SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

The Blue Dev­il is one of the few tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters that has en­dured over the years, with­stand­ing the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ‘pret­ty mas’, to carve its place in T&T’s his­to­ry books.

Cov­ered in blue paint, the Dev­il dances and prances along the streets on Car­ni­val Mon­day, strik­ing fear in the hearts of spec­ta­tors and mas play­ers alike.

In a re­cent in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Eu­stace Pierre, the founder of the Un­der­tak­ers-the Paramin Blue Dev­ils band ex­plained how the Blue Dev­il got its colour and how the art of be­ing a Blue Dev­il has changed over the years.

“The dev­il is tra­di­tion­al­ly a brown char­ac­ter but Paramin didn’t have cane, so our fore­fa­thers were in­stru­men­tal in get­ting to use ‘Blue’, Crown Blue that you wash your clothes with to white it, they mixed it with grease af­ter a process of boil­ing it af­ter how many hours to put on your skin and we just get the sim­ple thing of buy­ing Sama­roo’s body paint and putting it on your skin,” Pierre said.

The Un­der­tak­ers, Pierre said, have been able to se­cure a spot for the Blue Dev­il in most Car­ni­val fetes, as they are of­ten hired to blow fire at fete en­trances and on-stage when artistes per­form.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view, oth­er mem­bers of the band struck out the Blue Dev­il rhythm on met­al bis­cuit tins. Pierre said the tins are filled with pa­per and the pa­per is then set alight and left to burn to tune them, a tra­di­tion that has en­dured for as many years as the Dev­il has been danc­ing.

He said grow­ing up the hills of Paramin, play­ing the Dev­il came as a rite of pas­sage to him and many oth­ers.

“We have got it in Paramin, we can sell our­selves be­sides the sea­son­ings, we can sell our­selves this way in en­ter­tain­ing peo­ple as a tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ter in terms of en­ter­tain­ing peo­ple,” he said.

If you have ever seen a Blue Dev­il in ac­tion or heard Pay de Dev­il by Win­ston Bai­ley (The Mighty Shad­ow), you know the Dev­il must be paid when he ac­costs you on the road.

Pierre ex­plained that pay­ing the Dev­il is not just about hand­ing over your mon­ey when he blocks your path on the road.

“The dev­il not sup­posed to take mon­ey from some­body dri­ving in a car, we eh beg­ging, you sup­posed to dance for that mon­ey, you sup­posed to throw it on the ground and the dev­il has to dance, the dev­il comes en­slaved to that mon­ey,” he said.

Be­ing a Dev­il does not come with­out its own stig­ma, Pierre said, as the per­son por­tray­ing the char­ac­ter is of­ten viewed as evil. But Pierre said in or­der to play the Dev­il, you must know how to sep­a­rate por­tray­al from man­i­fes­ta­tion.

“The first thing we for­mu­late as a dev­il, is a line, there is a line be­tween what is por­tray­al and what is man­i­fes­ta­tion so the rhythm can man­i­fest you as much as how much your spir­it is in­to it,” he ex­plained.

He said in the ear­ly days of the Paramin Blue Dev­ils, frogs and snakes were a part of the play and Dev­ils could of­ten be seen with a frog dan­gling from their mouths as they danced.

How­ev­er, he said time has re­fined and dig­ni­fied Blue Dev­ils for their au­di­ences.

“We are do­ing it now with a lit­tle more de­cen­cy and re­spect for the pa­trons out there, there is a rite of no touch­ing so as the dev­il, you are not sup­posed to touch pa­trons, so you can in­voke fear up to a point of ‘Oh gosh, he go touch meh’ but no, that is what we test. So as chil­dren, the dev­il would have test­ed that in you as a child, they would have come to see your fear lev­el and dur­ing the year your moth­er would have said, I will let the dev­il come for you so we used to pay homage to that as a dis­ci­pline,” he said.

Fire-breath­ing is al­so a ma­jor part of the Blue Dev­il por­tray­al. It in­volves tak­ing a mouth­ful of kerosene and spit­ting it in­to the air over an open flame, in this case, a flam­beau, to cre­ate a plume of fire in the air.

While it is one of the more fas­ci­nat­ing as­pects of the Blue Dev­il per­for­mance, Pierre said it is very dan­ger­ous and should not be prac­ticed by those who are not ex­pe­ri­enced.

“I would say its a dan­ger­ous thing to do, you have to have your wits about you. You would have learned in your show­er at home a long time ago to put wa­ter in your mouth and blow to make a rain­bow, it comes like you are do­ing that with pitch oil or kerosene. We line our stom­achs with milk some­times to help but it is some­thing you shouldn’t just be try­ing if you don’t know what you are do­ing.”

Pierre said his band does its part in keep­ing the tra­di­tion of the Blue Dev­ils alive and well in Paramin by en­sur­ing that the up­com­ing gen­er­a­tion learns the ins-and-outs of the por­tray­al.

“A child in the neigh­bour­hood, five, six or sev­en years old, is some­body who might be in­flu­enced be­cause their fa­ther might come out for Car­ni­val, it’s like a way to keep the chil­dren con­struc­tive, like come, I go beat a pan for alyuh and alyuh go dance. We teach them to beat the pan, so in that way we en­sure the gen­er­a­tion down the road have a lit­tle skillset as how the pan is beat, what they do to tune the pan, what you say, how you bawl, how you blow the fire,” he said.

Pierre said be­ing able to ‘free-up’ on the road for Car­ni­val is one of the best parts of be­ing a Dev­il.

And while he said mod­ern-day Blue Dev­ils are a lit­tle more gen­tle with spec­ta­tors, Pierre has a warn­ing for those who line up to watch the Dev­il play: “You can’t tell the dev­il how to be­have, you can’t play mas and fraid pow­der, you com­ing to be en­ter­tained and that is what we do.”