boring debate about what's so grand or so wrong about it, with
people either declaring it to be the most wonderful invention since the steam engine or
condemning it as a straight route to eternal damnation.
Hey, it's just a period of excess that people have been indulging in from time immemorial.
It's long been understood to be a ritual form of social expression, a period of letting
off steam, a social safety valve and all that.
For certain, we bring to our own Carnival all our own native wit and skill and boundless
energy. Calypso and soca and chutney and steelband are all unique elements of Trinidad
Carnival, though all are in danger of being devalued by crass commercialisation because
Carnival, some people have recently discovered, can also be a money-making business.
I mean, it's obvious to anybody with an ear to hear that the craft of calypso, its
essential lyrical dexterity, is giving way to a kind of manic music, largely perhaps
because there's a whole new generation out there that prefers to dance (if that's what you
call it) rather than listen to calypso. Illiteracy made manifest.
The other day I read the lyrics of the latest offering by one of our so-called masters of
the art form and was so appalled by the dinkiness of the lyrics, I couldn't fathom why the
reviewer of that particular piece of frippery was so ecstatic about it.
Perhaps there was some hidden code inside there ("Raise your hand in the air!")
that I missed completely. But I doubt it. Banality is banality and no amount of musical
gymnastics can make it otherwise.
As for steelband. Not only does it have less and less to do with Carnival, although that
is how it started out (try and find a steelband on the road on Carnival Tuesday) but half
a dozen countries out there are quietly experimenting and doing other things with pan
that, mark my word, are going to shock us into stupefaction one of these days.
And then they're probably going to claim it as their own to boot.
So what, precisely, is all this chest-beating and hand-wringing about?
We didn't invent Carnival. We may have put a certain stamp on it but so have the
Brazilians. I suspect, in truth, that one of the reasons Carnival in Europe has lost its
elan is because social conditions have vastly improved, so that the protest element is no
longer valid, and with other distractions-theatre, opera, museums etc--people have moved
on.
Good for them, I say.
Our own Carnival is great for the people who still haven't got tired of it and for the
people who make a small fortune out of it every year, not excluding the Tourist Board
which has everything to gain from promoting it as the Greatest Show on Earth, though
Brazilians also make that claim.
Even Jamaica, these days, is trying to cash in on Carnival.
Okay, so Trinidad Carnival has also turned up in London and Toronto and Miami, which tells
me that a lot of our immigrants out there want to retain something that makes them feel
like they're still at home, if only once a year.
But please. Carnival is an annual ritual rooted in all kinds of primal stirrings that a
lot of the people who play mas every year don't have a clue about, which no doubt leads
them to imagine that what they are doing is so wonderfully original and mystical and all
that claptrap.
And naturally you get these con artists (well, it's mas, right?) who keep trying to
convince us that we're participating in some kind of magical mystery while the Jeremiahs
are rending their garments and proclaiming Gloom, Doom and Damnation.
Come on. The thing is just one big fete--an occasion for people to have a good time, for
the young in particular to vent a lot of idle energy and why shouldn't the criminal
element jump into the fray since, with so many victims easily at hand, it's easier than
having to kick down people's front doors and maim, murder, rape and rob them.
Don't think for a minute that I'm against Carnival. I mean, I've been there and done that.
What I'm against is making it out to be more than it is. It's also worrisome that since
Carnival now starts before Christmas, a lot of us are spending at least six months every
year doing nothing else but playing mas.
And there are those of us, I suspect, who never stop playing mas at all.
But listen up. It's just Carnival; it's neither a panacea for all our myriad problems nor
a ticket to hell. Okay?
home || about me || portfolio || resume || photoalbum || comedy || guestbook || bookmarks || trinidad & tobago