Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

So, it's Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry month, an event which as­sumes ca­lyp­so his­to­ry has been ne­glect­ed, is im­por­tant enough to get its own month, and makes a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion na­tion­al­ly. A hat-trick of wrong­ness.

The State funds tents, awards mil­lions in prizes at Di­manche Gras, gives it an in­cred­i­ble amount of free air time, and there's a grow­ing stream of talk about the val­ue of ca­lyp­so and car­ni­val year-round via me­dia. UWI has a Car­ni­val Stud­ies unit. There's a Car­ni­val In­sti­tute. UTT has an acad­e­my of Car­ni­val, head­ed by a ca­lyp­son­ian. Yet few of its pro­po­nents will ac­tu­al­ly pay for ca­lyp­so.

As for ac­tu­al ca­lyp­so his­to­ry, there's Rohlehr's Ca­lyp­so and So­ci­ety; Louis Reg­is's The Po­lit­i­cal Ca­lyp­so. There are al­so mi­nor works like Atil­la's Kaiso, film doc­u­men­taries like the Glam­our Boys, and Ray Funk's archival work. From the late 1950s ca­lyp­so and Car­ni­val had high-pro­file ad­vo­cates in me­dia and gov­ern­ment, like Bertie Gomes. And this is just off the top of my head.

De­spite these decades of ad­vo­ca­cy and pro­mo­tion, re­tired An­gli­can cler­gy­man Canon Knol­ly Clarke was re­port­ed as say­ing at mas'man Stephen Derek's fu­ner­al that the Car­ni­val should be "taught in schools." It's the lat­est in a round of such calls.

But it's al­ready taught, so far as I know, more en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly than that whole read­ing, writ­ing, arith­metic agen­da that seems to have fall­en by the way­side. This ef­fect (of Car­ni­val on ed­u­ca­tion) has been ev­i­dent to sen­si­ble peo­ple con­cerned with ed­u­ca­tion for some time. The fol­low­ing ed­i­to­r­i­al was pub­lished in the Teach­ers' Jour­nal in 1908, and re-pub­lished in the Port-of-Spain Gazette on Feb­ru­ary 25 of that year.

"The Car­ni­val is near at hand. A few days hence we shall have in our midst the non-ed­i­fy­ing spec­ta­cle of men and women, boys and girls, ar­rayed and garbed in every con­ceiv­able cos­tume out­side of the or­di­nary with their fea­tures in many cas­es con­cealed by the most hideous im­i­ta­tion of the hu­man coun­te­nance that imag­i­na­tive in­ge­nu­ity can de­vise.

"The rep­re­sen­ta­tion by them of the brute beasts is al­so not for­got­ten, for it is the de­light of many to em­u­late the most beau­teous forms of the bat and cow, and the fa­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions of the goat, pig and ass. The dev­il al­so has his share in the all-ab­sorb­ing pageant, for his is the hero­ic copy for num­ber­less boys who are nev­er more hap­py when rigged out in a close­ly fit­ting, to their mind, in­fer­nal garb, wild­ly run­ning through the streets, long pronged wood­en forks in hand and lusti­ly whack­ing their ver­te­bral ap­pendages to the huge de­light of them­selves and their ad­mir­ers.

"Oth­ers, less dis­posed to run, jump and skip about in the grotesque forms and ha­bil­i­ments may be now seen in the bands dressed a la ne­gre jardin...It is the busi­ness of these ne­gre jardins to use their gas­pa­ree sticks with great free­dom and �clat on the heads of ri­val bands wher­ev­er the Po­lice are not in ev­i­dence or when­ev­er a favourable op­por­tu­ni­ty presents it­self.

"Viewed in the light of an amus­ing pas­time, that is, as harm­less­ly rep­re­sent­ing the hea­then Sat­ur­na­lia of an­cient days, the Car­ni­val can be made to be­come an in­no­cent piece of di­ver­sion, but with its present as­pects of shame­less vul­gar­i­ty and bar­bar­i­ty there is no hes­i­ta­tion in stat­ing that it is a mis­for­tune such an ex­hi­bi­tion is tol­er­at­ed in a civilised com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing re­gard to or­der, re­spect and de­cen­cy.

"The teacher knows this to be but too true... (since) he con­sid­ers that much of the good work he has done dur­ing the past year is in dan­ger of be­ing un­done by the un­ruly li­cense these days af­ford.

"In some of the sis­ter colonies Car­ni­val is not known and in oth­ers on­ly a very mild form (of) what ob­tains here is tol­er­at­ed. It may be this cir­cum­stance is a bless­ing. The more se­ri­ous the char­ac­ter of a com­mu­ni­ty, the bet­ter for its good. The Car­ni­val, as it is, es­pe­cial­ly to the low­er class­es and some of the bet­ter part of the com­mu­ni­ty...can­not be re­gard­ed oth­er­wise than hav­ing a most de­mor­al­is­ing ef­fect on the gen­er­al com­mu­ni­ty."

Per­haps not so as­ton­ish­ing­ly, this de­scribes my own thoughts on the sub­ject, ar­rived at long be­fore I did any re­search on it. Con­tem­po­rary pro­po­nents like to pre­tend it's all "tra­di­tion" and valu­able cul­ture or some non­sense like that. In re­al­i­ty, it's a rit­u­al of de­viance–so­cial, sex­u­al and moral. And it al­ways has been.

But it's the moral bit that should con­cern the good cler­gy­man. The ques­tion aris­es: what, ex­act­ly, does he, and every­one else who bleats this, want to be "taught in schools"? Al­co­hol-in­duced fren­zy? Crude sex­u­al­i­ty? Vi­o­lence? To es­tab­lish that ca­lyp­so (a non-lit­er­ate form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion) is equal to lit­er­a­cy and con­ven­tion­al knowl­edge? Well, crime, Google's porn-stats, low na­tion­al lit­er­a­cy rates and the abysmal schools' ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults in­di­cate "mis­sion ac­com­plished" on all points.

The gen­e­sis of all this is the big lie that Car­ni­val is a "na­tion­al" and valu­able cul­tur­al fes­ti­val. Many peo­ple be­lieve and are at­tached to this idea. But in fact, as the Can­boulay folks con­tort them­selves year­ly to re­mind every­one, Car­ni­val is an African thing. Ar­ti­cles like the one I cit­ed above, where the re­spectable class­es who strove for ed­u­ca­tion and sen­tience in Trinidad, de­nounced the Car­ni­val, or thought it to be at best a harm­less di­ver­sion, can be found through­out the 19th cen­tu­ry and up to the mid-20th cen­tu­ry.

Peo­ple will be­lieve what they want to be­lieve. But peo­ple shouldn't on the one hand say "teach car­ni­val in schools" and throw ca­lyp­so his­to­ry at the pop­u­la­tion for a month, and then be sur­prised when the be­hav­iour they pre­cip­i­tate floods the na­tion in sex­u­alised chil­dren, vi­o­lence, crime and an­ar­chy as "our cul­ture."