An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Per­son­al­ly, I find the great­est loss to di­ver­si­ty can be felt dur­ing Car­ni­val when one com­pares the mass mar­ket "beads and biki­ni" phe­nom­e­non with the in­ven­tive­ness of yes­ter­year's ole mas.There is still some preser­va­tion of the lyri­cal tra­di­tion of prop­er kaiso, but even this seems set to be over­whelmed by the tide of lo­cal artistes bent on gen­er­at­ing a gaudy stage show while ig­nor­ing key el­e­ments of com­po­si­tion and rhythm.One of the proud ole mas char­ac­ters of yes­ter­year that is now ei­ther ex­tinct or very rarely seen is the min­strel. The tra­di­tion de­vel­oped in the Unit­ed States dur­ing the 1830s and found its au­di­ence in the post-Civ­il War era af­ter 1865.

Min­strel shows were pop­u­lar across Amer­i­ca, from the large cities where they took the form of ex­trav­a­gant vaude­ville plays or, in more mod­est cir­cum­stances, one-man per­for­mances.

The min­strels were some­times white men in "black­face," which is a form of car­i­ca­tured make­up that mocked and den­i­grat­ed the fea­tures of Africans. The per­for­mances main­ly fo­cused on plan­ta­tion themes that al­so sought to de­grade the Afro-Amer­i­can, such as the char­ac­ter of the "dan­di­fied coon."The min­strel made his ap­pear­ance in full black­face in Trinidad Car­ni­val some time to­wards the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry and is seen in pho­tographs from the ear­ly 1900s as well. Many sang songs of the Ante-bel­lum era like Old Un­cle Joe and re­lied on the ban­jo and box gui­tar. In the Car­ni­val bands of east Port-of-Spain, they fell in nat­u­ral­ly with the beat of things and some even be­came quite cred­itable ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.In these days of mu­sic trucks, it is hard to imag­ine a time when the kaiso for a jump-up dur­ing J'Ou­vert or on Car­ni­val Tues­day was pro­vid­ed by a sin­gle man. Each band had a chantwell with his gui­tar. These bards had names of fan­tas­tic im­port like King Pharaoh, Black Prince, Duke of Marl­bor­ough and Mo­ro the Re­beller. Per­haps one of the best known was Fred­er­ick Julien, who played with Whiterose and went about as the Iron Duke.

On the road, there were so many char­ac­ters that they pre­sent­ed a tru­ly grand sight. Some of these per­sist in the ole mas ren­der­ings of to­day, but oth­ers have van­ished. One of the most strik­ing was the drag­on band. This was meant to rep­re­sent the fiery ser­pent be­ing es­cort­ed by a king and queen, at­tend­ed by a host of imps and dev­ils. Around 1900 one band called the Red Drag­ons stood out as the finest ex­am­ple of this por­tray­al.

The Wild and Fan­cy In­di­ans were a lega­cy of the fas­ci­na­tion of Trinida­di­ans with the dime-nov­els telling about the hero­ics of the Old West and the emer­gence of west­ern movies in the cin­e­mas. Dressed to the hilt in beads and feath­ers, there were Red, Blue and White In­di­ans. With no spe­cial­ist Car­ni­val chan­dlery stores and the stuff in the down­town em­po­ri­ums be­ing out of the reach of the work­ing class­es, mas­quer­aders in these bands would scour the forests months in ad­vance, col­lect­ing seeds, which were paint­ed and used in lieu of ar­ti­fi­cial beads.

The clash of ri­val In­di­an bands was some­thing to be­hold, since the play­ers would burst in­to blood-cur­dling war-whoops and the kings of the bands would clash in ver­bal con­fronta­tion. Noth­ing was left out, and there were even squaws with their pa­poos­es on their backs and some­times a repli­ca te­pee. Clown bands were per­haps the most gaudy of the old mas of yore. There were sev­er­al that per­sist­ed through­out the ear­ly years of the 1900s, in­clud­ing Hon­ey Boys, Mys­tery, Davis, Iere and Dandy. The mas­quer­aders were not clowns in the cir­cus sense but in­stead were fan­tas­ti­cal­ly be­decked in beads, pleat­ed cheese­cloth, satins, se­quins and with yards and yards of tin­sel. The clown cos­tumes would ac­tu­al­ly jin­gle from the num­bers of bells at­tached to them.In an awak­en­ing of con­scious­ness of their African her­itage, one band dressed as Zu­lu war­riors in 1927. These were noth­ing short of ma­jes­tic, with the play­ers be­ing clad in skin-fit­ting meri­nos with their heads swathed in tight black cloth with a tuft of fake hair to im­i­tate the mat­ted locks of the peo­ple they por­trayed.The band en­com­passed oth­er the­atri­cal el­e­ments as well, in­clud­ing a life-sized pa­pi­er-mache li­on drawn on a cart. The king of the band, iron­i­cal­ly enough, was a "great white hunter" dressed in kha­ki with a cork hel­met and a ri­fle slung across his back. Drums were added to the usu­al in­stru­ments of the chantwell to add to the ef­fect. This band ap­peared on­ly for one year and then was nev­er seen again.