Photos by Stephen Broadbridge, Trini jungle juice, Tara Keens - Douglas
“The vocabulary of festival is the language of extreme experiences through contrast – The body is made into an object of dressing up, costuming and masking … And of course, singing and dancing and other kinds of play are part and parcel of festive celebrations, again with the idea of overextending the self. All of these motives underscore the sprit of increase, of stretching life to the fullest, that lies at the heart of festive celebrations” (Roger d. Abraham, in Turner (ed) 1982 167-68
First aim is to document human experience within festival. I will do this by documenting my own experience and a collection of quotes and images that best describe that experience.
Trinidad carnival parade takes place over a period of 2 days. These days will be broken down by time. Dawn, Midday and Dusk and discussed by the seasonal cycle of birth - death -renewal.
The narrative will take you through these cycles discussing (where necessary) the body,the crowd, the atmosphere,the city, the stage, the costume, the dance and the music.
DAWN experience - the birth - a baptism in mud!
I could do my research and tell you about the history of carnival and j’ouvert. Where it originated and how it has developed. About the olden days where carnival supposedly was richer in context and held more meaning for its participants. Carnival as culture has been beaten down over the years, with people assuming it will surely die. This is not so and there is a reason it continues to live on defying all those who predict its demise
Reiterating carnivals history from numerous texts, will not aid in grasping the feeling of the human experience within the festival. I cannot draw comparison to carnival before my time, but I can talk about what I experience today. The process may have changed but the feeling of ecstasic joy, I believe has remained the same throughout its existence. The joy I feel now is still the joy felt in past years just the tradition itself has changed. With that said, I don’t want to waste time talking about the supposed degeneration of a festival. Change is evident but the feeling of the experience attached to it can surely be felt by anyone who has participated.
As a Trinidadian, I have participated in Carnival as if my life depended on it. I have managed to go fourteens years straight playing in the ‘pretty’ mas. Everyone likes to look good and putting on that costume made you feel good! I remember picking up my costume a week in advance and trying it on everyday, until I woke up carnival morning and put it on one last time. It was an event within an event of sorts. There is the alteration of the costume, whether to add on or take off. Then taken into consideration are the boots that should be worn and the make up that should be applied. This was no ‘joke’ operation with women (and men included) contemplating how their hair should be worn and what colour shoes matched best with the braiding on the costume. So carnival came and I reveled in all my glory the costume I made my own. In those fourteen years however, I had always contemplated playing J’ouvert – ‘mud mas’ which was immediately followed with cries from my mother “ J’ouvert? Are you crazy? You can’t play both ‘pretty’ mas and ‘mud’ mas, you would not have enough energy. And it’s so dirty? So unsafe, you can’t tell who is who!” The list of reasons went on and on. This year however I said to myself I had to do it, I had to see what all this fuss was about ( not to mention my mother had never played before , so I dragged her along in the process. She could not preach against it, if she never played!)
So 2am Monday morning, I woke up and I must admit I was not excited. The thought of sleep and having to get up to play ‘pretty’ carnival loomed over me. I wanted to look decent; actually I wanted to look good, so I dressed the part. My mother walks in and questions my outfit. Do you plan on wearing that again? Turns out my clothes were too ‘nice’ for j’ouvert, so I changed into an outfit I was willing to part with, an old t-shirt and tights.
A group of us drove into town and in the darkness I can see the littering of people on all corners of the city.Carnival is rarely still, but in the early hours of the morning, the surroundings are eerie and solemn. The number of bodies kept piling up. This stillness will soon be over thrown. Everyone was getting ready for something; I was not quite sure what that something was.
I decided to play with a j’ouvert band, as I figured this would give me the feeling of belonging to a group, it cost about 50 CDN and this included free drinks. I would soon find out that to belong this was not necessary.
I could hear music blasting from random music trucks. The group I belonged too had a steel pan band, which I was happy about as steel pan music was traditionally what accompanied j’ouvert celebrations (I wanted to experience the real deal!). So in my t-shirt and tights I shuffled to the music. I tried to stay close to my group, as the mass of bodies were dizzying, in the darkness it was difficult to register who was who, who was participant and who was spectator.
Then I see this thing walking towards me. A human thing, caked with wet brown mud, carrying a bucket of that same wet brown mud. This was the dirtiness my mother talked about, and I clenched my whole body hoping to dear God that I would not be his next victim to splatter with mud.
The thing is I knew it was mud carnival, I knew I would get dirty but I was not ready, the site of him excited me but also made me uncomfortable. I still felt too clean to get dirty.
We caught up with our band and I began to see more people with smears of mud. In front of me there was a bathtub on wheels. A bathtub filled with the slimiest mud and at its side’s bucket of paints – red, blue, green, yellow and white. I could smell the fresh paint. This was our supply to revel in. Before I could turn to show my mother, I see my friend get a handful of blue paint to the mouth. His whole face is blue and his smile was blue as well. I laugh and like a domino effect, the paint was passed on. I dunked my hand elbow deep in this mud and flung it. I must admit it felt good. An old man covered in red, blessed me with red paint as well, all I could do is laugh and smile. J’ouvert knows no scorn.
So now I’m covered and my clothes are half wet and half dry. People resort to removing articles of soaked clothing as the paint feels better on your skin. I wish I wore less. I can’t tell who is who in the mess. I followed the happy group of people dancing to the beat of the steel pan. The music, the dance, the mud built a unitary momentum. There was a feeling of oneness. I was already dirty, so I didn’t care whose paint covered arm rubbed against mine, we were all in the same thing. A Unified and happy collective.
The darkness quickly dispersed as night meets and greets the rising sun. Reminding me it has only just begun. I had to get up in 2 hours to continue my carnival celebrations. People don’t seem to be concerned … they are dirty, muddy, tired but happy. Skin caked with cracking mud and paint they could not care less. All people were anonymous as all denominators of colour,class and race were erased. One muddy man looked like the other muddy man. There was no distinguishing between stranger and friend, they were both part of the collective experience. They both shared the same space in the streets.
You really can’t tell who belongs to where, it is displacement of sorts. It is the 'other 'world -that knows no boundaries. The existing social hierarchy that created boundaries that determine ‘who can go where, who can approach whom, who is welcome, and who is not’, is broken. The mud washes away these boundaries. The mud is to share, you can’t keep the mud to yourself. You can’t own it like a costume that is meant to fit your body. This substance consumes the body, able to spread over all equally. You cannot commercialize mud no matter how hard you try.
Carnival for the people is a challenge to the authorities, the power houses- the church, the hierarchies and the capitalist .It is appropriating spaces that in their ordinary day to day life do not belong to them. It is also celebrating the body. We live in a society where the body is private and its functions are private. “The body is where the power bearing definitions of social and sexual normality are, literally, embodied, and is consequently the site of discipline and punishment for deviation of those norms.” (Fiske 1987, p.248) people refuse the identity proposed by the dominant ideology and use the body as a material against morality, discipline and control. “
In opposition carnival celebrates the body. Best described by Bakhtin are the notions of the open body in carnival. He speaks of the grotesque body that is concerned with openness to the world. The parts of the body that reach out to the world or allow the world to enter. These include the nose, phallus, breasts, gential organs, buttocks, belly and the mouth. Modernity is concerned with the closed body that is separate from the world. Carnival is concerned with the open body that becomes part of the world. With this openness the body is able to connect with other bodies around in and also with its surroundings. This is exactly what occurs in the early hours of the morning during Trinidad j’ouvert. It provides us with a certain time and space that allows all involved to be part of the collective. The rhythmic songs played at carnival time encourage this openness in the way we are provoked to dance.
"There is no room for individual manoevring in the darkened streets; everyone is forced to follow the collective, steady rhythm coming from the nearest source of music. Whether they like it or not. everyone is borne on the rhythmic wave which runs through the crowd, back to back and belly to belly "1997 243 KONINGSBRUGGEN
" Mountains and abysses, such is the relief of the grotesque body; or speaking in architectural terms, towers and subterranean passages." 317 Mikhail Bakhtin
Blue Devils
Painting in Progress
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