Carl Ja­cobs

In­evitably, per­haps trag­i­cal­ly, Car­ni­val has long lost its soul. The cur­rent pre­tense at mas­quer­ade has de­gen­er­at­ed in­to two days of friv­o­li­ty that has lit­tle or no con­nec­tion with the unique cul­tur­al im­puls­es that once spiced our so­ci­ety and pro­duced, pro­pelled and per­son­i­fied the fes­ti­val.Most of the mag­nif­i­cent por­tray­als that re­vealed the in­tel­lec­tu­al depth and cre­ative ge­nius of our peo­ple, that made our Car­ni­val a tru­ly unique event, a hu­man spec­ta­cle to be­hold, have dis­ap­peared from the fes­ti­val's stage to­geth­er with the gallery of colour­ful char­ac­ters who still live in the mem­o­ry of an old­er gen­er­a­tion for the in­di­vid­ual dra­ma they once pro­vid­ed.For a boy grow­ing up in south­west Port-of-Spain in the 40s, Car­ni­val, its build-up and its mag­nif­i­cent cli­max, was a tru­ly fas­ci­nat­ing event. My fam­i­ly and I de­light­ed not on­ly in its his­tor­i­cal and cre­ative pageantry, but al­so in the colour­ful cav­al­cade of in­di­vid­ual char­ac­ters who gave the pa­rade a charm of its own.My moth­er would place bench­es and chairs along the pave­ment on Hen­ry Street, where we lived, and from which we were able to en­joy a close-up view of the pass­ing street pa­rade which was for us, in­deed, the great­est show on earth. As I re­mem­ber them, the bands were more than just or­di­nary works of art as their lead­ers used the medi­um of cos­tume to dra­mat­ic ef­fect, from recre­at­ing some of the epic events of his­to­ry, the blos­som­ing of civil­i­sa­tions, to putting their own satir­i­cal spin on the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial an­tics at home. The can­vas of Car­ni­val was an en­tire­ly eclec­tic af­fair, af­ford­ing its prac­ti­tion­ers full scope for their par­tic­u­lar cre­ative gifts. It was a no-holds-barred medi­um with por­tray­als rang­ing from the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous.

As a young spec­ta­tor, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly charmed by the mil­i­tary bands, the sailors and marines, who had a dis­tinc­tive ma­cho style of danc­ing to the mu­sic of the steel­bands which reg­u­lar­ly pro­duced them. Lead­ing the sailors were a group of "fire­men" wear­ing fan­cy head­wear and push­ing long stok­ing iron rods while ex­e­cut­ing a del­i­cate ex­hi­bi­tion­ist kind of chore­og­ra­phy that vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­fied them. The stok­ers were a pic­turesque group who ac­quired an ad­mi­ra­tion of their own. I used to tell my­self that when I grew up I would join this de­light­ful group of sailors, but when I came to man­hood the mil­i­tary bands were a dy­ing breed and, in any case, I came to re­alise that I re­al­ly didn't fit the "pro­file" of a stok­er.Of the range of in­di­vid­ual char­ac­ters who then peo­pled our Car­ni­val, the strut­ting Mid­night Rob­bers with their men­ac­ing rhetoric and caray­ing move­ments al­so held my fan­cy. Their broad-brimmed som­breros, tas­selled out­fits, at­ten­tion-win­ning whis­tle and home-made weapon­ry made them in­stant­ly recog­nis­able. The in­ter­play be­tween these des­per­a­does from hell, their vaunt­ing rob­ber talk and de­mands for blood mon­ey were the stuff of a won­der­ful the­atre that has vir­tu­al­ly gone with the wind. But some­times snip­pets of their threat­en­ing grandiose spiel still echo in my mind...."Stop, stop you mock­ing pre­tender, I am the grand­mas­ter crim­i­nal come from the bo­som of hell; where I live the sun nev­er shines and the rain nev­er falls....." Sad­ly, the Mid­night Rob­bers have since lost their charm­ing men­ace and, it seems, have large­ly re­tired to their abysmal abode.

As close-up spec­ta­tors, we al­so en­joyed "com­mu­ni­cat­ing" with mas­quer­aders whose por­tray­als called for the wear­ing of masks.If the rev­eller hid be­hind a mask with an en­larged nose, we would prompt­ly in­form him, "Mas, I know you by your nose."But as colour­ful, dra­mat­ic and root­sy as it was, Car­ni­val in the for­ties was re­al­ly a na­tion­al fes­ti­val in tran­si­tion. It had its ori­gins in the so­cial fer­ment of the post-eman­ci­pa­tion ex­pe­ri­ence when the masked balls of the up­per class even­tu­al­ly gave way to the rev­el­ry of freed slaves who would even­tu­al­ly change the colour and cul­ture of the is­land's pop­u­la­tion.In his book Trinidad Car­ni­val: Man­date for a Na­tion­al The­atre, Dr Er­rol Hill ob­serves, "Car­ni­val was al­so a time when the tal­ents of na­tive artists, po­ets, mu­si­cians, ac­tors, dancers and crafts­men were on dis­play. For Africans, Car­ni­val rep­re­sent­ed a time of re­con­nect­ing with their old so­ci­eties and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to find their rhythm in a new so­cial en­vi­ron­ment."Up from the 40s, Car­ni­val blos­somed in­to its gold­en age. Un­doubt­ed­ly the main in­spi­ra­tion for this glo­ri­ous flow­er­ing in the 60s, 70s and 80s came large­ly from the Band of the Year com­pe­ti­tion which Gov­ern­ment's Car­ni­val De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee first pre­sent­ed in 1963 at the Grand Stand on the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. Play­ing sec­ond fid­dle to the Sa­van­nah's cen­tral fo­cus was the Down­town com­pe­ti­tion which the City Cor­po­ra­tion held on Ma­rine Square, now Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, giv­ing mas­quer­aders a north-south pa­rade route through the city. Bring­ing the spec­ta­cle be­fore such mass gath­er­ings and of­fer­ing sub­stan­tial prizes to the win­ners (a mil­lion dol­lars at the Sa­van­nah) the com­pe­ti­tions helped to turn a group of lead­ing band­lead­ers in­to icons of Car­ni­val as they re­galed the fes­ti­val with a se­ries of bril­liant por­tray­als in their quest to earn the prize and glo­ry of Band of the Year.

As a young re­porter cov­er­ing gen­er­al events, I had both the plea­sure and du­ty of chron­i­cling these mag­nif­i­cent cli­mac­tic pro­duc­tions, the likes of which we will nev­er see again. It seems a tragedy that the tech­nol­o­gy of mass-pro­duc­ing video disks was de­vel­oped too late to cap­ture for pos­ter­i­ty the mag­nif­i­cence of this unique and glit­ter­ing hu­man spec­ta­cle. But hav­ing seen them, who can ever for­get such epic pre­sen­ta­tions as Harold Salde­nah's lm­pe­r­i­al Rome, George Bai­ley's Ye Saga of Mer­rie Eng­land, Ed­mund Hart's Flag­wa­vers of Siena, Stephen Lee He­ung's Chi­na, The For­bid­den City, Irvin McWilliams' Won­ders of Buc­co Reef; Cito Ve­lasquez' Na­ture's Note­book, Rus­sel Char­ter's Gul­liv­er's Trav­els, Wayne Berke­ley's Kalei­do­scope, Pe­ter Min­shall's Car­ni­val of the Sea, Raoul Garib's The Sting?From the mid-50s to the end of the 80s these car­ni­val band­lead­ers be­came leg­ends in their own right, bring­ing thou­sands of vis­i­tors to our shores and in­spir­ing an im­i­ta­tion of "the great­est show on earth" in oth­er cap­i­tals where mi­grat­ing Tri­nis had made their homes. They pro­duced a cul­tur­al won­der at home and gave to oth­er coun­tries an ap­petis­ing taste of our spe­cial joie de vivre.