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Happy Carnival Tuesday (Aruba/Carriacou/Dominica/Haiti/T&T… Style)!!!
Jackie Hinkson’s Street Exhibition of Canvas Murals, Fisher Ave, St. Anns, T&T (February 5-16, 2021.) Photo by Kim Johnson.
The videos are stunning especially in this time of Covid-19. One highlights masqueraders welcoming Jouvert in Miami. Another captures a parade of moko-jumbie-mobilized poui trees moving like ants through the streets of, what looks like, Woodbrock, T&T. And, there are others of revellers immersing self in the Carnival Trinity of Pan, Kaiso, and Mas, in villages and cities where Caribbean massives reside.
Expressing amazement at revelers’ ingenuity and audacity in celebrating in the face of Carnival’s absence, the sender thundered, perhaps more as question than assertion: ”Trinis can’t do without mas!” Only the “Eh” was missing/silent.
It were as if our reader was resurrecting Kitch’s haunting line released in Rainorama: “All we know they better do fast, polio or no polio, man we want we mas.” Today, Covid-19 is no joke yet we want we mas, but…
In putting together this Issue of Covid-No-Carnival Tabanca, we can’t help but revisit, CLR James’ contemplative cricket question, repurposed here as, “What do they know of Carnival that only Carnival know?”
In the following articles writers envision carnival not through a narrow lens but from a holistic one that interrogates ‘the carnival complex’–some frontally and others in passing. This issue starts with Steve Clarke’s “A Carnival Occurrence”, bringing to life Carnivals of yore through the eyes of a panman. This is followed by Michael Brizan-Reed’s “A Meditation During These Unprecedented Times” which reviews Mervyn Taylor’s poems, while pondering a “Carnival of Viruses”.
Remembrance of cultural icons, reminds us that though a voice may be silenced, the spirit of mas, carnival, and parang remains evergreen in the wake of our noble warriors: Jeff Mc Nish’s “Reflections on Uncle Winston: Parang Band Leader, Mas & Carnival-Man”; Salimbi Gill’s, “Sandra DesVignes-Millington, Singing Sandra”; and Clevil James’, “The Great Lord Burgess”, capture and reflect the fount of wisdom awaiting discovery in the multifaceted life-work of our indigenous scholars–past, present, and those yet to be forged against the backbeat of the collective pulse.
Read on and post your comments so that the conversation advances…
For BDN Editors
*Theme derived from Steve Clarke’s, “A Carnival Occurrence“.