Ac­tivist Pearl Ein­tou Springer lament­ed the "African was be­ing pushed out of the Car­ni­val." She was speak­ing at a pan­el dis­cus­sion themed Re­claim­ing. The Car­ni­val: His­to­ry of Re­silience and Re­sis­tance, at the Na­tion­al Li­brary, Port-of-Spain. She was joined by spo­ken-word po­et Muhammed Muwak­il. It formed part of the Kwame Ture Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture Se­ries 2012 host­ed by the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee. Among those present were its chair­man, Khafra Kam­bon and his spouse Asha. Springer said:?"The peo­ple don't have any knowl­edge of the im­por­tance of Car­ni­val and of its roots his­tor­i­cal­ly, and its role as an in­stru­ment of so­cial ex­pres­sion and so­cial co­he­sion, and its pos­si­bil­i­ty for trans­for­ma­tion and re­gen­er­a­tion. The peo­ple don't have knowl­edge of a peo­ple's abil­i­ty to sur­vive.

There is crit­i­cal need for the knowl­edge of the African to be spread in the com­mu­ni­ties, she said. "The knowl­edge is not on­ly about Car­ni­val. It is not on­ly about crit­i­cal re­sis­tance and re­ten­tion. It is about a peo­ple's abil­i­ty to sur­vive af­ter all the chal­lenges...af­ter suf­fer­ing the worst holo­caust. The same peo­ple who cursed it and lam­bast­ed be­fore are the same peo­ple who are em­brac­ing it. "The Car­ni­val is be­ing tak­en away from us. The African is be­ing robbed of this Car­ni­val. It is be­ing tak­en away from us." "The Car­ni­val is now be­ing tak­en away be­cause they (the busi­ness sec­tor) are now see­ing it as eco­nom­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant. It is now good for them. The peo­ple in east Port-of-Spain can't sell a sno­cone. No­body looks at the Hill...the bar­rack yards of Port-of-Spain." She al­so felt the skills of seam­stress­es and wireben­ders should be utilised more for sewing cos­tumes and de­sign­ing mas. "We have a whole in­dus­try wait­ing to be tapped in­to. We can make use of skilled seam­stress­es. We have to make use of broth­ers and sis­ters who have the skills. We need to make more use of wireben­ders," added Springer. Wax­ing pas­sion­ate about the pal­try re­mu­ner­a­tion for bo­is­men, who fea­ture promi­nent­ly in the re-en­act­ment of the Can­boulay Ri­ots, Springer said: "Bo­is­men are be­ing paid about $200. They can get their head bust or their eye gouged out for $200."

Need for ed­u­ca­tion

De­spite re­peat­ed at­tempts by the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties to stamp out Car­ni­va­lesque cel­e­bra­tions, the fes­ti­val has emerged in­to what his­to­ri­an Don­ald Wood de­scribes as the "most mag­nif­i­cent ex­pres­sion of Trinida­di­an cul­ture." It sur­vived be­cause of the re­sis­tance from the low­er class­es, who were adamant about pre­serv­ing their val­ues, mores, tra­di­tions and pat­terns of life. Yet, Springer felt there was the need for in­creased cul­tur­al ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure the trans­mis­sion of knowl­edge to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. While work­ing with chil­dren at Rose Hill and Pic­cadil­ly Streets, she was shocked that few chil­dren had ever heard about the Can­boulay Ri­ots. Be­fore Eman­ci­pa­tion (Au­gust 1, 1834), the slaves cel­e­brat­ed Can­boulay to com­mem­o­rate one of the few ex­cite­ments on the plan­ta­tions, a fire in the cane­fields. Around the 1840s Can­boulay, with its torch­es and stick­fights, merged in­to the Car­ni­val. "We gave them hoops to play douen (a folk­loric char­ac­ter) and they could not do it." Springer said: "The chal­lenge is de­fend­ing our cul­ture be­cause if our cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions are dead...we are dead." She laud­ed the mas for its spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. The tra­di­tion of mas­quer­aders cak­ing them­selves with mud for J'Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions was root­ed to the Yoru­ba myth in which "man was cre­at­ed with a spe­cial kind of mud, fire and wa­ter." The late great bard, Mighty Duke (Kelvin Pope)?came in for ku­dos. His clas­sic Black Is Beau­ti­ful head­lined nu­mer­ous J'Ou­vert por­tray­als.

Work­ing our is­sues through the­atre

In his con­tri­bu­tion, Muwak­il, shared some of his ex­pe­ri­ences as a stu­dent at St Mary's Col­lege and his the­atri­cal ex­per­tise. While work­ing with the youth, he found a lot of the young men could iden­ti­fy with the dance of the Mid­night Rob­ber, and that a lot of the young women could work out the Ba­by Doll char­ac­ter. They could work out some of their is­sues through the­atre. The­atre al­lowed them to be any per­son they want­ed to be in a mo­ment." But the more poignant mes­sage he want­ed to get out to the so­ci­ety was the need "to bridge the gen­er­a­tional gap." He added:?"It sounds like a cliche. But it is re­al." While any sol­id so­ci­ety reveres the el­der­ly and their wis­dom, he felt it was manda­to­ry to not "dis­count young peo­ple and their abil­i­ty to build." He felt the younger gen­er­a­tion had an ad­di­tion­al strength since they could sep­a­rate them­selves. "We are able to em­body our­selves from the first in­stance." He was dis­heart­ened "so­ci­ety had failed to recog­nise peo­ple of mul­ti­ple and dif­fer­ent in­tel­li­gences." He paid trib­ute to icons like Stal­in, Valenti­no and Shad­ow, who worked hard to achieve icon­ic sta­tus. Sum­ming up his sen­ti­ments, he said:?"Car­ni­val is a womb. A womb is a fac­to­ry."