Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

On Feb­ru­ary 1, a Mas­ters of the Mas ses­sions was held at Stu­dio 66 in Barataria. The se­ries fell un­der the ban­ner of Jou­vay Ay­i­ti, a joint mas camp ven­ture that in­cludes Scherzan­do Pan Groove, the De­part­ment for Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts at UWI and the Lloyd Best In­sti­tute, as well as the Stu­dio 66 Art Sup­port Com­mu­ni­ty.

The high­light of this fi­nal ses­sion was Car­ni­val re­nais­sance man Bill Trot­man, whose mul­ti­ple con­tri­bu­tions to the arts in T&T have had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the cre­ative land­scape. This as­sess­ment was shared by vi­su­al artist Makem­ba Kun­le, whose tenth ex­hi­bi­tion, Jou­vay Las­sup­pa, was held at Stu­dio 66 last No­vem­ber. Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, in his open­ing re­marks Kun­le lament­ed that "a lot of young peo­ple do not know about the tra­di­tions of keep­ing Car­ni­val alive."

Mod­er­at­ing the in­ter­view with Trot­man was di­rec­tor and play­wright Rawle Gib­bons. The two have been col­lab­o­rat­ing on a pub­li­ca­tion that cen­tres on Trot­man's life and achieve­ments. Still a work in progress, the book has an ex­pect­ed com­ple­tion date of mid-2013.

Gib­bons asked Trot­man ques­tions in four broad cat­e­gories, prompt­ing the Car­ni­val per­former's rem­i­nis­cences on his work as a dancer, a vi­su­al artist, a ca­lyp­son­ian, and a mas­man. Trot­man read­i­ly pro­claimed dance as his ear­li­est pas­sion, re­call­ing his boy­hood fas­ci­na­tion with the vet­er­an dancer Ge­of­frey Hold­er.

The au­di­ence laughed and clapped ap­pre­cia­tive­ly as Trot­man's re­spons­es to Gib­bons' ques­tions took the form of wind­ing anec­dotes and hu­mor­ous sto­ries. Trot­man rec­ol­lect­ed his youth in Cobo Town and the ear­ly days of his fam­i­ly life, and shared his thoughts on the re­al­i­ty of be­ing a sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an who is still very in­vest­ed in the art and cul­ture of his na­tion.

Trot­man has worn the hats of many cre­ative roles: ac­tor, dancer, ca­lyp­son­ian, co­me­di­an, po­et, sto­ry­teller, cul­tur­al ac­tivist, artist and tra­di­tion­al mas play­er. In none of these dis­ci­plines has he re­ceived any ter­tiary-lev­el, for­mal ed­u­ca­tion.

When asked whether or not he would like to rem­e­dy this, Trot­man re­spond­ed that he might have, at one point. Now, at 79, he proud­ly de­clared that such ex­ter­nal val­i­da­tion was be­yond his con­cern. The key thing, he told Gib­bons and the event's guests, was to con­tin­ue cre­at­ing, and to avoid la­bels.

"I am a pa­tri­ot of the skin I'm in," Trot­man said, adding, "a pa­tri­ot of T&T, of African­ism, of the arts."