Joshua Sur­tees

Un­der a blue sky in­ter­rupt­ed on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly by wisps of white cloud, moko jumbies pa­rade out­side the British Mu­se­um. El­la An­dall's Bring Down The Pow­er rings out over the crowds gath­ered in the court­yard in front of the steps lead­ing up to the columned por­ti­co.

In­side the fa­mous old mu­se­um, which con­tains arte­facts ac­quired (and oc­ca­sion­al­ly pil­fered) from the four cor­ners of the globe, one sec­tion of the world has been less fre­quent­ly cu­rat­ed than oth­ers: the Caribbean.So it's in­spir­ing to see Trinidad rep­re­sent­ed in an en­gross­ing in­stal­la­tion by British-Trinida­di­an artist, Zak Ov�, whose fu­tur­is­tic au­then­tic moko jumbies stand high in the Great Court in­ter­weav­ing post­mod­ernism and tra­di­tion.

But this in­stal­la­tion is not part of a cu­ra­to­r­i­al cel­e­bra­tion of Trinidad or the Caribbean. It has been com­mis­sioned as part of the British Mu­se­um's Cel­e­brat­ing Africa se­ries of per­for­mances, lec­tures and art­work and it co­in­cides with Lon­don's biggest cel­e­bra­tion of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val. Ov� (son of Ho­race Ov� the film­mak­er) was cho­sen to make a work that cel­e­brates the African di­as­po­ra and how its in­flu­ence and his­to­ry have trav­elled the world. It has suc­ceed­ed and is a won­der­ful work quite un­re­lat­ed to any oth­er art in Britain to­day. Cer­tain­ly it's not what the thou­sands of vis­i­tors pass­ing through the mu­se­um en­trance each day ex­pect to see.

The ma­te­r­i­al cul­ture of the Caribbean is a com­plex and con­test­ed are­na.

The ar­chae­ol­o­gy of the in­dige­nous peo­ple who were wiped out by the Span­ish is scarce and ex­tends most­ly to hu­man bur­ial re­mains and ev­i­dence of dwellings in mounds of earth and caves rather than art, tools, weapons and in­stru­ments.

The shack­les, tor­ture im­ple­ments and agri­cul­tur­al tools of the plan­ta­tion- era colo­nial­ists aren't the kind of his­to­ry the mu­se­um's di­rec­tors are keen to ex­hib­it, and you can't ex­act­ly ex­port and cu­rate the pret­ti­er as­pects of colo­nial­ism like the great hous­es and pub­lic build­ings.

So the Caribbean's phys­i­cal her­itage rep­re­sents the his­to­ries of the places where the ma­jor­i­ty of its peo­ple orig­i­nat­ed from many gen­er­a­tions ago: Africa and In­dia.

It is dif­fi­cult in muse­ol­o­gy to con­vey to peo­ple–the chil­dren in the crowd, for ex­am­ple–why a moko jumbie dis­play fea­tur­ing Trinidad's cur­rent Car­ni­val Queen, Stephanie Kan­hai, is part of a British Mu­se­um se­ries about Africa, with­out us­ing the words "slav­ery" or "in­den­tured labour." But these are words of­ten avoid­ed in muse­ol­o­gy for a whole raft of rea­sons, even though they are the on­ly ex­pla­na­tion as to why an Orisa rit­u­al was car­ried out by Ad� Egun Crispin Robin­son, a priest of the Cuban Ifa tra­di­tion who spat rum and spilled oil, wa­ter and hon­ey on the ground be­fore the moko jumbies per­formed.

At­ti­lah Springer, who cu­rat­ed the project ex­plained the of­fer­ing, say­ing, "The rit­u­al was for an­ces­tors, be­cause the moko jumbie is es­sen­tial­ly an an­ces­tral type of mas­quer­ade. A com­mon thread in African spir­i­tu­al be­lief is rev­er­ence for an­ces­tors.The rit­u­al we did was fol­low­ing the Orisa tra­di­tion of Yoru­ba peo­ple, which can be found in var­i­ous parts of the re­gion, in­clud­ing Trinidad. What (Robin­son) drew on the ground were the signs spe­cif­ic to a par­tic­u­lar verse of the Ifa lit­er­ary cor­pus that refers to an­ces­tral ven­er­a­tion. We called the names of our own an­ces­tors and some of the an­ces­tors of car­ni­val both in Eng­land and Trinidad like Clau­dia Jones and George Bai­ley. Af­ter that was the cast­ing of the co­conuts to find out if the of­fer­ing was ac­cept­ed, which it was. He closed with some praise songs for Egun, the Yoru­ba word for an­ces­tors."

Al­though jumbies are meant to watch over and pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties, the sight of them can be scary; and not just in a ver­tig­i­nous sense. Here in Lon­don, how­ev­er, there's poignan­cy to the per­for­mance. The beau­ti­ful cos­tumes are de­signed by Alan Vaugh­an of Touch D Sky–a band based in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do that al­so has a branch in New­cas­tle where Vaugh­an is from and where he teach­es British kids how to play moko jumbies.

Kan­hai is wear­ing the same cos­tume she won the Car­ni­val Queen com­pe­ti­tion in: The Sweet Wa­ters of Africa.

"The on­ly thing that's dif­fer­ent is that the ac­tu­al Queen head­piece is dou­ble the size," says Vaugh­an. "...We couldn't bring it over here be­cause it was too big," says Kan­hai, fin­ish­ing his sen­tence for him. The whole theme of our mas this year is called Cross­ing The Riv­er which is based on the Caryl Phillips nov­el based in the UK, US and Caribbean," Vaugh­an con­tin­ues.

He's been com­ing to Trinidad for 20 years and this year worked at Robert Young's Pro­pa­gan­da space in Bel­mont, close to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

"It's about how the in­flu­ence of Africa spread out and how it the­mat­i­cal­ly runs across gen­er­a­tions. There are throw­backs and leaps of time. So the whole mas, cross­ing the Sa­van­nah stage, or the 'riv­er', was ac­tu­al­ly cross­ing the At­lantic. The orig­i­nal spir­it from Africa man­i­fests it­self in mu­sic, rhythm, art de­sign so it's like the wa­ter is run­ning out from Africa feed­ing the world, hence this ocean cos­tume."

As well as Kan­hai's mag­nif­i­cent cos­tume, Vaugh­an and his two young prot�g�s � Bradley Bell from New­cas­tle and Jona­di­ah Gon­za­les from San Fer­nan­do � are dressed in cos­tumes with com­plete­ly cov­ered head­pieces.

"These are a hy­brid thing," says their soft­ly spo­ken de­sign­er, " so you've got in­flu­ence from Egun­gun cos­tume from the Yoru­ba tra­di­tion that man­i­fests it­self across West Africa and look­ing across to Trinidad you can see the sim­i­lar­i­ties with Pier­rot Grenade with all the pieces of fab­ric com­ing off. It pays homage to both those things."

Watch­ing the show are Ho­race Ov�, the play­wright Mustapha Matu­ra and the artist Pe­ter Doig among oth­er mem­bers of Trinidad's ex­tend­ed artis­tic fam­i­ly.

Zak Ov� is hap­py and slight­ly over­whelmed at how many peo­ple have come and how well it has turned out.

"This is mas mak­ing," he says. "Even if you look at the cop­per skirt (on one of the fig­ures), which I built in my gar­den. Re­al­ly I got that from the Dame Lor­raine: the Vic­to­ri­an skirt where you're show­ing your bam­see. All the el­e­ments in this have an in­spi­ra­tion from the years I've spent chip­ping on the road in Trinidad watch­ing and look­ing and learn­ing from all the great mas men be­fore me. Nari Ap­proo, Ja­son Grif­fith, Pe­ter Min­shall, you've got so many art stars who were born and com­mit­ted to mas mak­ing through my brief life­time. I've been in awe of their work. It al­ways struck me that we have such a pow­er­ful art phi­los­o­phy...why hasn't it had more in­flu­ence in gallery work?"

Just like Vaugh­an, who in­tends his cos­tumes to en­dure and be partb of his mas de­sign next year, Ove too wants his work to re­main.

"We break apart all these great works of art every year to en­able new works the next year - which is a stem line back to In­di­an and African tra­di­tions. But on an­oth­er lev­el, wouldn't it have been nice or ex­cit­ing to have a mu­se­um in Trinidad that ex­em­pli­fies the best of the best that was? Where we could still see Man­crab, where wen­can see the cos­tumes of peo­ple like Nari Ap­proo and get a his­to­ry and time­line of what each mas spoke about for the time it was cre­at­ed in."

Ov�, born in Cam­den to an Irish moth­er who ran a bou­tique store, was brought up sur­round­ed by his fa­ther's con­tem­po­raries.

"The whole way through my child­hood, I was dragged from po­lit­i­cal and so­cial sit­u­a­tion to po­lit­i­cal and so­cial sit­u­a­tion by a hand­ful of Trinida­di­an ac­tivists and artists who were in Britain at that time and they were kind of ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly, peo­ple like John La Rose, Mustapha Matu­ra etc."

He stud­ied film at St Mar­tin's School of Art and went on to di­rect mu­sic videos for the likes of PM Dawn, Monie Love and Cha­ka De­mus & Pli­ers in the UK and Ja­maica. He lat­er lived and worked in Trinidad mak­ing com­mer­cials in­clud­ing bmo­bile ads fea­tur­ing a young, un­known Ri­han­na.

"I've al­ways been back and forth," he says of his youth. "Spent many sum­mers of my child­hood with old peo­ple hav­ing been shipped back home, up in Blue Basin, liv­ing in the bush. And that gave me a very in­ter­est­ing per­spec­tive be­cause I grew up in old world Trinidad in that sense with peo­ple still talk­ing bro­ken French and men like Du Bois up in the hills. It's some­thing that stayed with me per­ma­nent­ly.

"My grand­par­ents ran a big store on Nel­son Street, Jones' Hard­ware Store, the store for the poor. It's been there since about 1907 and es­sen­tial­ly my fam­i­ly's trade is hard­ware but al­so the para­pher­na­lia used by obeah prac­ti­tion­ers: oils, in­cense, the stuff used in tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine. Grow­ing up be­tween Lon­don and Trinidad was a weird ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause one was mod­ern and then you're thrown back in­to the mix on Nel­son Street and In­de­pen­dence Square."

The old and the new are in­ter­wo­ven in his work. The cheeky young child­like fig­ures on the ground could be char­ac­ters from a sci-fi movie set in space, but on top of the "bam­boo" stilts (ac­tu­al­ly made of scaf­fold) the two main jumbie fig­ures are wear­ing masks that could come straight out of Benin.

It's im­pos­si­ble to tell with the naked eye whether the ma­te­ri­als are or­gan­ic or in­or­gan­ic, but Ov� says they are most­ly alu­mini­um and brass with a "Franken­stein" of dif­fer­ent man­nequins cut up to cre­ate the fig­ures. Mod­ern ac­ces­sories like sneak­ers, a skate­board and a stereo boom box are trans­formed in­to a kind of ex­ot­ic jew­ellery.

"I want­ed to cre­ate char­ac­ters that spoke about the past and the fu­ture, I want­ed the amal­ga­ma­tion of black and gold, the colours and ma­te­ri­als to im­preg­nate that sense of old world: fu­ture world. I'm con­cerned that the char­ac­ters and time­lines in old mas need new in­vesti­ture and new pow­ers. What's a su­per­hero if he doesn't have pow­ers? What's a su­per­hero if his pow­ers are out of date?"

Ov� ex­plains how he be­came in­fat­u­at­ed with the phi­los­o­phy and pol­i­tics of Car­ni­val tra­di­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly old mas while doc­u­ment­ing Car­ni­val in Trinidad.

"When I dis­cov­ered the in­tel­lec­tu­al world of Car­ni­val and how the process of trans­fig­ure­ment en­abled peo­ple that had been brought to Trinidad through slav­ery or in­den­tured labour and sud­den­ly em­pow­ered them to be any­thing that they want­ed to be, you re­alise that Car­ni­val in it­self is an in­cred­i­ble eman­ci­pa­tor. The process of trans­fig­ure­ment in old mas is what re­al­ly led us in Trinidad to a sense of in­de­pen­dence. So if a men tells you "right, you're a slave, your his­to­ry is this" sud­den­ly through the process of Car­ni­val and cos­tume and the cre­ative in­vest­ment of how you take your­self away from what some­body else might see you as, you've com­plet­ed the trans­for­ma­tion."

He's re­ceived the com­pli­ments of mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty staff from Nige­ria and the Con­go who recog­nise the moko jumbie tra­di­tion "which has lit­er­al­ly walked the land­scape of Africa be­fore trav­el­ling to the Caribbean with slav­ery," and see his work as cel­e­bra­to­ry, quite apart from most mod­ern in­ter­pre­ta­tions of African cul­ture and so­ci­ety that are mired in vi­o­lence, pover­ty and strug­gle.

What the Caribbean re­tained of African tra­di­tion is its cel­e­bra­to­ry na­ture and it's some­thing that will con­tin­ue to grow in im­por­tance as it is passed back and forth across the At­lantic.

"The im­por­tance that Car­ni­val has to play in the fu­ture of black con­tem­po­rary arts glob­al­ly is huge," says Ov�.

"The oth­er im­por­tant thing is the re­turn of Trinidad Car­ni­val to Ghana and Nige­ria. They're play­ing Trinidad mas in Africa and us­ing it to up­hold African mytholo­gies in the way Trinidad us­es Car­ni­val to up­hold its own."