opmaak journal #7 - Prince Claus Fund

Transcription

Contents
Contenu
Contenido
p. 2
p. 3
Visual Essays
p. 6
p. 8
Film grabs from Territories by Isaac Julien
p. 20
p. 24
p. 25
p. 26
Works of art by Peter Minshall
p. 29
p. 44
p. 46
Photographs of Summer Carnival
Rotterdam 2001 by Bas Czerwinski
p. 48
p. 52
p. 60
p. 62
Photographs of Carmen Miranda
p. 70
p. 73
p. 74
Photographs of Carnival Curaçao
by Catrien Ariëns
p. 80
p. 88
p. 100
p. 104
Photographs of Carnival Dakar
by Mamadou Touré Béhan
p. 108
p. 106
p. 110
Organisation of the Prince Claus Fund
Organisation de la Fondation Prince Claus
Organización de la Fundación Príncipe Claus
Els van der Plas
Editorial: Callaloo
Rex Nettleford
Textura y diversidad
La vida cultural del Caribe
Dick Hebdige
Isaac Julien, The Great Divide: Territories
Derek Walcott
Mass Man
Milla Cozart Riggio
Peter Minshall, Mas’ Man
Richard Schechner and
Milla Cozart Riggio
Peter Minshall: The Interview
Mijaíl M. Bajtín
El Boato Ritual
Karel Willems
The View from Above and Below:
Solero Summer Carnival Rotterdam
Stichting Zomercarnaval Nederland
Behind the Scenes at the Summer
Carnival Rotterdam
Lisa Shaw
The Brazilian chanchada (1930-59)
Roberto DaMatta
A Special Space
Ineke Holtwijk
The Rio Carnival is All about Money,
Publicity and Silicone
Patrick Chamoiseau
Mozaïque de souvenirs
La mort de Solibo Magnifique
Simon Lee
Wood, Skin and Steel
The Musical Fusions of Carnival
Aneka Roberts-Griffith Lee
Disquieting Music: Drupatee Ramgoonai
and the Rise of Chutney Soca
Malu Halasa
Catrien Ariëns, A Narrative of Passion and
Determination: Carnival in Curaçao
Glossary
Simon Lee
Contributors
Participants
Prince Claus Fund Journal # 7
1
Board of the Prince Claus Fund
Comité de Direction de la Fondation Prince Claus
Junta Directiva de la Fundación Príncipe Claus
HRH Prince Claus of the Netherlands,
Honorary Chairman
Professor Anke Niehof, Chair, Professor of Sociology
at Wageningen University and Research Centre,
the Netherlands
Professor Adriaan van der Staay, Vice-Chair,
Professor of Cultural Politics and Cultural Criticism at
the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Edith Sizoo, Secretary, International Coordinator of
Réseau Cultures et Développement, Brussels, Belgium
Professor Louk de la Rive Box, Treasurer, Director
of the European Centre for Development Policy
Management, Maastricht, the Netherlands
Ashok Bhalotra, architect and planner, Rotterdam,
the Netherlands
Emile Fallaux, script-writer and President of the
Hubert Bals Fund, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Morris Tabaksblat, Chairman Reed-Elsevier,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Office Bureaux Oficina
Els van der Plas, Director
Cora Taal, Executive Secretary
Vivian Paulissen, Policy Officer
Geerte Wachter, Policy Officer
Marlous Willemsen, Policy Officer
Jacqueline Meulblok, Publicity Officer
Carla Wauman, Director’s Assistant
Linda van der Gaag, Secretary
Sonja Rambharse, Assistant Secretary
Frans Bijlsma, Librarian
Fatima Aznag, Trainee
2001 Prince Claus Awards Committee
Comité des Prix Prince Claus 2001
Comité de Premios Príncipe Claus 2001
Professor Adriaan van der Staay, Chair, member
of the Board of the Prince Claus Fund, The Hague,
the Netherlands
Professor Charles Correa, architect and planner,
Bombay, India
Mai Ghoussoub, artist, writer and Director of Al Saqi
Publishers and Bookshop, London, UK; Beirut, Lebanon
Gaston Kaboré, historian and film director,
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Gerardo Mosquera, curator and art critic, Havana, Cuba
Bruno Stagno, architect and Director of the Institute for
Tropical Architecture, San José, Costa Rica
2
Organisation
of the Prince
Claus Fund
Organisation
de la Fondation
Prince Claus
Organización
de la Fundación
Príncipe Claus
2001 Exchanges Committee
Comité des Echanges 2001
Comité de Intercambios 2001
Ashok Bhalotra, Chair, member of the Board
of the Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, the Netherlands
Dr. Pieter Boele van Hensbroek, philosopher,
University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Professor Achille Mbembe, historian, University
of Capetown, South Africa
Dileep Padgaonkar, editor, New Delhi, India
Françoise Vergès, political scientist and lecturer,
Center for Cultural Studies, Goldsmith College,
London, UK
Abdullahi An-Na’im, professor of law, Emory
University, Atlanta, U.S.
2001 Publications Committee
Comité des Publications 2001
Comité de Publicaciones 2001
Emile Fallaux, Chair, member of the Board of the
Prince Claus Fund
Professor Hilary Beckles, historian and Dean of
the University of the West Indies, Jamaica
Professor Leonard Blussé, Professor of the
History of European Expansion at Leiden University,
the Netherlands
Ian Buruma, writer and historian, London, UK
Professor Avishai Margalit, philosopher at the
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Ellen Ombre, writer, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
2001 Activities Committee
Comité des Activités 2001
Comité de Actividades 2001
Edith Sizoo, Chair, member of the Board of the
Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, the Netherlands
Rustom Bharucha, cultural theorist, director
and playwright, Calcutta, India
Robert Loder, trustee of the Triangle Arts Trust,
London, UK
Solange Farkas, Director VideoBrasil, São Paulo,
Brazil
Callaloo
Callaloo is a soup that is made from various ingredients in an
unlikely combination of everything from dasheen leaves and okra
to coconut milk and crab. It is said to be the most delicious dish in
the Caribbean: a delicacy created from a hotchpotch of tastes and
smells. This amalgam of extremely diverse ingredients is a symbol
for both the Caribbean culture and its Carnival – that festive
parade of different cultural traditions and forms of expression
that so many people look forward to each year.
The Caribbean Carnival creates a bridge between artistic
disciplines, between people of different cultures and between
social classes and religious traditions. It exerts an indelible
influence on interculturalism and artistic development, and can
serve as an example for many multicultural societies. All the more
reason for the Prince Claus Fund to give the Principal Award to
outstanding examples of this Caribbean tradition and to select
Carnival in general as this year’s central theme.
The interest of the Prince Claus Fund in the theme of Carnival
was inspired by the essential characteristics of Carnival festivities;
the breaking of boundaries, the bridging of cultures and the
spaces of freedom that are created. As Russian expert on
Carnival Mikhail Bakhtin stated in 1929, ‘Carnival brings together,
unifies, weds and combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty
with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the
stupid’. Carnival provides a space of freedom where fusion,
mixing and melting can take place. Where the garbage man can
dance with the director and the go-go girl with the president.
Music in relation to Carnival is presented extensively in the
Journal because it carries all the characteristics of this fusion
festival. Drupatee Ramgoonai crossed racial borders of being a
Trinidadian of Indian descent who dared to sing Carnival songs,
an African tradition regarded as the preserve of blacks-from-theslavery-period. She developed chutney soca, a breakthrough in
Carnival music that used to be dominated by Calypso. ‘Indian
soca, sounding sweeter … Rhythm from Africa and India / Blend
together in a perfect mixture,’ she sings. Music expert Simon Lee
explains all the musical fusions and mixtures. And before you
finish reading his essay ‘Wood, Skin and Steel’, you are
overwhelmed by the richness of the musical traditions related to
Carnival in the Caribbean alone.
The light musical films of Brazilian chanchadas from the Thirties
were initially a vehicle for popular Carnival songs, which people
hummed and sang with the projection of the film. Later they
became carriers of Brazilian identity vis-à-vis American globalism,
and gave an optimism and confidence to the Brazilian people.
The visual essays of the Journal tell their own stories. Grabs
from the film Territories (1984) of artist Isaac Julien shows the
troubled and intense Notting Hill Carnival where people mix but
violence emerges. Territories gave testimony to that in the Eighties
when racial violence was at its height in London. That police
officers can be bored with joy happens in Rotterdam. The chair
of the Summer Carnival Foundation, the Principal 2001 Prince Claus
Award laureate, describes the festivities, and the photographs of
Bas Czerwinski document the joyous Dutch counterpart of
Notting Hill, an example for any multicultural activity in the
world.
Carnival was heavily influenced by the traditions of slaves and
displaced peoples in the Caribbean and Latin America, and has
been brought back to Africa by the 1998 Prince Claus laureate
Oumou Sy who organises the Dakar Carnival in Senegal. Photographer Mamadou Touré Béhan captures this historic exchange.
The impressive visual forms of and the ideas behind the work
of Peter Minshall, the 2001 Principal laureate from Trinidad, are
revealed in an interview with this multi-talented artist. It is for a
good reason Minshall named his company Callaloo. Innovation
through mixing is the essence of his work. Minshall was fascinated
as a young boy by the masquerade and the dressing-up during
Carnival. He gave new forms to the changes of identities. Men
became women, people animals. All transformed into living
artworks. High art was thrown onto the streets. As Carnival
should, he turned everything upside down in the representation
of form and colour, and he still does.
Photographer Catrien Ariëns takes us through delightfully
sensitive pictures of the Carnival preparations from Curaçao, an
island in the Dutch Antilles. These images reflect her research
into Curaçao society and the role of the festivities in this small
but lively island. In contrast, the largest Carnival in the world is
the four-day long festival in Rio de Janeiro. Here, Ineke Holtwijk
examines the flurry of plastic surgery on upper-class women’s
bodies before the parades and the all-night dancing.
Concepts, ideas and thoughts of the most respected Carnival
experts worldwide contribute to this Journal; Mikhail Bakhtin and
Roberto DaMatta are quoted. And the work on Carnival of two
Caribbean laureates of the Noble Prize and the Prince Claus
Award is published; ‘Mass Man’, a poem by Derek Walcott, and
an extract from the novel Solibo Magnifique by Patrick Chamoiseau
examine Carnival from the insider’s perspective.
Carnival tastes as good as callaloo. It is a great multicultural
party and a fusion feast, a space of freedom and a cultural bridge
which we all can cross both ways.
Els van der Plas
Director of the Prince Claus Fund
3
Callaloo
El callaloo es una sopa hecha de varios ingredientes en una improbable combinación de todo tipo de cosas, desde hojas de
dasheen y kimbambó, a leche de coco y cangrejo. Se dice que es el
plato más delicioso del Caribe: una esquisitez elaborada a base de un
putpurrí de gustos y sabores. Esta amalgama de ingredientes extremadamente diversos es símbolo tanto de la cultura caribeña como
de su carnaval, un desfile festivo de diferentes tradiciones culturales
y formas de expresión que tantas gentes anhelan ver año tras año.
El Carnaval del Caribe tiende un puente entre disciplinas artísticas,
entre gentes de diferentes culturas y entre clases sociales y tradiciones
religiosas. Ejerce una influencia indeleble sobre el interculturalismo y el
desarrollo artístico y puede servir de ejemplo para muchas sociedades
multiculturales. Para la Fundación Príncipe Claus todas estas son
razones de más a la hora de otorgar el Gran Premio a ejemplos que
destacan en esta tradición caribeña y de optar por el carnaval en su
generalidad como el tema central de la edición del presente año.
El interés de la Fundación Príncipe Claus por el tema del carnaval,
vino inspirado por las características esenciales de las festividades
carnavalescas, como son traspasar las barreras, vincular culturas y
los espacios de libertad que se crean. Tal como expuso ya en 1929 el
ruso Mijaíl Bajtín, especialista en el carnaval: ‘El carnaval acerca,
unifica, junta y combina lo sagrado y lo profano, lo alto y lo bajo, lo
magno y lo insignificante, la sabiduría y la estupidez’. El carnaval
proporciona un espacio de libertad donde pueden darse la fusión, la
mezcolanza y la amalgama. Donde el basurero puede bailar con el
director y la chica gogó con el presidente.
La música relacionada al carnaval figura de modo prominente en
el Journal puesto que reúne en sí todas las carcterísticas de este
festival de la fusión. Drupatee Ramgoonai traspasó las barreras
raciales de ser una trinideña de origen indio al atreverse a cantar
canciones de carnaval, que es una tradición africana que se percibe
como algo del dominio exclusivo de los negros del periodo de la
esclavitud. Ella ha desarrollado la chutney soca, que supone un
descubrimiento en la música de carnaval, que siempre la representaba el calipso. La ‘Indian soca’ tiene un sonido más suave. Los
ritmos de África y la India se fusionan en una mezcla perfecta…’, nos
dice en una canción. Simon Lee, especialista en música da cuenta de
todas las fusiones y mezclas musicales. Y antes de que uno termine
de leer su ensayo ‘Wood, Skin and Steel’ se verá abrumado con la
riqueza de las tradiciones musicales relacionadas al carnaval, y eso
sólo en cuanto al Caribe.
Los filmes musicales ligeros de las chanchadas brasileñas de los
años treinta inicialmente fueron un vehículo para las canciones de
carnaval populares que la gente tarareaba y cantaba al proyectarse
una película. Posteriormente pasaron a ser transmisores de la
identidad brasileña en oposición al globalismo norteamericano,
proporcionando así optimismo y confianza al pueblo brasileño.
Los ensayos visuales del Journal cuentan sus propias historias.
Trozos del filme Territories (1984) del artista Isaac Julien expone el
turbulento e intenso Carnaval de Notting Hill donde las gentes se
mezclan pero donde la violencia surge. Su filme Territories daba fe de
lo que se estaba dando en los ochenta, cuando la violencia
4
racial estaba en pleno apogeo en Londres. Rotterdam demuestra en
cambio que los agentes de policía se pueden aburrir alegremente. La
Presidencia de la Fundación Carnaval de Verano, el Gran Premio
2001 Príncipe Claus, describe las festividades y las fotografías de Bas
Czerwinski reflejan la alegre contrapartida holandesa a Notting Hill.
Todo un ejemplo para cualquier actividad multicultural del mundo.
El carnaval ha estado fuertemente influido por las tradiciones de
los esclavos y los pueblos desplazados al Caribe y a América Latina,
pero la laureada por la Fundación Príncipe Claus en 1998, Oumou
Sy, lo ha devuelto a África y ella es quien organiza el Carnaval de
Dakar en Senegal. El fotógrafo Mamadou Touré Béhan capta este
intercambio histórico.
Las impresionantes formas visuales e ideas que inspiran las obras
de Peter Minshall, el Gran Laureado de Trinidad del 2001 quedan
plasmadas en una entrevista con este artista pluritalentoso. Se debe
a una buena razón que Minshall bautizara su compañía con el
nombre de Callaloo. La esencia de su obra es la innovación a través
de la mezcla. De joven a Minshall le fascinaba la mascarada y los
disfraces del carnaval. Él proporcionó formas nuevas a los cambios
de identidades. Los hombres se transformaban en mujeres, las
personas en animales. Todos se transformaban en obras de arte
viviente. El arte se arrojaba a las calles. Tal como el carnaval lo
exige, él lo puso todo patas arriba en cuanto a la representación de
la forma y el color, lo cual aún sigue haciendo.
La fotógrafa Catrien Ariëns nos conduce por medio de fotografías delicadamente sensibles a las preparaciones del Carnaval de
Curaçao, una isla de las Antillas Holandesas. Las imágenes son
reflejo de la investigación de la fotógrafa de la sociedad de Curaçao
y el papel que tienen las festividades en esta isla pequeña pero llena
de vida. Como contraste está el carnaval más grande del mundo, de
cuatro días de duración, en Río de Janeiro. En referencia a éste,
Ineke Holtwijk examina el frenesí de la cirugía plástica en los
cuerpos de las mujeres de la clase alta antes de los desfiles y de los
bailes que duran toda la noche.
Contribuyen a este Journal los conceptos, las ideas y el pensamiento de los especialistas en carnaval más reconocidos mundialmente. Se citan a Mijaíl Bajtín y a Roberto DaMatta. Y se publican los trabajos sobre el carnaval de dos laureados del Caribe,
uno del Premio Nobel y el otro del Premio Príncipe Claus. ‘Mass
Man’, un poema de Derek Walcott y un fragmento de la novela
Solibo Magnifique, de Patrick Chamoiseau, examina el carnaval
desde la perspectiva del insider.
El carnaval sabe tan bien como el callaloo. Es una gran fiesta
multicultural y una fiesta de fusión, un espacio de libertad y un
puente cultural que todos podemos atravesar en ambos sentidos.
Els van der Plas
Directora de la Fundación Príncipe Claus
Callaloo
La callaloo est une soupe composée des ingrédients les plus
hétérogènes: des feuilles de dasheen par exemple, des okras, du
lait de coco et du crabe. Tous les ingrédients se combinent de
façon inattendue et le plat qui en résulte est, paraît-il, le meilleur
des Caraïbes: un met savoureux créé à partir du mélange des
goûts et des odeurs. Cet amalgame d’ingrédients extrêmement
variés est un symbole à la fois de la culture des Caraïbes et de
son carnaval – ce joyeux défilé qui rassemble diverses traditions
culturelles et formes d’expression, et que tant de gens attendent
avec impatience chaque année.
Le Carnaval des Caraïbes jette un pont entre des disciplines
artistiques, entre des personnes de différentes cultures, et entre
des classes sociales et des traditions religieuses. Il exerce une
influence indélébile sur l’interculturalité et le développement
artistique, et peut servir d’exemple pour beaucoup de sociétés
multiculturelles. Autant de bonnes raisons pour la Fondation Prince
Claus de décerner son Grand Prix à des expressions exceptionnelles de cette tradition caribéenne et de choisir le carnaval en
général comme thème central de cette année.
L’intérêt que la Fondation Prince Claus porte au carnaval lui a
été inspiré par les caractéristiques essentielles qui marquent ces
réjouissances; à savoir la rupture des frontières, le rapprochement
des cultures et la création d’espaces de liberté. Mikhail Bakhtin,
le spécialiste russe du carnaval déclare en 1929: ‘Le carnaval
rassemble, unifie, allie et combine le sacré et le profane, le haut
et le bas, le grand et l’insignifiant, le sage et le stupide’. Le carnaval
offre un espace de liberté où peuvent avoir lieu fusion, mélange et
brassage. Pendant le carnaval, l’éboueur danse avec le directeur
et la go-go girl avec le président.
La musique en relation au carnaval est traitée abondamment
dans ce Journal car elle porte en elle toutes les caractéristiques
de ce festival de la fusion. Vivant à Trinidad et descendante des
Indiens, Drupatee Ramgoonai franchit les frontières raciales en
osant chanter des airs de carnaval, une tradition africaine
considérée comme étant la chasse gardée des ‘noirs de l’époque
de l’esclavage’. Elle a créé une musique soca chutney qui constitue
une véritable percée dans la musique carnavalesque généralement
dominée par le calypso. ‘Soca indien, aux sonorités plus douces …
Rythmes venus d’Afrique et d’Inde / Combinés dans un amalgame
parfait’ chante-t-elle. Le spécialiste musical Simon Lee explique
toutes les fusions et les mélanges musicaux. Et avant même d’avoir
fini de lire son essai ‘Bois, Peau et Acier’ [‘Wood, Skin and Steel’],
vous serez éblouis par la richesse des traditions musicales liées au
Carnaval des Caraïbes.
A l’origine, les comédies musicales des chanchadas brésiliens des
années 30 étaient destinées à mettre en valeur les airs populaires
du carnaval que les gens fredonnaient et chantaient pendant la
projection du film. Par la suite, ces films sont devenus les porteurs
d’une identité brésilienne face au mondialisme américain et ont
redonné confiance et optimisme au peuple brésilien.
Les compositions visuelles du Journal racontent leur propre
histoire. Les prises de vues du film Territories (1984) de l’artiste
Isaac Julien montrent l’agitation et l’intensité qui caractérisent le
Carnaval de Notting Hill où les gens se mêlent mais où ressort
la violence. Territories témoigne de cette situation au cours des
années 80, au moment où les agitations raciales à Londres étaient
à leur comble. Mais à Rotterdam au contraire, les policiers
s’ennuient et s’amusent. Le président de la Fondation Carnaval
Estival, lauréate du Grand Prix Prince Claus 2001, décrit ces
joviales festivités et les photographies de Bas Czerwinski apportent
des documents sur ce joyeux pendant néerlandais du Carnaval de
Notting Hill, un exemple pour toutes les activités multiculturelles
à travers le monde.
Le carnaval a été fortement influencé par les traditions des
esclaves et des populations déplacées des Caraïbes et d‘Amérique
latine. Il a été ramené en Afrique par Oumou Sy, lauréate du Prix
Prince Claus 1998, qui organise le Carnaval de Dakar au Sénégal.
Le photographe Mamadou Touré Béhan a consigné en images cet
échange historique.
Les impressionnantes formes visuelles et les idées qui soutiennent l’oeuvre de Peter Minshall, lauréat du Grand Prix 2001, sont
révélées dans une interview avec cet artiste de Trinidad aux
multiples talents. Ce n’est pas pour rien que Minshall a appelé sa
compagnie Callaloo. L’innovation par le mélange est en effet
l’essence même de son œuvre. Dans son enfance, Minshall était
fasciné par les masques et les déguisements qu’il voyait pendant
le carnaval. Il a donné de nouvelles formes aux changements
d’identités. Les hommes sont devenus des femmes, et les hommes
et les femmes sont devenus des animaux. Il a tout transformé en
œuvres d’art vivantes. Le ‘high art’ était dans la rue. Comme il se
doit, le carnaval mettait tout sens dessus dessous dans les
représentations de formes et de couleurs, et il continue à le faire.
La photographe Catrien Ariëns nous montre des images
délicates et sensibles prises lors des préparatifs du carnaval de
Curaçao, une île des Antilles néerlandaises. Ces photos sont
le reflet de l’étude de l’artiste sur la société de Curaçao et sur
le rôle des festivités dans cette île petite, mais très animée.
A l’opposé, on trouve le plus grand carnaval du monde: le festival
de Rio de Janeiro qui dure quatre jours. Ici, Ineke Holtwijk détaille
la vague de chirurgie esthétique qui remodèle les corps des
femmes de la haute société avant les défilés et les nuits de danse.
Les plus célèbres spécialistes du carnaval présentent dans ce
Journal leurs concepts, leurs idées et leurs pensées; Mikhail Bakhtin
et Roberto DaMatta sont cités. Nous publions également des
oeuvres sur le carnaval de deux lauréats des Caraïbes : l’un a reçu
le Prix Nobel et l’autre le Prix Prince Claus; le poème de Derek
Walcott ‘Mass Man’ et l’extrait du roman Solibo Magnifique de
Patrick Chamoiseau nous montrent le carnaval vu de l’intérieur.
Le carnaval est aussi savoureux que la soupe callaloo. C’est une
grande kermesse multiculturelle, une fête des mélanges et de la
fusion, un espace de liberté et un pont culturel que nous pouvons
tous traverser des deux côtés.
Els van der Plas,
Directeur de la Fondation Prince Claus
5
People’s War sound system at London’s Notting Hill Carnival, 1983
Film grab from Territories by Isaac Julien, 1984
Sankofa Black Film and Video Collective
Encuentros de índole distinta modelan la vida cultural del Caribe.
Las gentes que pueblan un área que cubre unas mil millas y que va
desde las Grandes Antillas hasta la costa de Venezuela, han aprendido,
a través de la música, las mascaradas, la historia oral y la literatura,
a convivir sin estar juntos. Las experiencias combinadas, la creolisación,
confieren un nuevo significado a la palabra diversidad.
Textura y diversidad: La vida cultural del Caribe 1
Rex Nettleford
La diversidad texturada de la vida cultural caribeña es sin duda la clave más significativa para
el entendimiento y comprensión del dinamismo y energía que caracteriza la vida en una
región que abarca geográficamente desde las Bahamas hasta las Grandes Antillas (Cuba,
Haití, Santo Domingo, Jamaica y Puerto Rico), cubriendo alrededor de mil millas a través de
un archipiélago que comprende las Islas de Leewards y Windwards, junto a Barbados
levemente fuera de la frontera oriental, luego encrespándose desde Trinidad y Tobago hacia
las Antillas Holandesas, extendiéndose hacia al noroeste de Venezuela, el cual, al igual que
Colombia, insiste en que posee una costa caribeña. Las Guyanas, situadas en tierra firme de
Sudamérica, se ven a sí mismas tanto ‘caribeñas’ como parte del norte de Brazil, debido a
razones definitivamente culturales.
Tal como lo he señalado en otro lugar, el Caribe forma parte del gran drama de las
Américas, donde nuevas sociedades son formadas. Este proceso ha resultado en una entidad
distintiva y distinta denominada ‘caribeña’, cuyo proceso es intensamente cultural. El
encuentro de África y Europa en suelo extranjero y de éstos a su vez con los pueblos
indígenas en sus tierras, y, más tarde, con los inmigrantes tardíos de Asia (India y China) y
aún más tarde desde el Medio Oriente (Líbano), ha resultado en una cultura de textura y
diversidad unificada por una creatividad dinámica o un pluralismo cultural. Una descripción
adecuada de la persona tipícamente caribeña entonces es que es en parte africana, en parte
europea, en parte asiática, en parte nativa, sin embargo totalmente caribeña. Percibir esto es
entender la diversidad creativa que, a la vez, es causa y ocasión, resultado y punto definitorio
de la vida cultural caribeña.
Esto es lo que indudablemente hace del Caribe francófono, del Caribe hispano, del Caribe
holandés, de los territorios caribeños británicos transoceánicos y del Caribe estadounidense
(incluyendo el Commonwealth de Puerto Rico), verdaderos espíritus emparentados, a
pesar de las diferencias en lengua y sistemas políticos. Pues todos ellos se perciben a sí
mismos sobre la base de tener en común una plena comprensión de su poder de acción
cultural, logrando para sus habitantes un sentido de lugar y destino. No es de extrañar que
Martinica y Guadalupe, Curaçao y Saint Martin, Cuba y Santo Domingo, junto con Haití,
Puerto Rico y las Islas Vírgenes estadounidenses, así como también las colonias británicas
de las Islas Caimán, las Islas Vírgenes británicas, Montserrat, y las Islas Turks y Caicos, se
identifiquen culturalmente con las naciones recientemente independizadas, desde Belice a
Trinidad y Tobago. Si éstas celebran sus afinidades culturales con el Caribe en su conjunto,
no están menos concientes de los desafíos planteados por la complejidad del proceso de
manejar la diversidad. Pues esto demanda, de todos quienes habitan la región caribeña,
la capacidad de construir puentes no sólo entre las clases y las razas dentro de los países de
la región, sino también entre los continentes del mundo, los cuales se hallan representados
en el Caribe a través de siglos de migración (voluntaria e involuntaria), continuando
8
1.
Esto discurso fue pronunciado durante la ceremonia
de presentación de los
Premios Príncipe Claus
2001, el pasado 11 de
diciembre en el Palacio
Real de Amsterdam.
la interacción via el turismo, las transacciones comerciales y los contactos profesionales.
El Caribe, en sí mismo expresión de tal diversidad, de su sobrevivencia y más allá de la
misma, ha bregado a lo largo de cinco siglos con el manejo de la complejidad de tal
diversidad. Tales han sido los desafíos que hoy es posible decir, con un cierto grado de
certeza, que los pueblos del Caribe han aprendido a vivir juntos y no simplemente uno al
lado del otro. En cualquier caso, la revolución de la tecnología de las comunicaciones y el
tremendo progreso en las facilidades para viajar han planteado la urgente necesidad para los
pueblos del siglo xxi de aprender a vivir juntos, para lidiar con los dilemas de la diferencia
mediante vías que sirvan al ensanchamiento de la calidad de vida de los seres humanos y
aseguren el desarrollo humano positivo en el ingreso pleno al tercer milenio.
La diversidad es entonces un aspecto definitorio de la vida cultural contemporánea del
Caribe. La retroalimentación de las culturas en contacto, en lo que ha llegado a denominarse,
por parte de los estudiosos, ‘el proceso de creolisación’ está marcada por la integración de
elementos dispares, a los cuales estas culturas otorgan significado; y el proceso depende de
las dinámicas de contradicciones y múltiples conexiones, que a momentos se funden, a
momentos se rechazan, a momentos se integran, a momentos se separan, en un acto
continuo (un encadenamiento) de cambio, de movimiento y contorneo caleidoscópico.
Aun el todo de esto retiene una lógica interna y una consistencia preservada dentro de una
experiencia compartida que se repite a través del tiempo y en el telescopio de una visión
común de la realidad, incluyendo el reconocimiento de una existencia trizada y una
creatividad caótica – en suma, esto significa la esencia de un multiculturalismo intertextual.
Muchos creen que todo esto es evidente en el Carnaval, pre-cuaresmal en origen e
indiscutiblemente el más acabado de las artes festival, nutrido en el seno de la América de
las plantaciones – a partir de La Habana y Puerto Príncipe, incluyendo el Puerto de España y
Río de Janeiro con Bahía, todo el Caribe Oriental y Nueva Orleans puesta entremedio. Esto
es visto por el estudioso cubano Antonio Benítez-Rojo como la práctica sociocultural
primaria que ‘mejor expresa las estrategias que el pueblo del Caribe posee para hablar de sí
mismo y de su relación con el mundo, con la historia, con la tradición, con la naturaleza, con
Dios’. Aquí, entonces, están las bases para un sentido apropriado del ‘yo’ caribeño, un
sentido apropriado de un mundo más amplio al cual el sujeto caribeño (individual y
colectivamente) debe relacionarse y, por ende, un sentido apropriado de ‘saber’.
Es la mente lo que está en juego. Por su misma naturaleza, la mente cultiva los espacios
que permanecen inviolados – más allá de la opresión y el opresor, ya sea el amo de esclavos,
el funcionario de la corona colonial o el títere sucesora nativa. Esa misma mente también
construye, desde el intelecto y la imaginación, los bastiones de discretas identidades así
como también canteras de invaluables materias primas que tanto pueden ser usadas para
construir puentes más allá de las fronteras culturales como pueden, en momentos de
autoafirmación irracional, clausurar aquello denominado ‘el Otro’ y derivar en una suerte de
racismo y discriminación racial, xenofobia y un sinnúmero de aberraciones relacionadas. Estas
derivaciones negativas llevaron a las Naciones Unidas a montar una conferencia mundial que,
aunque controvertida, abordó el tópico en septiembre del 2001, en Durban, Sudáfrica.
Benítez-Rojo plantea el caso gráficamente: ‘Yo parto de la creencia que la “Caribeanidad”
es un sistema lleno de ruido y opacidad, un sistema no lineal, un sistema impredecible – en
suma, un sistema caótico más allá de todo alcance para cualquier clase específica de
conocimiento o interpretación del mundo.’ Aquí Benítez-Rojo se alinea, junto a otros, en
torno al apasionadamente defendido punto de vista de que aquellas perspectivas del
pensamiento humano divididas en pre-moderno, moderno y postmoderno no tienen
sentido a la hora de lidiar con la vida cultural caribeña en tanto todos estos estados definidos
de existencia coexisten en un entrecruzamiento dinámico dentro de la definición del sujeto
caribeño y la sociedad. Los productos de la imaginación creativa, desde el lenguaje y la
religión hasta las manifestaciones artísticas en las artes visuales y teatrales, todos ellos
complican la descollante complejidad de la vida caribeña y el ser cultural.
Esa complejidad es más que lo que el síndrome binario de Europa sugiere. En el Caribe la
denominada ‘gran tradición’ funciona mano a mano e interactúa con la ‘pequeña tradición’.
9
Top shot of the leaders of the Carnival floats,
taken from Leigh Bowery’s studio, Notting Hill Carnival, London, 1983
Una canción popular, un tone de reggae contemporáneo o el calipso puede ser ‘clásico’,
‘moderno/contemporáneo’, y ‘étnico’ al mismo tiempo. Las ‘Redemption Songs’ de Bob
Marley, ‘Many Rivers to Cross’ de Jimmy Cliff, ‘Jah Is My Keeper’ de Peter Tosh, ‘Jean and
Dinah’ o ‘Congo Man’ de Mighty Sparrow, ‘Sugar Boom Boom’ de Lord Kitchener, ‘Caribbean
Unity’ de Black Stalin y ‘High Mass’ de David Rudder son clásicos en sus géneros.
Las lenguas creole del Caribe son consideradas idiomas en su calidad de tal. Esto resulta
válido para la denominada Jamaican Talk, que tiene un diccionario publicado por la
Cambridge University Press, así como también para el papiamento, lengua lo bastante
consistente como para ser usada en la instrucción en instituciones de enseñanza en Curaçao.
Por su parte, el kweyol, que es la lengua usada por las emisiones de radio en territorios
donde anclaran los franceses y donde todavía tienen influencia cultural, ha incorporado
substancia rítmica a gran parte de la poesía del santaluciano Derek Walcott y el martinico
Aimé Césaire. También, está el sranam tonga, que bien pudiera haber dado poder motriz a
las estrofas de Martin Dobru de Surinam. La poesía de Nicolás Guillén canta con la voz del
español cubano, no del castellano. A su vez, bañada por el flujo y reflujo de las aguas de un
mar caribeño a momentos dormido en calma y a momentos ruidoso en su turbulencia
tempestuosa, la jácara antillana de las islas montañosas acontece a través de las letras de los
calipsoniano, los cuartetos en rima del folklorista y poeta Louise Bennett, o en el humor
narrativo de un Paul Keens-Douglas. Estas lenguas descritas como los vehículos de resistencia, ritual, historia oral y humor, se sustentan a sí mismas sobre la base de fundamentos
lingüísticos perfectamente seguros, resistiendo las dificultades ortográficas. A la vez, ellas
sirven a variados propósitos, en forma paralela al inglés estándar, francés de la Académie
Française, el español metropolitano y el holandés estándar, medios imperiales – y aún
considerados legítimos (de comunicación civilizada y formal) en un Caribe que constituye
indudablemente la región colonizada más extensa sobre el Planeta Tierra, que existe desde
que Cristóbal Colón descubriera que él fue descubierto por los amerindios del Caribe en 1492.
Si esto ocurre con el lenguaje, también es lo mismo en el caso de la religión. La vida
cultural caribeña es una expresión de aquella advertencia bíblica que señala de que en la Casa
de Dios hay muchas moradas. Para el ciudadano caribeño es posible ser bautizado como un
católico romano, un anglicano, un metodista o un presbiteriano y todavía encontrar paz y
alivio en la santería, el vúdú, la pocomanía/sión, la reanimación, la kumina, el shango, o en
cualquier otra expresión religiosa nacida y desarrollada en el Caribe, en modalidades que los
‘credos extranjeros’ no pueden del todo exhibir. El hinduismo, el islam, el culto de la orisha
y el espiritualismo de la New Age son todas religiones legítimas hoy en lo que fuera alguna
vez una avanzada del cristianismo. A la vez, es posible para un indio oriental, de calificados
antecedentes de origen, haber nacido dentro de una familia hindú, haberse educado en un
colegio cristiano (católico románico o presbiteriano) y más tarde casarse con una
musulmana. Tal confusión cultural no resulta necesariamente en la esquizofrenia. A
menudo, esto sirve como una fuente de vitalidad creativa. Es en esto donde se asienta buena
parte de la substancia de lo que es la vida cultural caribeña – ‘el ruido y opacidad’, el
‘impredecible … sistema caótico’ del carnaval en términos de Benítez-Rojo.
Tal realidad dialéctica se halla al alcance de los seres más comunes en la región y da cuenta
de la texturada diversidad del Caribe. Por tanto, el continuum izquierda-centro-derecha de
la percepción política occidental es algo que resulta de seguro lineal para la dinámica y
compleja existencia del sujeto caribeño. Es posible, para éste, ser conservador(a) en un
conjunto de problemáticas, radical e izquierdista en otro nivel, e irritantemente centrista en
otro, creando problemas (para muchos una solución) y, algunas veces, dilatando la acción en
nombre de una prudencia que acaso no sea sino indeferencia. El fenómeno pudiera bien
estar profundamente determinado por la experiencia existencial e histórica de una vida
llena de contradicciones, paradojas y relaciones dialécticas, vivida por siglos bajo reglas
formales de compromiso no hechas por uno.
Lo mágico también coexiste con lo científico. Poca duda cabe de que para muchos
caribeños ‘ciencia’ significa ‘la más alta ciencia’ enraizada tanto en la noción de lo
supernatural como en la experiencia empírica de la práctica de la medicina tradicional que se
12
basa en el diálogo con las plantas de la Naturaleza, sus manantiales y su suelo fértil. Lo
metafísico destaca al lado de lo epistemológico por cierto, y los mitos viven en batalla con la
historia fáctica para, con dificultad, producir el sentido y la validez de la existencia a partir de
la realidad vivida.
El caos no significa desorden crónico, aunque los cínicos serán rápidos en hallar en éste la
razón para poner en práctica su mala administración política, evidencia de licencia y
desorden bajo la máscara de la libertad y los derechos humanos, con el gravamen de golpes
militares supuestamente democrático electorales. Más bien, en la cultura caribeña, existen
principios regulativos que subyacen a toda su turbulencia y estabilidad frágil. Ellos,
felizmente, hacen posible la repetición y el ‘ritual’ evidente en las artes y otras expresiones
culturales del Caribe. Estas a su vez otorgan a los pueblos de la región un sentido de lugar,
aun en momentos en que ellos operan en el margen y encuentran sus razones para
cuestionar fundamentos.
Es dicha paradoja la que se impregna en las artes festivales en el Caribe, de las cuales el
carnaval pre-cuaresmal es apenas uno – no obstante, icónico y dominante en la vida caribeña
contemporánea. El carnaval es usado como medio convencional de liberación, recreación y
celebración en forma paralela a la atracción de turistas cuyo dólar (o euro) es vital para la
sobrevivencia económica caribeña en estos tiempos globalizados. La diáspora caribeña es en
sí misma preservadora del fenómeno y, lo mismo, Brooklyn (Nueva York), Boston y Miami,
Toronto (Canadá) y Notting Hill (Londres), han llegado a ser centros del carnaval caribeño
en la batalla por espacio de la diaspórica India Occidental por espacio y por la preservacion
de identidad entre los migrantes que residen en comunidades hostiles que buscan mantenerse
a sí mismas alejadas de una contaminación considerada foránea a sus identidades
homogéneas.
De vuelta en el Caribe, allí otras artes festivales existen como parte de ese mismo proceso
de auto-descubrimiento y de la creación de un espacio unificante que tiende puentes entre
las brechas dentro de una sociedad producida por siglos de diferenciación en base al lugar de
origen, la raza, el color de piel, la clase social y el género sexual, junto a las más modernas
diferenciaciones de afiliación política y orientación sexual. Existe, en este contexto, el más
reciente arte festival denominado ‘Crop Over’ arranca de la experiencia histórica de la
esclavitud en las plantaciones de caña de azúcar en Barbados, lo cual ha revivido y
desarrollado una celebración de larga tradición para convertirla en un importante evento, de
importancia nacional, dentro del calendario contemporáneo. El Hosay sirve para integrar,
dentro del impulso de la vida cultural caribeña, a los indios [orientales] que ingresaron a la
sociedad caribeña – tras la abolición de la esclavitud – como trabajadores calificados, aunque
plenamente armados de una memoria cultural del islam y el hinduísmo. El proceso de
retroalimentación naturalmente continuo y las paradojas de nuevos encuentros aumentó el
alcance y profundidad de la mezcla enriquecida. El Hosay es uno de los resultados de tales
presagios contradictorios, amenazamente desintegradores pero esperanzadamente
integradores. Así, los indios occidentales afro a menudo tocan la percusión mientras los
indios orientales llevan a cabo la danza en este arte festival. Por otra parte, el espíritu de los
indios [orientales] en la pocomanía jamaicana entabla diálogo con la temprana integración
de la mano de obra calificada asiática dentro de los rituales religiosos sincretizados de los exesclavos, en sí mismos productos de la retroalimentación.
Hay, por cierto, otras artes festivales equivalentes al carnaval pre-cuaresmal, los cuales
tienen pedigree ancestral y se hallan enraizados en la lucha/encuentro de Europa y Africa en
el suelo extranjero en las Américas. Se trata de la denominada ‘Masquerade’, en las Islas de
Leeward. Tiene larga existencia en Jamaica, Belice y Las Bahamas bajo el nombre de
‘Jonkonnu’ y en Bermuda como ‘Gombay’. El ‘Día de Reyes’ en Cuba, que ha sido objeto de
estudio antropológico para Fernando Ortiz de Cuba, la ‘Rara’ de Haití y otros complejos
menores de afirmación cultural colectiva conllevan testimonio del exito y tenacidad del
proceso y los productos.
13
Super eight footage of man dancing to the sound system People’s War,
Notting Hill Carnival, London, 1983
Todos ellos representan la esencia de la vida cultural caribeña desde que ellos existen, tal como
Roberto González-Echeverría lo ha dicho en relacion a las manifestaciones artisticas cubanas:
La fusión promiscua de los elementos clásicos y populares americanos y europeos,
como también de instrumentos de los más variados orígenes … produce una
nueva música, un nuevo conglomerado en el cual ya no se necesita síntesis.
Lo heterogéneo … es también un abandono de las nociones de orígenes, a las cuales
ninguno de los elementos necesitan permanecer fieles, en vez de eso, es en sí
mismo un origen, un nuevo comienzo – es ya el futuro contenido en el comienzo.
Entonces, de acuerdo a Edouard Glissant, el escritor martinico, el Caribe no tiene mito de
origen; sólo un mito de relaciones – relaciones de esto y lo otro y todo ello en un gran
pimentero que transforma a la persona cultural caribeño en parte africano, parte europeo,
parte asiático, parte nativo, sin embargo totalmente caribeño. El componente nativo
permanece a pesar de una historia de etnocidio que afecta los caribes y los taínos. El hecho
de la sobrevivencia cultural entre estos pueblos indígenas caribeños da motiva a la
celebración anual de una Semana Caribe en Dominica, o para la tenaz sujeción al nombre de
‘indios’ por parte de los habitantes de la República Dominicana con alguna gota de sangre
no caucásica en sus venas. Pero también la población afrocaribe de Belice mantiene su
culturalmente mestizado ‘ser’ a través de los festivales de Gurifuna y de sus concientemente
preservadas memorias que han ganado enorme vigencia desde los sesenta en ese país del
centro del Caribe.
Para las civilizaciones o conjuntos culturales aferrados a la noción de homogeneidad
como el principio organizante de la sociedad y el determinante de sentido y sensibilidad,
dicho perfil multifacético, diverso y pluralista de conciencia y realidad está destinado a
aparecer como una complicación, más que como algo simplemente complejo, amenazando
con la ‘mestización’ de la casta pura, como un miembro anglosajón del parlamento
recientemente temió que Gran Bretaña sufriera con la continúa inmigración de hordas de
paquistaníes, indios, africanos e indios occidentales hacia el Reino Unido.
Toda Europa aparentemente teme a esta amenaza con una ansiedad abierta o encubierta.
Paquistaníes en los fiordos más nortinos de Noruega, turcos en las areas urbanas de
Dinamarca y Suecia o en las fábricas de Alemania y árabes y africanos occidentales en París
están dando un nuevo perfil etnográfico a los países europeos occidentales, los cuales están
convirtiéndose en ‘multiétnicos’ y ‘multiculturales’. Esto desafía a cada país en particular a
reevaluar sus valores e ideas a nivel de las bases mismas del poder (político y económico) y
la estructura de gobierno y la naturaleza de la sociedad civil dentro de sus fronteras. El
mundo sin fronteras de la globalización de nuestros días al mismo tiempo aparece más
sujeto a transacciones fiscales computarizadas y menos a mixturas humanas orgánicas. La
vieja globalización (bajo el colonialismo) al menos mantuvo la diferencia étnica y de clase
entre la soberanía cristiana/caucásica y el subyugado trabajo pagano/negro, asiático/hindú
y musulmán. Las cosas ahora parecen indudablemente diferentes ante el expandido
mestizaje biológico y la irrupción de un difuso ecumenismo religioso, a lo cual se agrega la
apelación universal hacia una nueva ‘espiritualidad’.
En el Caribe, dichos problemas ‘nuevo-surgidos’ para la Europa Occidental son rasgos
antiguos en la historia y desarrollo de la región. A la vez, la resolución del conflicto esencial
continúa para ser acometido a través de la conformación de la vida cultural con ‘la cultura’
ligeramente definida como la expresión de aquello que arranca de la vigorosa mezcla de
elementos diversos y puestos de manifiesto a traves de la lengua, la religión, los modelos de
parentesco, la manifestación artística y las máximas colectivas de prudencia que sirven
como filosofías que apuntalan por la base la política y la vida económica.
Una vez más, como lo he planteado en otro lugar, el mundo entero ha devenido ‘creole’,
en el sentido caribeño de forjar, a partir de los elementos dispares de un ‘mundo-aldea’,
nuevas expresiones que desafían todo a una nueva cosmología. La verdad es que las
generaciones de individuos dentro del Caribe estuvieron siempre definidas por la inter-
Bibliografía
and Tobago 1763-1962, Hollis
Liverpool (Research
Brathwaite, Kamau;
Associates School Times
Contradictory Omens: Cultural
Publications, 2001)
Diversity and Integration in the
Caribbean (Kingston,
Nettleford, Rex; ‘Caribbean
Savacou: Mona, 1985)
Creative Diversity – the
Defining Point of the
Benítez-Rojo, Antonio;
Region’s History’, charla
‘The Polyrhytmic Paradigm:
presentada en la Caribbean
The Caribbean and the Post-
Diaspora Conference
Modern Era’, capítulo 12, en
(Londres: University of
Race, Discourse and the Origin
South Bank, 31 de Agosto
of the Americas – A New
del 2001)
World View, editado por
Vera Lawrence Hyatt y Rex
Nunley, John W. &
Nettleford (Washington,
Bettelheim, Judith; Caribbean
DC: Smithsonian Institution
Festival Arts: Each and Every
Press, 1995)
Bit of Difference (Seattle,
Washington : University of
Glissant, Edouard;
Washington Press, 1988)
‘Creolization in the Making
of the Americas’, capítulo 13,
Ortiz, Fernando; La antigua
en Race, Discourse and the
fiesta afrocubana del día de
Origin of the Americas –
Reyes (La Habana: Ministerio
A New World View, editado
de Relaciones Exteriores,
por Vera Lawrence Hyatt y
1960)
Rex Nettleford
(Washington, DC:
Walcott, Derek; ‘The Muse
Smithsonian Institution
of History – An Essay’ en Is
Press, 1995)
Massa Day Dead? Black
Moods in the Caribbean,
González-Echeverría,
editado por Orde Coombs
Roberto; Alejio Carpentier:
(Nueva York: Doubleday
The Pilgrim at Home (Ithaca,
Anchor, 1974)
Nueva York: Cornell
University Press, 1977)
Hill, Errol; The Trinidad
Carnival – Mandate for a
National Theatre (Austin,
Texas: University of Texas
Press, 1972)
Lamming, George; Coming,
Coming Home: Conversations II
Western Education and the
Caribbean Intellectual
(Saint Martin: House of
Nehesi Publishers, 1995)
Liverpool, Hollis; Rituals of
Power and Rebellion: The
dependencia de quienes se establecen a sí mismos en encuentros de diferentes tipos. El amo
de esclavos fue altamente dependiente del esclavo y viceversa. De hecho, la emancipación
de los esclavos fue la liberación de ambos, amos y esclavos en cuanto, para citarme a mí
mismo, ‘los carceleros y los encarcelados están después de todo en prisión’. Esa es la paradoja que ha sustentado la vida cultural caribeña, que continúa manifestando relaciones
contradictorias que producen agonía pero también más vida.
El laureado Premio Nobel de las Antillas, Derek Walcott, ha comprendido la verdadera
naturaleza del fenómeno en su ensayo ‘The Muse of History’, planteando lo siguiente:
La tribu sometida a la esclavitud aprendió a fortalecerse a sí misma por la vía
de una astuta asimilación de la religión del Viejo Mundo. Lo que pareció ser
sumisión fue redención. Lo que pareció la pérdida de tradición fue su innovación.
Lo que pareció la muerte de la fe fue su renacer.
Para alcanzar esto, la sociedad caribeña por largo tiempo se ha refugiado en dominios
inexpugnables de especificidad, con ricos resultados en expresiones religiosas y en las artes
de creación (teatrales y visuales), así como también en la filosofía de alcance local que se
halla en la literatura oral de la región (proverbios, narrativas orales o la tradición de los
‘contes’), que albergan la sabiduria colectiva de la gente común y corriente. Es como si la
gran masa de la población en el Caribe poseyera una comprensión intuitiva de la certeza
básica de que un mundo que ignora el hecho de la pluralidad, de textura en el modo de ser
humano, de la multifacetica naturaleza de todos los seres vivientes y los sistemas y estructuras que ellos crean para su sobrevivencia, no es un mundo para la existencia humana.
¿Cuál es entonces la lección que hay que aprender de la vida cultural caribeña con sus
paradojas, sus condiciones problemáticas y sus posibilidades? Ciertamente muestra que los
cambiantes paradigmas, que determinan el nuevo orden internacional bajo la globalización,
el sentido texturado y la sensibilidad de la juventud del tercer milenio bombardeada con
numerosas imágenes de sí y la sociedad vía los medios o a través del contacto personal con
personas de diferentes proveniencias, razas y orígenes culturales, son todos desafíos para la
diversidad creativa de la especie humana, lo cual requiere manejarse con sensibilidad y
bravura. Se trata de los principios regulativos básicos que hacen de toda la humanidad una
sola gran familia, aun cuando la diversidad también deba ser reconocida y admitida. El
Caribe prevalece como un ejemplo bastante genuino de dicho reconocimiento y aceptación
del concepto de e-pluribus-unum en la conformación de la sociedad civil – el fundamento
para la gobernabilidad democrática del siglo veintiuno.
Tales son las contradicciones en los diseños arquitectónicos y las obras de ingienería que se
hacen presentes tanto en la construcción de puentes entre los continentes en areas del desarrollo humano, y en el imperativo de la administración creativa de las complejidades resultantes. La inversión en recursos humanos, que se halla aquí implicada, no demanda menos
de los productos del ejercicio de la imaginación creativa colectiva. El carnaval, inter alia, en
tanto elemento icónico en la vida cultural caribeña es naturalmente parte del viaje hacia adelante,
más que la autocomplacencia a lo ‘bardo’ con lo que demasiados están propensos a confundirlo.
Pues, es entre estos supuestos ‘bardos’ – los individuos ordinarios de abajo – donde se
halla el crisol a partir del cual se forja la vida cultural. A la vez, esto es algo conocido para
todos los verdaderos artistas caribeños – exponentes de las artes visuales, las letras y el
teatro popular (sean intuitivos o estrenados en la academia). Desde Sparrow, Black Stalin y
Kitchener, pasando por Bob Marley y Peter Tosh hasta llegar a George Lammita, Karnau
Brathwaite y Derek Walcott, la palabra está tan en circulación que lo extraordinario de la
vida cultural caribeña es el resultado de las vidas ordinarias protagonizadas por la masa del
pueblo caribeño, pueblo que pudiera haber sido separado de sus hogares ancestrales y
sufrido la indignidad de la denigración y deshumanización, pero que ha conseguido
sobrevivir y desplazarse más allá de la mera supervivencia, hacia el germen diverso, texturado
y rico de una civilización que puede ser justificadamente designada como ‘caribeña’.
Carnival Tradition in Trinidad
Traducido del inglés por Luis Carcamo-Huechante
16
17
Archival footage of ‘riots’ at the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival, London, from the BBC
Issues of race and social turmoil in the UK are amplified within the setting of
London’s Notting Hill Carnival, where two people died during the parade
last year. It is against this backdrop that Territories, made in 1984 by the artist
and filmmaker Isaac Julien, has been rediscovered. Julien, who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, made Territories when he belonged to Sankofa
Black Film and Video Collective. In 1987, the cultural critic Dick Hebdige
wrote the essay ‘Digging for Britain: An Excavation in Seven Parts’ for the
ICA Boston exhibition, The British Edge. The film grabs from Territories and
the Hebdige extract is a time capsule from the mid-Eighties, when cinema,
music and style in Britain combined to make a powerful statement, one that
reverberates uneasily until today.
The Great Divide
Territories
1.
‘Cockney Translation’ is a
Film by Isaac Julien
song by the London-born
‘toaster’ Smiley Culture who
Text by Dick Hebdige
rhymes in Jamaican Patois
over music. ‘Cockney
‘11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
It’s Smiley Culture with the mike in me hand
Me come to teach you right and not the wrong
In a de Cockney translation.
Translation’ was released on
the Fashion Label in 1984.
2.
In the early 1980s, summer
riots were prevalent across
Cockney have names like Terry, Arthur and Del-Boy
We have names like Winston, Lloyd and Leroy,
We bawl out yow! While cockneys say Oi!
What Cockney calls Jacks, we call a Blue Bwoy
Say Cockney have mates while we have spar
Cockney live in a drum, while we live in a yard
Rope chain and choparita me say Cockney call tom
Say Cockney say Old Bill, We say dutty Babylon
In a de Cockney translation
In a de Cockney translation.’1
the UK, starting with Brixton
in London, St Pauls in Bristol,
Handsworth in Birmingham,
Moss Side in Manchester and
in Bradford. The street
unrest culminated in the
1985 rioting in north
London’s Broadwater Farm
low-income council estate,
during which Police
Constable Keith Blakelock
was murdered. This summer,
… Young blacks in Britain, in the wake of riots in Brixton and Broadwater Farm2, [are] liable
to negative coverage in the press and on tv (where they figure predominantly as victims,
culprits, unemployment figures, ‘immigration’ figures), [and] to aggressive and intensive
policing … A blatant assertion of the rights to be a black Londoner, to be both black and
British, [has] political bite – this is an identity traced out along a special jagged kind of
‘British Edge’.
20
there were riots in Bradford
The ‘casual’ style of dress, which since the early to mid-Eighties has functioned as a
uniform for ‘streetwise’ inner-city youth of whatever ethnic origin, represents a similar
and Video Collective; dir:
appropriation – this time of the signs of ‘quality’, ‘distinction’, (international) ‘class’. The
Isaac Julien, 1984)
various combinations of expensive designer-label sportswear (Sergio Tacchini tracksuits,
4.
Adidas running shoes, Lacoste and Christian Dior shirts etc) are at once a repudiation both
Simon Jones, White Youth and of the rhetoric of wasted youth and of subculture ‘costume’ for ‘(good, classical) clothes’.
Jamaican Popular Culture
The casual fashions euphemise the joblessness or irregular employment by converting
(MacMillan, reprint 1988)
‘casual’ work in the ‘black economy’ into a comfortable and affluent ‘casual style’. They
swap enforced ‘idleness’ for a ‘life of leisure’. The casual style asserts the right to be relaxed,
at home on Britain’s windy streets instead of yearning back to an imaginary homeland in
Africa, the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, Cyprus, ‘Albion’…
This … generation which is in the different (though by no means unrelated) institutional
sites of independent film and video production – funded by organisations like the British
Film Institute, Channel 4 and the radical, inner-city educational authorities – is finding a
distinctive voice and vision for black Britons – a vision and a voice which challenge the
established fixings of both ‘black politics’ and ‘black film’. Young black intellectuals
working together in the new film and video collectives (e.g. Sankofa … ) are disrupting the
image-flow, smudging the line which separates the two dominant image strands of the
black communities, relayed through the British press and tv – troublesome blacks (the
riots) and fun-loving blacks (the grinning dance of Carnival).
In … Territories, [Isaac Julien uses] everything at [his] disposal – the words of Fanon,
Foucault, C.L.R. James, tv news footage, didactic ghostly echoes of dub reggae, the
scattergun of rap – in order to assert the fact of difference, to articulate new relations to the
body, subjectivity, politics, to make fresh connections between another set of bodies,
another set of histories – to open up the ‘territories of race … of class … of sexuality’3.
Deconstruction here takes a different turn as it moves outside the gallery, the academy, the
library, to mobilise the crucial forms of lived experience and resistance embedded in the
streets, the shops and clubs of urban life. Deconstruction here is used publicly to cut across
the categories of ‘body’ and ‘critique’, the ‘intellectual’ and the ‘masses’, ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ –
to bring into being a new eroticised body of critique, a sensuous and pointed logic – and to
bring it to bear on the situation, to make the crisis speak.
‘Curses, says the proverb, are like chickens, they return home,’ writes Thomas Carlyle in
The Irish, 1839 … For the British Empire has folded in upon itself and the chickens have
come home. And as the pressure in the cities continues to mount, the old unities have
shattered: the ideal of a national culture transcending its regional components and of a
racially proscribed ‘British’ identity consistent and unchanging from one decade to the next
… These fantasies have started cracking at the seams. More and more people are growing up
feeling, to use Colin MacInnes’ phrase, ‘English half-English’.
[Or as Jo Jo, a white reggae fan, from Birmingham’s Balsall Heath, one of the oldest areas
of black resettlement in Britain, explains,] ‘There’s no such thing as “England” any more …
welcome to India brothers! This is the Caribbean! … Nigeria! … There is no England, man.
This is what is coming. Balsall Heath is the centre of the melting pot, ’cos all I ever see when
I go out is half-Arab, half-Pakistani, half-Jamaican, half-Scottish, half-Irish. I know ’cos I am
[half-Scottish/half-Irish] … who am I? … Tell me who do I belong to? They criticise me,
the good old English. Alright, where do I belong? You know I was brought up with blacks,
Pakistanis, Africans, Asians, everything, you name it … who do I belong to? I’m just a broad
person. The earth is mine … you know we was not born in Jamaica … we was not born in
“England”. We were born here, man. It’s our right. That’s the way I see it. That’s the way
I deal with it.’4
3.
Territories (Sankofa Black Film
and Oldham, where 11.2 per
cent of the population voted
‘The Great Divide: Territories’ by Dick Hebdige is extracted from the essay ‘Digging for Britain: An Excavation in
for the white supremacist
Seven Parts’ for the ICA Boston exhibition, The British Edge. It appears courtesy of ICA Boston.
BNP (British National Party)
during the local by-elections.
21
Man with death mask, shot at Notting Hill Carnival, London, 1983
Derek Walcott
Mass Man
‘I did not choose the mas’,’ says the Trinidadian street artist Peter Minshall,
‘it held me by the foot and pulled me in.’ Ideas about design, identity,
Through a great lion’s head clouded by mange
a black clerk growls.
Next, a gold-wired peacock withholds a man,
a fan, flaunting its oval, jewelled eyes,
What metaphors!
What coruscating, mincing fantasies!
choreography, participation and art, all go into Carnival. For Minshall, a
Hector Mannix, water-works clerk San Juan, has entered a lion,
Boysie, two golden mangoes bobbing for breastplates, barges
like Cleopatra down her river, making style.
‘Join us’ they shout, ‘O God, child, you can’t dance?’
but somewhere in that whirlwind’s radiance
a child, rigged like a bat, collapses, sobbing.
conducted an in-depth interview with Minshall, during which he revealed
But I am dancing, look, from an old gibbet
my bull-whipped body swings, a metronome!
Like a fruit-bat dropped in the silk cotton’s shade
my mania, my mania is a terrible calm.
mas’ band designer since the Seventies, the ‘business of playing mas’’ is
about being someone other than yourself. Milla Cozart Riggio remembers
her first Carnival in Port-of-Spain. Afterwards, she and Richard Schechner
his influences and inspirations. His dancing mobiles have changed not only
the face of world street theatre and the international art scene but also the
modern concept of the spectacular. Peter Minshall is the recipient of the
Principal 2001 Prince Claus Award.
Peter Minshall
Mas’ Man
Upon your penitential morning,
some skull must rub its memory with ashes,
some mind must squat down howling in your dust,
some hand must crawl and recollect your rubbish,
someone must write your poems.
Milla Cozart Riggio
Trinidad is a microcosm of the world. We are Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Our challenge is to show that it can work. If here, on this little island in
the Caribbean, all these races and creeds can live together in harmony,
can flourish, can delight in the differences among them, there may
yet be hope for the world.
Peter Minshall, ‘The Art of Mas’ ’, 1986
Derek Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992 in recognition of a lifetime’s achievement in poetry
and drama. He divides his time between the Caribbean and Boston, where he teaches at Boston University. ‘Mass Man’,
published in 1969 in The Gulf and Other Poems, appears courtesy of Derek Walcott.
24
February 1995, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. The preliminary competition for the King and
Queen of Carnival. On the track, waiting to cross the Queen’s Park Savannah stage, is a
dazzling array of giant costumes – the beasts, bugs, birds, and images of African and
Amerindian masquerades that are the hallmark of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. Alyson
Brown waits as four twenty-foot wings for Joy to the World are attached to her shoulders
and waist. It is my first Carnival, and I poke a microphone into Alyson’s face, quizzing her
about the controversy surrounding her band Hallelujah. Has she been touched by the fact
that fifty-two evangelical ministers have signed a petition to force Peter Minshall to change
the name of his band on the grounds of sacrilege? ‘Of course I have been touched. We have
all been touched,’ Alyson says, ‘and I have prayed about it a lot.’ Hours later, after watching
dozens of these gigantic costumes towering above each single human being who is
‘dancing’ the costume in a quest for the title of Carnival King or Queen, I am not prepared
for the weightless and soaring beauty of those snow-white wings as Alyson glides
effortlessly, dancing – really dancing – to whatever calypso is by chance played on the
somewhat crudely overpowering sound system in the arena known only as the
‘Grandstand’. On the subsequent Sunday night, this set of snowy wings is transformed by a
bold Matisse-like panoply of rainbow colour, as Alyson dances her way into the Queen’s
crown, seemingly oblivious to the controversy, unaware of anything except the kinetic
25
Earth maiden in Song of the Earth by Peter Minshall
Trinidad Carnival, 1996
Photo by Jefrey Chock
Courtesy of the Callaloo Company and the photographer
grace of her own movement. At that moment, long before I had met him personally,
I understood the essence – the heart – of Peter Minshall.
It is, in a sense, the heart of the Caribbean writ large. For Minshall, ‘playing mas’’ is not an
interlude. It is a way of life. It is a religion. And making mas’ for others to play is Minshall’s
own private ‘yes’ to the universe. It is his gift to his own small island of Trinidad. And
through that island to all the nations that comprise the West Indies, and through the
Caribbean to all the world: ‘hallelujah! Jump up with Peter Minshall!’
David Rudder’s 1995 ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, to the rhythm of which the relatively small
mas’ band of 1,000 players joyously chipped, jumped, and danced its way into the Band of
the Year, is the musical embodiment of the prayer that is Minshall’s work. This prayer is
joyous, but it is not blind. Minshall’s art embodies what Nobel Prize winning poet Derek
Walcott has called the ‘tragic joy’ of the Caribbean. The joy of Carnival is not the frenzy of a
folk seeking momentary release, it is instead the song that sings through and in spite of the
pain, the struggle, the pleasure and the hardship of surviving and thriving in a tropical
region often overshadowed and too frequently overlooked. It is the Song of the Universe
that thunders through the voice of David Rudder and Charlie’s Roots on-stage leading
2,000 frolicking masqueraders all clad in one solid colour of Red in 1998, while a single
waif-like figure moves silently along the perimeters of the stage, sometimes sitting on the
edge, holding a small heart-shaped pillow, the flag of Trinidad with a large crack running
down its central black stripe.
Minshall does more than capture the essence of the reality that is the Caribbean. His even
greater gift is his ability to reach through that reality into the mythos of this (or any other)
region. For the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, he used the wings of
Joy to the World, reduplicated many times over for the immense Olympic Stadium, to
express both the spirit of the south in the u.s. and the mythical story of the Olympics
themselves. Back in Trinidad, where despite opportunities to further his own career
elsewhere he has stalwartly remained, Minshall – Minsh as he is almost legendarily known
in Trinidad – continues to produce bands that express the ‘duality’ of his own vision.
Following the three time Band of the Year winning trilogy of Hallelujah (1995), Song of the
Earth (1996), and Tapestry (1997) and the stunning river of Red (1998), were the Lost Tribe
(1999), M2K (2000), and the much darker, beautiful, monstrous, blinded vision of This is
Hell (black for the oil, gold for the money, 2001).
Like most great art, the key to Minshall is finally the clean simplicity of his vision. This
was nowhere more vitally revealed than in the black and white allegory of the band with
which he ushered out the twentieth century: M2K. Angered at a government that had
callously paved a large section of the Queen’s Park Savannah, covering the hallowed earth
surrounding the stage, Minshall boycotted the Grandstand venue in favour of an alternative
Carnival performance enacted elsewhere on the Savannah grounds. The mystique of
Minshall drew an immense crowd away from the Grandstand to where his band – dressed
in black and white aviator suits, replete with zippered sleeves and legs that could be opened
to create many different looks – moved in two large units: 2,000 black and 2,000 white clad
Carnival aviators looking forward to the century to come, rather than harking nostalgically
back to the century past. These space folk of M2K approached each other in an immense
human wave from opposite ends of the Savannah, each balancing a huge sphere in its own
colour, black above the black, white above the white. At the moment of their encounter, the
spheres burst releasing silver and gold balloons: silver from the black sphere, and gold from
the white. And then in the simplest allegory possible, those playing mas’ sprayed each
other black and white: the black spraying the white, the white spraying the black until at the
end of the day, all were merged into varieties of grey.
In M2K, Minshall used Carnival as an occasion to protest an enormity while presenting an
allegory of overcoming difference, racial and otherwise. In Tapestry he presented gilded
human tableaux – of the Pietá, side by side with Shiva, Lord of the Dance – that reflected the
kaleidoscope of cultures and religions that make up his island of Trinidad. This is Hell made
a statement about the present directions, the yielding to Mammon, that Minshall fears in
28
Trinidad. But none of these bands, nor any of Minshall’s art, is limited by or locked into
social, political, or economic realities. More than anything else, perhaps, Minshall has been
able to use the elemental danger of Carnival, the threat of potential annihilation with which
humans always confront each other, as a path through which he reaches beyond the merely
physical to the individual and collective spirit beyond.
Minshall’s most original achievement may lie in his dancing mobiles: Tan Tan and Saga
Boy and their diverse offspring. Alone of all the designers in the twentieth century,
Minshall showed the world how to create figures that can dance above and with the human
body, giant images whose movement is the movement of the body that carries them,
images that can dance not only with the feet of the human dancer but with and from the
arms and fingers as well. But his genius lies not so much in the creation of these figures as in
the dance itself, in the transformation of so much human agony, pain, and terror into the spirit
of joy and the triumph of the human will.
Peter Minshall: The Interview
Richard Schechner and Milla Cozart Riggio
14 February 1997, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad
Interviewers’ note: For the most part, Peter Minshall speaks a crisp Etonian English.
But from time to time, out of excitement, delight, and choice, he breaks into
Trinidadian. In editing the interview, we have tried to keep those locutions.
Minshall: The other day just outside the mas’ camp I was talking to someone who had come
down from Jamaica, and in the middle of a very relaxed conversation, she said, ‘But your
accent doesn’t sound Trinidadian.’ And I said, ‘I have two languages. The one in which I am
expressing myself now – and my native language.’ I think in both these languages, though
when I am most excited, I revert to my native tongue both in thought and speech. I guess
what you’re seeing comes out of the natural animation that goes with speaking Trinidadian.
In 1974, a year of revelation and change for me, I was with … Arnold Rampersad, who
wrote a biography of Arthur Ashe [1993] and also a book on Langston Hughes [1986]. He
was visiting Trinidad, and we had played Jouvert. So we decided to go for a ride up near
Maracas. There we met by chance a 92-year-old woman, Elise Rondon, who sold sugar
cakes and pickled pommecythere [a tropical fruit]. She had a grace and a language of the body
… There in a little rum shop, sheltering from the rain, drinking a beer, this lady, brightly
garbed, golden earrings, with her tray of fruit. Conversation starts up, and I remember her
sayin’ that she had a ‘Chinee’ husband from Venezuela. And I will never forget this action:
‘And he did used to write me letter!’ [Minshall demonstrates, emphatically slapping his
right index finger against his left palm.] Absolutely the action of an old Trinidadian woman
… In the meantime, ttt [Trinidad & Tobago Television] asked me to do a half-an-hour
programme on a subject of my choice, and … I visited Elsie Rondon about four or five times
– and she started to tell me stories. She had an extraordinary presence and sense of theatre.
The reason why? She had been a bélé queen all her life. The dance called bélé is like a minuet
to African drums, mainly a woman’s dance, utterly Caribbean.
Schechner: Did you play mas’ when you were a kid?
Minshall: It starts when you’re a child, mindless … at the age of thirteen, with a cardboard
box and Christmas tree bells turned inside out as eyes, and some silver and some green
paint that I begged from the Chinese man who ran the grocery at the bottom of the hill, and
bits of wire, and bones the dogs had left around the yard dried in the sun and bleached, I
29
Callaloo dancing tic tac toc down the river in Callaloo by Peter Minshall
Photo by Norton Studio
prepared all by my precocious little self a costume for the Saturday afternoon children’s
competition.
I called my mother from the balcony. ‘Mummy, mummy, mummy! Come see my
costume!’ ‘Oh, very nice, darling! Tell me, what is it?’ ‘But, mummy, I’m an African witch
doctor.’ ‘Oh, but darling, you’re the wrong colour. Here, come.’ And she gives me a dollar,
sends me down to Ross’ drugstore on Frederick Street for ‘animals charcoal’. That’s all I
remember. To this day I don’t know what ‘animals charcoal’ is. So I get the stuff, and I am
transformed into a black that is as deep as velvet. Then I go down to the Savannah and dance
my mas’ and I am awarded the prize in my age group for ‘the most original’. So I suppose the
die was cast there and then.
Now, three years later, at age sixteen, still a schoolboy, I do something which was then
commonplace. I assure you the Jouvert, the face of the Jouvert, the age of the person who
participates in the Jouvert has changed radically. In those days, prominent figures in society
– lawyers, doctors – would be seen in the Jouvert in their wives’ nighties or in corsets.
Jouvert was about the ridiculous … And another thing about the Jouvert then was the mud.
Sometimes when … I try … to figure out what the Carnival’s about, I say: the ritual of
putting mud on the body for Jouvert is about the myth of man being made from that mud. It
is returning to the source, it is being one with the universe. That mud is of the earth, but it is
also of the Milky Way. That river of people is a river of stars, it is not your everyday …
ok. Into that Jouvert this schoolboy, having tied a pillow to his backside, and having
stockinged every inch of his body, including his head with a T-shirt, over which there is a
mask, over which there is a hat, in one of his sister’s discarded dresses and a pair of old
slippers, goes into town quite unconscious as a Dame Lorraine – but totally disguised. To be
disguised is not to be hidden. On that Jouvert morning that schoolboy was liberated from
race, from age, from gender. It was total liberation.
And then a Mrs. Burnett, a good friend of my mother, a black Trinidadian, while visiting
said, ‘Jean [Minshall’s mother], why doesn’t Peter design a costume for my daughter?’ Now
this is the unconsciousness of a young growing-up-person; you don’t know what you are
doing or why. But as I look back I find it plain to see. His first costume as an African witch
doctor is for his white self, and then I take this black girl and send her up as a Gothic stained
glass window. So I think the business of playing mas’ is about being other than yourself.
Riggio: You skipped over the time between age twelve and sixteen.
Minshall: In the meantime I am going to school, I am involved in theatre, I am designing
for the Trinidad Light Opera.
Schechner: What … drew you away [to the uk], and what then drew you back?
Minshall: Well, passing over the details, I was admitted to the Central in London [now
Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design] … at the age of 21, I arrived at a most
extraordinary time, the beginning of the Sixties, the year of the Beatles. I saw Olivier’s
Othello, went to the National Gallery and saw that sepia-tinted cartoon done by Leonardo
himself … And the World Theatre season! A Zulu Macbeth, Umabatha, with his army, this
wall of warriors, coming from the furthest back wall of the theatre down to the edge of the
audience … Any art I had seen before had only been in books …
Bit by bit I learned – without sounding too grand – what art is … The more my eyes were
being opened the more I was able to see … And amidst all of this … my thesis at the end of
three years is on Trinidad Carnival. [It] deals with the Bat, and with the Fancy Sailor –
which, in its time … was the most surreal statement I have experienced. Imagine a man
coming down the street in Port-of-Spain, and where his head should be is a giant slice of
paw-paw, or a cash register with a drawer that actually works, or a tree with three barking
dogs on it, or made out of cottonwool and swansdown and little bits of silver paper, a great
delta-winged warplane – utterly surreal …
32
And then, I can’t remember how it happens, somebody says, ‘Get off your ass, child,’ and I
take my portfolio to … Peter Darrell [who is collaborating with] Colin Graham … on Beauty
and the Beast for the inauguration of the Scottish Theatre Ballet at Sadler’s Wells. As I am
showing them my work from Central, I turn the page and there is a costume for the nowdefunct J.C.’s Carnival Queen Show called Once Upon a Time – in my mind it’s Titania
coming down to the ground with great butterfly wings – and Darrell looks at this thing and
says, ‘You’re the person we’re looking for.’ That was 1969. So I designed the set and costumes.
Four years later my mother is in London and says, ‘Now Mr Designer, I want you to
design a costume for your little adopted sister.’ The heart skips a beat. ‘Furthermore, I want
it to be a hummingbird.’ Oh dear. The happening young London designer returns to the
island to design for children’s Carnival … I must’ve spent off and on about five months just
fiddling – in between whatever jobs I was doing – putting into this diminutive little work
all my theories about playing with the mas’ and its energy: it’s about performance, it’s about
mobility. It was Christmas Eve night I came back [home to Trinidad] with £100 worth of
fabric, which was a lot of money back then. On New Year’s Day we start to construct the
costume. It took five weeks, twelve people. It was totally meticulous, 104 feathers, each one
made up of 150 different pieces of fabric, the blue to the purple to the green, stuck with
transparent nail varnish over bits of plastic over a pattern. All pinned up, then finally
assembled. I got ill during the thing. The doctor pumps me up with antibiotics. My limbs,
my joints all go. It has to be finished. She misses the first competition, she misses the
second. It has to be finished. Finally, I make the decision. We haven’t slept for three nights.
One person is holding the thing onto Sherry standing there like a little girl crucifix – there’s
no time for zips – while we sew her into it.
We lift her up onto the jitney, drive to the Savannah in a dream … Helen Humphreys
says, ‘Hurry up, hurry up! The Queens are on-stage!’ We lift her out of the van, put on
touches of make-up, she’s a little iridescent tent. What a sense of theatre, that child! God,
talk about how to get into it off-stage. This little thirteen-year-old girl is going up the path.
I’ve rehearsed with her with canes and an old sheet and told her, ‘Forget you’re a bird.
You’re a flag woman. Wave your flag, dance, you’re not flying, these are not wings, you’re a
little girl enjoying yourself.’ And she goes onto the stage, wearing, I tell you: a face of steel!
This little thing exploded like a joyful sapphire on that stage, and 10,000 people exploded
with her. On that afternoon, a moment of revelation. ‘Christ, so this too is art!’ I did not
choose the mas’ – it held me by the foot and pulled me in …
So back in London, started doing things in the Notting Hill Carnival. In ’75, because of the
Hummingbird and because he has fallen out with one of my first gurus of the mas’, a great
artist, Carlisle Chang, Lee Heung rings me up in London and says, ‘How would you like to
design my next band?’ … I remember one day driving across one of those Westbourne
highways, and it just comes to me. While Braf [Hope Braithwaite, one of Minshall’s
teachers at Queen’s Royal College, Port-of-Spain] was teaching me all about The Tempest
and Othello, my other English teacher, Mr Laltoo, was teaching me about Mr Milton and his
Paradise Lost. So these many years later, I think, ‘Mr Lee Heung wants me to do his band …
what do I do?’…
Paradise Lost was a watershed in the context of Carnival; it was epic. It was a visual thesis
of the many things I would do in years to come … I approached Paradise Lost as a
symphony in four parts.
Schechner: What year was it?
Minshall: Paradise Lost? 1976. Hummingbird, ’74 … So 1978, return to Port-of-Spain to do
Zodiac. Discipline, not a damn sequin, not a piece of braid! Primary colours – red, blue,
yellow, black, and white – spinnaker nylon. It started with a section called ‘Fire’ in Paradise
Lost. [One of Minshall’s first uses of things attached to the feet, the technique upon which
almost the entire band Zodiac two years later was based.] It’s incredible how things happen
… Trundling through [London’s] Underground [were] all these damned Americans with
33
The midnight cowboy in Danse Macabre by Peter Minshall
Photo by Key Caribbean
their great backpacks. I’m sitting there: ‘Mas’, mas’’ – it’s never far away – I go into de
sporting goods shops, lookin’ at all de backpacks. Zodiac was aluminium backpacks,
extensions here, spring-steel wires there, and great shapes attached to the ankles. As
[George] Balanchine said, ‘I want you to “see” the music and “hear” the dance.’ So the
whole band [of about 1500] is coming down, and every step to the music moves the fabric
ten feet in the air and you get this kinetic madness …
Schechner: What finally got you to move back to Trinidad?
Minshall: You begin to feel homeless … At a certain point, I thought, ‘Enough is enough’
… Trinidad is where I am going to be … Around this time Errol Hill, a professor of theatre,
now retired, also from Trinidad at Dartmouth … gets in touch with me in London to design
his Man Better Man …
Schechner: After that you came back to Trinidad for good?
Minshall: I don’t remember the exact date … I start doing the mas’, even as the mas’ is
undergoing certain social changes. It used to be very much a male thing, but at the point of
my return it was becoming what you now see, very much a female thing. It was also going
through all kinds of visual changes … It’s not easy. I suppose that not-easiness came to a
mighty crescendo with the experience of Hallelujah [1995], where nothing I had done in my
life had prepared me for two and a half months of daily diatribe in the newspapers … the
most extreme Pentecostals saying it is sacrilege to use the word ‘hallelujah’ in Carnival …
[Then] I went through my own spiritual transformation. I am sitting right here one day, I
hear a rustle over there in the heliconias, and I look: there is the cat, Missy, having just
missed the hummingbird that was about to touch the heliconias. In a flash, I understand
that the cat, the hummingbird, the heliconias, and myself are one. I can explain it no other
way. And I was paralysed. This is my life’s work. I want to bring celebration back into the
mas’ … It is a week after the Hallelujah [which won Band of the Year], and I am on the north
coast, by the sea, alone. The rocks, the crashing waves, the horizon … Mr God says to me, ‘It
was a beautiful Hallelujah. But whatever made you think it would be easy?’
In dealing with the mas’, I and other people have had to deal with my whiteness. It has
not been easy. It is not easy when the fear of aids seizes the place, and you read in one of
the weeklies, ‘Don’t join the Minshall band, you’ll get aids.’ It’s not easy. [Long silence,
then he continues.]
The first trilogy [River (1983), Callaloo (1984) and The Golden Calabash: Princes of
Darkness and Lords of Light (1985)]. Derek Walcott has always been a champion of my work.
Himself having received a Guggenheim Fellowship, he recommended me. There was this
great battle. Derek saying, ‘They’ll only give it to you if you apply for theatre.’ And I said,
‘No, it has to be for the mas’.’ The difficulty being in making the application, you have to say
both what you want to do and explain what the mas’ is. Miracle of miracles, I am awarded a
Guggenheim on the basis of the mas’ …
My father used to be a manager of the tourist board … He was connected to the first steel
band that ever went to London. I don’t have the letter from my father now, but I remember
the story so well. ‘Well, suh, you just hang de clot’ from de costume and put little mirrors
underneet so as you dance de mas’, you does make de clot’ move and from underneet de
clot’ you does see a flash of dis and a flash of dat.’ The expression, ‘to make the cloth dance’.
Now all of these connections – Paradise Lost, ‘ Fire’, Zodiac – the thing coming from the
feet, how to make the cloth dance – and this is purely abstract. The other thing, too … the
Bat was right for the Fifties, he’s quaint now because his competition really is … [the]
movies, television. So we have to learn what the Bat or Robber teach us – that dance, that
mobility – and not just re-create them, but find their contemporary equivalents.
Mancrab [the principle male character, the king of the mas’ River, 1983]. I actually constructed the model, then realised that man normally stands like that [demonstrates feet
36
together], but you play mas’ like that [demonstrates feet apart] – considering the distance
between the ankles. Therefore, extending a man’s shoulders into a kind of rectangular
armature with arms going out at each corner perfectly and fibreglass fishing rods coming
into the angles so that one is going there, one there, one there – as he rocks his shoulders all
of those rods move. At the tip of each rod the corner of a 25-square-foot piece of silk, so that
the dancing steps of the feet move the rods which give life to the canopy of silk, a turbulent,
billowing cloud. Yes, ‘to make the cloth dance’. This is contemporary. This is our equivalent
of what you see now at the Museum of Modern Art. I feel comfortable with this.
Then a story begins to build. And you don’t get the final line in the story until a week
before Carnival … then suddenly, ‘Oh, that’s the story, “Mancrab and Washerwoman”.’ He,
a master of technology. She, simple love and beauty. She represents Blanchisseuse, the
pureness of the clear river water, also the pureness of true love. She, dressed in white cotton
organza, the simplest little costume, carrying two poles, and lines of silk washing just
hanging down, and a laundry basket in her hand, so simple. He, Mancrab, the claws of the
crab turned this way like something coming out of a military tank. He’s metal with a great
crab’s head with little lights and things flashing, a compressed-air canister on his back. He
comes on stage moving to the sound of East Indian tassa drums. I had seen kathakali
[classical Southern Indian drama dance] in London – so I go up to an Indian village with
Peter Samuel [Minshall spreads his legs into the wide, bent-knee stance of kathakali and
stamps the ground with high, violent steps to an imagined drumbeat] …
The thing about mas’ in a push-button television age, it’s about human energy. There are
no electric wires, it’s me doing this, it’s me making it work. It really is a chilling thing, in a
Carnival, full of all its manly parts, its sequins, its feathers, to see this piece of white silk
undulating, and suddenly rivers of red starting to run. At that point, with due respect,
because it was so good, stolen from kathakali, a performance that left me limp, he exits
pulling from his gut …he just leaves this 30 yard trail as he exits …
River. I used the clothes of our island ancestors – African, Indian, some European; turbans
with pearls, all in white cotton – 2,000 people, men and women. And each section was
called by the name of a river in Trinidad … And der’s nutting dat makes black people look
more beautiful than to put them in white …
Of course, before this, controversies rip. How could I bring a band all in white. Carnival is
colour! This is madness. In fact, the colour scheme of the band was this skin tone and that
skin tone and the other. And the white just framed it. The people looked beautiful. So on
Monday, as the band hits the stage, there is Mancrab, crowned King the Sunday night
before, challenging Washerwoman. And with a symbolic square of white cloth, she
dismisses him. But the story goes, that Carnival Monday night, Mancrab, using all his
technological magic, fashioned an illusory rainbow. All those little gadgets of the twentieth
century, that are so dear to us, that make our lives so comfortable, offering all these pretty
colours to the people …
Tuesday morning. Every single person in the band has been supplied with a white cotton
pouch and in it is a white squeezy bottle [plastic squeeze bottle, such as is used for
dishwashing liquid] loaded with coloured dye. Ha! Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.
Now this is where the people take the art over from the mas’ man. I, being the disciplined
artist, and knowing that Carnival has to be pretty and entertaining, had been stupid enough
to think the first section would splash itself orange and blue on the stage, the section neatly
green and yellow, and the other colours would follow – and so on.
Carnival Tuesday, we have folded up the white cloth, put it away. We have made exactly
the same size, exactly the same length, a cloth that is a rainbow. Suddenly on Tuesday the
people are under Mancrab’s rainbow. The ritual begins. Charlie’s Roots is playing the most
painful funereal version of ‘Rivers of Babylon’, a reggae. Thirty priestesses, women in
white, with white head-ties, holding calabashes. Fifteen faced the Grandstand, fifteen faced
the North Stands. They go through a ritual. Then all of a sudden they tip the calabashes
down the fronts of their white dresses. The poor announcer, ‘And it looks like – blood!’
Red, and they go into a Shango madness.
37
Callaloo by Peter Minshall, Trinidad Carnival, 1984
Photo by Derek Gay
Courtesy of Callaloo Company and the photographer
Mancrab comes on under his canopy, but it’s not attached to his feet; four men are holding
it, thank goodness, because the wind is raging. Washerwoman’s washing has been slashed
overnight and splattered with red, the red of his silk. Washerwoman, the queen of the
band, in the middle of Carnival is brought over the stage lifeless, on the shoulders of three
bearers. And then, the best laid plans … The band is waiting at Frederick Street by the jail
and down at the tail-end, Patrick Raymond, who heads the last section, puts his bag of
squeezy bottles which he is about to give to his group onto the ground and a car wheel
mashes the bag, a bottle bust, colour splashes onto a lady’s nice white costume. Well, is to
know, colour spread like fire through the band … All those people who said, ‘Oh God, it’s
white!’ on Monday, but then realised it looked so beautiful on Tuesday – the country is in
disbelief, we could spoil it so. Because the river now – the story is coming to completion – is
polluted.
We had parked up by the side of de stage 500 gallon barrels of these same colours,
hooked up to power hoses … Yellow went 30 feet up into the air like an arc of pee, and look
at the people: ‘Oh, God, wet me down!’ And they came wid de blue, and as it came up the
people are shouting, ‘Wet me dowwwnn!’ And talk about the frenzy of the twentieth
century, ‘Wet me dowwnn!’ This baptism, this ritual, this total madness on-stage! I’ve
never experienced anything like it.
So much for my artistic ideas of neatly colouring each section. This was a chaos of colour,
a madness, all the colours running together ’til they got to a deep purplish muddiness. But
it was so much better than what I had planned – the people played the art profoundly. They
played pollution better than any artist could have painted …
over. I’m wearing an ordinary T-shirt, the fibreglass rod is there. The mind doesn’t think it,
the hand does it. The hand picks up a scissors, cuts into the hem of the T-shirt and pushes
the fibreglass through. And suddenly that [Minshall describes a circular shape around his
waist] happens all around me. ‘Todd, please, run into town, get me a bolt of cotton jersey,
and buy a sewing machine.’ I start to make shapes and cones. Talk about making a person
bigger – it’s gone right through and been absorbed into the Carnival. It went straight into
the Atlanta Olympics [1996]. The opening number, the tribal ‘Call to the Nations’, all of
those jumping and dancing hoops, it started off one day with a fellow in a studio with
T-shirt and a piece of fibreglass. Two years later, it’s fashion. Well I’m not Cecil Beaton, and
this isn’t My Fair Lady. Nobody knows it, but Trinidad put a little thumb-print there, our
little mark on the universe.
‘Mas’ Man’ is extracted from Richard Schechner and Milla Cozart Riggio, ‘Peter Minshall:
A Voice to Add to the Song of the Universe’, TDR/The Drama Review, 42:3 (T159-Fall, 1998), pp. 170-193.
© 1998 by New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Schechner: One of the most impressive things about Carnival is that it’s both very local
and enormous … Between the people watching and the people doing, who’s left inside?
It is ritual, definitely. How else can people go hour after hour repeating the same
movements to the same music? It’s a kind of religious service. A celebration, certainly, but a
playing out of belief also. They also immensely enjoy seeing themselves enact themselves.
To put it in Clifford Geertz’s words, the Carnival is a story Trinidadians tell themselves
about themselves.
Minshall: I have this observation. Here’s a little island that needs catharsis like anybody
anywhere else. But we don’t have either the resources of the audiences for a Broadway
season or a West End. But we have the same needs. So what do we do? Carnival. That it goes
back to the most ancient times, that it really is a celebration of life … it’s our Broadway.
Schechner: It’s both more and different from Broadway. Broadway is a very expensive
40
Photo by Noel Norton
Minshall: Boss, you make me want to cry. Because I know the absolute truth of what you
saying … I squirm when the announcer or commentator says, ‘This “costume” …’ Please
learn to say ‘mas’ ’, or ‘this dancing mobile’, or ‘this walking sculpture’. This is not a
costume. I like the word ‘mas’ ’. It is our word m-a-s apostrophe …
[In 1981] I’m visiting San Francisco doing the tourist thing, and I pass a corner shop just
bright with kites … I go in to look and touch and I discover … the fibreglass rod. In Carnival
we have used wire, cane. Immediately I think, mas’! mas’! The first time I use it to simply
make long, long feathers for the band Jungle Fever, like grasses, forest of feathers quivering
across the stage. Then one day, this is how it happens, we’ve done the Mancrab thing. I’m
working on the band Callaloo, and I am thinking, how does this band work? Instinct takes
Mancrab in River by Peter Minshall
veneer entertaining relatively few people. Carnival is more like the Elizabethan or Greek
theatre – such a large proportion of the whole population participates. At Broadway there is
an absolute separation segregating the audience from the stage. In Carnival, at many
decisive points and times, all separation dissolves into a scene of total participation …
Brecht would have loved the Carnival audience – active, involved, knowledgeable, and
critical. The Broadway audience is an extension of the tv audience – passive and receptive.
41
Papillon by Peter Minshall, Trinidad Carnival, 1982
Photo by Noel Norton
Courtesy of Callaloo Company and the photographer
El teórico ruso Mijaíl M. Bajtín publicó, entre otros temas, muchos trabajos
sobre el carnaval y sobre las culturas de la risa rusa y europea; pero sus ideas
filosóficas abarcan los valores y creencias humanas universales. Las citas de esta
versión se han extraído de su libro Problemas de la poética de Dostoievski y son
editadas por M. Pierrette Malcuzynski y Myriam Diocaretz.
El Boato Ritual
Mijaíl M. Bajtín
El problema del carnaval (en el sentido del conjunto de diferentes festejos, ritos y formas de
tipo carnavalesco), de su espacio, de sus profundas raíces en la sociedad y en el pensamiento
primitivo del hombre, de su desarrollo en una sociedad de clases, de su excepcional fuerza
vital y de su encanto imperecedero, es uno de los problemas más complejos e interesantes
de la historia de la cultura … Es una forma de espectáculo sincrético con carácter ritual … sin
escenario ni división entre actores y espectadores. En el carnaval, todos participan, todo el
mundo comulga en la acción. El carnaval no se contempla ni tampoco se representa, sino
que se vive en él según sus leyes mientras éstas permanecen actuales, es decir, se vive la vida
carnavalesca. Ésta es una vida desviada de su curso normal. Es, en cierta medida, la ‘vida al
revés ’, el ‘mundo al revés ’ [monde à l’envers].
Las leyes, prohibiciones y limitaciones que determinan el curso y el orden de la vida
normal, o sea, de la vida no carnavalesca, se cancelan durante el carnaval: antes que nada, se
suprimen las jerarquías y las formas de miedo, etiqueta, etc., relacionadas con ellas, es decir,
se elimina todo lo determinado por la desigualdad jerárquica social y por cualquier otra
desigualdad (incluyendo la de edades) de los hombres. Se aniquila toda distancia entre las
personas, y empieza a funcionar una específica categoría carnavalesca: el contacto libre y
familiar entre la gente …
En el carnaval se elabora, en una forma sensorialmente concreta y vivida entre realidad y
juego, un nuevo modo de relaciones entre la gente que se opone a las relaciones jerárquicas y
todopoderosas de la vida cotidiana. El comportamiento, el gesto y la palabra del hombre se
liberan del poder de toda situación jerárquica (estamento, rango, edad, fortuna) … La
excentricidad es una categoría especial dentro de la percepción carnavalesca del mundo …
También se relaciona con la familiarización la tercera categoría de la percepción
carnavalesca del mundo: las disparidades carnavalescas. La actitud libre y familiar se
extiende a todos los valores, ideas fenómenos y cosas. Todo aquello que había sido cerrado,
desunido, distanciado por la visión jerárquica de la vida normal, entra en contacto en
combinaciones carnavalescas. El carnaval une, acerca, compromete y conjuga lo sagrado con
lo profano, lo alto con lo bajo, lo grande con lo miserable, lo sabio con lo estúpido, etcétera.
De ahí deriva la cuarta categoría carnavalesca: la profanación, los sacrilegios carnavalescos,
todo un sistema de rebajamientos y menguas carnvalescas, las obscenidades relacionadas
con la fuerza generadora de la tierra y del cuerpo, las parodias carnavalescas de textos y
sentencias, etcétera …
La acción carnavalesca principal es la coronación burlesca y el subsiguiente destronamiento
del rey del carnaval … En la base del rito de coronación y destronamiento del rey se
encuentra el núcleo mismo de la percepcion carnavalesca del mundo: el pathos de cambios y
transformaciones, de muerte y renovación. El carnaval es la fiesta del tiempo que aniquila y
renueva todo. Así es como puede ser expresada la idea principal del carnaval …
Coronación-destronamiento es un rito doble y ambivalente que expresa lo inevitable y lo
constructivo del cambio-renovación, la alegre relatividad de todo estado y orden, de todo
44
poder y de toda situación jerárquica. En la coronación ya está presente la idea de un futuro
destronamiento: la coronación desde un principio es ambivalente. El que se corona es un
antípoda del rey verdadero: esclavo o bufón, con lo cual se inaugura y se consagra el mundo
al revés del carnaval. En el rito de coronación, todos los momentos de la ceremonia, todos
los símbolos del poder que se entregan al coronado y su vestimenta se vuelven ambivalentes,
adquieren un matiz de alegre relatividad, de acccesoria ritual, su significado simbólico se ubica
a dos niveles (como símbolos reales del poder, es decir, en el mundo normal, están en un
solo plano, son absolutos, pesados y de carácter monolíticamente serio) …
La ceremonia del rito del destronamiento se contrapone al rito de coronación; al destronado, se le quitan sus ropajes, se le arranca la corona y otros símbolos del poder, se burlan de
él y se le golpea. Todos los momentos simbólicos de esta ceremonia de destronamiento se
ubican también en otro plano positivo, no se trata de la negación y aniquilación plena y
absoluta (el carnaval no conoce ni la negación, ni la afirmación absolutas). Es más, precisamente en el rito de destronamiento se manifestaba con una particular claridad el pathos
carnavalesco de cambios y renovaciones, la imagen de la muerte creativa … Pero repetimos
que la coronación y el destronamiento son inseparables, es un rito doble cuyos dos
componentes se convierten uno en otro mutuamente; en la división absoluta se perdería
totalmente su sentido carnavalesco …
Todas las imágenes del carnaval son dobles, reúnen en sí ambos polos del cambio y de la
crisis: nacimiento y muerte (imagen de la muerte embarazada), bendición y maldición
(las maldiciones carnavalescas que bendicen, con un simultáneo deseo de muerte y regeneración), elogio e injuria, juventud y vejez, alto y bajo, cara y trasero, estupidez y sabiduría …
son muy características las imágenes de pares contrastantes (alto-bajo, gordo-flaco, etc.) y
similares (dobles-gemelos). También es típica la utilización de los objetos al revés: la ropa
puesta al revés, los útiles de cocina en lugar de sombreros, los utensilios caseros usados
como armas, etc. Se trata de una manifestación específica de la categoría carnavalesca de excentricidad, de la violación de lo normal y de lo acostumbrado, la vida desviada de su curso habitual.
La imagen del fuego carnavalesco es profundamente ambivalente. Es un fuego que
simultáneamente aniquila y renueva al mundo … La risa carnavalesca también es
profundamente ambivalente. Se relaciona genéticamente con las formas más antiguas de
risa ritual … La risa carnavalesca asimismo va dirigida hacia las instancias supremas: hacia el
cambio de poderes y verdades, hacia el cambio del orden universal. La risa abarca ambos
polos del cambio, se refiere al mismo proceso del cambio, a la misma crisis. En el acto de la
risa ritual se conjugan la muerte y la resurrección, la negación (burla) y la afirmación (risa
jubilosa). Se trata de una risa de contemplación universal profunda. Esta es la especificidad
de la risa carnavalesca ambivalente. En relación con la risa, señalemos un problema más: el
de la naturaleza carnavalesca de la parodia … El parodiar significa crear un doble destronador,
un ‘mundo al revés ‘. Por eso la parodia es ambivalente …
La arena principal de acciones carnavalescas era la plaza [pública] con las calles adjuntas. El
carnaval, ciertamente, también penetraba en las casas y se delimitaba en realidad tan sólo en
el tiempo y no en el espacio; el carnaval no conoce el escenario ni las candilejas del teatro y
su espacio principal podía ser solamente la plaza, puesto que por su mismo ideal el carnaval
es popular y universal, y todos deben participar en el contacto familiar. La plaza fue el
símbolo de lo popular. La plaza del carnaval –plaza de acciones carnavalescas-- adquirió un
matiz simbólico complementario que la ampliaba y produndizaba … También otros lugares
de acción (por supuesto motivados por el argumento y por la realidad), al poder ser espacio
de encuentro y contacto de todo tipo de gente –calles, tabernas, caminos, baños públicos,
cubiertas de buques, etc. – adquieren un sentido complementario de su representación,
puesto que el simbolismo universal carnavalesco no teme al naturalismo de ninguna manera …
‘El Boato Ritual’ es una versión editada de Mijaíl M. Bajtín, Problemas de la poética de Dostoievski [orig. en ruso, 1963,
pp. 171-186], traducido del ruso por Tatiana Bubnova, © 1986 Fondo de Cultura Económica, México.
45
Rotterdam Summer Carnival Parade 2001
Photo by Bas Czerwinski
Courtesy of DUCOS/ACR and the photographer
From humble beginnings in 1984, the Solero Summer Carnival Rotterdam
has grown into a not-to-be-missed event that celebrates the best of
multiculturalism within the challenging context of the carnivalesque.
This year, nearly 800,000 people joined the over thirty nationalities who
celebrated their culture and music in the street parade and in the evening
concerts. The Stichting Zomercarnaval Nederland, which organises the
Carnival, is the Principal 2001 Prince Claus laureate.
The View from Above and Below:
Summer Carnival Rotterdam
Karel Willems
From the skyboxes on either side of the mayor’s balcony on the front of Rotterdam’s city
hall, the main street of the Coolsingel looked like it was on the verge of exploding.
Hundreds of thousands of people were celebrating the seventeenth annual Rotterdam
Summer Carnival. On the street, the parade was a rush of sheer colour, activity and noise:
elaborate costumed groups from the Caribbean, rhythms from Brazil, DJs from London and
brass bands from the Netherlands. A cacophony of joy reverberated in the canyons between
the buildings. According to official figures from the Rotterdam city council, 760,000
people danced for over three hours as they waited to see the 2,695-strong parade on the last
Saturday in July this year. Equal numbers stayed out late into the night enjoying the live
music from the three outdoor stages in different parts of the city.
Carnival, which originally began as ‘a Caribbean practice that came in response to the
displacement of islanders of African and Asian descent and as a protest to the dominant
cultures, whose spaces they now shared’1, is a radical experience. The art forms that characterise it have been identified by Trinidadian sociologist Lloyd Best as: limbo (making space
where before there was none); mas’ (disguising into whatever you like, being someone
else); pan (making music wherever you go with whatever you find); and calypso (talking in
tongues, making double entendres). For him, Carnival is ‘an urban, multicultural situation,
a party …’2 The movement of this essentially Caribbean festival from the new world to the
old also represents the vital cultural transmission of a bitter history: the transatlantic slave
trade and colonialism.
This was probably not the only reason the Antillean community founded the Stichting
Zomercarnaval Nederland [the Dutch Summer Carnival Foundation] in 1984. That year,
600 people participated in the Saturday street parade, which attracted 65,000 visitors. By
2001, over thirty different ethnic groups were involved in the Solero Summer Carnival
Rotterdam – Antilleans, Columbians, Cape Verdeans, Brazilians, Surinamese, Dutch, to
name a few. Many more nationalities watched the parade, since the city boasts 180 ethnic
groups. Our philosophy has been to use Carnival as the means of building bridges between
communities normally divided by ethnicity, religion, society and class. There is enough
hate in the world. At the Stichting Zomercarnaval Nederland, we believe we can soften the
problem a little by using the Carnival context to get people talking. More often than not in
our experience, they dance first then appreciate similarities and differences later.
No doubt, thousands of people dancing wildly in city streets and squares goes against
the status quo. ‘Carnival is invariably defiant. Its very location resists confinement … The
48
1.
Catherine Ugwu, ‘The Other
Notting Hill: Carnival in
London’, (ai) Performance for
the Planet (New York:
winter, 1999) p. 21
2.
Lloyd Best, keynote address at
the Conference on Cultural
Enterprises in the Caribbean,
in Port-of-Spain, 2000
view is always central. It is a communal act of self-expression that is never regulated or
controlled … Everyone is invited and it is this mass audience and artist intervention which
4.
creates the spectacle.’3 And it is within this particular arena that anything can happen.
Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems
This year, Carnival queens from Curaçao, Aruba and Cape Verde came to Rotterdam. The
of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Theory visiting of Carnival dignitaries from the Dutch Caribbean and the rest of the Caribbean is
and History of Literature,
another way of both strengthening Holland’s cultural ties to that part of the world and
Volume 8, edited and transchallenging a long-standing relationship. According to the Russian literary theorist Mikhail
lated by Caryl Emerson,
Bakhtin, ‘Carnival is the place for working out … a new mode of interrelationship between
(Manchester: Manchester
individuals, counterposed to the all-powerful socio-hierarchical relationships of nonUniversity Press, 1984) p. 123 carnival life. The behaviour, gesture, and discourse of a person are freed from the authority
5.
of all hierarchical positions (social estate, rank, age, property) …’4 It is this realignment of
Ibid., p. 122
the powerful and the powerless – the true meaning of carnivalesque – that makes Carnival
6.
such a threat to the established order.
Ibid., p. 123
This version of le monde à l’envers [the world turned inside out]5 is not a perspective
people naturally gravitate towards. Many of the Caribbean ‘diaspora’ Carnivals have
effectively exchanged the dominant culture for their minority culture. In the case of
London’s Notting Hill, Toronto and New York’s Brooklyn, it is predominately AfroCaribbean culture on parade. But it is much harder to create a cultural mosaic. Although the
Rotterdam Summer Carnival was started by the Antillean community, it is not an
exclusively Antillean Carnival in the Netherlands. It is an event that stresses multiculturalism and this can be done through different avenues. For some people, it can happen
through the experience of travel or by simply listening to the latest cd from Africa. For
others, it’s the first bite they take when they sample another country’s cuisine. Personal
encounters are also encouraged in the Summer Carnival, together with a wide variety of
food and drink from around the world to help people appreciate cultural differences. So
you not only watch and mingle with other cultures but you also get to taste them as well.
The multicultural space that the Carnival provides is all encompassing.
At a time when religious tension appears to be rising in the world, our Carnival is also
multidenominational. Despite the Catholic associations of Carnival with the pre-Lenten
holiday, the Solero Summer Carnival is a special, hybrid event. Dutch people from the
province Noord-Holland, where Rotterdam is, do not traditionally celebrate Carnival
because they are Protestants. From the Caribbean, the Surinamese who are Protestants also
don’t have a tradition of Carnival, yet they make an exception to participate in the Solero
Carnival. Even people from Holland’s Muslim, North African population attend. The
relations between the different groups are peaceful. This year at the Rotterdam Carnival,
there were 100 police officers on duty – compared to the 8,500 who policed London’s
Notting Hill, a direct result of two deaths during the 2000 parade.
On Carnival weekend in Rotterdam, a clear signal is sent to city inhabitants and visitors
when the festivities begin. During the warm-up party on the Friday before the street
parade, three brass bands play and walk from different parts of Rotterdam finally
converging at a central location. People trail behind the bands, listen to the music and often
dance. Carnival is one of the few times of the year when they can escape the mundane and
do whatever they like. They can even become somebody else, even if it’s a poor imitation. No
one is judgemental.
Bakhtin points out, ‘Carnival brings together, unifies, weds, and combines the sacred
with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the
stupid.’6 That is the essence of Carnival: people are in strait jackets for most of the year, but
for a few precious days they are free to create, to participate, to actually live and do things
that in some cases aren’t socially acceptable. The function of Carnival is to provide a space
for freedom of expression – a freedom on many levels, one which dares to consider a wider
definition of national identity.
Probably fifty-five per cent of the people attending the Summer Carnival Rotterdam are
ethnically mixed and forty-five per cent are Dutch, and it has been through this experience
of Carnival that Holland’s essentially Dutch nature has changed. It’s more than the lure of
3.
Ugwu, p. 21
49
the exotic or the ‘other’. It is a healthy interest and curiosity about the world. At a time
when cultures are mixing, the Dutch ain’t Dutch any more, and Carnival has been in the
forefront of building a new community/identity where people are mingling with each
other and cultivating other cultures which might be Dutch but are not from Holland.
After the street parade, Rotterdam is filled with live music from around the world. The
Rotterdam Summer Carnival is an opportunity for young, foreign musicians to introduce
their musical styles to the west and play to larger audiences. By the morning, everyone feels
better about who they are and what they want to do. And for us at the Stichting Zomercarnaval Nederland, turning the world upside down is a considerable undertaking –
culturally, politically, socially, organisationally – but it is enormously worthwhile.
Behind the Scenes at the Solero Summer
Carnival Rotterdam
Stichting Zomercarnaval Nederland
Every year the Stichting Zomercarnaval Nederland writes an evaluation report of the Solero
Summer Carnival. The following extracts from the 2001 evaluation show that organising
the Carnival is labour-intensive.
Warm-up, Friday, 27 July 2001
One.Tel Podium (Churchillplein)
– lc Brass
– Caribbean Brass
– Brotherhood
over specially from Aruba, gave several performances during the Kingdom Games and at
the Ban Topa, and provided an organic transition from the Cultural Special to the Solero
Summer Carnival. bmw’s performance during the warm up of the Solero Summer Carnival
concluded the Kingdom in Focus Cultural Special and marked the start of the national
number one festival, the Solero Summer Carnival. The link between the Cultural Special
and the warm-up meant that there was a live act on the podium during the warm-up for the
very first time and this improvement did not go unnoticed. More than 40,000 people,
including a large number of young people, enjoyed bmw’s performance until the early
hours. This improvement will be continued in the coming years, so the promoters of the
Kingdom in Focus Cultural Special can look back with pleasure at the lasting result they
have achieved.
During the past seven years the warm-up has evolved from a local appetiser to a fullyfledged event. Both the parades of the brass bands through the city and the activities on
Churchillplein draw such massive crowds that the infrastructure and organisation will need
to be adjusted. Approximately 7,000 people follow each brass band through the streets and
about 40,000 people gather at the final location. Both the organisers and the police will
have to put more people on the streets to ensure that this part of the programme goes
smoothly. It will be necessary to clear the location of traffic and set up the stands earlier and
alter the arrangement of the stands to ensure that Churchillplein is better able to cope with
the growing number of visitors. The growth of this event will also make greater demands
on the organisation’s manpower in the future.
Artistically too, the time has come to give the warm up a new boost. Up to now the Battle
of the Drums has been a fairly informal event. The brass bands have indicated that they
would like to see a national contest for Brass Band of the Year. This means the musicians are
challenging not only the organisers of the Solero Summer Carnival but also and above all
each other to produce a quality product. The Solero Summer Carnival is eager to accept this
challenge and will be looking at ways and means of doing so towards the end of 2001.
The addition of a live act, in this case bmw, will be repeated in the future. While the
warm-up, unlike the street parade, still reaches only a limited number of cultural groups,
we shall be aiming to broaden it both in terms of programme and scope.
Street Parade, 28 July 2001
Three brass bands – strolling bands which each played for about fifteen minutes on their
own (unamplified) podium before all playing together for about five minutes.
Facts and Figures
– dj Ben
– bmw (Aruba)
Presented by Alice Fortes
The three brass bands set off at 7 o’clock in the evening from three different locations for the
warm up in the centre of Rotterdam. As always, they set off from Middellandplein, the
Oude Haven and Noordplein. This is starting to become a familiar event, judging by the
number of people that had already congregated at those three locations. Meanwhile a crowd
was gathering at Churchillplein and the atmosphere was lively. The audience warmed to dj
Ben’s musical contribution. At about 9 o’clock the bands swung into Churchillplein. By
then the square had filled up and there were some 40,000 visitors. The audience was
enthusiastic and the bands were received well. The climax, when all three brass bands
started playing together, was truly spectacular. Alice Fortes’ effective and heart-warming
presentation ensured that people in the square could follow what was going on throughout.
By then it was time for the Aruban group bmw, a live band on the Churchillplein podium
during the warm up for the first time in the history of the Solero Summer Carnival. The
combination of the Kingdom Games, the Kingdom in Focus Cultural Special and the Solero
Summer Carnival provided a good overall presentation, focusing on the Antillean and
Aruban communities and their cultural manifestations. The group bmw, which had flown
52
34
1
31
20
3
1,346
588
319
48
174
189
80
29
35
36
9
22
Participating groups
Participating group from abroad
Individual participants
Queens
Queens from abroad
Adult participants
Participating children
Carers and stewards
Road Pieces
Body Pieces
Shoulder Pieces
Head Pieces
Floats
Food vehicles
Musical floats
Vehicles of the organisation
Live bands
19
4
1
391
2,695
djs
Strolling bands
Steel band
Musicians
Participants
1,758m length of street parade
5,050m total length of route
113ft stands along the route
approximately twenty cultural
communities involved
53
The artistic growth of the street parade, which has been clearly visible in the past few years,
continued this year too. Each year it becomes a little more difficult for the jury to choose the
winners. Besides which, the groups grow bigger and more numerous each year. The
intensive coaching given to new participants meant they were well able to hold their own
within this complex and massive event. Coaching focuses on technical and safety aspects
and on the artistic translation of the group theme. In order to maintain the qualitative
growth of the street parade, the organisation will also be providing support and coaching to
the ‘old’ participating groups from 2002. Each participating group will be given personal
attention by the project team from 2002. We realise that this will entail an enormous effort,
but the Solero Summer Carnival attaches great importance to upgrading the artistic content
and applying new methods.
Public interest in the street parade continues to grow each year. This year the street
parade attracted no fewer than 760,000 spectators from inside and outside the Netherlands. The growth of the street parade, the growth of the cultural communities involved
and the growth of audience numbers do however have a downside. The event is growing
increasingly complex and labour-intensive. More stringent government requirements
concerning large-scale events are also making themselves felt. The available staff is proving
inadequate to cope with the increase in scale. The Summer Carnival Foundation is therefore
going to enlarge its committee and ducos/acr (the firm of event organisers) will be
expanding its staff from late 2001 …
With additional financial support it was possible to take an important step forwards this
year in terms of international representation at the street parade. In recent years cooperation with the Curaçao Carnival has become something of a tradition. Each year the
queens of both carnivals take part in the activities of the other. Committee members and
organisers of both events visit one another and exchange knowledge and experience.
Together with the External Relations department it was decided further to enhance and
intensify the co-operation with the so-called ‘home countries’. As a result, the Curaçao
Carnival was also able to participate in the street parade with a group this year, and for the
first time delegations from Aruba and Cape Verde were represented. In addition to a joint
queens’ float from the three ‘home countries’ this also meant representatives of the various
administrations could be received. The visit of the international delegations to Antilles
House, Aruba House and the Cape Verde Consulate and contacts with the organisers of the
two carnivals have resulted in an expression of their intention to build on this initiative.
This means that the involvement of a number of cultural communities in the Solero
Summer Carnival is even more firmly assured …
The growth of public interest has meant that the area reserved for guests in front of the
town hall has had to be reduced over the past few years. Even so these measures proved
inadequate in 2000. For this reason it was decided in 2001 to replace the guests’ stand with a
skybox. This takes up several square metres less space and offers guests better opportunities
for marketing. This proved a great success. Despite the large numbers in front of the town
hall the situation remained manageable and the guests appreciated the facility. A bonus was
that guests were able to watch the podium programme on Coolsingel until late at night …
Summer Carnival Rotterdam begins 26 July 2002.
56
57
The light musical films of Brazilian chanchadas from the Thirties were
initially a vehicle for popular Carnival songs. Audiences hummed the
music and applauded Carmen Miranda in movies like Alô, alô, Brasil! and
Estudantes. By the end of the Fifties, this home-grown cinema movement
began to reflect the country’s growing political confidence. Celluloid
provided a prism of the new-found social optimism born out of the
economic developments and populist reforms of the Juscelino Kubitschek
presidency.
The Brazilian chanchada (1930-59)
Lisa Shaw
Introduction
From the mid-1930s until the end of the 1950s Brazilian cinema was dominated by a
popular genre which came to be known as the chanchada, although the frame of reference
for this umbrella term was to shift significantly during this period as the Brazilian film
industry felt the impact of sociopolitical, economic and cultural transformations. The term
chanchada was coined in the 1930s by journalists and film critics to refer scathingly to the
highly derivative, light musical comedies that were used to promote Carnival music. But it
was soon to become the accepted way of referring to increasingly polished productions,
particularly those of the Atlântida studios, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1941, which enjoyed
unprecedented popular success in Brazil. By the 1950s, chanchadas were no longer necessarily musicals, but maintained a tradition of carnivalesque humour1.
1.
In the 1950s, radio stations
only played compositions if
they were paid by the
creators or the record
companies to do so, and thus
the public only got to hear a
limited range of Carnival
music. The resulting lack of
true competition led to a
decline in the quality of
Brazilian musicals in the 1930s: the carnival revue meets the backstage plot
During the silent era, Carnival was the focus of much interest among Brazilian filmmakers,
and it has been estimated that between 1906 and the arrival of the talkies in the early 1930s,
around fifty shorts were produced using footage from the annual celebrations in the city of
Rio de Janeiro. The first sound documentary on this popular theme, O carnaval cantado de
1933 no Rio de Janeiro, was screened on Ash Wednesday 1933, and paved the way for a series
of Carnival films, such as A voz do carnaval (1933) from the Rio-based Cinédia studios,
which combined actual footage of Carnival balls and processions with a fictitious plot line.
As the decade progressed, the promotion of Carnival music became the raison d’être for most
films, which found a ready-made cast of actors, actresses and performers among Brazil’s
radio stars, whose established fame and popularity represented a huge box-office draw2.
The first Brazilian musicals were clearly inspired by Hollywood, and the established stars
of radio and popular music found themselves in front of the cameras. Alô, alô, Brasil! of
1935, the plot of which revolved around a radio fan’s obsession with a fictitious singer, set
the trend of allowing audiences to see their favourite radio stars playing themselves on
screen, both in front of and behind the scenes, affording the public a voyeuristic glimpse of
life ‘nos bastidores’ [in the wings or backstage]. This musical, featured the most wellknown radio presenter of the era, César Ladeira, the comedians Jorge Murad, Barbosa Júnior
and Cordélia Ferreira, and the hugely popular actor from the teatro de revista, Mesquitinha3.
The musical numbers were provided by Carmen Miranda, her sister Aurora, and the equally
famous performers Francisco Alves, Dircinha Batista, Almirante and Mário Reis. In
60
Carnival songs, and meant
that many old ‘classics’ were
revived in the annual celebrations. By the mid-1950s
Carnival music had largely
vanished from the chanchada.
2.
The success of A voz do
carnaval (1933) in guessing
which would be the greatest
hit songs of the forthcoming
Carnival was never equalled
by subsequent Carnival films
or chanchadas. Virtually all
the hits of the subsequent
Carnival had featured in the
film.
3.
The Brazilian teatro de revista
competed with Parisian
vaudeville and Italian opera
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and opted
for costume comedies that
often parodied foreign styles
and works. It also incorporated references to the
cotidiano, just as the
chanchada was to do later.
The teatro de revista, which
Estudantes of 1935 Carmen Miranda played an up-and-coming radio star, and in Alô, alô,
carnaval! of the following year, which Sérgio Augusto calls ‘Carbono dos primeiros
musicais (ou filmes-revista) da Metro’ [A carbon copy of the first musicals (or musical
revues) produced by mgm], she and her sister performed a memorable rendition of the song
‘Cantoras do rádio’ by the popular composers Braguinha and Alberto Ribeiro. The plot of
Alô, alô, carnaval! centred on the production of a revue show in a ritzy Rio casino and the
difficulties encountered off-stage. The show-within-the-film combined the comic talents
of its actors with performances of Carnival marches or marchinhas and sambas written by
some of the most acclaimed popular musicians of the time4.
died out at the end of the
1950s, changed little over
The chanchadas of Atlântida Cinematográfica
The Rio-based film production company Atlântida Cinematográfica was founded in 1941 by
and record industry some of Moacyr Fenelon, Alinor Azevedo and José Carlos Burle, and although they set out to
its brightest stars, such as
produce serious, quality films, the studios inevitably succumbed to commercial pressures
Carmen Miranda, Francisco
and began to exploit the Carnival musical to the full adding comedy to the winning
Alves and Sílvio Caldas. It felt formula. Atlântida produced a series of low-budget but highly successful chanchadas in the
the impact of the expansion
1940s and 1950s which appealed to both children and adults. Atlântida’s chanchadas
of the cinema, although the
typically portrayed disadvantaged migrants and their humour often hinged on the sense of
two complemented each
alienation and confusion experienced by such characters in the big city. These films were a
other in the 1920s, when
focus of popular identification in the 1950s in particular, when mass migration from rural
revistas accompanied the
areas to urban centres reached its peak. They tended to be filmed against the clock and to
showing of films in Rio’s
follow a schematic plot line. The director Carlos Manga has identified four basic stages in
cinema halls.
the archetypal chanchada plot: firstly, a young man or woman becomes embroiled in a
4.
sticky situation, secondly, a comic character tries to protect him or her, thirdly, the villain
The early chanchadas placed
gains the upper hand, and finally, the villain is defeated. The famous double act of the comic
little importance on choreo- actors Oscarito and Grande Otelo, who appeared together in thirteen of Atlântida’s films,
graphy, which resulted in
ensured huge popular appeal. They both starred in the paradigmatic Atlântida chanchada,
rather static performances,
Carnaval no fogo of 1949, which, like numerous examples of the genre, centred on
and it was the music itself
carnivalesque inversion, more specifically on exchanges of identity, and followed the
that was central to the films. formulaic storyline to the letter. The hero, Ricardo, played by Anselmo Duarte, finds a
According to director Carlos cigarette case belonging to the villain of the piece, a gangster named Anjo played by José
Manga, dance sequences in
Lewgoy. By using the silver case Ricardo is identified by other hoods as their leader, in a
the chanchadas, like in the
classic case of mistaken identity5.
teatro de revista, acted as
The chanchadas were typically set in fancy hotels, glamorous nightspots, ocean liners
‘cortinas musicais’ [musical
(De Vento em popa of 1957), radio stations (Garotas e samba of 1957), record companies
curtains] to ‘facilitar a con(Quem roubou meu samba? of 1958), television studios (Absolutamente certo of 1957) and
strução do roteiro e quebrar other pleasure-oriented locales frequented by society’s élite or associated with the world of
a continuidade’ [to facilitate
show business. Locations such as the Copacabana Palace and the Quitandinha, an exclusive
the construction of the plot
hotel and a former casino on the outskirts of the imperial city of Petrópolis in the state of
and to break the continuity]
Rio de Janeiro, provided Brazilian cinema audiences with a seductive and illusory cultural
(Augusto 1993, 15).
domain, in which representatives of the working masses – who were employed there or
5.
tricked their way in – and the élite came into contact.
Carnaval no fogo (1949) was
Carnaval Atlântida, produced by the Atlântida studios in 1952, hinges on this battle
to represent something of a
between the popular and the erudite in the chanchada6. The backstage plot revolves around
watershed in the developthe production of an epic movie about Helen of Troy, but in spite of the best efforts of the
ment of the chanchada, in
producer of this epic, one Cecílio B. de Milho, which include contracting as technical
that for the first time, the
advisor a professor of Greek mythology named Xenofontes (played by the well-known
plot took precedence over
comic actor Oscarito), the production of an historical epic on Brazilian soil proves
the musical numbers which
impossible and only a Carnival musical is a viable option. Xenofontes succumbs to the
were not Carnival songs.
bewitching rhythms of popular music, losing all composure when learning to dance the
A review in the newspaper
mambo with the Cuban actress Maria Antonieta Pons. The ultimate defeat of classical music
O Globo of 8 February 1950
by popular song occurs when two humble studio hands, played by Grande Otelo and Colé,
even went so far as to
watch a scene on the set of a Greek garden in which Helen of Troy is entertained by the
state ‘Carnaval no fogo, da
strains of a harp. The two onlookers make fun of the choice of music and in their minds the
the years, and gave the radio
61
Carmen Miranda, this page and opposite, in
Weekend in Havana by Walter Lang, U.S., 1941
scene is transformed into a Carnival celebration, in which the Afro-Brazilian singer
Blecaute, dressed in a toga, performs the lively and risqué Carnival marchinha, ‘Dona
Cegonha’.
The epitome of sexual temptation in the chanchada was the exotic foreign beauty,
particularly the lascivious latina stereotype7. It is no coincidence that in Carnaval Atlântida
the respectable professor of Greek mythology, Xenofontes, is led to his moral downfall by a
Cuban beauty. Only moments after they meet, Oscarito’s character is dancing a rumba and
surrendering to the physical pleasures of Carnival. The numerous ‘south-of-the-border’
Hollywood musicals of the 1940s, which equated Latin nations with loose morals, rhythm
and vivacity, undoubtedly made an indelible impression on the chanchadas, particularly in
the musical/dance sequences. Evidently, Brazil does not consider itself sufficiently ‘exotic’,
and looks instead to its Spanish-speaking neighbours for icons of a mythical latinidad. In
Esse Milhão é Meu, the clownish civil servant, Felismino, uses his new-found wealth to visit
the tellingly named ‘Sevilha Club’ nightspot with a group of male colleagues. The cabaret
act features female dancers dressed as stylised sevilhanas in flamenco dresses, their male
partners wearing mock toreador outfits. The stage-set is that of a bull ring, and more
dancing girls enter dressed as bullfighters from the waist up, but in fetishistic high-cut
leotards and stiletto heels. This caricatured depiction of ‘Latin’ passion is enough to entice
the lecherous, drunken Felismino on-stage, where he charges around like a bull as the
audience cheer ‘olé’. The musical interlude reaches a farcical climax as Felismino imitates a
flamenco dancer, followed by a mimed rendition of cante jondo with guitar accompaniment. Here the Latin motif is comically undercut.
Similarly, in Cinedistri’s Absolutamente certo of 1957, directed by the former chanchada
heart-throb, Anselmo Duarte, one of the television shows, which forms the central focus of
the production numbers in the film, takes the form of a cabaret act which begins with a
flamenco-style dance routine, followed by a vocal performance by three male crooners
singing in Spanish.
Carlos Manga’s comedy O homem do sputnik (1959) represents a significant shift in his
attitude towards Brazilian cinema and his own identity. He had become aware of the fact
that the influence of American cinema had in some ways been detrimental to his career,
admitting that: ‘não era a minha raça, o meu país – então me revoltei contra isso’ [It wasn’t
my race, my country – so I rebelled against it]. This film mocks the imperial pretensions of
the First World and the superpowers’ ignorance of supposedly ‘underdeveloped’ nations.
In it a caipira couple, Anastácio Fortuna, played by Oscarito, and his wife, played by Zezé
Macedo, discover what they think is a sputnik satellite on top of the chicken coop in their
backyard. As the news of their discovery spreads, they are both drawn to the capital city,
Rio de Janeiro, and eventually they become the centre of attention, as officials from France,
Russia and the u.s. try to acquire the treasure. The final scene shows all the interested
parties fighting over the ‘sputnik’ in Anastácio’s backyard. The representatives of the three
superpowers crowd around the well where they believe it to be hidden, each claiming ‘é
nossa’ and playing out their imperial pretensions in a comic parody of the Cold War. The
supposedly ignorant Anastácio exclaims ‘Até parece a Liga das Nações. Veja aqui a
diplomacia’ [It’s like the League of Nations. How about that for diplomacy!].’ Finally one of
the villagers, a portly Portuguese by the name of Seu Manuel, passes by on his donkey again
and points out that they are in fact squabbling over nothing more than a weather vane,
which he has had mended and placed back on the roof of the church. As the representatives
from the three nations leave deflated and humiliated, the Portuguese villager exclaims: ‘E
depois nós é quem somos os burros’ [And then they go and call us asses]!8 After their brief
flirtation with ‘high society’ in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and a stay at the emblematic
Copacabana Palace Hotel, a trope of glamour and modernity in Atlântida’s chanchadas,
Anastácio and his wife are happy to return to their wooden shack in a rural backwater.
The carnivalesque inversion of rural/urban and third world/first world hierarchies is
central to O homem do sputnik, and the country bumpkin is shown to have more common
sense and clearer judgement than all the big shots from the city and from overseas. Rural
64
Atlântida, é superior à
7.
simplicity and homely values win out in the end. Brazil (and its cinema industry) is
retaliating for being treated as primitive and a cultural backwater, forced to look outside its
borders for inspiration. National pride lies in the paradoxes of life in Brazil, where vestiges
of colonial/rural life co-exist with the impact of the Cold War. As Sérgio Augusto writes,
‘Manga se refere a O homem do sputnik como o seu ajuste de contas com o poder cultural e
econômico dos eua’ [Manga refers to O homem do sputnik as his settling scores with the
cultural and economic might of the u.s.]. This film was produced in the context of the
Brazilian government’s increasingly tense relationship with the International Monetary
Fund (imf), which was trying to oblige Brazil to adopt much more restrictive economic
policies. This period of mounting tensions culminated in President Juscelino Kubitschek’s
controversial decision to sever links with the imf in June 1959. O homem do sputnik
eloquently captures the capitalist backlash and anti-foreign/imf feeling at the close of the
1950s. As Thomas Skidmore writes, ‘The u.s. government and the imf became the
scapegoats for the painful stabilisation measures the Kubitschek government had begun …
Although the extreme version of radical nationalism did not represent the views of most
Brazilians, the resentment against “foreign pressure” was widespread.’ The film’s message
is thus a product of the defiant mood of the times, as Brazil shook off the condescending
image of third world underdog and asserted its cultural and political sovereignty.
maioria dos musicais norte-
Ana López (1993) examines
americanos exibidos
Hollywood’s filmic mani-
ultimamente no Rio. Pela
pulation of three female
primeira vez, temos um filme
stars from Latin America,
em que a história supera a
namely the Mexicans,
parte musical’ [Carnaval no
Dolores del Río and Lupe
fogo is better than the
Vélez, and Carmen Miranda,
majority of North American
who each represented
musicals shown recently in
different aspects of the
Rio. For the first time we
exotic ‘other’ from the late
have a film in which the story
1920s to the mid-1940s. In
is more important than the
the 1930s Vélez played the
music] (Augusto 1993, 52). It
archetypal Latin temptress
is no coincidence that 1949
with an insatiable sexual
saw a perceptible shift in the
appetite, and embodied a
role of Carnival music within
potent ethnic ‘otherness’
the cinema, since it was in
that was too subversive for
that year that copyright laws
the climate of the Good
were tightened significantly,
Neighbour Policy era.
and the performance of
In the 1930s and early to mid-1940s the Brazilian cinema industry was just finding its feet
late 1930s too ‘Latin’, Del
and was content to produce highly derivative chanchadas, which undeniably improved in
Río’s beauty and aloof
quality as the industry gained in technical know-how and in self-confidence. Although this
indifference were not
tradition of adopting Hollywood templates wholesale, with little or no critical edge,
‘ethnic’ enough, and it was
continued well into the 1950s, that decade also witnessed the parodic reworking of some of
Carmen, whose aggressive
these very templates. Why did this shift take place within the chanchada genre at this time?
sexuality found its expresIf we accept that popular film acts as a kind of cultural barometer, what does this change of
sion on screen in only
approach and focus tell us about popular sentiment in this era?
gesture, innuendo and risqué
During the first era of president Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945), the issue of national identity
comments, who became a
had been high on the regime’s agenda, and a clever balancing act of censorship and conon-derogatory and nonoption of popular culture, the arts and the media, had been employed to foster a heightened
threatening symbol of
sense of belonging to a wider community. For the most part, this official promotion and
latinidad in the 1940s.
framework of exaggerated patriotism was not endorsed in popular film, which instead
8.
expressed a kind of anti-identity and celebrated the common places of everyday life, which
The tradition of jokes at the
ordinary people could identify with. This, however, suited Vargas’s populist approach to
expense of the Portuguese
government, which entailed active support for the growth and diffusion of popular cultural
community was an estabforms. By and large, the musicals of the 1930s did convey a real sense of brasilidade and
lished one in Brazil. These
everyday life, dealing with prosaic topics such as water shortages, the failings of public
anti-Portuguese jokes were
transport, and political corruption. These chanchadas were primitive but it was precisely
more than just a source of
their self-deprecating humour, and the clash between them and their polished first world
easy laughter in the chanchada; cousins, which held the key to collective identity. Popular cinema was in synchrony, at least
they helped to bolster the
nominally, with the cultural policies of the central state apparatus. However, in the late
self-image of the poorly
1940s and early 1950s Brazil felt the impact of a sharp increase in u.s. investment and also
educated Brazilian audience
steadily acquired a new-found confidence. On the one hand, identity now became more of
in the face of the mounting
an issue in the face of increasing u.s. involvement in domestic affairs, and on the other
demands of modernity. As
hand, popular film began to assert the independence of the Brazilian cinema industry. The
Davies (1982) argues, such
irreverent comedies of the 1950s charted the shifts taking place in the social structure, as the
ethnic jokes are not primarprocess of industrialisation gathered momentum and the urban centres of the south-east
ily about prejudice or ethnireceived increasing numbers of rural migrants. Popular film articulated the resulting
city, but about the normative identity crisis experienced by many Brazilians, particularly the humble man in the street,
structure of modern
who now found himself confronted by dramatic economic and cultural transformations.
industrial society, which
In the latter half of the 1950s Brazil was a rapidly changing place. The mid-1950s were a
values two personality traits
time of fear of military intervention following President Vargas’ suicide in office in 1954. By
beyond all others, namely
1960, however, a mood of tremendous optimism had replaced that of anxiety, thanks to the
Carnival songs was increasingly restricted by legislation
and the payment of copyright
charges. Even the most
popular songs could not be
performed in the dancehalls,
on the radio, in the cinema
or on the television, without
proper authorisation.
6.
This film sets out to ridicule
Hollywood’s big budget
excesses, and according to
Sérgio Augusto, the character of Cecílio B. de Milho
(whose surname translates
as corn or maize in Portuguese) is a caricature of
Samuel Goldwyn rather than
Milho’s virtual namesake.
Sérgio Augusto (1993, 123)
comments on the similarities
between the plot of this
chanchada and Vincente
Minnelli’s MGM musical The
Band Wagon, produced a
year later in 1953. Given that
the Brazilian film appeared
first, the obvious parallels
serve to reflect the pervasiveness of this theme of the
superiority of the popular
over the classical/learned.
Chanchadas and Brazilian identity
Whereas Vélez was by the
65
Movie poster from That Night in Rio by Irving Cummings, U.S., 1941
Carmen Miranda singing ‘I Am Just Wild about Harry’ in
Greenwich Village by Walter Lang, U.S., 1944
Filmography
economic developments and populist reforms of the Kubitschek presidency. A new capital
city Brasilia was inaugurated in that year, a symbol of faith in the future, and equally of a
new era for Brazilians. Depictions of Carnival scenes and the performance of the
accompanying music on screen were no longer adequate sites on which to map popular
identity, as Brazilians tried to make sense of a changing world and reassert their place in it.
Consequently, many of the chanchadas of this decade turned their attentions away from
exuberant displays of Carnival pleasure and towards a questioning of Brazil’s place in the
world. The chanchada became a site of irreverence and transgression, and increasingly
employed cultural negations and symbolic dissonances in order to challenge hierarchical
order and assert the autonomy of the Brazilian nation and its cinema industry. It provides a
fitting metaphor for Brazil’s affirmation of its economic independence in the face of
constraints imposed by the capitalist world. The overturning of established hierarchies of
authority and power on screen represented a more adequate use of the Carnival metaphor
as a means to contest dominant ideology and values.
the rational pursuit of ad-
the British Film Institute,
Schwarz, Roberto; Misplaced
vantage, and the ability to
1977)
Ideas: Essays on Brazilian
Duarte, Anselmo (1957) Absolutamente certo, Cinedistri
enjoy the fruits of success.
López, Ana M; ‘Are all Latins
Culture (London and New
Downey, Wallace, de Barro, João, and Ribeiro, Alberto (1935)
Jokes about someone else’s
from Manhattan?:
York: Verso, 1992)
Alô, alô, Brasil!, Waldow Filmes-Cinédia
stupidity and stinginess pre-
Hollywood, Ethnography and
Stallybrass, Peter, and
Gonzaga, Adhemar (1936) Alô, alô, carnaval! Cinédia-Waldow
suppose that these traits are
Cultural Colonialism’,
White, Allon; The Politics and
Costa, Rui (1939) Banana-da-terra, Sonofilmes
the norm (Palmer 1994, 62).
Mediating Two Worlds:
Poetics of Transgression
Burle, José Carlos (1951) Barnabé, tu és meu, Atlântida
Cinematic Encounters in the
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell
Barros, Luiz de (1944) Berlim na batucada, Cinédia
Americas, ed. John King, et.
Burle, José Carlos (1952) Carnaval Atlântida, Atlântida
al. (London: BFI Publishing,
Stam, Robert, and Johnson,
Marten, Léo and Muniz, Fausto (1933) O carnaval cantado de 1933
1993)
Randal (eds.); Brazilian
no Rio de Janeiro, Cine-Som
Alencar, Edigar de; O
Manga, Carlos; ‘Carlos
Cinema (New York:
Macedo, Watson (1949) Carnaval no fogo, Atlântida
carnaval carioca através da
Manga: Depoimento
Columbia University Press,
Downey, Wallace (1931) Coisas nossas, Byington & Cia
música (Rio de Janeiro:
Prestado a João Luiz Vieira
1995)
Manga, Carlos (1957) De vento em popa, Atlântida
Francisco Alves, 1985)
em 1980’, Filme Cultura, 41-
Stam, Robert, and Vieira,
Macedo, Watson (1948) E o mundo se diverte, Atlântida
Images for ‘The Brazilian chanchada (1930-1959)’ are from Carmen Miranda by Cássio Emmanuel Barsante
Altman, Rick; The American
42 (May 1983), p. 30
João Luiz; ‘Parody &
Manga, Carlos (1958) Esse milhão é meu, Atlântida
(Rio de Janeiro: Europa Empresa Gráfica e Editora Ltda., originally published 1951)
Film Musical (Bloomington
Monsiváis, Carlos; ‘Mexican
Marginality: The Case of
Macedo Watson (1946) Este mundo é um pandeiro, Atlântida
and Indianapolis: Indiana
Cinema: Of Myths and
Brazilian Cinema’, Framework,
Downey, Wallace (1935) Estudantes, Waldow-Cinédia
Demystifications’, Mediating
28, 1985, pp. 20-49
Manga, Carlos (1957) Garotas e samba, Atlântida
Augusto, Sérgio; Este mundo
Two Worlds: Cinematic
Vieira, João Luiz; ‘A
Manga, Carlos (1959) O homem do sputnik, Atlântida
é um pandeiro: A chanchada
Encounters in the Americas,
Chanchada e o Cinema
Manga, Carlos (1954) Matar ou correr, Atlântida
de Getúlio a JK (São Paulo:
ed. John King, et. al.
Carioca (1930-1955)’, História
Manga, Carlos (1954) Nem Sansão nem Dalila, Atlântida
Carmen Miranda, right, and her sister Aurora, left, in
Companhia das Letras, 1993)
(London: BFI Publishing,
do Cinema Brasileiro, ed.
de Mille, Cecil B. (1949) Samson and Delilah, Paramount
Alô alô, carnaval! by Adhemar Gonzaga, Brazil, 1936
Bakhtin, Mikhail; Rabelais and
1993)
Fernão Ramos
Macedo, Watson (1946) Segura esta mulher, Atlântida
his World (Cambridge MA:
Palmer, Jerry; Taking Humour
(São Paulo: Art Editora,
Burle, José Carlos (1958) Quem roubou meu samba?, Cinedistri
MIT Press, 1968)
Seriously (London and New
1987)
Gonzaga, Adhemar and Mauro, Humberto (1933) A voz do
Bakhtin, Mikhail; The Dialogic
York: Routledge, 1994)
Vieira, João Luiz; ‘Este é
carnaval, Cinédia
Imagination (Austin: Univer-
Richard, Jr., Alfred Charles;
meu, é seu, é nosso:
sity of Texas Press, 1992)
Censorship and Hollywood’s
Introdução à Paródia no
Benamou, Catherine; ‘Orson
Hispanic Image: An
Cinema Brasileiro’, Filme
Welles’s Transcultural
Interpretive Filmography,
Cultura, 41-42, May 1983,
Cinema: An Historical/
1936-1955 (Westport,
pp. 22-29
Textual Reconstruction of
Connecticut and London:
anon. Revista cinelândia,
the Suspended Film’,
Greenwood Press, 1993)
(September 1952) 45, p. 52
Bibliography
It’s All True, 1941-1993. (Diss.
New York University, 1997)
DaMatta, Roberto; Carnavais,
malandros e heróis: Para uma
Carmen Miranda in Estudiantes
Carmen Miranda in Alô, alô, Brasil! by Wallace Downey,
sociologia do dilema brasileiro
by Wallace Downey, Brazil, 1935
João de Barro and Alberto Ribeiro, Brazil, 1935
(Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1979)
Davies, C.; ‘Ethnic Jokes,
Moral Values and Social
Boundaries’, British Journal
of Sociology, 33, 1982,
pp. 383-403
Feuer, Jane; The Hollywood
Musical (Basingstoke and
London: The Macmillan
Press (BFI Cinema Series),
1993)
French, Philip; Westerns:
Aspects of a Movie Genre
(London: Secker and
Warburg, in association with
68
69
Whether in an alley, neighbourhood or financial district, Carnival requires
a suspension of the mundane and a special kind of inversion: living and
work areas are turned into playgrounds. Brazilian anthropologist Roberto
DaMatta examines the process which transforms Rio de Janeiro into a
metaphorical medieval square where people defy social conventions and
openly seek pleasure and happiness.
1.
The first thing that the
‘socialist’ Brizola city
government (1982-1986) did
when it was inaugurated was
to plan and build the socalled Sambodrômo – an
enormous terrace, designed
by the famous Brazilian
architect Oscar Niemeyer –
so that the city could have a
permanent place for its
samba school parades.
A Special Space
2.
In 1977, for example, the
Roberto DaMatta
price of regular seats ranged
from seventy-five to 750
Carnival requires its own particular space, whether it be out on the street, alley, square, or
avenue, or in a club, school, or home … This space must be ‘produced’, even when it is the
more closed space of a club. Thus, the walls of the club are decorated with motifs relating to
Carnival. Scenes and decorations may depict a southern seashore or memories of an
idealised historical Rio. The club may be turned into an art gallery with motifs reminiscent
of Picasso, or into a theatre recreating Dante’s Inferno (as was the case of an unforgettable
Carnival in Manaus). So even when a space is already well-defined, it has to be turned into a
new and different area designed exclusively for Carnival.
The same is true of urban space. The commercial centre is closed off to traffic so that
people can occupy it without difficulty, whether or not they belong to the typical
carnivalesque associations (the blocos and the samba schools). Streets and avenues are
tamed and domesticated. If, in everyday life, the streets of Brazil and Rio de Janeiro are
mortally dangerous for pedestrians, and cars whiz through the streets as if they were out to
kill people, during Carnival the nervous and hysterical centre of the city seems to turn into a
medieval square, and it is taken over completely by the people, who replace the cars and
come to witness or participate in Carnival’s multiple levels. Under a ‘carnivalesque schema’,
a centre of impersonal decisions and business becomes the centre for all the encounters and
dramatisations that typify Carnival. The commercial and banking district of Rio de Janeiro,
for example, becomes an immense promenade area, where people walk by each other, look
at each other, and eventually wear their Carnival costumes.
The centre of the city thus acquires a movement of its own. First of all, it truly becomes
the centre even though Carnival is a holiday. On holidays people ordinarily get away from
their area of work and head for the beaches or the most entertaining and distinctive districts
of a city: Copacabana, Ipanema, or Leblon, in the case of Rio de Janeiro; Icaraí, in the case of
Niterói. At Carnival this movement is reversed and they head for the centre of the city, just
as they do on work days, but this time to indulge in Carnival merriment. It should also be
noted that this displacement itself is festive and it is done … in a highly conscious way. On
the buses people sing, dance, and play the drums; this, needless to say, is not due to any
sudden improvement in the city transportation system. The bus trip itself is encompassed
by Carnival since it is not transporting ill-paid workers with a strict deadline for arriving at
work but Carnival foliões sure that things will not begin until they get there. And here the
reversal is remarkable, for the moment of travel in a crowded means of public transportation is ordinarily considered one of the clearest examples of city hellishness; at Carnival it
becomes a moment of high creativity and an event to be lived with smiles, diversion and
bodily contacts. This is a conscious displacement and a movement marked by ritualisation
and inversion. It thus differs markedly from the trip to daily work and its ‘empty time’, time
that has to be killed.
70
cruzeiros (about $ 5.50 to
$ 55.00 U.S.). The box seats,
about fifty-one of them,
cost 10,000 cruzeiros
(about $ 733).
The urban world is set aside for and by Carnival. Entire streets take on a private aspect,
opening again a deep link between their houses, displaying their own lighting and
decorations, and holding their own parade and fantasia (Carnival costume) competition.
Similarly, entire zones of the city are reordered such that the downtown becomes divided
into a multitude of small niches or little squares where people can meet and celebrate their
Carnival. The city government itself creates these spaces by setting up bandstands on
certain corners of the major avenues and hiring small bands of musicians to play there. Thus
Rio de Janeiro, seen every day as a systematic and highly fragmented, problematic megalopolis,
suddenly finds itself articulated by many Carnival subdivisions, each with its own band,
bandstand and population. Everyone joins in the merriment and this reinvention of city space,
which shifts from being impersonal and disconnected to being personal, ‘communitarian’ (in
Victor Turner’s sense), and most especially, creative. It now leaves room and opportunity for
the individualised expressions of neighbourhoods, classes and social categories. But all of this is
done in the same style, the style of Carnival, and that is a basic point.
The movement of Carnival does not differ from other ritual movements in that they all
require a special place for their performance. The major contrast between the Carnival
marches, military parades and religious processions is that the Carnival requires a much
larger space, which is occupied for a much longer time. Military parades and processions
occupy public space (streets, alleys, avenues and squares) for a few hours in the morning or
the afternoon. Carnival massively occupies this space for at least three days and includes a
long period of preparation. Considerable effort must be invested in traffic plans and
arrangements, particularly in cities like Rio de Janeiro with a population of more than five
million people. Besides the traffic arrangements during the Carnival period, there is the
construction of bandstands and huge grandstands to provide seating for 60,000 people
during the march of the samba schools on Sunday1. These grandstands have bathrooms,
medical facilities, areas for tv and radio broadcasting, places of honour for visitors and a
covered section that has higher prices. The box seats are located in this ‘noble’ section, a
space that is segregated and also hierarchically arranged, as is true in the ‘clubs’. The line of
parade, involving approximately 12,000 persons among the twelve associations of the main
group of the samba schools, takes place in a true canyon of spectators, who occupy both
sides of the grandstands and join in singing and dancing with the desfilantes2.
During Carnival, then, the street is permeated by the povo [the poor folk]. They occupy it
at virtually every level for parades, promenades and all the other social activities associated
with a lengthy occupation of the public arena. Carnival replaces the frantic and deadly
journeys of buses and automobiles with an inverted movement that has no sure direction
or destination. It is highly ritualised because it is openly self-conscious. In this ‘Carnival
trip’ it does not matter where one is going or how one gets there. The important thing is to
move along without direction or destination, to take intense delight in the movement
itself, and to occupy humanly the streets of the city’s commercial centre, where impersonal
and inhuman laws of transit prevail in the ordinary routine of the everyday world.
In the Carnival of 1977, I saw people sleeping, urinating and making love on the benches
of the small garden in the centre of the city. I also saw whole families camped out in the
centre of the city. Sitting on aluminum chairs, they nonchalantly watched the passing
groups of foliões and blocos. Close by were their open cars, where little children were calmly
sleeping. It was like an inverted picnic, but one located on the savage and hostile asphalt
that had been transformed and domesticated for the moment since they also had coolers
from which they took bottles of water and beer, as desired. All this was happening on Rio
Branco Avenue, the centre of Rio’s banking, commercial and shopkeeping world. Our
home-grown, greedy and impersonal Wall Street had been transformed into a collection of
‘houses’ encompassed by the same family spirit that typifies the small towns of the interior.
Rio de Janeiro was now a city divided into a thousand small towns.
I noted this same sensation of transformation and radical displacement of activities,
persons and objects, as I observed the movement of people on Rio Branco Avenue in
the area of Cinelândia. On Rio Branco Avenue, where the everyday pace is rushed and
71
concerned about getting somewhere, I saw people strolling without any look of concern on
their faces. No one was heading for a pressing or important goal of the sort that makes us
forget the pleasure of the trip. No one had such clear-cut goals on their Carnival stroll. We
know that human beings form a group when they have common objectives. It takes some
minimal common denominator to form clans, lineages or political parties. But in Carnival,
people behave without specific goals and with multiple aims. On this occasion it is ‘joy’,
‘laughter’, ‘music’, ‘happiness’ and sexual pleasure that matter, which brings about a
formidable transformation of and invention of what we, in Brazil, call o povo [the destitute
people] or a massa [the masses], that mass of relatively undifferentiated human beings who
appear basically indistinguishable in their pursuit of human things. As such, they now seek
goals for which politicians and ministers have not yet devised a form, much less a method
to reach them. People are now basically seeking pleasure and luck, happiness and well
being. That is precisely what rules out the exact sociability of corporate bodies and permits
the fantastic openness that ends up relinking and reuniting each with all as only an
authentically religious moment would do. All are joined as mere Carnival foliões and as full
members of the same human species eternally searching happiness, and, above all, as
Brazilians … Stripped of our social roles as members of a family, neighbourhood, race,
occupational category and social segment, we are left simply with the truth that we are
nothing more than men and women seeking pleasure in a certain style. It is because of this
that we can instantly conclude that we are, above all, Brazilians.
‘A Special Place’ by Roberto DaMatta, an extract from Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes (London: University of Notre Dame
Press, originally published as Carnavais, malandros e heróis: Para uma sociologia do dilema brasileiro in 1979, English
translation and reprint 1991, pp. 81-85), appears courtesy of the author.
72
Rio de Janeiro’s four-day Carnival, the largest in the world, has long
ceased to be a party for the poor. Stars fight for the best place and
models rush to get their fat removed by liposuction. And all of this is
much to the regret of the traditionalists who mourn the passing of
their once equalitarian festival.
Rio Carnival Is All about Money,
Publicity and Silicone
Ineke Holtwijk
Model Rosane Braga, twenty-six, is completely unknown in Brazil. A plastic surgeon is to
remove one of her ribs so that she will look even thinner during Carnival. This means that
her 72cm waist will be reduced to a mere 66cm. But while the surgeon’s at it, Rosane has
decided that she might as well have some fat removed by liposuction, get her nose fixed
and have silicone implants in her breasts. ‘My dream is to have the body of a Barbie Doll,’
she says.
However, her investment – the loss of a rib cost her the equivalent of Euro 8,168 – failed
to win her a coveted place on a float. The competition for ‘the greatest show on earth’, as the
organisers of the Rio parade like to call it, is fierce. There is a lot of sculpted nudity on offer.
And women are increasingly going to great lengths to win that special place.
Plastic surgeon Farid Hakme works at the Interplastica clinic that normally deals with
fifty breast operations a month. This figure soars to 400 in the weeks preceding the
Carnival. Hakme: ‘The first thing that they ask when they come here is whether it can be
done in time for the parade.’
The doctor says that the ladies like to have everything fixed for the parade: buttocks and
fat removal (liposuction), with breasts becoming a recent demand. He understands it.
‘You’re a model and you’ve had a child. So you don’t want to appear on the float with those
shrivelled breasts. We simply turn them back into goddesses.’ He also has male patients
who get their spare tyres removed for the parade. ‘But they’re gay.’
No one’s ashamed. The plastic surgeon in Brazil is the equivalent of a Dutch hairdresser.
A few weeks ago even the youthful wife of the governor of Rio admitted that she too had
had a ‘lipo’. This was not for the floats but simply because of Carnival. ‘There are so many
foreign visitors and I want to look good.’
God couldn’t think of everything when he created the world and Janaina Guerra doesn’t
blame him. The 23-year-old bleached blonde is as thin as a rake. But a few weeks ago she had
1700ml of fat removed. She’d been booked for a photo session and of course Carnival was
also coming up. ‘I couldn’t be photographed from a certain angle because it looked as if I had
a bit of a tummy.’
Janaina doesn’t feel that there’s anything exaggerated about this. ‘Carnival is important
for your career. The whole world can see you.’ Previous parades have resulted in quite a few
invitations for shows. This month Janaina is on the cover of Ele & Ela, a magazine for men.
This kind of work will also strengthen your market position in the parade. The blonde is
appearing with seven samba schools over a period of two nights. She admits that it’s a real
slog. ‘Sometimes I have to wear sandals and sometimes I have to wear boots.’ Fortunately,
apart from that she’s practically naked.
But there were two samba schools that she turned down. ‘You really have to check out
what they’re offering you,’ Janaina advises. ‘I don’t want to be stuck at the back of the float.
73
Buena Vista
Early morning before the start of the big parade, Curaçao Carnival
Photo by Catrien Ariëns
That doesn’t do you any favours.’ And she always demands a place on the right-hand side
because that’s where the television cameras are.
Just two schools have hired Rosane Braga. She will feature as a madrinha for the Tradicao
samba school, a role that with a little luck and skill could result in media interest. The
madrinhas – literally godmothers – are the parade’s cheerleaders. They dance in their
sequinned bikinis in front of the floats or groups of people in costumes. Rosane is a
madrinha for the invalids’ group. Her group is called ‘Freedom for the Butterflies’.
The samba schools, the Carnival associations which are responsible for Rio’s four-day
parade, were founded in the slums at the beginning of the last century. Their members were
black and poor. By the 1960s, Carnival, which is actually a competition, had become more
professional. The costumes were more luxurious and stars, including white stars, had begun
to appear on the floats.
Since the 1980s Carnival has rapidly ‘whitened up’. Poor people can no longer afford the
costumes. Either it’s the middle class who buys the costumes, and often by means of the
Internet, or it’s the tourists who head straight to the parade from the airport.
You have two options if you want to appear on a float. You can buy a place – and here
Euro 9,075 should go some way towards achieving this – or you can put on a short skirt and
show the director of a samba school what you have on offer. That is if you’re beautiful, of
course.
Dionizio da Costa Mendes, the youthful director of the social department of the
Salgueiro samba school, says that his office is inundated with women, all of whom wish to
speak to him urgently. ‘I suddenly turn into Leonardo di Caprio in the days leading up to
the Carnival.’
The fiercest fight is over who will be the godmother of the drum band. ‘They’ll practically
kill each other for it,’ says Leci Brandao. But being beautiful is not enough. It helps to be an
ex. The ex of racing driver Ayrton Senna and Ronaldo’s ex were amongst this year’s prizewinners.
Leci is a samba singer; she is coffee-coloured, more than fifty and has samba in her heart
rather than silicone implants in her breasts. She is one of the tradicionalistas who hate
women like Rosane and Janaina.
Leci feels that the samba schools should dump these opportunists immediately and give
their places to mulatto beauties from the slums. Rather than hanging around fitness centres
for two hours a day, these young women are deeply committed to the samba school; they
attend rehearsals every week and wear the association’s colours with pride.
But the he-men who run the samba schools prefer centimetres and silicone. Carnival has
long ceased to be the party of democracy, starring queens for a night. It’s all about money
and publicity. The directors are constantly harping on about the slums and beauty that
comes from within. But who are the women who succeed in getting the best places and the
expensive costumes without actually having to pay for them? They’re the Misses, the exes
of famous footballers and the models who suddenly show up just before Carnival. And Leci
feels that this is stupid beyond belief.
‘It would be understandable if these women could win points for the competition but
this is not the case. The samba schools should be more self-aware and simply ignore them.’
Paulo Cesar Mangana, head of the Salgueiro samba school, feels that this is nonsense.
‘People prefer to see a beautiful body rather than an ugly one.’ Should he go against his
better judgement and reject these divine creatures? Beauty creates publicity. And so
‘Salgueiro will always have a place for a beautiful woman.’ Sixty models and fifteen actors
and actresses will be parading with Salgueiro this year. ‘We’re in fashion.’
Mangana has booked the most talked-about woman of the year: the media phenomenon
Joana Prado. The school’s competitors say that it’s cost a small fortune, a claim that
Mangana denies. Prado is a veiled but otherwise extremely naked belly dancer who appears
each day on television. She has been successfully launched as the successor to Tiazinha, the
‘auntie’ with the whip who was the sensation of last year’s Carnival.
A few months ago Joana Prado’s perfect body resulted in record sales for Playboy. When
76
Joana, whose nickname is the Enchantress, visited a rehearsal at Salgueiro shortly before the
Carnival, she was applauded by the school’s thousands of members. No one cared that
Joana is white and that her undulations do not include the samba.
Joana can wear her famous veil on the float as she portrays a seller of Arab herbs. However, Mangueira, Leci Brandao’s samba school, turned the Enchantress down as her veil
entails the risk of losing points because it covers her face. Initially Joana was to deploy her
body for the school but her departure has been a triumph for its traditionalists.
Leci admits that models do appear on the Mangueira float. ‘But they do it out of love for
the school,’ she says. ‘Mangueira is an extremely closed samba school on the edge of the
slums and has close ties with the local residents.’
For several years now Mangueira’s godmother has been elected by the 300 members of its
drum band. Actresses in need of samba lessons are not in the running. Each year the winner
is a musa de raiz, a woman who is born and bred in the neighbourhood like Tania Bisteka, a
less-than-perfect mulatto who out-dances everyone else. A few other samba schools have
followed suit. But the traditionalists urge caution here. For some schools this is simply a
marketing strategy because appearing to be authentic sells better.
Mangueira can do wrong as far the traditionalists are concerned. This year the samba
school is deploying a group of 800 black dancers. They will depict the role of the Negro in
Brazilian history. ‘It’s an attempt to re-introduce the local community into the parade,’ says Leci.
And – surprise, surprise – the stars will still be out in force. But this time Leci, a negritude’s
activist, is also trying to involve black heroes, a move that is quite simply a tradicionalista’s
spin on reality: ‘showing the parade live on television means that there will always be stars.’
Translated from the Dutch by Annie Wright
‘The Rio Carnival Is All about Money, Publicity and Silicone’ by Ineke Holtwijk
was first published in De Volkskrant, 6 March 2000
77
Otrobanda, Roodeweg
The evening before the carnival parade, Curaçao Carnival
C’est le carnaval à Fort-de-France en Martinique. Devant une foule médusée, le conteur Solibo Magnifique meurt étouffé dans ses propres mots
et fait l’objet d’une enquête policière. L’écrivain Patrick Chamoiseau est
né à la Martinique où il habite encore actuellement. Solibo Magnifique est
le deuxième de ses romans. Il a reçu le Prix Goncourt pour le troisième,
intitulé Texaco. Patrick Chamoiseau a été lauréat du Prix Prince Claus
en 1999.
Mozaïque de souvenirs
La mort de Solibo Magnifique
Patrick Chamoiseau
Au cours d’une soirée de carnaval à Fort-de-France, entre dimanche Gras et mercredi des
Cendres, le conteur Solibo Magnifique mourut d’une égorgette de la parole, en s’écriant:
Patat’sa! ... Son auditoire n’y voyant qu’un appel au vocal crut devoir répondre: Patat’si! ...
Cette récolte du destin que je vais vous conter eut lieu à une date sans importance puisque
ici le temps ne signe aucun calendrier.
Mais d’abord, ô amis, avant l’atrocité, accordez une faveur: n’imaginez Solibo Magnifique
qu’à la verticale, dans ses jours les plus beaux. Cette parole ne se donne qu’après l’heure de
sa mort ... tristesse, mi! ... et même pas dans un dit de veillée, auprès de son corps parfumé
aux bonnes herbes. Se figurant un crime, la police l’a ramassé comme s’il s’agissait d’une
ordure de la vie, et la médecine légale l’a autopsié en petits morceaux. On a découpé l’os de
sa tête pour briguer le mystère de sa mort dans sa crème de cervelle. On a découpé sa
poitrine, on a découpé ses poumons et son coeur. Son sang a été coulé dans des tubes de
verre blanc, et, de son estomac ouvert, on a saisi son dernier touffé-requin. Quand Sidonise
le reverra, aussi mal recousu qu’un jupon de misère ... roye! comment dire cette tristesse
qu’aucune brave ne peut laisser noyer ses yeux? ... C’est pourquoi, ô amis, avant ma parole je
demande la faveur: imaginez Solibo dans ses jours les plus beaux, en vaillance toujours, avec
le sang qui tourne, le corps planté dans la vie en poteau d’acacia dans une boue dangereuse.
Car, si de son vivant il était une énigme, aujourd’hui c’est bien pire: il n’existe (comme s’en
apercevra l’inspecteur principal au-delà de l’enquête) que dans une mosaïque de souvenirs,
et ses contes, ses devinettes, ses blagues de vie et de mort, se sont dissous dans des
consciences trop souvent enivrées.
A terre dans Fort-de-France, il était devenu un Maître de la parole incontestable, non par
décret de quelque autorité folklorique ou d’action culturelle (seuls lieux où l’on célèbre
encore l’oral) mais par son goût du mot, du discours sans virgule. Il parlait, voilà. Sur le
marché aux poissons ou il connaissait tout le monde, il parlait à chaque pas, il parlait à
chacun, à chaque panier et sur chaque poisson. S’il y rencontrait une commère folle à la
langue, disponible et inutile, manman! quelle rafale de blabla ... Au billard de la CroixMission, au vendredi du marché-viande à l’arrivage du boeuf, sur le préau de la cathédrale
après la dévotion, au stade Louis-Achille tandis que nous assassinions l’arbitre, Solibo
parlait, il parlait sans arrêt, il parlait aux kermesses, il parlait aux manèges, et plus encore aux
fêtes. Mais il n’était pas un évadé d’hopital psychiatrique, de ces déréglés qui secouent la
parole comme on se bat une douce. Au Chez Chinotte, sanctuaire du punch, on s’assemblait
80
1.
Rhum blanc
2.
Philosophe martiniquais
pour l’écouter alors que pas un cheveu blanc n’habitait sur ses tempes, et le tafia 1 n’avait
même pas encore rougi ses yeux (seul le premier jaune sale avait touché le blanc) qu’un
silence accueillait l’ouverture de sa bouche: par-ici, c’est cela qui signale et consacre le
Maître.
3.
Un bidonville de la banlieue
de Fort-de-France.
4.
Grand tambour traditionnel
que l’on joue avec les mains.
5.
Un jeu de dés martiniquais
J’aurais voulu pour lui d’une parole à sa mesure: inscrite dans une vie simple et plus haute
que toute vie. Mais, autour de son cadavre, la police déploya la mort obscure: l’injustice,
l’humiliation, la méprise. Elle amena les absurdités du pouvoir et de la force: terreur et folie.
Frappé d’un blanc à l’âme, il ne me reste plus qu’à en témoigner, dressé là parmi vous,
maniant ma parole comme dans un Vénéré, cette perdue nuit de tambour et de prières que
les nègres de Guadeloupe blanchissaient en souvenir d’un mort. Mais, amis ho! devant ces
policiers gardez les dents à l’embellie, car, ainsi le pense René Ménil2 dans une écriture, c’est
par le rire amer qu’une époque se venge de ceux qui encombrent tardivement la scène, et se
sépare d’eux, en espoir, avant leur mort réelle.
Donc, fatale soirée: après les défilés, la foule s’était répartie dans les bals populaires
(grajés-jounous, touffé-yinyin, zoucs et autres machapias ... ) que Carnaval sème à son heure
depuis les herbes de Balata jusqu’aux cases du quartier Texaco3. Dans l’air du centre-ville ne
subsistait plus que la cendre des joies, et sur les mornes lointains des tambours ka 4
syncopaient leurs battements. Sous les tamariniers de la Savane, grand-place de liberté
végétale, les amateurs du jeu serbi 5 avaient enflammé des dizaines de flambeaux et hurlaient
leurs paris en échangeant des dames-jeannes de tafia. D’autres nègres, moins débridés,
priaient silencieusement la sainte Madone de la Jossaud à propos de l’énigme d’une carte
noire parmi des rouges, ou des salopes hésitations d’une boule de casino-tonneau. Il faut
dire, pour finale du décor, le gravier d’étoiles au ciel, l’haleine aigre-douce des tamarins, et la
cacophonie des marchandes de toutes qualités.
Son tambour à l’épaule, le musicien qui d’habitude accompagnait les parlers de Solibo
Magnifique arriva dès les premières ombres et s’installa sous le plus vieux des tamariniers,
auprès du monument aux morts. C’était un rien d’homme dessiné par ses os, avec le cou
blanchi d’une dermatose ancienne, il se criait Sucette. Ce surnom provenait de ses attentions
buccales notoires aux bouteilles du rhum Neisson. Par douze tak-tak sonores et deux-trois
grondements de son tambour gros-ka, Sucette convoqua une compagnie sous la lumière de
son flambeau. Flap, et même plus vite que flap, délaissant les tables de jeux, un auditoire
s’était formé, avide déja de l’apparition de Solibo Magnifique: toute parole du vieux conteur,
rare ces temps-ci, était bonne à entendre. Il va venir, Sucette? ... Où il est ho? tu crois qu’il va
venir? ... Ces impatients ne pouvaient deviner qu’un moment plus tard, la police inscrirait
leur nom dans un procès-verbal, ni même ne soupçonnnaient qu’en certaines circonstances
et au nom de la Loi de simples écoutants de contes-cricraks devenaient des témoins.
(Liste des témoins. Extraite du rapport d’ensemble d’enquête préliminaire remis
par l’inspecteur principal au commissaire divisionnaire.
– Zozor Alcide-Victor, commerçant, demeurant 6 rue François-Arago.
– Eloi Apollon, surnommé Sucette, se disant tambourier de cricracks, en réalité sans
profession, sans domicile fixe.
– Le surnommé Bête-Longue (des recherches concernant l’état civil de cet individu sont en
cours), se disant marin-pêcheur, très certainement sans profession, demeurant à Texaco,
près de la fontaine.
– Lolita Boidevan, surnommée Doudou-Ménar, vendeuse de fruits confits, demeurant au
Pont-Démosthène, après le grand canal, derrière la ravine.
– Patrick Chamoiseau, surnommé Chamzibié, Ti-cham ou Oiseau de Cham, se disant
‘marqueur de paroles’, en réalité sans profession, demeurant 90 rue François-Arago.
– Richard Cœurillon, se disant employé d’usine (?), très certainement sans profession,
demeurant à Château-Boeuf, dans la première descente.
81
Kintjan, Antoine Maduro Stadium
The end of the children’s carnival in Curaçao
– Bateau Français, surnommé Congo, fabricant de râpes à manioc (?), très probablement
sans profession, demeurant quartier La-Belfort, Lamentin.
– Charles Gros-Liberté, surnommé Charlot, se disant musicien, en réalité sans profession,
demeurant rue du 8-Mai, cité Dillon.
– Justin Hamanah, surnommé Didon, se disant maître-djobeur au marché aux légumes, en
réalité sans profession, demeurant 10 rue Schoelcher, Terres-Sainville.
– Conchita Juanez y Rodriguez, de nationalité colombienne, sans profession, fichée comme
se livrant à la prostitution, sans domicile fixe.
– Antoinette Maria-Jésus Sidonise, marchande de sorbets, demeurant rue des Abymes,
Trénelle.
– Pierre Philomène Soleil, surnommé Pipi, se disant maître-djobeur, en réalité sans
profession, demeurant à Rive-Droite-Levassor.
– Sosthene Versailles, surnommé Ti-Cal, employé municipal, demeurant rue de la Liberté
prolongée, Volga Plage (connu comme indépendantiste).
– Edouard Zaboca, surnommé la Fièvre, se disant ouvrier agricole, en réalité sans
profession, demeurant à Gondeau, Lamentin.
6.
Planteurs blancs de la
Martinique et leurs
descendants.
7.
Echange traditionnel entre
le conteur et son public.
Le conteur veut être sûr que
son public est bien réveillé.
8.
Réponse traditionnelle
du public.
9.
A nouveau, échange traditionnel entre le conteur et
son public.
Ces témoins ont été entendus par le brigadier-chef, Philémon Bouaffesse, puis
par moi-même, Evariste Pilon. Leurs auditions, ainsi que les incidents regrettables
qui les ont accompagnées, font l’objet des procès-verbaux joints.)
An! Solibo Magnifique était arrivé en achevant une pirouette. Moustaches en touffe,
barbiche balai-coucoune à la pointe du menton, il avait les yeux jaune-rouge des experts en
tafia. Sa chemise de nylon blanc portait des manchettes en or, oui, et des serre-manches
argentés. Son pantalon-tergal, escampé à mort, tombait pile sur des santiagos vernis: ah,
Solibo méritait encore l’autre morceau de son nom! ... Il avait soulevé son petit chapeau
pour saluer l’auditoire: Messieurs et dames si je dis bonsoir c’est parce qu’il ne fait pas jour
et si je dis pas bonne nuit c’est auquel-que la nuit sera blanche ce soir comme un cochonplanche sans son mauvais samedi et plus blanche même qu’un béké 6 sans soleil sous son
parapluie de promenade au mitan d’une pièce-cannes é krii 7? ...
– E Kraa! 8 avait répondu la compagnie.
Alors-isidore, tandis qu’au loin les rumeurs s’épuisaient, le Maître de la parole avait parlé
inoculant à l’auditoire une fièvre sans médecine. Il ne s’agissait pas de comprendre le dit,
mais de s’ouvrir au dire, s’y laisser emporter, car Solibo devenait là un son de gorge plus en
voltige qu’un solo de clarinette quand Stélio le musicien y engouffrait son souffle.
Toute la nuit, le vocal avait tonné. Prouvant au Maître de la parole leur vigilance, les
écoutants avaient répondu le E kraa! avec force. Le Misti-craa! 9 avait sonné comme la passe
des soufflants d’un orchestre latino. A l’heure où le ciel pâlit et qu’un vent brumeux
annonce le petit jour, Solibo Magnifique avait hoqueté dans un virage de la parole. Puis, sans
pourquoi ni comment messieurs et dames, s’était écrié: Patat’ sa ! ... (Or, Patat’ sa! n’existe
pas dans le cricrack. Le conteur dit E krii, demande Misticrii, interroge pour savoir si la cour
dort souplé? ... appelle son tafia, un accord du tambour, mais ne hèle jamais Patat’ sa! ... )
Pourtant à ce cri de souffrance, la compagnie avait répondu Patat’ si!, tant il est vrai qu’en
matière de sottise les meilleurs candidats ne se trouvent pas toujours dans les troupeaux de
moutons.
‘Mozaïque de souvenirs: La mort de Solibo Magnifique’ est extrait du livre Solibo Magnifique de
Patrick Chamoiseau(Paris: Editions Gallimand, 1988) pp. 25-34 © Editions Gallimard
Parade, Curaçao Carnival
84
Otrobanda, Breedestraat
The Gran Marcha, the big parade, Curaçao Carnival
From samba and merengue to reggae, zouk and calypso, Carnival music
provides the creative space for masking and fantasy, liberation, licence and
celebration. With roots in ancient religions, popular Carnival hits merge
the past with the new music technologies of the present. The infectious
beat is part of a living tradition that began in enslavement and migration
and continues today.
Wood, Skin and Steel
The Musical Fusions of Carnival
Simon Lee
The sacred drum of Africa
In the pre-dawn dark of a Monday morning in February or March, depending when the
Roman Catholic season of Lent begins, city streets throughout the Caribbean stir and
convulse to incendiary rhythms which eventually erupt at sunrise into the tidal wave,
which is Carnival.
In the darkness of Jouvert (from the French jour ouvert, daybreak) bamboo vaksins hoot in
Port-au-Prince, Haiti; gwo ka drums thunder in Basseterre, Guadeloupe; lapo kabwit drums
rage in Roseau, Dominica, while in Trinidad, blue devils wave their tails and menace
crowds with pitchforks to the militant beat of biscuit tins as steel bands hypnotise
thousands into the slow syncopated ‘chip’ shuffle which will keep them moving, long after
the sun slides behind the mountains of the Northern Range.
If Carnival is the apotheosis of Caribbean popular culture, a combination of planned
multimedia event, spontaneous street theatre and party, then music is undoubtedly its
driving energy, the spirit which animates the craftsmen and women, designers and
ultimately the masqueraders and all who participate in this collective festival. It is music
which provides the creative space for masking and fantasy, liberation, licence and
celebration.
Contemporary Carnival, whether in the Caribbean, Latin America or in the wider
diaspora (Miami, Toronto, London), embraces high and low culture, the avant-garde along
with folk traditions. In the largely oral societies of the Caribbean, where the concept of
documenting heritage is still fairly recent, Carnival is a repository of the cultures inducted
to the region through greed, violence and deception, and an accumulation of the fusions, or
creolised syncretisms, which have evolved as a result of 500 years of their co-habitation.
As an organic cultural phenomenon, Carnival is a working example of the concept of
building bridges between cultures and at the same time it is a refutation of homogeneity
and the dangerous fallacy of globalisation. Assimilating, or worse, sacrificing, the ‘other’ on
the altar of an economic or technological buzzword may lead not only to the destruction of
bridges but also to the drying up of the rivers they cross.
Examining Caribbean Carnival as a repository of history, Creole development and
popular culture, the culture and the religions of Africa, Asia and the Americas, and even
those of Europe, play a vital role in the music of Carnival.
Sadly, virtually nothing has survived of the region’s original inhabitants, the
Amerindians, apart from the shac shac (or maracas), which feature as percussion
instruments throughout the islands. It is only in the musically fertile Windward island of
Dominica that you can hear Amerindian music, played on bamboo flutes to drum and shac
88
shac accompaniment, with singing and dancing performed by cultural groups from the
Carib Territory, where the region’s last 3,500 indigenous survivors live.
Yet even in Dominica, as throughout the Caribbean, the music of Carnival is powered by
African-derived rhythms. After the European settlers had decimated the indigenous
population they turned to Africa as a new source of free labour. The millions of slaves
imported between 1514 and 1888 carried their gods and ancestors – along with the rhythms
that summoned them – across the Atlantic.
At Haiti’s oldest vaudou ceremony (six days and nights starting on Good Friday) held in
the Souvenance compound to honour the Rada lwa or spirits of Dahomey (present-day
Benin), the same rhythms and songs played in Africa 300 years ago can still be heard. Some
of these songs are sung in ‘langaj’, a sacred African tribal language no longer spoken.
Similarly, in Cuba’s African-derived Santeria religion and the secret, all male, Abakua
sect, African rhythms still survive – as they do on the tiny Grenadine island of Carriacou,
where the Big Drum ceremony for the ancestors is still performed. In Trinidad, there is the
Yoruba Orisha religion, in Suriname there is Winti ancestor worship, and in the majority of
the islands some kind of African-derived religion, some nameless, some only halfremembered but all of them powered by the sacred drum.
All these sacred musics were used as strategies for survival and resistance during and after
slavery. It’s no coincidence that the successful slave rebellion in Haiti was initiated at the
Bois Caiman vaudou ceremony in 1791, where drums summoned the aggressive Petro
spirits to assist the slaves in their war against the French.
Some of these rhythms have found their way into the music of Carnival and also into
Latin Jazz classics. Roots music bands in Haiti, starting with Boukman Eksperyans (named
for the Jamaican born vaudou priest who presided at Bois Caiman), which have
experimented since the 1980s with the fusion of vaudou ceremonial rhythms and songs
with electric instrumentation and transnational influences from rock, reggae and rap to jazz
and hip hop, unleash vaudou rhythms on the Port-au-Prince Carnival crowds, and
possession is a regular occurrence.
It was an influx of Carriacouan immigrants to Trinidad in the 1840s, bringing with them
the rhythms of Big Drum ritual dances derived from the Hausa, Arada, Ibo, Kromanti,
Manding tribes who gave such impetus to Trinidad’s post-emancipation Carnival.
Carriacouan master drummer Winston Flaery also claims that the music and songs of
stickfighting, which played a prominent role in Trinidad’s Carnival through the nineteenth
century and which is still practised, also came from Carriacou.
African rhythms have played a major role in all Creole music forms from son and
merengue to reggae, zouk and calypso. Yet the African drum had to endure colonial
oppression – something which ironically worked as a catalyst in producing one of the main
musical ingredients of Carnival in the Anglophone Caribbean – the steelpan.
While the Hispanic colonists tended to allow their slaves a degree of cultural licence
(which some theorise is one of the factors in Cuba’s polyrhythmic music), drums were
banned in many British and Dutch islands.
Besides fearing the drum’s potential for signalling and orchestrating rebellion, the
colonial authorities of Protestant islands tended to be far less tolerant of African-style
worship than their Roman Catholic counterparts in the French and Hispanic Caribbean.
Since the reformation, Protestantism had banished the saints, the ceremony, the rituals of
Catholicism (which in many aspects parallels the secular pageantry of Carnival) for a
fundamentalist austerity.
The ritual and saints of Catholicism were not that far removed from the African orishas
and the appropriation of Catholic saints by Creole African religions is another example of
successful bridge-building, which rather than resulting in homogeneity, produces
something unique, part of the Creole paradigm.
After the 1888 ban on drums in Trinidad, (commemorated in an early calypso ‘Can’t beat
the drum in my own native land’) experiments were made first with lengths of bamboo,
giving rise to the tamboo bands which accompanied Carnival bands and then in the late
89
Seru Fortuna
Juanita, dressed as a Barbie Doll for the Curaçao school carnival,
with her father and grandmother
1930s with pots and pans, tins and eventually the oil drum prototypes of the steelpan.
A similar creative diversion took place in Curaçao, when the distinctive African tambu
rhythm played on drums and hoe heads was banned only to resurface as tumba, Curaçao’s
equivalent of calypso.
Creolising the mix
Creole music – that is, music created in the Caribbean – is another continuous example of
syncretism and the building of bridges between often disparate cultures.
So it is not surprising to find a Javanese band in Suriname playing soca music from
Trinidad’s Carnival nor a traditional Jing Ping folk band in Dominica playing the calypsos of
the Mighty Sparrow, probably the world’s best known surviving ‘Trini’ calypsonian. Nor is
it uncharacteristic at Trinidad’s Hosay festival, which was originally a solemn Shi’ite
Muslim occasion commemorating the deaths of Mohammed’s nephews in battle, to find
the descendants of African slaves beating the tassa war drums alongside their East Indian
compatriots. The Chinese cornet, played in the essentially African conga music of Santiago
de Cuba’s Carnival, has long been recognised as a definitive sound of this particular Carnival.
The fusion which is the basis of most Caribbean popular music and especially the music
of Carnival is that of African rhythms with European forms (from classical music to formal
dances, hymns, folk and sailors’ songs) and instrumentation. Once again it is relevant in the
light of the bridge-building (vis à vis homogeneity versus roots and identity debate) that
the fusions produced are new, unique, and distinctly Creole forms. They have become
sources of national and regional identity and pride.
The ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel points out in his well-researched overview of the
region’s music, Caribbean Currents, forms as different as the rather stately danza of
nineteenth century Puerto Rico, which has little or no African input, and the distinctly neoAfrican Cuban rumba of the late nineteenth century are Creole creations.
To come up to date, we can identify two vibrant but little known Afro-Caribbean dance
musics as examples of the continuing Creole paradigm: Punta Rock, a band produced by the
Garifuna or Black Caribs of Belize (descendants of the offspring of African slaves and Caribs
from St Vincent), fuses traditional Garifuna rhythms and drums with calypso, soca, salsa,
son, and zouk influences played on electric instruments.
Similarly, in Suriname, kaskawi is a total hybrid: a fusion of kawina drumming and
kaseko (Suriname’s version of calypso which takes its name from the French Guyanese
Creole dance cassez corps or break your body). Both kaseko and kaskawi are permeated with
the rhythms and vocal styles of the Bush Negroes, runaway slaves who founded
clandestine settlements in the Amazon rainforest, maintaining an African lifestyle and
culture to this day.
It seems entirely apt and pertinent to the debate that it was a kaskawi hit, ‘Faluma’, sung
by the Surinamese group Ai Sa Si in Saramakan (one of the tribal languages of the Bush
Negroes), that provided the Barbadian soca group Square One with their massive Carnival
hit of the same name in 1997/98. Sung by the region’s reigning soca diva Alison Hinds (who
retained the Saramakan lyrics), Square One’s ‘Faluma’ was played at Carnivals throughout
the Caribbean and the diaspora and was instrumental in establishing the singer as an icon of
popular culture.
The ‘Faluma’ story is a prime example of Carnival music at its Creole creative best: it
spans the cultures of the Caribbean, from the Maroons of the seventeenth century and their
language, while incorporating soca, the latest musical idiom of Trinidad, as interpreted by a
Barbadian band. This is spontaneous bridge-building.
It’s both instructive and musically delightful to compare the original with its neo-African
polyrhythms and call and response choral work with the faster tempo soca version, but
more significant is the fact of its regional and diasporic success. This was not a by-product of
marketing but rather the Carnival infrastructure which underpins the Creole aesthetic.
‘Faluma’ precisely because of its uniqueness (but with the strong rhythms and call and
response format accessible to any Caribbean citizen) became an almost overnight success,
92
spread through the islands by DJs, radio stations and eventually bands on the road. Carnival
hits, whether road marches, party songs or traditional calypsos with their strong lyrical
content – each of these genres will be judged according to different criteria – are ephemeral
creations and however good they are rarely outlast the Carnival season. The Carnival
culture demands new songs each year (a situation which frustrates many musicians) and
many classics disappear into oblivion. However a hit in any category is usually innovative
but most importantly for road marches and party songs must be danceable. Traditional
calypso tends to be judged on the wit and word play of its lyrics.
Mother of all carnivals
Any discussion of Carnival music brings us to Trinidad, home of calypso and steelpan.
Theories on the origins of calypso are wide-ranging, controversial and ongoing. One of the
calypso greats, Rafael de Leon, the Roaring Lion, devoted an entire book to proving its
origins lay with the medieval French troubadours. Africanists point to songs of praise, satire
and topicality still sung in Africa. While both these schools of thought have their points,
the controversy is irrelevant. Calypso is a Creole form par excellence – a multi-fusion.
Trinidad, with its rich history and resulting cosmopolitanism (Spanish colony, settled by
French planters then seized by the British in 1797 who brought in Portuguese, Chinese and
East Indian indentured labourers after Emancipation) has been one of the major centres of
creolisation for more than 200 years.
Carnival was introduced to the Spanish-controlled island in the 1780s by an influx of
Roman Catholic French planters, invited under generous terms by the Spanish, with an eye
to developing the colony. The French from Martinique, possibly Haiti and Grenada too,
brought their slaves with them. As early as the 1820s, the Martiniquan planter Begorrat and
his chantwell (master singer) the slave Gros Jean, whose French Creole praise song for his
master, may be the first documented calypso:
Begorrat et Diab’la, c’est un (Begorrat and the devil, that’s one)
Begorrat et Diabl’a, c’est deux (Begorrat and the devil that’s two)
Begorrat fort cruel et mauvais (Begorrat is strong, cruel and wicked)
Begorrat roi-la dans son pays (Begorrat is king in his country)
Before Emancipation, the slaves had observed and even imitated their masters’ Carnival
celebrations. It is likely that some actually performed as musicians in the orchestras which
provided the accompaniment for the elegant Carnival balls. What is certain is that right
across the Caribbean it was the slaves’ appropriation of European formal dances (quadrille,
lancers, polka, reel and mazurka) which spawned the early forms of Creole music from
Cuban danzon to Haitian mereng, or the bélé of the Lesser Antilles.
With Emancipation in 1834 and the final end of slavery after the apprenticeship period in
1838, Carnival and its music passed into the hands of the black urban masses. They used the
festival not only to mimic and mock their former masters, but to settle scores among rival
gangs, which at Carnival would form themselves into bands, led by a chantwell.
Prior to 1834, the only celebrations allowed to slaves were during the Christmas season, a
period at the end of the sugarcane harvest and when the local militia would train and
therefore be ready for any slave insurrection.
After Emancipation the ex-slaves seized on Carnival as their festival. They celebrated
liberty by commemorating the old plantation days with the burning flambeaux of the
Cannes Brulées procession (gangs of slaves were called out to neighbouring plantations in
the night to put out fires which might otherwise have destroyed the precious crop).
They vented their creative energies in costume, song and dance and released their frustrations in escalating violence which led to the banning of Cannes Brulées and clashes with
colonial authorities in the 1880s. In this period Carnival and its music were distinctly AfroCreole and there was little interaction between the black lower classes and the privileged
white minority.
93
Children’s parade, Curaçao Carnival
After the intervention of the authorities in the 1880s, the banning of drums and even masks,
the foundations of modern Carnival were laid as the middle classes and even some of the
élite felt safe enough to participate. The bridge was now ready for building and music played
a fundamental role.
By the end of the nineteenth century calypso, or kaiso, was used to refer to any song
sung during the Carnival season. These songs included the lavway (an African style call
and response chant which led street festivals), the belair (French Creole topical song),
the calinda (stickfighting song) and the bongo (wake song sung for the recently dead).
Tunes were borrowed from the region (the Haitian folk song ‘Chaconné’ or ‘Yellow Bird’
is a famous example), from Europe and from America and between 1890 and 1930
accompaniment was often the string band (flute, clarinet, bass, cuatro, guitar and violin)
which was borrowed from neighbouring Venezuela.
It was the leader of the calinda (stickfighting) band who emerged as the early calypsonian,
or chantwell, as he was originally known. By the early 1900s the calypso tent (a bamboo
structure thatched with palm leaves) appeared, devoted to presenting songs of topical
interest, scandal, insult (picong), ballads and virtually any theme. The lavway – especially in
its ‘leggo’ form – became the street chant eventually evolving into what is known today as
‘The Road March’ (the most popular song played on the road during Carnival).
The stigma attached to the culture of the black lower classes, which we find throughout
the Caribbean (to the ridiculous extent that some black Dominicans still refer to themselves
as Indios Oscuros) gradually receded as the twentieth century progressed. Yet even as late
as the 1950s and the emergence of the Mighty Sparrow who won his first calypso monarch
title in 1956, to be a calypsonian or a steelbandsman was synonymous with being a lowlife.
It says much for the creative power of Carnival music that it was eventually able to cross the
bridges of class and colour.
This process of low culture (read African or Asian but definitely non-white) being
accepted, endorsed and even appropriated by élites is general throughout the Caribbean. It
happened with Cuban rumba (which went on to become an international dance craze –
despite the fact that most of the music played abroad was son) with reggae (initially
despised as downtown/Rasta music), calypso, steel band and if there are any doubts, one
only has to examine the most recent case: bachata of the Dominican Republic.
Unlike the national music merengue, which received state sanction from the dictator
Trujillo in the 1940s, the melancholic bachata (with its plangent soukous – like tumbling
guitars and Afro beats, whose lyrics voiced the pain of love gone wrong, betrayal or the
oppression and nostalgia of the displaced rural poor) remained the entertainment of the
lower class until the 1980s, when it received recognition only through the efforts of the
Dominican Republic’s greatest contemporary musician and songwriter, Juan Luis Guerra.
Recommended
Listening
Carriacou Callaloo (Rounder
Haiti
96
Records, U.S., 1999)
Various, Rhythms of Rapture,
Sacred Musics of Haitian
Barbados
Vodou (Smithsonian
Square One, In Full Bloom
Folkways, U.S., 1995)
(Esaf, Barbados, 1998)
Boukan Ginen, Jou A Rive
(Xenophile, U.S., 1995)
Trinidad
Boukman Eksperyans, Libeté
Various, Trinidad Rough Guide
(Pran Pou Pran) (Mango, UK,
to Calypso and Soca (World
1995)
Music Network, UK, 1999)
Tabou Combo, Zap! (Mini
Ella Andall, Oriki Ogun (Ella
Records, U.S.)
Andall, Trinidad, 1999)
Mighty Sparrow, Vols 1-3 (Ice
Jamaica
Records, Barbados/UK,
Various, The Roots of Reggae
1992)
(Lyrichord, U.S.)
Shadow, Shadowmania 1&2
(Rituals Records, Trinidad,
Cuba
1997)
Los Munequitos de Matanzas,
Andre Tanker, Children of the
Rumba Caliente (Qbadisc,
Big Bang (Rituals, Trinidad,
U.S.)
1996)
Clave y Guaguanco, Noche de
la Rumba (Tumi, UK, 1999)
Curaçao
Various, Fiesta Cubana Congas
Trinchere-a Tela t’ei bash’
y Comparsas (Artex, Canada,
abou (Trinchera, Curaçao,
1991)
1999)
Mercedita Valdes, Tumi Cuba
Ike Jesurun, Time (Red Bullet,
Classics Vol 2: Afro Cuban
Holland, 1995)
(Tumi, UK)
Izaline Calister, Soño di
un muhé [One Woman’s
Dominican Republic
Various, The Rough Guide to
Dream] (Exil Musik,
Curaçao, 2000)
Merengue and Bachata
(World Music Network, UK,
2001)
Returning to Trinidad and contemporary Carnival music, we are faced with paradoxes and
contradictions in terms of building bridges but more especially with reference to homogeneity.
Calypso and what some take to be its modern fast tempo version soca (in fact a
continuation of both the lavway and party song tradition) after some exciting musical
experiments in the 1970s and early 80s, have been stagnating musically since the 1990s.
In the 1970s calypsonians like Lord Shorty and the great Shadow (who was finally
recognised in 2000 when he won his first calypso monarch title) infused calypso musical
forms with the bass rhythms of American funk and soul, the distinctly Afro rhythms of
Tobago’s tambrin drums and the influence of Dominica’s kadans (a fusion of Haitian
konpas and calypso) to produce calypsoul or soca.
However, in their efforts to homogenise the soca sound to make a similar crossover into
the mainstream market that reggae had made so successfully, ‘Trini’ musicians simplified
some of their unique rhythms or simply turned to synthesisers and drum machines,
incorporating samples of dancehall and rock. Calypso, with its local topics and soca, with its
lyrical flimsiness do not travel well; it took a Bob Marley to internationalise reggae, and
Carriacou
Caribbean Voyage Series,
Suriname
Ai Sa Si, Faluma (Arti,
calypso and soca only function in a Carnival context, they are not musics to sit and listen to.
The result, while not unpleasant in the context of a Carnival fête or on the road during the
frenzy of Carnival, has been a rootless unmemorable sound, in which the majority of soca
songs sound the same. It’s also no coincidence that increasingly over the last decade it has
been musicians from other islands who have musically dominated the ‘Trini’ Carnival,
starting with the Barbadian invasion of 1996 led by the very talented young Bajan arranger
Nicholas Brancker, who is in touch with the musics of the region.
The Jamaican Byron Lee has been playing ‘Trini’ Carnival regularly for the past twenty
years; the Barbadians have come close to winning soca monarch titles recently and in the
past two years Talpree from Grenada and Godfrey Dublin from St Vincent have both been
major presences in ‘Trini’ Carnival. The reason for their success lies precisely in working
with their roots and not attempting to excise them in the misguided attempt at
globalisation or mass consumption.
Creatively, the musical initiative in Carnival has passed out of ‘Trini’ hands, although
there is a new generation experimenting with rapso – a dancehall, rap, Jouvert chant style
fusion. There is still the possibility of exploring the Afro-Indo fusion, initiated by Indian
singers like Drupatee Ramgoonai and Rikki Jai who had some success in both calypso and
soca, and in terms of bridge-building, the chutney (derived from fast paced Bhojpuri folk
and women’s wedding songs) soca fusion has long been accepted.
But for some of the most creative Carnival music we have to look elsewhere in the
Caribbean: Dominica, Suriname, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cuba and Haiti. Dominica’s
bouyon fusion is a perfect example of the Creole paradigm: it combines the unique Jing Ping
folk music of the island with regional influences as diverse as salsa, zouk and soca. In
Martinique, Xtrem Jam combines traditional bélé singing, gwo ka and hip hop rhythms
with the melodies of Algerian Rai. The Guadeloupean Carnival band Akiyo, similar in style
to a Bahian Afro Bloco with their array of gwo ka drums and percussion are spine tingling
with powerful lyrics linking past to future.
It seems then that Caribbean Carnival music, intuitively accessible to anyone with a sense
of rhythm, of collective celebration, is a dynamic bridge-builder. It was forged in its diverse
but interrelated forms in the one region of the world where different cultures have been
able to creatively bridge the legacies of oppression, exploitation and fundamentalism.
Yet the very Creole expressions of this multi-culture depend for their aesthetic survival
and development on resisting homogenisation and on finding new ways to reinterpret old
traditions, while responding creatively to the present and future. As the renowned St
Lucian jazz composer, multi-instrumentalist and director of the West Indies jazz band
Luther Francois notes, ‘We have so many rhythms in the region, the challenge is to liberate
them.’ We need only take a glance at the phenomenal global success of Cuban music to
realise the validity of Francois’ statement.
Holland, 1998)
Guadeloupe
Akiyo, Memoires (Declic,
France)
Belize
Andy Palacio, ‘Til da Mawnin
(Stonetree Records, Belize,
Dominica
1996)
Exile One, Anthology (Gordon
Henderson Productions,
Where available, years of
Commonwealth of
release have been provided
Dominica, 1996)
WCK, Caribbean Heartbeat
(CK Entertainment, Commonwealth of Dominica, 2001)
Caribbean Voyage Series,
Dominica (Rounder Records,
U.S., 1999)
97
Otrobanda, Brionplein
After the teenagers’ parade, Curaçao Carnival
Chutney Soca’s elevation to the same status of world recognised forms of
music, like calypso and soca, marks the emergence of a new Caribbean
identity. Drupatee Ramgoonai, a woman chutney soca artist from Trinidad
and Tobago, was one of the pioneers of the form. Her music has helped to
emphasise the concepts of multiculturalism and racial harmony in the
Caribbean, where the racial tensions between African-descended and
East Indian-descended peoples are still high.
Disquieting Music: Drupatee Ramgoonai and the Rise of Chutney Soca
Aneka Roberts-Griffith Lee
They give me blows
Last year for doing soca
But it shows
How much they know ’bout culture
For the music of the steeldrums from Laventille
Cannot help but mix with rhythm from Caroni
For it’s a symbol of how much we’ve come of age
Is a brand new stage
Chorus:
Indian soca, sounding sweeter
Hotter than chula
Rhythm from Africa and India
Blend together in a perfect mixture
All we do is add new flavour
Leh we get down to Indian soca
‘Indian Soca’ by Drupatee Ramgoonai (1989)
In 1988, Drupatee Ramgoonai and chutney soca walked into my primary school, St.
Gabriel’s Girls Roman Catholic, in south Trinidad. Every year the school held a calypso
show, where one of the Carnival season’s most popular calypso/soca artists performed.
Ramgoonai, a thin East Indian woman with past-shoulder length hair, wearing a yellow
sari-like outfit, stood on-stage in the school courtyard. Her song, ‘Mr Bissesar’, was a
popular, easy-to-dance-to record that my school friends and I called ‘Roll up de Tassa’,
because of its catchy chorus of ‘Roll up de Tassa, Roll up de Tassa Bissesar’. Apart from the
enjoyment we felt when listening to ‘Mr Bissesar’, we also felt confusion – Indian people
weren’t supposed to sing calypso. That music traditionally belonged to black ex-slaves who
had been oppressed for centuries.
Our disquiet was not confined to my particular group of friends. Before Ramgoonai could
finish singing, a crowd of unruly school children surged around her. Some of my classmates
tried to pull her off the stage by the black tank top she was wearing under her sari. It ripped,
exposing one of her breasts. My last recollection of the chutney singer was of her being
quickly escorted off the playground, away from the juvenile mob.
100 Prince Claus Fund Journal # 7
This was just one of the incidents Ramgoonai faced when she entered the calypso arena.
Another ethnically mixed female singer was sometimes pelted with wet toilet paper,
Chutney and Soca; the East
tomatoes and eggs by disgruntled audiences. Ramgoonai and others were going against the
Indian Contribution to the
grain, according to Rosemarijn Hoefte, head of Caribbean Studies at kitlv (Royal Institute
Calypso (Trinidad: Jordans
of Linguistics and Anthropology, Leiden), ‘Traditionally calypso is considered a part of
Printing Service, 1991) p. 51
male, Afro-Trinidadian working-class culture.’
2.
For Ramgoonai, it wasn’t only her audience who was up in arms. She was also scorned by
Ibid.
members of her own community. From the predominantly East Indian area of Penal in
3.
Trinidad’s deep south, Ramgoonai came from a tradition where, Hoefte explains, ‘Women
A twenty-eight inch long
are generally expected to become mothers and housewives, to protect the cultural heritage,
barrel shaped drum with two harmony and values of the East Indian community.’ And when they didn’t, they were
ends, covered in goats’ skin.
heavily criticised, if not ostracised. Drupatee was described as a ‘disgrace to Hinduism’ and
The larger end is the bass
one critic, Mahabir Maharaj, writing in the Sandesh paper, said ‘For an Indian girl to throw
and the shorter, the tenor.
her high upbringing and culture to mix with vulgar music, sex and alcohol in Carnival tents
4.
tells me that something is radically wrong with her psyche. Drupatee Ramgoonai has
Literally means sticks. Iron
chosen to worship the gods of sex, wine and easy money.’2
rod struck with a U-shaped
It wasn’t fame that attracted Ramgoonai to the Carnival tents. Her 1987 debut song,
beater that is used as a
‘Pepper Pepper’, describes the hardship of being an East Indian housewife. Ramgoonai,
percussion instrument.
whose husband is East Indian, publicised the plight of her fellow women. At the same time
her music was a radical form of merging and mixing essentially Caribbean cultures. She was
in the forefront of the creolisation of Carnival music, and contributed to bridging the racial
divide between Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians. Her 1988 hit, ‘Mr Bissesar’, and a year later,
her recording ‘Indian Soca’ continued to make calypso/soca less ‘black’ and more ‘Trini’.
Ramgoonai was reviving an experiment that began in 1970, by Sundar Popo, a young East
Indian from Barrackpore, Trinidad. Popo took traditional East Indian music, (which
survived its dislocation across the ‘middle passage’, when East Indians were taken to
Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname in the 1840s to work as indentured labourers on the
sugarcane plantations) and merged it with calypso, the Carnival music created by the
African slaves after their emancipation. Chutney – derived from a Hindi word used to
describe a hot, peppery mix – was born, and Popo was its first king. Conventional Indian
instruments like the dholak3 and dhantal4, along with the western guitar and synthesiser,
backed the lyrics, sung in a mixture of Hindi and Trinidadian Creole. Sundar’s debut song,
‘Nana and Nani’ (1970) was a Number One hit in both Trinidad and Guyana. The album that
followed helped make chutney popular among the Indo-Caribbean community.
In the late 1970s, Nisha Benjamin, a chutney singer from Guyana, sang Number One hits
that described the hardships of women working and living on the sugarcane estates and the
overall oppression of East Indians by the Forbes Burnham regime, the Guyanese dictatorship. Guyana’s racial tensions, fuelled by the country’s discriminatory politics, effectively
stifled the development of the musical form there. Over 300 miles away, Trinidad and
Tobago had a more tolerant atmosphere, although the ethnic divide is still evident. While
Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians are separated statistically by a margin of only two per cent, in
the past the Indian population felt side-lined. The political party that stayed in power after
independence from Britain in 1962 until 1986 was considered a ‘black man’s’ party. It was
not until the 1990s that both Guyana and Trinidad elected a government that was
predominantly East Indian.
It was also around this time that the term ‘chutney soca’ finally replaced ‘Indian soca’ and
the expatriate East Indian communities living in the west started to demand a more
traditional sound reminiscent of Popo’s original chutney. The change in the political climate
saw the emergence of new chutney soca artists from Guyana as well, and even Benjamin went
back into the studio and re-recorded some of her original material.
Curiously, Afro-Trinidadian male singers also aided the development of soca chutney.
By the 1980s, well-known calypsonians, like the Mighty Sparrow, Baron and Aloes, began
to experiment. Calypso itself was changing as an art form and being relegated to second
place by soca, with its faster beat and invocations to ‘jump and wine’. The Indian instruments
1.
Zeno Obi Constance, Tassa,
Prince Claus Fund Journal # 7 101
of the tassa5 , dholak and sitar were still there, but the steelpan had been added. The songs
were mostly in Trinidadian Creole with a sprinkling of Hindi. Songs like Baron’s ‘Raja Rani’
and Mighty Sparrow’s ‘Marajin’ (1982), although not accepted by all Indian people, helped
make the ethnic group more visible, not only at home but also on the international stage.
However, the Trinidadian audience – of either race – was still unprepared for Ramgoonai.
Picking up where Popo and Benjamin left off, Ramgoonai created a Caribbean music
representative of the large numbers of East Indian descendants in the region and became
the first East Indian woman to top the soca charts with a Number One hit, ‘Mr. Bissesar’.
The same song that was my classmates’ and my introduction to her; the music was Number
One throughout the English-speaking Caribbean within two weeks of its release. A few
weeks after that, it was Number One on the soca charts in the u.s., Canada and England. It
remained there until almost the end of the decade.
Ramgoonai paved the way for those that would come after like Rikki Jai, Chris Garcia and
Brother Marvin, the first mixed race (Indian/African) chutney singer to come second in the
calypso monarch competition in 1996. By the end of the 1980s there were at least twenty
Indo-Caribbean artists. With each new one, the form became more and more popular, until
eventually, in 1996, the first chutney soca monarch competition was held.
And now there is no turning back. ‘Chutney has not only symbolised an emergence of a
new social paradigm of multiculturalism but has also played a formative role in the process.
Indeed many Trinidadians are already speaking of their country not as the proverbial “land
of steel band and calypso” but as the home of steel band, calypso and chutney.’6
5.
Drupatee Ramgoonai, Rikki
A drum
Jai, Phoolmatee Ramjattan,
6.
Rakesh Yankaran, Nathaniel
Peter Manuel, East Indian
Lalla, Rooplal Girdharrie,
Music in the West Indies,
Devanand Guttoo, Kenny J,
(Philadelphia: Temple
Heeralal Rampartap, Roy
University Press, 2000) p. 195
Rampersad, Nermal Gosein,
Clint Thomas, Rasika Dindial
Various, Hot and Spicy
Recommended
Chutney (Nascente, UK)
Listening for
contains Sundar Popo’s
Chutney Soca
classic ‘Scorpion Gyal’ and
recent fusions like Double
Drupatee Ramgoonai,
D’s Ragga ‘Dulahin’
Drupatee Ramgoonai (JMC
Records, U.S., 1999);
Where available, years of
Drupatee In Style 2000 with
release have been provided
Machel Montano, Chutney
Soca (JMC Records, U.S.,
2000)
Sundar Popo, Sundar Popo
2000 (JMC Records, U.S.,
2000); Cool Yourself with Cold
Water (JMC Records, U.S.,
1996)
Various, Golden Hits (JMC
Chris Garcia, Chutney
Bacchanal (JMC Records,
U.S., 1995)
Anand Yankaran, Party Time
(JMC Records, U.S.)
Sharlene Boodram, Colours of
Unity (Rituals, Trinidad, 1996)
Compilations:
Sonny Man, Boyie Basdeo,
Cecil Funrose, Jairam
Dindial, Madan Ramdass,
Heeralal Rampartap,
Ameena Ramsawan, Anil
Suchit, Chutney Party Mix
(MC Records, Trinidad,
1995)
Ramraji Praboo, Sundar
Popo, Atiya, Geeta
Kawalsingh, Nazimool and R.
Khan, Chutney Gold (JMC
Various, Chutney Soca
CDs by Drupatee Ramgoonai, the ‘Trini’ chutney soca queen
Monarch annual compilation
(Southex Production,
Trinidad, from 1998) The
2001 compilation features
Dutch photographer Catrien Ariëns lived in Curaçao as a child. In 1995,
move from still images to moving pictures. She is currently in Curaçao, shooting a film on
Carnival.
Her motivations go beyond mere documentation. ‘They’re emotional’, Ariëns admits. ‘In
Holland, Curaçao has a negative image and it’s not fair that the people are so badly
stereotyped. They should be given credit for something they’re good at. Carnival, which is
not subsidised, is local, mixed culture and it belongs to them.’
she returned to the island and effectively began a love affair with the
people and with Carnival. Currently she is shooting her first film on the
lead up to the festivities, which begin in February.
The photographs by Catrien Ariëns, which appear in this Journal, were taken between 1996 and 1999.
Curaçao Carnival starts on 3 February and ends on 12 February 2002.
A Narrative of Passion and Determination:
Carnival in Curaçao
Photographs by Catrien Ariëns
The children’s tumba king, Curaçao Carnival
For Dutch photographer Catrien Ariëns, Carnival held little intrigue when she first
returned to Curaçao in 1995, where she lived as a child. However, after more visits and
prolonged stays, she came to realise the cultural, social and political significance of the tenday long festival to the 160,000 inhabitants of the largest island in the Dutch Antilles.
‘During Carnival, people express their longings and desires,’ explains Ariëns, who has been
taking pictures for over twenty-five years. ‘It is the only time people mix and communicate.
Curaçao is a small island and everyone meets on the street. The rest of the year, they’re
segregated in their own circles.’
Among Curaçao’s fifty ethnic groups, social, as well as economic divisions, keep people
apart. Despite this, middle and lower income families come together and participate in the
Carnival parties, competitions and marches. During this period, people partake in activities
they normally shun, like having their photographs taken because, according to Ariëns, ‘The
dressing up is so sensual, erotic.’
In Curaçao, Carnival begins with a series of music festivals. Tumba dominates the
celebration in Curaçao in the same way samba is the Carnival soundtrack for Brazil and soca
for Trinidad. There are tumba festivals, for children and for the radio, each one with an
election for a queen, prince and pancho [jester], followed by more parades, competitions,
jump-ups and parties. The Tuesday evening parade, before Ash Wednesday, is a repeat of
Sunday’s daytime grand parade but the atmosphere on Tuesday is special because it takes
place at night and is beautifully lit. By morning, the island has returned to normal.
Ariëns captures the essence of Carnival in her photographs. Her 1999 book, Curaçao, is an
intimate portrait of a people who have endured a difficult political history. Originally
discovered by a lieutenant of the conquistador Cortes, Curaçao became a ‘freshening up’
post at the height of slavery under the Dutch. Slaves, who had endured the gruelling
‘middle passage’ voyage from Africa to the Caribbean – some 3,000 miles – were taken out
of the holds of ships, washed, and made to sing and parade before being auctioned.
Hundreds of years later, the island boasts the biggest oil refinery in the western world for
the Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum Company. After the oil bust of the Seventies and Eighties,
tourism became another island industry. Although it has never flourished like nearby
Aruba, the annual number of holidaymakers and cruise-line passengers visiting Curaçao
exceeds its population. Currently, the island is experiencing an economic downturn, a
situation that makes Carnival all the more valuable. It remains one of the few times of year
when self-esteem is high among the populace.
For Ariëns, it was the behind the scenes activities at Carnival – the planning which started
as soon as one Carnival finished, the plethora of meetings, the search for the new and the
shopping trips to Trinidad, Miami and New York, and the designing, sewing and the
costume try-outs, a narrative of passion and determination – that influenced her decision to
Veeris
Text by Malu Halasa
Glossary
Bachata – A slow bolero – a dance and guitar-based song style
– originating in Cuba, exported to the Dominican Republic
where it became part of the folk music, called ‘Songs of Bitterness’. With its plangent tumbling guitar and Afro rhythms, bachata
which was originally denigrated (it literally means ‘trash’) and was
made socially acceptable thanks to the efforts of the Dominican
Republic’s leading musician/songwriter Juan Luis Guerra.
Belair – A traditional French Creole tropical song. Also known
as the bélé, a Creole dance common throughout the Caribbean.
In Haiti, Tobago, and Carricaou it is danced as a means of
communicating with the ancestors.
Bongo – A wake song for the newly dead.
Callaloo – A thick soup, which is one of the staple dishes of
the Greater Caribbean, probably of African origin. To main
ingredient of dasheen leaves (similar to spinach), crab, pig’s
foot, okra, root vegetables, dumplings and seasoning can be
added. Callaloo is a term that is also used metaphorically to
refer to the mixed population of the Caribbean, especially
cosmopolitan Trinidad.
Calinda (or Kalenda) – A stickfighting song, or more generally
the dance accompanying stickfighting, an African-derived sport
popular throughout the Caribbean from the eighteenth century
and still practised in Trinidad.
from the African born and was used to refer to the white
colonial élite and locally born slaves. Today the term is used to
describe the dialects and syncretic languages of the Caribbean
and its diverse cultures.
Picong – Songs of topical interest, scandal or insult. The term
is used to refer to the trading of insults which are part of
extempo competitions between two calypsonians. Not all those
who ‘give picong’ (are insulting) can ‘take picong’ (criticism).
Dhantal – A chutney percussion instrument: an iron rod
struck with a U-shaped beater.
Reggae – The Caribbean’s most successful music form, which
evolved in Jamaica in the early 1960s from experiments to
produce local alternatives to the dwindling supply of imported
American R&B. Drawing on Mento folk music, retaining African
and neo-African rhythms and jazz, ska emerged as the prototype, with its distinctive offbeat style. The tempo was slowed
down to produce rocksteady and, with the increasing prominence of the electric bass, roots reggae became established
by the early 1970s. The latest version is dancehall.
Dholak – A twenty-eight inch long barrel shaped drum with
two ends, covered in goats’ skin. The primary percussion
instrument in the popular East Indian chutney music of Trinidad
and Guyana.
Gwo ka – In Creole, it literally means big drum. One of
Guadeloupe’s seven African-derived traditional rhythms played
at communal Lewoz gatherings and adapted by Carnival
marching percussion bands. Gwo ka rhythms featured in the
early stages of zouk as pioneered by Antillean supergroup
Kassav, who still appear with a Gwo ka drummer.
Jouvert – Daybreak on the first day of Carnival, (pronounced
jouvay). A Creole term derived by eliding the French for ‘day
open’. In Trinidad, Jouvert officially begins at 2am on Carnival
Monday, long before sunrise, although this is regarded as the
climax of Jouvert, which continues up till lunchtime.
Kadans (or more correctly cadencalypso) – A fusion of Haitian
konpas and calypso pioneered in Dominica by Gordon
Henderson and Exile One in the mid-1970s and a seminal
influence on both zouk and soca.
Calypso – One of the most popular musical forms of Trinidad,
brought to the Americas in the eighteenth century. Introduced
by African slaves, it derives from songs of praise and derision.
Kaiso – A synonym of calypso, originally used to refer to any
song sung during Carnival.
Carnivalesque – A literary term meaning the playful
subversion or obscuring of social hierarchy during Carnival.
Kaskawi – Suriname’s version of calypso. A fusion of kawina
drumming and kaseko music.
Chanchada – Originally a derogatory term, which eventually
became more respectful, for the light musical comedies of Brazil
in the 1930s which were used to promote Carnival music.
Lapo kabwit – In Creole, goatskin. A kind of drum from
Dominica used in Carnival processions.
Chutney soca – A Trinidadian fusion which evolved in the
1980s. Spicy chutney, with its sexually-charged dancing, derives
from the Bhojpuri folksongs and songs sung at traditional Hindu
weddings on Bride’s Night to instruct the bride in her marital
duties, both brought by East Indian indentured labourers during
the nineteenth century. Soca is the modern high energy version
of calypso and chutney soca is one of the recent fusions which
includes ragga (Jamaican dancehall), soca and parang (Spanish
music – originally carols played in the Christmas season).
Creole – Adapted by the Portuguese (crioulo) then Spanish
(criollo). Probably originally of African origin, the term was
used by slaves to distinguish those born in the New World
Lavway – An African style call and response chant which led
street festivals.
Mas’ – An abbreviation of masquerade, pronounced either
‘mass’ or ‘mares’. Playing mas’ is assuming the personality of
whatever costume you are wearing and, by extension, ‘making
mas’’ means playing the fool or focusing on the ridiculous rather
than the sublime.
Patois – A term used in English-speaking islands to refer to a
local vernacular – in Trinidad to the French Creole still spoken
in some remote villages; in Jamaica to Jamaican English.
Linguistically it is more correct to use the word ‘Creole’
because it has the connotations of a complete English system.
Soca – A fusion of calypso and soul originally developed in
Trinidad and Tobago in the mid-1970s. A faster and more
party-orientated form than traditional calypso, which with its
characteristic suggestive pelvic swivelling, thrusting ‘wining’
dance is now the Carnival dance music of choice throughout
the Anglophone Caribbean, and is increasingly influential in the
French and Dutch Antilles.
which ninety per cent of Haiti still subscribes. This spelling is
closer phonetically to the root word, vodun, from West Africa
which means spirit. Vaudou also avoids the stigma and the
stereotyping of the English word voodoo and its Hollywood
B-movie connotations. As the vaudou emperor Aboudja
Derencourt explains, vaudou is a tradition open to the world.
‘Everyone can come and look into vaudou and see the positive
things we’re doing and see we’re not hanging people upside
down or eating soup with fingers in it.’
Zouk – Hi-tech dance music from the French Antilles.
Developed by Kassav from the French Antilles, initially using
Haitian konpas or kadans rhythm but incorporating the
traditional Guadeloupean Gwo ka rhythm and absorbing
influences from rock, funk, Zairean soukous, salsa, and son.
Besides hi-energy zouk, there is the slower romantic zouk love.
By Simon Lee
Additional research by James Wescott
Steelpan / pan – The only acoustic instrument invented in the
twentieth century. Developed in Trinidad during the late 1930s,
using discarded steel drums from the oil industry as a percussive Carnival accompaniment. This was a continuation of
experiments begun after British colonial authorities banned the
African drum in 1884. Initially, bamboo tubes were used, later
biscuit tins and trashcan lids, saucepans and eventually the oil
drum. It was discovered that by sinking the top, different notes
could be produced. The steelpan is now a highly developed
instrument, which comes in a range of forms from bass to cello,
guitar and tenor.
Shac shac – Maracas. The only indigenous instrument surviving
in the Caribbean – the gourd rattle of the Amerindians and also
a favourite percussion instrument of the African slaves and still
used widely in all Afro-Caribbean popular dance music from
Cuban son, to Dominican merengue and ‘Trini’ soca.
Soukous – Generic term for modern Zairean dance music.
Said to come from the French verb secouer, ‘to shake’.
Steel Band – A band composed of steelpans. In Trinidad’s
national Panorama competition, bands may have as many as 120
players, their instruments usually mounted on wheel-borne
carriages. There are also smaller ensembles, the pan round the
neck traditional bands (usually between twenty and thirty
members) or even smaller groups like the jazz-inspired Panazz
Players with ten members.
Vaudou – The preferred method of spelling by practitioners of
Haitian vaudou, an African-derived syncretic belief system to
Le carnaval a été fortement influencé par les traditions des
esclaves et des populations déplacées des Caraïbes et
d‘Amérique latine. Il a été ramené en Afrique par Oumou Sy,
lauréate du Prix Prince Claus 1998, qui organise le Carnaval de
Dakar au Sénégal. Le photographe Mamadou Touré Béhan a
consigné en images cet échange historique.
Carnival Dakar, Senegal
Imaginary king and queen, Carnival Dakar, Senegal
Design by Oumou Sy, 1998
Design by Oumou Sy, 1998
Photo by Mamadou Touré Béhan
Photo by Mamadou Touré Béhan
© Prince Claus Fund
© Prince Claus Fund
Contributors
Catrien Ariëns is a Dutch photographer who spent her
childhood in Curaçao. She took up photography seriously in
1975, making stills on movie sets. Since then she has made photo
documentaries on women’s rights, the Catholic church and the
upper class in the Netherlands. In 1986 Ariëns exhibited her first
collection of photographs from Curaçao, Curaçao Revisited,
followed in 1998 by the photo book, Curaçao, an Island of Its Own.
She is currently in Curaçao making her first film, about Carnival.
Patrick Chamoiseau (1953, Fort-de-France, Martinique) studied
law in Paris and now lives back in Martinique. Chamoiseau is the
author of a historical work on the Antilles, Under Bonaparte, and
two non-fiction works: In Praise of Creoleness and To Write in a
Dominated Country. His novels include Chronicles of the Seven
Sorrows, Solibo Magnificent, Seven Dreams of Elmira and, most
famously, Texaco, for which he won the Prix Goncourt – France’s
highest literary prize – in 1992. Texaco has been translated into
fourteen languages. In 1999, he was the recipient of a Prince
Claus Award.
Roberto DaMatta is a Brazilian anthropologist. His book
Carnivais, malandros e heróis: Para uma sociologia do dilema
brasileiro (1979) was one of the first cultural accounts of
citizenship in Latin America. He is also the author of A Divided
World: Apinaye Social Structure. He is a professor at Notre Dame
University in the U.S. and a columnist for the newspaper Estadao
de S Paulo.
Myriam Diocaretz is the author, editor and co-editor of about
twenty books in English, French and Spanish on critical theory,
semiotics of discourse, gender studies and poetics. She has also
published four books of poetry. She was born in Chile and now
lives in the Netherlands.
Malu Halasa is the features editor of Tank, a visually led
bimonthly, and of MINED, a new biannual of ideas; both
magazines are published in London. She is also a co-editor of
Creating Spaces of Freedom, an anthology of essays on cultural
repression, published by the Prince Claus Fund. She has written
for the Guardian, Index on Censorship, New Statesman, Rolling Stone
and The Sunday Times. Recently, she started www.fidela.com, an
independent record label in the UK.
Dick Hebdige is the dean of Critical Studies and the director of
the Writing Programme at California Institute of the Arts. He is a
cultural critic and scholar who has written extensively on
popular culture, contemporary art and design, the anthropology
of consumption and media and critical theory. His landmark
study, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), was the first book
dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. He also wrote Cut
‘n’ Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music (1987) and Hiding in
the Light: On Images and Things (1988).
Ineke Holtwijk (1955) studied literature before she became
the South America correspondent for De Volkskrant, a leading
Dutch newspaper. She has been living in Rio de Janeiro since
1989 and has written several books on South America. Her
prize-winning book Cannibals in Rio was based on her experiences in Rio and her knowledge of Carnival. Her novel Asphalt
Angels, about a gang of street children in Rio, was translated into
several languages and was awarded in 1999 the best foreign
youth book by the American Librarians Association. Ineke
Holtwijk is also a correspondent for NOS-Journaal, the Dutch
TV news programme.
Isaac Julien is an artist and critic living and working in London.
He also teaches film theory at Harvard University. His first film,
Looking for Langston (1989) – a biopic of the Harlem Renaissance
poet – was considered a founding text in New Queer Cinema.
Since then his films have forged a new language of black representation and probed the homoerotic gaze. He has received
many prestigious film awards, including a 1991 Cannes Critics
Prize for the feature-length Young Soul Rebels – a portrait of 1980s
London’s multiracial music scene. Between 1994 and 1997 he
lived in New York and made the seminal film Frantz Fanon: Black
Skin, White Mask which also signalled a move from cinema to
film installation in art galleries. He made The Long Road to
Mazatlán at Art Pace, the foundation for contemporary art in
San Antonio, where he was in residency in 1999. His work has
been exhibited in Boston, Oxford, Geneva, Helsinki, Johannesburg and London. He has been short-listed for the Turner Prize.
Aneka Roberts-Griffith Lee (1977, London) has written features for the Trinidad Guardian and Trinidad Express Newspaper
and for the Insight Guide to Trinidad & Tobago, a popular guidebook published in co-operation with the Discovery Channel.
She was also the managing editor of the new Caribbean
magazine, Caribbean e-Business, and has published fiction in the
Caribbean Writer, a journal from the University of the British
Virgin Islands, which showcases new writing talent. Recently,
she moved from St Joseph, Trinidad, to London.
Simon Lee (1951, London) taught English, drama, media and film
studies for the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority)
between 1974 and 1987. He helped draft the ILEA’s anti-racist
and anti-sexist policies and worked on development of multicultural/anti-racist/anti-sexist secondary school curricula. After
moving to Trinidad in 1987 to teach, he joined the Trinidad
Guardian in 1992 and has since written freelance for several
publications, including Islands International magazine and the New
York Times travel section. For Caribbean World (UK) and Rhythm
magazine he has written a series of articles on Caribbean music.
Lee has also contributed chapters on music, dance, the visual
arts and eco-tourism to the Insight Guides to Hispaniola and
Trinidad & Tobago. He has won several awards for his travel
writing. His book Caribbean Music-Mizik A Nou (French Creole for
Our Music) will be published at the end of 2002.
Milla Cozart Riggio, the James J. Goodwin Professor of English
at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, has been living and
studying Trinidad Carnival since 1995. She is the editor of the
special issue of TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies on Trinidad
and Tobago Carnival, from which the Peter Minshall interview is
taken. Her other publications include Teaching Shakespeare through
Performance. She is currently editing Culture in Action: Trinidad and
Tobago Carnival for Routledge Press, and co-editing Mas: From La
Trinité to Trinity College.
Richard Schechner is the Professor of Performance Studies
at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He edits
TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies. Schechner’s books include
Environmental Theatre, Between Theatre and Anthropology, The End
of Humanism, Performance Theory, The Future of Ritual, and
Performance Studies: An Introduction. He founded the Performance
Group, with which he directed Dionysus in 69, Tooth of Crime, and
Mother Courage and Her Children. He founded and is artistic
director of East Coast Artists, where his most recent works are
Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Schechner has
conducted performance workshops and lectured in Asia, Africa,
Europe, Australia, and the Americas. He is the recipient of
numerous fellowships and awards, as well as two honorary
professorships.
The Gulf (1970). Walcott made his poetry debut at eighteen with
the collection Twenty Five Poems and his first play, Henri
Christopher, was performed in 1950. Three years later, Walcott
moved to Trinidad where he worked as a teacher and then as a
journalist writing features for Public Opinion in Kingston and
drama criticism for the Trinidad Guardian. From 1959 to 1971
Walcott was the founding director of the Little Carib Theatre
(later the Trinidad Theatre Workshop). His play Dream on
Monkey Mountain (1971) was commissioned originally by the
Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1960s but produced
finally in the U.S. His Nobel Lecture The Antilles: Fragments of Epic
Memory was published in 1993. Walcott lives in Caribbean and,
during the academic year, Boston, where he teaches at Boston
University.
Karel Johan Willems (1952, Willemstad, Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles) has a master’s degree in the Science of Industrial
Management Reasons. For the last seventeen years, he has
organised the Solero Summer Carnival Rotterdam, and for the
last seven years, he has served as chairman of the Summer
Carnival Foundation because ‘I like to see all the ethnic groups
respect each other on an non-segregated basis.’
Translators
Lisa Shaw is senior lecturer in Portuguese at the University
of Leeds and the author of the book The Social History of the
Brazilian Samba (Ashgate, 1999). During autumn term 19992000, she was visiting lecturer in Brazilian Civilisation and
Popular Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. She
is the author of various articles on Brazilian popular music and
film in the Vargas era (1930-45), and is particularly interested in
how popular identity was articulated in the chanchadas or light,
musical comedies of the 1940s and 1950s. She is currently
working on a co-authored book about popular cinema in Brazil,
as well as developing her interest in Portuguese musical
comedies from the 1940s and 1950s.
Els van der Plas (1960, Netherlands) is the director of the
Prince Claus Fund. An art historian, art critic and curator, she
was the founder and director (1987-1997) of the Gate
Foundation in Amsterdam, an organisation for the intercultural
exchange of contemporary art. She co-edited The Art of African
Fashion and Creating Spaces of Freedom, both published by the
Prince Claus Fund. She writes for several magazines and lectures
at different universities worldwide. She curated the following
shows: Het Klimaat (Netherlands, 1991), Indonesian Modern Art
(Indonesia/Netherlands, 1993), Orientation (Indonesia/
Netherlands, 1996) and Secrets (Netherlands, 1996).
Derek Walcott (1930, Castries, St Lucia) was awarded the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1992 in recognition of a lifetime’s
achievement in poetry and drama. His works include Omeros
(1990), The Arkansas Testament (1987), Another Life (1973) and
Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante is the Assistant Professor of
Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. His
BA was in Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Universidad
Austral de Chile (1985), his MA was in Spanish Literature at the
University of Oregon (1997) and his PhD was in Hispanic
Literatures at Cornell University (2001).
Marie-Luc Grall graduated from the Université de Bretagne
Occidentale, the Rietveld Academie and the Universiteit van
Amsterdam where she studied French language and literature.
She is also a visual artist and exhibits at the Josine Bockhoven
Gallery in Amsterdam.
Carla Wauman (Belgium, 1975) works at the Prince Claus Fund
as assistant to the director. She studied Latin American languages
and culture at Leiden University. She specialised in contemporary
social changes in Brazil, where she has lived.
Annie Wright is a translator and independent videomaker in
Amsterdam. Her translations include Memories (the autobiography of the Dutch suffragette Aletta Jacobs), antidiscrimination reports for the UN and art publications for the
Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Rotterdam’s Boymans-van
Beuningen Museum. Wright’s videos have been screened at the
Directors’ Guild of America (Hollywood), the Knitting Factory
(New York City) and Channel Four (London).
Detail of photograph by Aristides Alves
Mandu – Cachoeira Bahia, Brazil
From Máscaras
dainBahia
/ Masks
of Rio
Bahia
Carmen
Miranda
Nancy
Goes to
V Mês
Internacional
daU.S.,
Fotografia,
by
Robert
Z. Leonard,
1950 São Paolo, Maio de 2001

opmaak journal #7 - Prince Claus Fund

Transcription

Similar documents

layout 1 - All Celebrity Travel

a huge thank you from the carnival chairs and committee to all who

the carnival procession resources

Carousel Carnival Poster 2015 - Petaluma Valley Athletic Club

Term 3, Week 1 - Grenfell Public School

CAPA pesquisa inglesfim - Revista Pesquisa Fapesp

Pagewood Public School Newsletter

0039 - ESJ - PDF Things to do

Jherizhana the Sphinx

Pedro Fernández began his international career when he was