Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Magisterská diplomová práce

Mária Melegová

Bc. Mária Melegová

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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Bc. Mária Melegová

Carnival and Identity in Trinidad and Tobago Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.

2015

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

This thesis could not have been written without the scholarly guidance and support of PhDr. Vera Palenska, CSc. A special word of thanks to Maxine Kimbrell, whose advice and support helped me complete this work. I would like to acknowledge my family for their warm encouragements. Finally, my partner Colin whose steadfast support buoyed my efforts.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 6

1.1 What is Carnival? ...... 7

1.2 History and Development of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago ...... 9

1.3 African or European Origin? ...... 14

2. Features of Trinidadian Carnival ...... 20

2.1 Calypso ...... 20

2.2 Steelbands ...... 26

2.3 Carnival Characters – The Devil and the Dragon ...... 31

3. Carnival and Identity as Portrayed in the Novels ...... 35

3.1 The Obeah Man by Ismith Khan ...... 36

3.2 The Dragon Can‘t Dance by Earl Lovelace ...... 40

3.3 Moses Migrating by Samuel Selvon ...... 54

Conclusion ...... 61

Bibliography ...... 64

Summary ...... 68

Resumé ...... 69

1. Introduction

My interest in Carnival began with my visit in New Orleans and my personal experience with Mardi Gras Indians. The dedication of these African Americans to prepare for Carnival by sewing a new costume every year made me wonder what cultural impact

Carnival has had on peoples‘ identities around the world. Thus I began to research the different carnivals from various regions and I found Trinidadian Carnival the most compelling regarding its role in the history and its impact on Afro-Trinidadians‘ cultural, racial and social identity.

The main purpose of this thesis is to explore Carnival‘s social functions in Trinidad and Tobago. Beginning with a theoretical background, I examine the history and development of Carnival, particularly the origins of Carnival and its roots with regard to Eurocentric and

Afrocentric theory. The work then moves to the specific region of the Caribbean and, in particular, Trinidad and Tobago and provides a brief history of the country, exploring the origins of Carnival in these islands and the role Carnival plays in the local culture and society.

The thesis provides a detailed description of various customs and traditions in Carnival festivities, with particular focus on the features and significance of calypsoes, steelbands, costumes and playing mas.

This theoretical background provides the basis for the analysis of three fictional literary works set during Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. These three works reveal the importance of Carnival in the lives of various characters and their search for identity. The

Obeah Man by Ismith Khan explores the question of communal and individual identity triggered by Carnival festivities. In this work, Carnival represents the vessel through which the main character Zampi contemplates his dual identity and struggles to reconcile his opposing selves. Lovelace‘s The Dragon Can’t Dance provides the main resource for my analysis and depicts the life in the yard of Calvary Hill in Port of Spain. This novel offers a

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social commentary concerning ongoing changes to the Carnival tradition and their influence on the main characters‘ lives. The last work, Moses Migrating by Samuel Selvon, portrays the life of expatriate Moses who returns to Trinidad for Carnival after twenty years spent in

London. He experiences an identity crisis as he is split between his adopted home in London and his native home of Trinidad. He feels the connection to his ancestral roots while celebrating Carnival but still struggles to establish his real cultural identity when he tries to represent Britain in a good light during the masquerade. All three works deal with notions of identity and how Carnival reflects and shapes these identities. The thesis reveals what role

Carnival has played in the cultural identity and, indeed, the very lives of the people of

Trinidad and Tobago.

1.1 What is Carnival?

Carnival is an annual festival celebrated around the world. By researching more about carnival festivities and traditions we can re-discover ourselves and learn how to accept and respect other cultures. Carnival can be compared to a mirror that reflects the identities of many people from different parts of the world. Carnival as a tradition is constantly changing.

It changes outwardly in its traditions, costumes, masks and songs but also internally through its influence on identities and ideas. It allows people to both express themselves and to exchange experiences with others through acts of creation.

What are the origins of Carnival festivities? Until today, the exact origins of the word carnival are not clear. Stendebach, however, offers two different explanations. The first explanation is traced back to Medieval Latin. Carnevale is related to the tradition of Lent and therefore to Christianity, as is evident in the approximate translation of ―farewell to meat‖ which comes from the practice of giving up meat during Lent (Stendebach 4). The second can be traced back to the Latin expression carrus navalis which closely translates to a vehicle of

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the sea (Stendebach 4). The clear modern representation of this history would be the carnival float, which is shaped like a boat on wheels. This pagan festival, however, was linked to both seasonal changes and sexuality, and thus it can be assumed that with the arrival of Christianity the festival was purified and the origins replaced with the carne vale interpretation – a more suitable connection to Lent (Stendebach 4).

The Eurocentric theory of carnival‘s origins places them in Europe and links them with Christian traditions. Although there seems to be disagreement on the actual date of origin, Italian Christians started many centuries ago to organize a costume festival right before the first day of Lent. As time passed this practice spread to France, Spain, and all the

Catholic countries in Europe. With colonisation, the French, Spanish, and Portuguese brought their traditions, including carnival, to their colonies. However, the Afrocentric theory provides unquestionable evidence of carnival having origins in Africa, particularly in ancient

Egypt. I will compare these two theories later on with the analysis of Trinidadian Carnival origins.

Tancons emphasizes that modern carnivals ―embody communal values and promote collective behaviors that contribute to the cohesiveness of New World societies‖ (44). The carnivals based in Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, South Africa, and the southern United States were established and celebrated at different times but they are all connected by shared origins related to the twin institution of slavery and colonialism (Tancons 44).

Many carnival traditions in former colonies have always been connected to race and discrimination. In many parts of the world where Europeans set up colonies and entered into the slave trade carnival took root. This is evident, for example, in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition in New Orleans, which celebrates the shared identity of African American slaves and

Native Americans in fighting against European colonization. Brazil, once a Portuguese colony, is also famous for its carnival. Carnival celebrations are now found throughout the

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Caribbean and in large cities in Canada and the U.S. where Caribbean people have settled.

Tancons furthermore asserts that carnival takes place in the streets and it is performed through people and their performance of visual art (44). As Tancons explains carnival consists of:

both a performance art form and mass spectacle, Carnival channels the energy

of individuals and masses through choreographed and free movement,

enhanced with costumes and masks with varying degrees of structural

sophistication and aesthetic achievement. (44)

Carnival is not only an exhibition and performance of art. Carnival has always been a vehicle through which people shared their colonial experience and identified culturally. People also used carnival as a tool to express their struggles and to re-establish their identities. Carnival can be also considered a space where people can reconcile their spirituality.

1.2 History and Development of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago

Colonialism played a significant role in shaping the history of Trinidad and Tobago.

Trinidad went through different stages of colonial rule: Spanish, French and English. The

French settled in Trinidad, bringing with them their slaves, customs, and culture. By 1797,

14,000 French settlers came to live in Trinidad, consisting of about 2,000 whites and 12,000 slaves. Most of the native people of the Lesser Antilles, often called the Amerindians or

Caribs, who were the first people to live in Trinidad, died from forced labour and illness. The country of Trinidad was built on hardship and suffering of African slaves. By the early 19th century, some six million slaves had been brought to the Caribbean.

Carnival in the form of fancy masquerade balls was introduced to Trinidad around

1785, as the French settlers began to arrive. The tradition became very popular mostly among wealthy colonists organizing extravagant balls. The tradition of using masks was very close to the funeral traditions of the slaves. African slaves were banned from participating in balls and

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therefore they held in secret their own little carnivals in their backyards — practising their own tradition and folklore, but also copying the French elite‘s masked balls.

Another significant event in the origins of Carnival that slaves experienced, but then turned into their own expression of identity and defiance, was the burning of cane fields.

Before 1838, whenever sugarcane fires broke out on a plantation, the Africans slaves were sent to put them out as portrayed in an 1881 government report:

In the days of slavery, whenever fire broke out upon an Estate, the slaves on

the surrounding properties were immediately mustered and marched to the

spot, horns and shells were blown to collect them and the gangs were followed

by the drivers cracking their whips and urging them with cries and blows to

their work. (qtd. in Hill 22)

Harris adds that white colonists put on African slaves‘ clothing and walked through the streets with a torch in their hands to mimic and laugh at African slaves and their suffering (110).

Thus after emancipation, African ex-slaves would set fire to their ex-masters‘ plantation on purpose to mock them and to express their freedom. This event was celebrated by Africans afterward as the Cannes Brulées (French for canes burning), and was also considered to be the origin of the African kalenda1 (type of stick-fighting2) and Carnival itself (Liverpool,

―Origins‖ 30). Thus was born the Cannes Brulées ritual (known in patois as Canboulay), regarded as one of Afro-Trinidadians‘ resistance and survival tools. Rachid considers this

1 The kalenda (calinda), traced back to Guinea, emerged as a general term for the stickfight - both the stickfight dance-ritual, and the songs and other performances that accompanied the ritual. Kalenda songs were rebellious. Chanting in a warlike manner, in the African call-and-response pattern, the singers boasted of their feats or those of the main stickfighters. (Liverpool, ―Origins‖ 31)

2 Stickfighting can be traced back in Trinidad as early as the late 1700‘s. This was a ritual dating back to the times of slavery where men would duel with sticks or bois (French for wood) in gayelles (stickfighting arenas) or rings. To the rhythms of drumming and singing, the stick-fighters would use their skills in dance-like motions to defend themselves from their opponents. The prize was the honours resulting from the wounding and sometimes death of opponents. Stickfighting was banned in 1880 in response to the Canboulay Riots. Today, stickfighting gayelles all over Trinidad and Tobago present an important feature of the annual Carnival celebrations.

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occasion as very significant shaping moment in Trinidad history as it later becomes a tool of political empowerment in which Afro-Trinidadians celebrate their freedom and re-establish their ―collective African memory, identity, and self‖ (178). Thus after emancipation African

Carnival culture replaced the European one as dominant until the turn of the century.

The French called the Africans who participated in 19th century Trinidad Carnival jamettes, a term that had its root in the French word diamètre, which meant ―below the diameter of respectability or the underworld‖ (Pearse qtd. in Liverpool, ―Origins‖ 27). This term reveals that the French found the character of African activities to be too vulgar and devilish and to pose a potential threat of slave revolt. Riggio points out, however, the hypocrisy of this act as the French settlers in Trinidad themselves borrowed certain hedonistic features of Carnival traditions from the slaves. They dressed up as mulatresses and negre jardins (field slaves), mimicked African dances such as the bamboula3, ghouba4, kalinda, and belair5, and practised African drumming (13). This act was not surprising or shocking as the

English as well as the French were already obsessed by other exotic cultures and romanticized the traditions and customs of the peoples they colonized.

Around this time, free-coloured6 people pursued their desire to celebrate Carnival in the European style of balls, from which they had previously been banned by white settlers

(Liverpool, ―Origins‖ 27). Before, they enjoyed celebrating Carnival in the safety of their own homes or in the homes of others as they were not allowed to celebrate in the streets or in the

3 Bamboula is a ritual involving dance, drums, and stick fights and was part of the enslaved Africans‘ celebration to welcome the sugar cane harvest. (Liverpool, ―Steelbands‖ 179)

4 Also known as juba, giouba, jhouba is a dance coming originally from West Africa that involves stomping as well as patting and slapping of arms, chest, legs and cheeks.

5 A form of dance, originally from the French bel air, known throughout the West Indies. It is possible that it comes from the Bele tribe on the Senegal River, West Africa. In the 19th century, it was a topical satiric or eulogistic song, and also a drum dance. Currently, it is music for a formal secular festival organized by neighborhood groups and pre- sided over by an elected ―King‖ and ―Queen.‖ (Martin 221)

6 The free-coloured refers to those Frenchmen who were of lesser rank than the ―elite‖ from France, in that they were either mixed with the African race or were locally born. (Liverpool, ―Origins‖ 37) 11

spaces where white settlers celebrate. However, even after emancipation, they refused to join

Africans in celebrating Carnival in the streets. This suggests that they wanted to affiliate with

Europeans and gain a higher social status over Africans. Liverpool emphasizes that ―In associating their celebrations with Europe, they showed where their values and aspirations lay. Thus the free-coloureds used Carnival as a form of passive resistance‖ (―Origins‖ 30).

Rather than supporting the disadvantaged African ex-slaves, they maintained their own traditions and values. Hill asserts that Carnival became ―a symbol of freedom for the broad mass of the population [...,] a deeply meaningful anniversary of deliverance from the most hateful form of human bondage‖ (qtd. In Liverpool, ―Origins‖ 36). Thus with the white carnival celebrations pushed to the fringes and the free-coloured undergoing serious problems of recognition and status influenced by the elites‘ policies, the Africans were able not only to dominate Carnival but to make it totally African.

After emancipation Africans took over the streets and celebrated Carnival in exuberant and shocking spirit which, as discussed above, came across to white colonists as vulgar and offending. Rachid suggests that even though African ex-slaves used masquerade dance, stick- fighting, and Canboulay as celebration of African cultural memory and as tools of political empowerment, the white colonialists viewed these practices with hostility (178). Around the end of the 20th century, the British had enough and were persuaded that Carnival had to be purified. The colonial government started to ban various Carnival activities and to confiscate drums and sticks. However, the African celebrations could not be so easily tamed. Thus the

British decided that a path for Carnival to gain respectability once more was by turning it into national event. With the introduction of various restrictions and new policies by the 1890s the presence of jamettes were already under threat of disappearing from Carnival. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 1940s, steelbands as ―social organisations similar in form and function to the legendary stick fighting bands of the nineteenth century‖ (Rohlehr 369) revived the

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Carnival spirit of resistance and survival. Carnival became heavily politicized as the working and middle classes openly expressed their voices and opinions about social issues in Trinidad and their contempt for promoting Carnival as a tourist attraction and selling it to the global markets for profit. As Green and Scher state, ―Carnival was promoted as a sellable commodity destined less for the people than from the consuming global market‖ (qtd. in

Rachid 181). Green and Scher imply that Carnival in this period was in control of people who in order to commodify Carnival promoted ―the authenticity of culture in order to sell it to the global market and, to borrow Fanon‘s words, prostitute the nation‖ (Rachid 180-181).

The history of Carnival reflects the history of people in Trinidad and Tobago. Carnival in Trinidad has developed through four key historical periods and was a vehicle through which Afro-Trinidadians bridged gaps created by the exclusions of dominant white culture.

From French fancy balls in the late 18th century, to the period of emancipation in 1834 and celebrations of jamette Carnival, through the rise of nationalism and formation of steelbands in the 1950s and 1960s, and later the era of global consumerism from the 1970s till the present, Carnival‘s evolution demonstrates deep seated changes in the social and cultural ethos of the islands and its people. Above all, however, the Canboulay tradition has endured longest and most shaped modern Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. Tancons suggests that

Trinidad Carnival is viewed as ―an emblem of national harmony within which races and classes can, and do, to some extent, cohabit‖ (46). Moreover, Carnival is considered a dynamic tool for self-expression and by participating in Carnival people can learn more about their roots and history. For some devout Trinidadians, Carnival is both an act of worship and a statement of racial and political identity and pride.

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1.3 African or European Origin?

The predominant theory behind Carnival‘s origins was for many years Eurocentric and evolutionary. According to this theory, Trinidad Carnival‘s roots were linked with Christian pre-Lenten traditions of the French and French Creole settlers who allowed the African and

Afro-Creole population to celebrate Carnival in the fields or on the streets of Port of Spain.

Liverpool asserts that the Eurocentric view of Carnival roots was normal as there was an affinity to view history through the lens of colonialism. This European view of history was always considered superior (―Origins‖ 24). According to this view, the similarities between

Trinidadian and European carnivals are attributed to the fact that Carnival had to be introduced and brought to Trinidad by English or French settlers. In addition, the early French settlers influenced the social, cultural, and political life of Trinidad and Tobago society greatly to the extent that they avoided and tried to hide what role Africans played in Carnival history. As Liverpool argues ―European writers undervalued the experiences and thought processes of the oppressed lower classes in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly those of African descent‖ (―Origins‖ 24).

Nevertheless, after emancipation Africans celebrated their freedom in the ―Cannes

Brulées‖ ritual and from the evidence found in the documentation from this period, it can be assumed that white colonists‘ perspectives was rather bleak and racist when they thought that

Carnival was invaded by Africans both metaphorically and literally. As a result of this invasion, the white elites withdrew from celebrating Carnival. As Riggio states, this white colonists‘ view was that ―emancipated Africans stage[d] a kind of cultural coup, wresting the

Euro-Catholic festival from those who originated it and making it over into something Afro-

Trinidadian‖ (12). Riggio explains that there are compelling historical proofs supporting this version of Carnival‘s transformation, but there is also proof that the African tradition of

Canboulay existed long before this transformation occurred (12). It would seem that by

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banning Africans from participating in the balls the European elite inadvertently supported

Africans in affirming their ancestral culture and turning back to their roots to celebrate and commemorate their African traditions in secret. These practices would remain hidden until after emancipation. This theory affirms that there were two opposing and concurrent carnival traditions in Trinidad in the 19th century. Very often the Eurocentric view of Carnival‘s origins overlaps with the Afrocentric view, as both have shared historical roots.

Liverpool notes that it was Robert Tallant7 who focused on the origins of European festivities and had proved that these origins trace back to ―the Egyptians of Africa who, thousands of years ago, held carnival festivities in celebration of the fertility of the earth and women, as well as the replenishment of their food stocks‖ (―Origins‖ 26). Therefore he suggests that slaves brought their traditions with them and continued practising them in the

New World.

Despite European claims regarding the origins of Carnival as a European creation, it was the Africans who revolutionized these festivities. While the white and free-coloured people continued to enjoy Carnival and their balls, Africans chose the streets and plantation fields as the stage for their celebrations. Smart explains that Trinidadians nowadays call

Carnival ‗we thing‘ and indicates that carnival is ‗a black thing‘, coming entirely from Africa

(29). Evidence collected from different observations and references in various documents and the nature of the associated traditions, like dances, masks and costumes, indicate the African origins of Carnival.

For many Eurocentric scholars, the Afro-Trinidadian Carnival as we know it started after the Emancipation in 1838. Liverpool‘s research, however, shows otherwise. Africans were not only banned from participating in balls and European Carnival celebrations but they were also prohibited from celebrating their ancestral traditions like kalenda or stick-fighting.

7 Robert Tallant is a Mardi Gras researcher. These quotes are taken from his book Mardi Gras written in 1948. Mardi Gras is the name for the carnival celebrated in Louisiana, USA. 15

Liverpool reveals that as early as 1810 Africans were banned from carrying sticks in public and could be arrested if caught with one. These sticks were used for the tradition of stick- fighting, later called kalenda. This would prove that stick-figting was recognized as early as in the beginning of the 19th century and was already part of African Carnival celebrations.

Liverpool‘s explanation for whites‘ participation in kalenda is based on cultural and intellectual domination. By participating in African practises, whites affirmed their domination over Africans‘ savage-like and primitive traditions (―Origins‖ 32). Paradoxically for the Africans, the kalenda ―seemed to represent a psychological release of tensions: frustration engendered by domination, and violent expressions of anger directed from below at the repressive white system of control and political organization that had eliminated many other African forms of expression. It seemed to be aggression turned towards themselves‖

(Liverpool, ―Origins‖ 32). Smart also asserts that stick-fighting closely resembles ritual fights during sacred Egyptian offerings (54). Smart places Carnival‘s origins back to the beginnings of civilization with the Kemet people of the Nile Valley (66). They held various agricultural and religious rituals, wearing different animal masks and people gathering in processions

(Smart and Nehusi 83). These traditions spread across Africa and similarly they also expanded to Europe. Smart explains that Greeks scholars schooled in ancient Egypt borrowed the idea of carnival and brought it and incorporated it into Greek festivities. Then this tradition spread and was adopted successfully by different European cultures (79-80). Smart, nevertheless, states that every carnival embodies African traditions and Trinidadian Carnival in particular epitomizes the great Pan-African festival (72).

Furthermore, historian Father Anthony de Verteuil in 1982 challenged the view that

Carnival as we know it started after emancipation. Liverpool reveals a document handed down to Anthony from his French Creole family containing evidence from the diary of a young German who resided in Trinidad in the 1830s describing the carnivals of 1831 and

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1832. Liverpool uses this document to confirm that Africans practised their traditions long before emancipation:

Sunday Feb. 13th 1831. I went out in the afternoon to look at masqueraders. A

year ago crowds of masks were to be seen, but on this occasion we did not see

a single one. How things change in a single year. Feb. 14th 1831. I go to call on

Madame Bock, but M. Bock told us that she was getting ready to attend the

disguise ball [...] the dances are usually African dances and the enthusiasm of

the negroes and negresses amuses us very much, for these dances are

stupendous. March 1832. I went to see the masks. Nearly all were coloured

folk, and a crown of acquaintances and our Negroes had organized a funeral

procession, to mark the end of Carnival. (qtd. in Liverpool, ―Origins‖ 32-33)

The quote strongly indicates whites‘ participation in African traditions and that African slaves were allowed to celebrate their ancestral rituals. Moreover, Liverpool adds that carnivalesque traditions are found all over Africa as intertwining elements of various rituals and customs.

Liverpool also explains that:

Masking suggests spirit-associated transformations whereby the wearers cancel

or obliterate their personalities by changing into other human characters and

supernatural spirits so that they are no longer themselves. By embodying

spirits, African maskers bring the mysterious world of nature and the

supernatural into the known and more predictable community of humans, so

that the spirits may commune with the people and cause them to respond in

various ways: dancing, drumming, praying, hand-clapping, offering, and

singing. (―Origins‖ 33)

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Additionally, Liverpool‘s findings reveal that the majority of African slaves and manual labourers who were brought to Trinidad were familiar with West African masking and masquerading traditions (―Origins‖ 34).

Several aspects of the slaves‘ Carnival celebrations offer clear connections to their

African heritage and apparent reinvented symbolisms in the context of their bondage in the

New World. Prior to emancipation, African Carnival in Trinidad often featured distinct characters that set these celebrations apart from their European counterparts. For example, the

Moko Jumbies stilt walkers are believed to resemble Guinean and Senegalese stilt dancers, which symbolized protective ancestral spirits watching over their people. Another common character was that of the warrior, as represented by the Ju Ju mask. This character apparently reflects past battles between whites and Africans in Africa and thus clearly parallels the current struggle of African slaves against white oppression in the New World (Liverpool,

―Origins‖ 34-35). The masking tradition is based on a concept of African spirituality. The characters were of a more spiritual nature, connecting the human world with the spiritual world beyond. Smart notes that the source of this masking comes from religious rituals in ancient Egypt where Kemetic religious celebrants wore animal masks (86). Various manifestations of this masking tradition have developed throughout the history of Trinidadian

Carnival. One prevalent concept is that of the full body mask featuring a prominent headpiece, rather than only a face mask. This tradition is evidently more African than

European. Not only the masking traditions but also the materials themselves point to African roots. Liverpool depicts some African elements in Carnival festivities: ―Body paintings were sacred, linking the masker to the ancestral world … decorative calabashes commemorated victories or hunting scenes … Round gold plaques worn on stick-fighter‘s chests were soul carriers … Feathers were instruments that demonstrated the ability of the spirits to fly to different worlds (35). Feathers are common elements used in different carnivals around the

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world. New Orleans‘ Mardi Gras Indians are very proud about their feather and bead costumes. The use of feathers can also be traced back to Africa. Africans use them on masks and headdresses to gain power to travel to the spiritual world to be reborn. Another important tradition with African roots is that of parading, which is of significant importance in

Caribbean Carnival. This activity stems from the African custom of circling through villages while dressed in costumes and masks. This practice was supposed to bring good luck and help resolve problems. Thus we can clearly see that various African traditions were maintained among the slave community in Trinidad through their carnival festivities and thus served as a means for preserving their African roots and identity but also to overcome the oppressive regime to which they found themselves subjected.

Finally, the correlation with Cannes Brulées implies that the African Carnival had nothing to do with the European festivities. Carnival for whites had no deeper meaning than to have fun, dance and drink. For Africans, on the other hand, it shaped identity, was part of their religion, and commemorated their former freedom. All the evidence supports the view that Trinidad Carnival originated with the Africans who were enslaved and brought to

Trinidad. The majority of customs linked with Carnival were proven to be African in form and function. Thus the ultimate source of Carnival lies in Africa.

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2. Features of Trinidadian Carnival

2.1 Calypso

The origins of calypso date back to the middle passage across the Atlantic to the New

World where African slaves grieved their capture and separation from their homelands and families with these songs of protest against this act of dislocation and degradation. As Smart states: ―Their only possession was their humanity, which they articulated through their distinctive Afrikan culture‖ (94-95). These tunes came from different traditions in West

Africa where people sing and chant at various occasions. African slaves kept the spirit of this tradition alive, and they continued singing as a sign of rebellion at the Caribbean plantations.

These songs were sung during hard work and when worshipping their ancestral Gods. They were songs of both protest and praise. Liverpool also asserts that various scholars have researched the features of Caribbean music, particularly Calypso, and linked them with

African roots (181). As Liverpool suggests ―these songs were sung mainly in the call-and- response form of traditional West African music‖ (―Steelband‖ 181). Furthermore, Pearse adds that ―calypso became the chief weapon in the armory of the enslaved people as they passively launched blistering attacks on the plantation system, hoping to dull its sharp edge with their flattery and mimicry of the elite plantocracy‖ (qtd. in Liverpool, ―Steelband‖ 181).

Thus it is evident that the oral tradition of calypso originated with African slaves and was later influenced by French, Spanish and English colonial settlers in Trinidad.

Hill discusses the etymology of the world calypso and finds evidence in Quevedo‘s

―History of Calypso.‖ Quevedo was a leading calypso singer, known as Atilla the Hun, between 1930 to 1950 (359). Atilla writes:

In my own experience of over half a century's association with kaiso, carnival,

and kaiso tents, the first word which I heard used to describe this song and

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dance form was kaiso. Kaiso was used to describe the song when sung as well

as a means of expressing ecstatic satisfaction over what was in the opinion of

the audience a particularly excellent kaiso.... Through the years I have heard

the words kaiso, caliso, rouso and wouso, and finally calypso in that order. It is

my profound conviction that the word kaiso will be restored before long to its

rightful function as the descriptive name for our most typically West Indian

song and dance form. (qtd. in Hill 359)

Hill‘s reading of the origin of calypso traces back to Africa which significantly supports the

Afrocentric theory of Carnival‘s origins. He researched the Hausa language of West Africa where the word kaito or kaico can be pronounced either kaitso or kaicho. Hill provides the local translation of the word which is: ―An exclamation expressing great feeling on hearing distressing news‖ (361). Moreover, Hill‘s findings show that ―Hausa is the language of the largest tribal group in Nigeria who inhabit the northern region of the country. It is also, very probably the most widely used West African language as it is spoken by various tribes throughout the interior regions of coastal states from Nigeria to Senegal‖ (361). Many slaves must have been taken from this territory to the West Indies and therefore spoke or could at least understand the Hausa language.

Another explanation is that Trinidad was last to be settled and shaped into a slave plantation economy in the Caribbean region and after Emancipation in 1838 there was a large need for agricultural workers. Therefore many slaves and workers were brought from West Africa. Hill suggests that the term kaico was introduced by West African workers who spoke Hausa language which later on changed pronunciation and spelling to kaiso (Hill 361-362).

According to Quevedo‘s manuscript, it is supposed that the first Trinidadian calypsoes were sung in African language (qtd. in Hill 363). However, Hill contests that this assumption is questionable because of the French presence and French Creole influence (363). What is

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certain is that later on Creole became an acceptable language to use for calypsos depending on who was in rule in Trinidad, whether French, Spanish or English. However, calypso, was always associated with mimicking, satirizing and criticising the relevant rule and government.

Toussaint, another supporter of Afrocentric theory, discusses the roots of calypso, attributing them to African ancestry. He draws a connection between Afro-consciousness of

Trinidadians and African religious consciousness in calypso. Toussaint points out the African ancestry which remains and is incorporated not only in ―the drumology but also African vestments, ornaments, and totem items used by some calypsonians during their performances.

Expressive body movement continues as a natural response to calypso, and it often matters not whether the poetics of the song is political, religious, ideological, or licentious‖ (140).

Toussaint connects Afro-consciousness in calypso music to the ancestral homeland and the diaspora (141). The context of calypsoes was often spiritual and connected to the ancestral roots in Africa. Calling for spiritual guidance in moments of weakness, slaves working hard on the fields called for help and tried to connect through calypsoes with their homelands and their ancestral Gods.

It is important to see the main purpose of calypso singing as a rebellion. The Creole word for the lead singer at the Cannes Brulées was chantuelle. Liverpool discusses

Emancipation in 1838 and the role of the chantuelle: ―it was the voice of the chanteuelle that first rang out in ecstasy, as he sought to communicate the sufferings and torments of his people while at the same time he mocked and derided in song the whites and mulattos‖

(―Steelband‖ 181). Calypso has become a vehicle through which Trinidadians have expressed their displeasure with colonial society. As Espinet and Pitts quote:

The calypso is a form of criticism, a living witty comment on contemporary

events ... Despite the lightness of the vehicle, the calypso usually contains

philosophies of the simple things in everyday life, the words displaying a

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deepness of thought ... one would least expect from the singer and the

surroundings in which it is sung. (qtd. in Patton 55)

Calypso can be considered a political weapon which played an important role in the history of

Trinidad, rebelling against the system of enslavement, criticising the government, or satirizing the economic and political situation in Trinidad. Social and political history performed a significant role in shaping and changing the calypsonians‘ views and opinions and calypso themes. Patton considers calypso as ―a major manifestation of the poetry, narrative, and oratory of the Caribbean expressed as musical performance‖ (55). Furthermore, Brathwaite describes calypso as ―the original authentic voice of the people‖ (qtd. in Patton 56). Patton emphasizes the importance of the art of calypso:

as a musical performance combining lyrics, melody, and the verbal and visual

persona of the singer with arrangement, dramatic presentation and audience

engagement in a significant and symbolic cultural context has been a defining

element of the culture and identity of Trinidad for many years. (55)

Patton also asserts that the calypso tradition has been constantly changing due to new technologies and in particular due to ―commercial interests, as well as the institutionalizing and televising of national festivals such as the carnival in Trinidad‖ (56). Lyric writers normally differentiate between different theme categories like ―entertainment, social satire, protest and political commentary, party songs, inspirational, and historical‖ (Patton 56).

Patton furthermore discusses features of a good calypso and uses Warner‘s work to come to the conclusion that either it comes down to exceptional lyrics or catchy tune (56). It is important to consider that calypso is mainly performed during Carnival. As it works on the basis of call-and-response, the orality of calypso connects the singer and the audience and their responses and it is important how they relate to the lyrics and context of the calypso.

Thus calypso is a constant dialogue between the writer/singer and his audience. Greaves

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affirms that ―Both the audience and the performer take turns initiating calls and responding‖

(34). Thus this act can be considered a communal occasion which plays a significant role in shaping Trinidadians‘ cultural identity. Calypso provides various key functions in Trinidad: communication medium, cultural statement, resistance tool and entertainment. Toussaint suggests that when Calypso artists perform, they express their ―notions about identity and consciousness‖ (139). Patton uses the findings of Stuart Hall to define cultural identity:

1) the idea of a Calypso as rhetorical performance in its totality accomplishes

what may best be described as the shaping and defining of cultural identity for

its audiences

2) identity as composed of the differences from other cultures and practices.

Cultural identity is thus a matter of becoming as well as being, not so much a

recovery of the past as a positioning by and within existing narrative (71)

Patton finds extremely important the positioning aspect and especially calypso‘s performative power (71). Hall‘s research can be used to identify calypso as the symbol of cultural identity of Trinidad.

Calypso continues to be the main musical form in Trinidad and a very important tool for social commentary on issues like gender inequality or urban poverty. The music of

Trinidad and Tobago is undeniably the calypso. The world is changing and calypsonians find it difficult to produce their songs and keep up with the competition on the market. They are struggling to preserve traditional elements of calypso. This issue is represented in Lovelace‘s novel The Dragon Can’t Dance where the character of Philo, the Calypsonian, decides to sing about what people want to hear rather that commenting on national social issues. Rohlehr argues that ―Market forces have steadily pushed calypso toward commodification, teaching singers to do for profit what their ancestors did for fun, entertainment, relaxation, edification, or self-knowledge‖ (82). Rohlehr observes that calypso tends to undergo changes through

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internal ethnic and aesthetic conflicts by mixing two or more musical styles (85). Rohlehr provides an example: ―calypso and reggae/dub/ragga; or calypso and chutney or parang or soul or zouk. In past decades calypso has intermarried with various Latin rhythms: meringue, samba, mambo, etc‖ (85).

Across the Caribbean various musical styles are linked with plantation slavery. These styles include the bamboula and the kalenda music, which have been referenced earlier in this thesis. All of these and others are based on religious and work songs of African slaves and have shaped the calypso of today.

Afro-Caribbean music then, in the form of the calypso and through the vehicle of the steelband, has flooded the Caribbean. Liverpool describes steelband as ―an ensemble of oil drums, burned, grooved, and tuned to concert pitch with pans ranging ambiguously from bass, baritone, and alto to the tenor and soprano‖ (―Steelband‖ 180). The annual Carnival, involving calypso, steelbands, and masquerades, is the single biggest and most important cultural activity today. However, with the increasing music market competition and commodification of arts, the true calypso is dying out. Modern calypso writers are now concentrating more on the entertainment and competitive aspects than on social commentary.

As examined above, there is a long history and background behind the art of calypso.

Liverpool outlines a brief history of calypso:

From an enslaved African to a post-Emancipation chantuelle to a twentieth-

century calypsonian; from basic African rhythms to a present-day soca style8;

from sugar and cocoa plantations to kalenda and Dame Lorraine9 yards in the

8 Soca is a modern variant of calypso, dating from the late 1970s, generally distinguished by its function as dance and party music, as opposed to calypso's function as listening music with narrative lyrics. (Dudley ―The Steelband‖ 28)

9 A traditional Carnival character who originally mocked French plantation wives. Formerly this character was played by cross-dressing men as well as women, but it is now primarily a female masquerade. The all- over floral print dress of this mas is augmented with a padded posterior and breasts, and sometimes a pregnant belly. (Martin 225) 25

nineteenth century; from calypso tents in the 1920s to neon-lit forums in the

1960s; and from protesters to entertainers, calypsonians have today become

skilled craftsmen and professional artistes. (―Steelband‖ 185-186)

Rohlehr considers calypso the soul of Carnival. Trinidadian cultural sphere could not continue without them (86). Rohlehr argues that it might be especially calypso songs which preserve the character of Carnival. He argues that calypsoes ―are the life force without which the masquerade itself, and even the more serious music that resonates at its periphery or beneath its mask of gaiety, would cease to exist‖ (87). Calypso as a genre is changing its character and position in Trinidadian culture due to increasing influence of the worldwide musical industry.

In Trinidad Calypso is struggling to stay authentic and true to its roots, but competition forces calypso into mixing with more known genres to gain popularity and please the worldwide audience.

2.2 Steelbands

The most prominent part in modern Trinidadian Carnival is steelband music. The birth of the steelband can be traced back to the late 1930s and early 1940s. The bands and their badjohn10 leaders represented an early critical voice among the poor. They realized that the poor needed to be visible and obtain a political voice in postcolonial Trinidad. As will be discusses later, Lovelace portrays badjohn character in The Dragon Can’t Dance through the character Fisheye who re-establishes his identity in a steelband. The author discusses the importance of steelband as an important element of commemoration of emancipation:

10 Street-toughened fighters connected to communities and steelbands, who aggressively defend territory, dignity, and honor. (Martin 221).

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Steelband was the Emancipation-Jouvay11 movement's new force. It had

arrived at the beginning of a new epoch. The colonialist movement was on its

last legs. Self-government and independence were around the corner. The

Jouvay characters that had maintained their expressions of rebellion and

resistance for 120 years were now largely taken for granted, the social

conditions out of which they had grown, ignored. The steelband provided a

new focus and challenge, not only because of its music but also the violence

that accompanied it. Where the violence of the Jouvay characters had become

formalized into ritual, the steelband presented a violence that was naked, that

could not be ignored, that recalled the first fierce Jouvay revelers coming onto

the streets just after Emancipation. (―Emancipation‖ 55)

Deepak argues that the rivalry and strong competition between bands which sometimes brought on violence was not popular in Trinidad (201). The 1952 report of the government steelband committee, known as the Canon Farquhar Committee, informed the public about the character of steelbands as follows:

The steelband is essentially a creation of the masses with their poor housing,

overcrowding, unemployment, large families and general lack of opportunity

for recreation and cultural expression. It was as if in unconscious protest of

these delimiting circumstances that underprivileged youth evolved a medium

of self-expression which seems destined to make a distinctive contribution to

the cultural life of the West Indies. The typical steelband population is

predominantly negroid with a fair sprinkling of East Indians. To them the

11 Jouvay, J'ouvert, Jouvert, Jourvert, Jour ouvert or Jou ouvert is derived from the French, jour ouvert, the opening day of Carnival which begins in the early morning hours (often officially 2:oo A.M.) Monday morning before Ash Wednesday. Jouvay is a nocturnal mas that breaks up shortly after dawn. Jouvay originates from the celebration of Emancipation. For some the French pronunciation obscures the Trinidadian transformation of Carnival from a celebration of the European plantocracy to the African-inspired Carnival of Emancipation. (Martin 227) 27

steelband is not merely another local institution: it is a way of life.

Unfortunately, however, this unique form of music-making was characterized

by feuds between rival bands. These clashes were invariably instigated by and

centered around the young women of ill repute who followed the bands. (qtd.

in Aho 37)

Fisheye in The Dragon Can’t Dance is a member of such a band and this band is his whole life. He considers himself a warrior and enjoys fighting. Fisheye gains respectability in his community through being the strongest warrior. His whole identity was shaped by his membership in a steelband. During that time it was not about music or instruments or about art as it is nowadays. The whole social organization came out of Carnival, as ―a gathering of

Jouvay people complete with flag-man and badjohn and jamette woman and man beating iron.

There was pride and there was danger‖ (Lovelace, ―Emancipation‖ 55). Lovelace describes the preparations being made by young men for the important annual carnival celebrations:

Now the steelband tent will become a cathedral, and these young men priests.

They will draw from back pockets those rubber-tipped sticks which they had

carried around all year, as the one link to the music that is their life, their soul,

and touch them to the cracked faces of the drums. (―The Dragon‖ 12)

Aho also discusses the background of steelbands and points out that the whole community stood behind their bands, mostly of African heritage and from poor areas (27). There was significant violence during the peak steelband years, from around 1945 to 1965. There was rivalry between bands and violence between bands and the police. The reasons for this conflict with police were mostly the noise steelbands made by beating steel drums, marching on the streets illegally, or stealing dustbins to create their instruments. The reason for band rivalry was mostly territorial, over girlfriends or over stealing each other‘s tunes (Aho 37).

Lovelace depicts the spirit of this era when he writes in The Dragon Can’t Dance:

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. . . those were the days when every district around Port of Spain was Its own

island, and the steelband within its boundaries was its army, providing warriors

to uphold its sovereignty. Those were the war days, when every street corner

was a garrison; and to be safe, if you came from Belmont, you didn‘t let night

catch you in St. James; if your home was Gonzalez Place, you didn‘t go up

Laventille; and if you lived in Morvant, you passed San Juan straight. (54)

Rachid discusses the history and importance of steelband fighting in Trinidad, comparing steelband fighting to 19th century stick-fighting and suggesting that both ―expressed the racialised ideology of belonging and Africanness and consequently the exclusion of other ethnicities‖ (180). However, it was not always about violence. It has also had positive outcomes like learning about leadership, communal spirit and experiencing personal growth.

Young people in the poor neighbourhoods did not have a chance to be recognized through the paths of education or careers, so they had to find different outlets for their energy and talents.

Steelbands provided such an outlet where they could express their own distinguishing culture, their own instruments and music, to express their real selves and to define their social identities and their roles in the communities (Aho 32).

Stuempfle affirms that ―the steel pan developed from a rustic invention of the urban poor into an astonishingly versatile musical instrument, a transformation that for many

Trinidadians symbolizes their progress from colony to independent nation‖ (qtd. in Dudley,

―The Steelband‖ 13). The drum was not only a musical instrument but an empowerment tool which helped the African community to stand to action. Aho suggests that:

Socioeconomic class, color, and race have affected the creation and evolution

of steel band music in Trinidad and Tobago. African customs, including skin

drumming, were suppressed by the British colonial government and later by

many elite or status-seeking black and colored persons who wished to

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disassociate themselves from the music, instruments, and life-styles of

Trinidad‘s poor urban masses of African heritage. (53)

Dudley explains that ―Skin-headed drums were virtually banned after the 1882 Canboulay riots between jamette revellers and police and a stigma of vulgarity and danger continued to be associated with the tamboo bamboo12 that replaced them‖ (―Dropping‖ 137). The same issue was linked to the steel pan drum that replaced bamboo. The origins of these bamboo bands traces back to the kalenda drumming and singing that accompanied stick-fighting.

As Dudley emphasizes in the beginning of the 1950s, many middle-class Trinidadians started to identify themselves culturally with the steelband (―Dropping‖ 138). In the 1940s bamboo drums were replaced by drums made of steel called steel pans or just pans which had better resonance and tone and which came from thrown away material from the oil companies and the U.S. military forces stationed in Trinidad. By the early 1960s steelbands had superseeded brass bands as more popular music for Carnival festivities.

Later commercial sponsorship of the bands brought greater control over the bands and less independence. Nevertheless, the bands were in need of recognition, status and funding.

Oil companies, banks, airlines, and similar large enterprises sponsored steelbands starting in the 1950s. They provided uniforms with their names on them and sometimes they sent the bands to other islands or to Europe, Canada, or the United States to represent Trinidad internationally (Aho 45). Aho affirms that ―Politically and historically, the mid-1950s were suitable for the development of a Trinidadian and West Indian identity and pride‖ (52). Great

Britain was granting independence to its colonies. Local governments needed the support of local people and therefore it would be very unwise not to support the most significant musical and cultural manifestations of Trinidadians‘ identity. Most bands seem to have benefited from

12 Polyrhythmic percussion made by beating bamboo sticks of varying lengths against the ground (hence "tambour" or drum). Probably derived from Ghana, this art of rhythmic beating led to beating metal piles by the youths of Laventille, who later invented the steel drum. (Martin 234)

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the sponsorships which allowed them to improve their musical instruments and uniforms, and at times to travel abroad. However, Lovelace portrays a different scenario in his work, wherein Fisheye cannot condone the arrival of sponsors and fights against the commodification of steelbands and Carnival.

The pan drums and steelbands embodied the social struggle of poor Trinidadians. The instruments and social organization of steelbands are cultural and racial expressions for many

Afro-Trinidadians. By expanding their talents and skills, they sharpen their identities and channel their struggles and efforts into something prosperous (Aho 53). Past colonial domination demanded expressive voices. Thus steelbands were born and have become a symbol of national pride and unity which has played an important role during the national festival of Trinidadian Carnival. However, steelbands have undergone considerable change over time. They are slowly disappearing from the annual carnival celebrations as their authenticity and role in commemorating African roots have been questioned. Trinidadian people demand steelbands to play more calypso music and thus celebrate their collective

African identity. Steelbands have found themselves at a crossroads. If they are to regain their prominence in traditional Trinidadian Carnival, steelbands must rediscover their roots as a vehicle for social commentary and shed the recent commercialization that has taken over this once proud tradition.

2.3 Carnival Characters – The Devil and the Dragon

African ancestry and colonial history combined to introduce various fantastical and demonic masks into Carnival traditions. The elements of good and evil are being balanced and portrayed during Carnival. This balance is achieved in particular by two traditional characters who embody evil and who juxtapose the celebratory nature of Carnival festivities in general. These characters are the Devil and the Dragon.

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During the 1848 Carnival, groups of almost naked Africans coated their bodies black and occupied the streets. They were all chained together pulling each other. This represents one of the earliest manifestations of demonic symbolism in Trinidadian Carnival. This symbolism strongly implied the enslavement of Africans and the Middle Passage from Africa to the West Indies. Devils are also referred to in the 1856 Port of Spain Gazette:

Devils [who] filled the streets overnight during Carnival, and, two years later,

another complained of the hooting of a parcel of semi-savages [...] exhibiting

hellish scenes and the most demoniacal representations of the days of slavery

as they were forty years ago. (qtd. in Harris 110)

Harris explains that by painting their faces white and their bodies black their intention was to recollect a sad history of colonialism. He also describes his own personal experience: ―The

Devils moved through the crowd, creating their own playing spaces and then demanding money from spectators by thrusting their painted faces into those of villagers and visitors alike and jabbing a single finger in the air‖ (109). Harris asserts that by mimicking devils and imitating slavery, freed slaves portray a ―‗slavery is hell‘ equation, the layers of mimesis at work in these performances are richly suggestive‖ (111). As pointed out above in the history of Carnival in Trinidad, white colonists liked to dress up as African slaves, and in turn, as

Liverpool affirms, ―the devil masquerade was a way for black people to mock white authority by embodying negative characterizations of the black race‖ (qtd. in Dudley, ―The Dropping‖

149). Participants in this tradition at the same time implied the link and similarities between devils and white colonists. Harris discusses this implication and suggests that: ―At the same time, since both black skin and chains are part of the traditional Christian iconography of demons as well as marks of slavery, there is the reminder that black humanity had to be demonized by whites in order to justify slavery‖ (111).

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It is crucial to add that when these Devils played with images of colonial authority it signified not only resistance and mockery but also the seizing of power and freedom of expression. The Devil character played an important role in traditional Trinidadian Carnival.

However, the inverse role of this character is slowly disappearing as Carnival is turning into a touristic attraction forgetting about the real purpose of commemoration of Afro-Trinidadian collective history.

Another character represented in Trinidadian Carnival is the Dragon. The mask of the

Dragon was inspired by Jab Jab13, sometimes also referred to as King Beast. The

Dragon/Beast is closely related to the book of revelation and is generally chained and represents the gates of hell and underworld. The Dragon costume consists of scales, a dragonhead with a movable tongue and a long scaled tail. Chains are tied around the beast in order to restrain him. The Dragon is the fire-beast from hell, coming to earth as a bringer of destruction. Dancing through the streets, the aim of the Dragon dance is to captivate and frighten its audience.

The representation of this mask is nicely portrayed in Lovelace‘s The Dragon Can’t

Dance where the character of Aldrick dedicates his whole life in preparing for Carnival and sewing his costume and mask of the Dragon every year. His dedication and his Dragon dance metaphorically represents his bond to his ancestral roots and his African identity. However,

Aldrick starts to doubt his self and the role of his Dragon dance in Carnival and refuses to take money from the audience even though it is traditional for the Dragon character to collect money during Carnival as a payment for his performance. Harris suggests that ―Lovelace‘s novel may be read as a parable of the commercialization and consequent prettification of

Carnival, a process that has led to what he calls, in a striking phrase ―the impotence of

13 A traditional Carnival character that looks like a happy medieval European clown but is nevertheless a whip- carrying devil. A Jab Jab wears a painted mask made of thin wire mesh (probably buckram) that covers his entire face. The Jab Jabs' fierceness is revealed in their songs and chants. In the streets they crack their whips in the air and challenge one another to exchange lashes. Jab Jab derives from the French diable modulated into the patois jiable and from that to Jab Jab, twin devils or double devil. (Martin 227) 33

dragons‖ (117). People that are playing Dragons or Devils at modern Carnival do not realize the history and meaning behind this masks and costume as Aldrick did once when Dragons were dangerous and symbolized the system of enslavement. Nowadays, unfortunately,

Carnival is slowly losing its function of affirming Afro-Trinidadians‘ cultural identity and instead becoming a global commodity.

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3. Carnival and Identity as Portrayed in the Novels

Applying the theoretical framework expounded above, this section analyses three fictional novels set in Trinidad and Tobago during Carnival. All three works deal with the notion of identity and, more specifically, portray how Carnival becomes the focal drama in which identity, and the search for it, plays out in real time. As Riggio affirms:

The history of Carnival is essentially the history of the peoples of Trinidad and

Tobago – embedded in the stories of conquest, enslavement, resistance, and

indentureship, and in commercial, cultural, and ethnic exchange among the

many who were forcibly brought to the place, or settled there, or imposed

themselves on the island. (9)

The Caribbean region is an ideal place to examine how a person‘s identity changes and presents itself through various historical and social veils. Caribbean colonial history created a melting pot of different races, cultures and languages. Thus the people of this region are constantly trying to both establish and re-establish their identity through multiple ethnic and cultural traditions. Carnival is one such tradition which is both a symbol of national identity and a performance art that acts out the search for personal and cultural identity. This thesis deals with three fictional novels set in Trinidad and Tobago during the Carnival. The key work analysed in this work is The Dragon Can’t Dance as it provides the most opportunities to explore the theme of multi-level identity. Even though the other two books, The Obeah

Man and Moses Migrating provide fewer instances of Carnival, they also offer useful insights in examining notions of identity and the link between Carnival and the self. The objective of this part is to reveal how Carnival shapes and redefines collective and individual identity.

Carnival is a time when social boundaries (racial, religious and economic) fall down and people become one. People conceal their identity with costumes and masks and reveal

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their true inner selves through connecting with their ancestors and their ancestral past.

Carnival‘s roots can be found in the institution of slavery – a time of oppression and racial miscegenation. Carnival was once a weapon of resistance against colonialism and imperialism. Carnival has become a tool to piece together the fragmented identities of the

Caribbean people and their multiple selves.

3.1 The Obeah Man by Ismith Khan

The first novel to be analysed is The Obeah Man by Ismith Khan which is set in Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago during Carnival. Having left behind the city and his former self to become the obeah14 man, the main character Zampi returns to the city in search of his love Zolda. This work examines Zampi‘s struggle to find and understand his real self and people around him as could be observed upon his entering the city during Carnival celebrations. Zampi‘s first observations of Carnival are very negative as he almost sees peoples‘ souls beyond their masks:

There was something ugly, something cruel, about people at Carnival time. …

He wondered if this ugliness was not buried in them all along, and now it

showed itself during Carnival … and now he thought that it was the Carnival,

that it did bring out all the nastiness people had locked up in them all year. ‗Is

the work of the devil he-self.‘ (Khan 2)

Zampi‘s observations bring out different links between Carnival and the city and Carnival and the self. The city of Port of Spain was ready for Carnival. The city becomes alive, expecting the Carnival to start:

14 A West African system of medicine which uses skulls, bones, shells, and feathers and is often a theme in Carnival bands. (Martin 230) 36

The city of Port of Spain was coming to life now … It would be a good day for

Carnival. From the distant cross-streets there were sounds of great bands of

steel drums and voices, hundreds of voices singing calypso … And above the

great din of music there was laughter … All was laughter today when even the

ugly, the shy, the maimed, the too modest, came wriggling, writhing, seeking,

looking for that moment of joy, perhaps a lover by evening, hidden behind a

penny paper mask. (Khan 3)

Carnival takes place in the streets, and the streets are the stage on which people act out their various selves. People lose themselves to their instincts, they surrender their senses to

Carnival‘s elements of sounds, colours, rhythm and movement. Different emotions take over the streets and all the people come together celebrating the festival.

Zampi is lured into the spirit of Carnival. Even though he feels like escaping, some part of his body is strongly connected to the city and Carnival. However, he is not treated nicely by locals who are scared of his obeah magic and its supposedly black power. Zampi does not understand why people are scared of him. He contemplates about his obeah and how he has cured and helped people in the past. He starts to question the purpose of his occupation, ―What was obeah? … Was he playing with the devil? Was his an evil power?‖

(Khan 4). Zampi is torn between his instincts and his feelings. He struggles with his doubleness and his quest to unmask his true self is redefined by people he meets and things he experiences during Carnival.

The identity and behaviour of people changes during Carnival. Peoples‘ behaviour is influenced by bacchanal and their real selves are awakened and displayed in the streets of Port of Spain as portrayed through Zampi‘s observation of the masqueraders:

One of the great bands with hundreds of masqueraders was coming down

Frederick Street, its savage steel-band rhythm flooding the narrow streets,

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flowing into the bones of office workers dressed in their quiet business suits.

Their faces were chagrined, their bodies longed to surrender to the lewd

contortions of the masqueraders. Their instincts and hidden urges were covered

up with an air so thin that a moment‘s rubbing of their bodies in the mass of

debauchery would split it wide open. (Khan 5)

People give into their animalistic instincts and urges and celebrate bacchanal with passion and with all their senses. Zampi also loses his senses when the band approaches. He loses his present self into his past self. Once again he struggles to understand what power the city holds over him and what is happening to him when Carnival possesses him:

As the band approached, Zampi felt its savage rhythm steal away his senses,

then in a moment he was in possession of himself again … They were so close

now, he could feel the heavy booms of the drums on his chest like physical

blows … and then obeah man saw the steel drummers sweating in the heat of

the early morning sun. They alone looked savage, and grim … They mirrored

the obeah man‘s feeling about himself in the city. He knew its very heartbeat,

he knew its people … He viewed the street and the masqeuraders through a

special kind of lens, and held it close like some new and fascinating

possession. (Khan 5)

Zampi is aware that he is still a part of the city and that his self is split between the city and its lures and his isolated life as the obeah man. As Smart and Nehusi suggest, Carnival is a

―creation of a mirror of society and a merciless examination of ourselves … a journey into the absurd to expose the other side of society and therefore of our own individual selves, of our natural reality‖ (100). Carnival mirrors people‘s feelings, struggles and opinions.

Zampi‘s struggle can be compared to the collective struggle of Trinidadians to come to terms with their colonial past. As Alleyne-Dettmers explains: ―They [Trinidadians] do not

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put on a mas15, but the mas comes out from inside, the spirit that transforms the black smeared body into a site of protest to retrace the erasure of origins in a colonial past‖ (250).

Zampi also realizes that his struggle is not individual but collective:

Now if the human body were to be exposed to all the noises of bacchanal … all

the small notes and the large notes of the steel drum … the bamboos … all the

smells of bodies sweating in the sun … if the hungry thoughts of one mind in

the crowd broke loose and lashed themselves to all the objects of its lust, it

would explode like a calabash in the sun. In the seething chaos there is order,

thin and hidden from the eye. Each man narrows down the wide and open field,

his focus falls upon a single flask of rum, a pair of breasts, a pelvis that arcs

and circles wide. (Khan 58)

Irobi notices that Carnival is ―an eloquent example of the transcendent expressed through spectacle, procession, colors, music, dance, and most important, the physical movement of the body‖ (901). Zampi is lured into the bacchanal because he follows his senses. He realizes that he can use his obeah to help people understand their true selves.

The author portrays Zampi as ―one of the breeds of the island that has no race, no caste, no colour; he was the end of masses of assimilations and mixtures‖ (6). The time of colonization and racial miscegenation was difficult, and Trinidadians struggled to preserve their traditions and their pride in their ethnicity. The crucial moment in the novel is when the

English painter visiting Port of Spain asks Zampi what the obeah really is. Zampi tries to explain and realizes that he does not have to struggle to reformulate his sense of social and personal identity but he can be a middle-man, a ―catalyst‖ (Khan 107) between cultures, remove all masks and reveal his true self. Irobi invites us to understand Carnival as a ―bridge,

15 Mas is the Trinidadian word for masquerade. Some people prefer to use the word ―mas‖ instead of Carnival. Mas is part of the triumvirate of calypso, pan, and mas. To play mas means to put on a costume and participate in a mas band or play as an individual in the streets. This is the key action of Carnival from which everything else comes. (Martin 229, 232) 39

a continuum, a collective performative aesthetic that manifests both an African and African diasporic need and facility for self-redefinition‖ (904). Zampi‘s contemplation about his purpose in life and about his obeah through the interaction with other people during Carnival brings him to the conclusion that he can be whatever he wants to be and help other people to do the same.

Even though Zampi follows his purpose in life to become the obeah man, he is lured back to the city and experiences Carnival again. Carnival is a vehicle of integration and acceptance for Zampi. He re-integrates himself into the cultural life of the community and accepts himself as part of that communal identity. He acknowledges and ultimately embraces both sides of himself, his sensuality as well as his spiritual identity. Like obeah itself in which both the dark and light forces of the spiritual world exist, he comes to understand that he is both his dark and light side and that they are both part of a larger whole, dependent on each other for full identity and power.

3.2 The Dragon Can’t Dance by Earl Lovelace

The second work to be analysed is The Dragon Can’t Dance by Earl Lovelace.

Lovelace‘s novel describes a diverse community living on Cavalry Hill in Trinidad and

Tobago. Similarly to Khan‘s The Obeah Man, this work mostly focuses on exploration of the nature of the self through Carnival celebration as it portrays people‘s identification with

Carnival. This novel, however, places particular emphasis on ancestral history and the legacy of colonialism. As Riggio puts it: ―Living in an oral culture, Trinidadians and Tobagonians from an early age possess an unusual degree of physical self-confidence flowing from their experiences of self-presentation in one festive performance or another, most obviously in

Carnival‖ (8). People of the Calvary Hill share the same colonial history. The author uses his writing technique to portray his characters in successive chapters, using different roles as

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names for each chapter, indicating the role the character plays, both in the Carnival and in the community. They all relive and replay this history through Carnival which was once a tool of resistance against the institution of slavery:

as Maroons, as Runways, as Bush Negroes, as Rebels: and when they could not

perform in space that escape that would take them away from the scene of their

brutalization they took a stand in the very guts of slave plantation, among

tobacco and coffee and cotton and canes, asserting their humanness in the most

wonderful acts of sabotage they could imagine and perform. (Lovelace 10)

As Alleyne-Dettmers suggests, ―Carnival is being reinterpreted as a major symbol for Afro-

Caribbean (and Asian) peoples to decipher and reconstruct their fragmented histories, which were effectively eroded through colonization and other problems of belonging‖ (241). As

Lovelace states in the book, ―Once upon a time the entire Carnival was expressions of rebellion‖ (121). We can retrace this rebellion against colonialism in the book in all the inhabitants who: ―[are] refusing to be grist for the mill of the colonial machinery that kept on grinding in its belly people to spit out sugar and cocoa and copra, they turned up this hill to pitch camp here on the eyebrow of the enemy to cultivate again‖ (Lovelace 10-11).

Lovelace‘s novel describes the Hill in the period of the 1960‘s, when the local steelbands changed from street gangs who settled their rivalries with knives, to musical bands competing under the sponsorship of various sponsors. The work explains the social function of the Carnival through various characters. The author uses his characters to illustrate how traditional Carnival affects Trinidadians and how Carnival and Trinidadians are changing in response to the influences of dominant culture, especially the commercialization of the festival. By focusing on four characters – Aldrick, Philo, Fisheye and Sylvia, the author depicts how Carnival has forged each character‘s identity by his or her positive and negative reactions toward the tradition. Lovelace uses the characters to show how the current

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experience of Carnival challenges each character to make choices about what Carnival meant in the past and what he or she wants it to mean in the present and future. They must decide either to accept assimilation or resist it.

The main character Aldrick‘s acts and observations will be the main focus of the analysis. Every year, Aldrick prepares for the Carnival by sewing his dragon costume. He is preparing for the Carnival day to present his ―self that he lived the whole year‖ (Lovelace 44).

He sews the costume a whole year and he identifies with the costume. The costume provides a link to his ancestors:

the making of his dragon costume was to him always a new miracle, a new test

not only of his skill but of his faith…it was only by faith that he could bring

alive from these scraps of cloth and tin that dragon, its mouth breathing fire …

It was in this message that he asserted before the world his self. It was through

it that he demanded that others see him, recognize his personhood, be warned

of his dangerousness. (Lovelace 35-36)

Aldrick literally brings the costume of the dragon to life. His selfhood is strongly connected to the costume and later to the dragon dance performance. As Irobi suggests: ―Through the elaborate pre-performance processes of building masks, costumes … the actants and participants of Carnival literally, performatively and philosophically, transcend themselves‖

(902). This is exemplified in the novel by the following passage:

Aldrick worked slowly, deliberately; and every thread he sewed, every scale he

put on the body of the dragon, was a thought, a gesture, and adventure, a name

that celebrated some part of his journey to and his surviving upon this hill. He

worked, as it were, in a flood of memories, not trying to assemble them, to link

them to get a linear meaning, but letting them soak him through and through;

and his life grew before him, in the texture of his paint and the angles of his

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dragon‘s scales, as he worked. And, working now, he sewed scales for his

grandfather, who he remembered from the far distance of his boyhood.

(Lovelace 36)

In other words, Aldrick‘s identity is interwoven with Carnival and his costume.

However, he starts to doubt the meaning of Carnival for the local people when commercialization takes place and sponsors find their way to the Carnival. He describes the traditions and the history behind the celebration throughout the novel in a nostalgic and melancholy way which implies that he is afraid that by changing old customs they will lose their connection to history. He feels nostalgic for lost authenticity of this tradition. As Belghiti suggests: ―Aldrick contests the neo-colonial project of promoting the cultural heritage of

Trinidad as a global commodity by refusing to sell his dragon dance to foreign tourists, euphemistically depicted as ‗pale faces‘‖ (186). When he speaks to his friend Philo he questions the purpose of his playing the dragon, ―What is you or me, Philo? And I here playing a dragon, playing a masquerade every year, and I forget what I playing it for, what I trying to say. I forget, Philo. Is like nobody remember what life is, and who we fighting and what we fighting for…‖ (Lovelace 110). Aldrick struggles to understand what role he plays in

Carnival and what purpose his life leads to. He is scared because he feels the change coming:

―Who was he? What was there to define himself? What would he be able to point to and say:

This is Aldrick. What?‖ (Lovelace 150). He begins to doubt the role of his costume and his dance in the Carnival:

You see me here, I is thirty-one-years old. Never had a regular job in my life or

a wife or nutten. I ain‘t own house or car or radio or racehorse or store. I don‘t

own one thing in this fucking place, except that dragon there, and the dragon

ain‘t even mine. I just make it. It just come out of me like a child who ain‘t

really his father own or his mother own. (Lovelace 110)

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Belghiti notes that the dragon becomes a ―symbol of cultural struggle and survival‖ (192) and

Aldrick fights to preserve tradition through playing the dragon. Thus, Aldrick remembers his

Uncle Fredy and his words which become a mantra for his work: ―Take it easy, worked now into his dragon and its growing story of lives and manness and faith‖ (41). Reyes notes that

Aldrick‘s ―dance [for example] allows him to liberate himself from the past of oppression‖

(qtd. in Belghiti 171). Aldrick wants people to resist the change that commercialization might bring. He wants to fight to preserve their tradition and to keep mas pure. Aldrick, like Zampi, is preoccupied with the notion of the individual and collective identity:

The moment Aldrick stepped outside, Carnival hit him. And his heart grew big,

and he felt a softness flew over him, and the burning of tears in his nostrils; for

there before him on the street, the steelband and masqueraders were

assembling. The months of practising and sewing and painting and building

were flowing together … And watching, fascinated by it all, as if he were

seeing with the boy‘s eyes, Aldrick felt a tallness and a pride, felt his hair rise

on his head, felt: ‗No, this ain‘t no joke. This is warriors going to battle. This is

the guts of people, their blood; this is the self of the people that they screaming

out they possess, that they scrimp and save and whore and work and thief to

drag out of the hard rockstone and dirt to show the world they is people.‘

(Lovelace 121-123)

The suggestion of blood symbolizes the whole concept of Carnival‘s presence in the collective memory of Caribbean people. Belghiti suggests that ―The image of blood in the description of Aldrick‘s dance expresses a sense of permanence that is not different from the one empire attributes to itself‖ (190). For the characters in the book and for the actual

Trinidadians, preparing and celebrating Carnival is a part of their lives. It is how they lived for centuries: ―the Hill hot, loud, buzzing with beating steelband people walking in calypso

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rhythm, proclaiming their aliveness‖ (Lovelace 24). The spirit of the Carnival is in their veins and in their bones: ―break-away rhythms that laugh through the groans of these sights, these smells, that swim through the bones of these enduring people … proclaiming life, exulting in the bare bones of their person and their skin … up on the hill with Carnival coming and calypso tunes swimming in the hair of these shacks, piercing their nostrils‖ (Lovelace 13).

They dance, they sing, they shout, they drink, they live the Carnival.

Aldrick and other participants in Carnival are linked to their ancestral history through participating in Carnival: ―For two full days Aldrick was a dragon in Port of Spain … He was

Manzanilla, Calvary Hill, Congo, Dahomey, Ghana. He was Africa, the ancestral Masker … breathing out fire, lunging against his chains, threatening with his claws, saying to the city: ‗I is a dragon‘‖ (Lovelace 123-124). Smart and Nehusi explain that when playing the mask a person ―becomes a personality which the mask characterizes for the duration of performance‖

(99). Aldrick understands his individual self through a strong connection to his community and its past:

[Carnival] move across the face of the awakening Hill, sweeping yards in a

ritual, heralding the masqueraders‘ coming, that goes back centuries for its

beginning, back across Middle Passage, back to Mali and to Guinea and

Dahomey and Congo, back to Africa when Maskers were sacred and revered

… affirming for the village the tribe, warriorhood and femininity, linking the

villagers to their ancestors, their Gods. (Lovelace 120)

Aldrick sees his neighbourhood in the flow of bacchanal and understands Carnival‘s socially transformative power, he recognizes himself as a part of the community. He also understands that Carnival gives people the opportunity to be visible and to be heard:

‗You are beautiful, Calvary Hill … Listen to your steelbands how they playing!

Look at your children how they dancing! Look at your beads and feathers! …

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Look at your colours! You is people, people. People is you, people!‘ He

wanted everybody to see him. When they saw him, they had to be blind not to

see. They had to be deaf not to hear that people everywhere want to be people,

and that they going to be that anyway, even if they have to rip open the guts of

the city. (Lovelace 124)

Belghiti suggests that ―Being visually expressive, dance more particularly enables African-

Caribbeans to ‗see‘ and project themselves ‗as subjects‘ choreographing a counter-discourse of their collective memory‖ (169). Tressler proposes that Aldrick reflects on the importance of the dragon mask in the communal history, pondering upon the other inhabitants of the yards and what will happen with their Carnival ―self‖ once the Carnival has ended (22):

And he understood now then what it means when people said that they wished

everyday was Carnival. For the reign of kings and princesses was ending,

costumes used today to display the selves of people were going to be taken off.

What of those selves? What of the selves of these thousands? What of his own

self? (Lovelace 125)

Aldrick realizes that it is not just about the loss of symbolism but also that important tradition of Carnival has for many of them transferred to only a ―party costume‖ (Tressler 22).

Aldrick‘s questioning of his dragon self and other selves of his neighbours leads to a symbolic climax when he decides not to participate in the next Carnivals. His disillusionment is shared by another character named Fisheye. Fisheye has lost hope in future Carnivals and opposes the changes which led to commercialization of Carnival. He wants to protect his community and therefore rises to rebellion. Together with a few followers, he forms a rebellion group to defend their traditions. Aldrick decides to join with the rebels and follow Fisheye.

Fisheye‘s identity has been shaped through his participation in the steelband. After

Fisheye leaves the prison for the first time he finds himself joining and dedicating himself to

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the steelband. For Fisheye, Carnival is a war and his identity is strongly connected to the battles he fights on the streets:

In this war, in this army, Fisheye at last found the place where he could be a

man, where his strength and quickness had meaning and he could feel pride in

belonging and purpose to his living, and where he had all the battles he had

dreamed of, and more, to fight. While he was with them, Calvary Hill became a

name to be respected. (Lovelace 54)

Riggio describes Carnival steelbands as ―territorial and aggressive, providing a home and, in the West Indian sense of the term, a ‗yard‘ for their members‖ (9). Fisheye and his band are turning the city into a place where they establish respect for themselves and identity. They are

―making the city their arena, their savannah, their stage, parading, bragging their might, warming, stretching their limbs in the tough, hot, rejoicing steelband music their accompanying bands, after months of practising, had captured to exalt them…‖ (Lovelace

55). For Fisheye, being a part of a Carnival band was more ―essential than brotherhood for their human hopes and surviving … their warring had become the celebration and consecration of a greater brotherhood – a love that gained its nurture in the fierceness of their warring‖ (Lovelace 59). Riggio adds that ―Carnival‘s life depends on display, confrontation, competition, and (repeated) reconciliation among people of different colors and backgrounds‖

(9). Fisheye fights to gain a reputation of the strongest man and he considers himself ―a warrior, a fighter, entering bodily into the violence boiling in the guts of the city‖ (Lovelace

54). However, his girl Yvonne does not understand why there is so much hate and competition among gangs while there is so much unfair treatment of their own people by government. She challenges Fisheye to make peace with other bands and concentrate their anger on government and fight for poor and disadvantaged people (Lovelace 59). Fisheye comes to understand the truth in her words but he cannot imagine his life without his band

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and without the fight. When his band signs the peace with an opposing band, Fisheye‘s life loses its purpose. Times started to change and bands started to be commercialized by various sponsors. However, Fisheye kept fighting to the point when they had to suspend him from the band (Lovelace 69-71). Fisheye needed to fight against something and his next target became authorities. (Lovelace 60-63).

Calvary Hill‘s community forgets how they respected and admired Fisheye. They start ostracizing him for condemning and fighting against the commercialization and commodification of steelbands and Carnival itself. Fisheye finds peace and fulfilment in being a member of the steelband. When he is not understood and becomes an outcast, he forms the rebellion patrol Calvary Nine in search of his personhood and identity. Aldricks joins him for the same reason. He feels, as Lovelace said of himself in 1998, ―horror [at] the vision of a Carnival torn from its political and social roots, gutted of its power and presented as a neutral aesthetic creation‖ (―Emancipation‖ 59). Fisheye sees in Aldrick the dragon and considers him a perfect person to join the rebellion. He also shares Aldrick‘s disappointment in Carnival‘s transformation and that makes it easy to recruit him to his cause. As Tressler affirms, Fisheye influences Aldrick into extreme actions to express their disappointment with the community; however, at the end, they are imprisoned for rebelling against authorities in a society still influenced by colonialism (19).

When they are caught by police and brought to court, the lawyer admits that the police did not stop the rebellion because they believed that the rebels would fail out of frustration and their rebellion would be like a dragon dance, a threatening act but harmless (Lovelace

183). The lawyer also states that this action was done to ―affirm a personhood for themselves, and beyond themselves, to proclaim a personhood for people deprived and illegitimized as they: the people of the Hill, of the slums and shanty towns‖ (Lovelace 183). However,

Aldrick disagrees with the lawyer and admits to his rebellion partners that he took it seriously

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and he wanted to pose a threat (Lovelace 185). However, after spending some time in jail,

Aldrick struggles to decide whether his actions were more than a dragon dance. He comes to understand that they wanted to be visible and heard and it was a desperate action to save their community traditions from ceasing to exist (Lovelace 188). Furthermore, he realizes that the authorities wanted to kill the rebellion in them and that he and the other rebels were encouraged to believe that they had only ―played a mas‖ (Lovelace 185, 191). Belghiti points out that after the years spent in prison, Aldrick makes up his mind to never again participate in the Carnival with his dragon mask because he realizes that it is ―a mere masquerade with no political, cultural, or social significance‖ (195). Tressler emphasizes Lovelace‘s belief that

―the AfroTrinidadian people are losing their courage to threaten the authorities with their raw force. As a result of this loss, they become helpless as they stop believing that they have any power in mas. Acquiescing and assimilating, they fail to commemorate their ancestors‘ rebellion‖ (22). Aldrick‘s internal struggle can be compared to the journey of another character Philo who finds himself trapped between his own and popular beliefs.

Lovelace portrays Carnival as a cultural platform through which Philo the Calypsonian and Aldrick the Dragon maintain their African heritage and contemplate about their links to this heritage in Trinidad where the nation was created by a mixture of various ethnicities and cultures (Belghiti 175). Carnival is often portrayed in calypsoes as ―the culture of Trinidad‖, and it could not exist without them. Calypsoes‘ function is to maintain the energy of the

Carnival (Rohlehr 86). The calypsoes give life to Carnival and, as Rohlehr declares, Carnival

―would cease to exist‖ without them (87). Calypso is one product of this mixture and Rohlehr explains that ―the mixture of sounds which overlap in calypso dance and music is actually representative of the overlap of tongues, races, ethnicities, and the cultures that intertwine and constitute the multi-layered discourse of the nation of Trinidad‖ (qtd. in Belghiti 182). The character of Philo stands for the calypsonian voice. Belghiti also asserts that ―The lack of

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cultural homogeneity in Trinidad has also produced a mixture of music and dance forms that have intertwined and eventually shaped the Calypso as a culturally multi-layered genre‖

(177). James states that ―Philo creates his ‗mask‘ not through paint or cloth, but in self- dramatisation within the ambivalent rhetoric of his calypsoes‖ (195). Lovelace‘s novel depicts his perception of the nation through the character of Philo who exposes his calypso art to the world and develops an international consciousness and understanding of this art.

Philo is tired of following Calypso tradition and making songs about social change. He is determined to win the Calypso King Contest with his sexually suggestive calypso ‗the Axe

Man,‘ which moves away from a typical political content of calypso tradition. He sells it to foreign sponsors so as ―to write down my name‖ in history as he says to Aldrick (Lovelace

113). Philo wants to expand beyond Trinidad and he wants to put a mark in the world with his music:

What did they want him to do? Continue to stand on the Corner watching

people? What did they want him to do? End up like his father singing and

playing the Arse on Local Talent on Parade? The show didn‘t exist anymore . .

. He had to move on, and they couldn‘t, wouldn‘t leave the Corner . . . he had

to get away, to move in larger area of space, to move, to move. (Lovelace 232)

Philo finds his calypso cross-cultural, not only symbolizing its African cultural heritage, but also acknowledging how it came to existence through different cultural interactions. Belghiti defends Philo against Fisheye‘s accusations of betraying the Calvary Hill community.

Belghiti states that ―Philo opens the possibility of using his calypso as a medium to re-define his culture not through a rooted identity but through its potential to extend to other cultures‖

(174). Philo is aware that people from the Hill started to dislike him because of his popularity and fame. He tried to keep a good relationship with Aldrick and tells him that: ―I ain‘t changed … I is the same man. I still Calvary Hill, no matter what you see me do, you is me

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and I is you‖ (Lovelace 156). He tries to show his friends that the fame did not change him, but he struggles to persuade them otherwise. After he is insulted and outcast from his community, he writes a calypso about the Hills‘ Hooligans, which later on ironically becomes a symbol for Fisheye‘s and Aldrick‘s struggle and rebellion. Brydon considers Philo‘s acts ―as a possibility for social change‖ (qtd. in Belghiti 174). Furthermore, Belghiti finds in Philo‘s actions a chance for ―a new paradigm of globality in which the growth of global capital overlaps with the growth of an international consciousness of national culture‖ (174).

Tressler‘s reading suggests that Philo makes a decision according to societal change and decides to create the music which people want to hear (Lovelace 112) instead of creating something he really believes in (19). Philo moves his creative work outside of the social boundaries of ethnicity, race and nation which are strongly embodied in his Afro-Creole

Trinidadian identity (Belghiti 214). Philo‘s return to the Hill at the end of the novel symbolizes his connection to his homeland and to his people even though his calypsoes allowed him to expand beyond the Hill and improve his living.

The character of Sylvia is Aldrick‘s love-interest and she is crucial to his identity struggle. She is mainly depicted though Aldrick‘s thoughts and descriptions. When Sylvia, eyes ―eager, burning, and shielding invitation and promise . . .‖ (Lovelace 44), dressed in a virginal white knee-length dress and high heels, first offers herself to Aldrick, he is unable to reconcile his desire for her with his dragon role:

hurling at him now, with all the fragile softness and youth and warmth of her

womanness, announced and emphasized and shouted out in the pathos and

beauty and ridiculousness of the handed down dress and the oversized shoes

and the lipstick and the ribbon in her hair . . . Aldrick was a dragon . . . the only

responsibility he had to bear now was to his dragon. (Lovelace 43-44)

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His internal struggle comes in the way of his happiness. He decides he has nothing to offer her. Thus, Sylvia realizes that Aldrick‘s whole life revolves around playing a dragon. By the time Aldrick transforms and wants to offer her more than a masquerade, she has already offered herself to another male character in the story. Sylvia‘s presence in the Carnival is important for Aldrick‘s transformation:

Then he saw Sylvia, dancing still with all her dizzying aliveness, dancing

wildly; frantically twisting her body, flinging it around her waist, jumping and

moving, refusing to let go of that visibility, that self that Carnival gave her;

holding it balanced on her swaying hips, going down and coming up in a tall,

undulating rhythm, lifting up her arms and leaping as if she wanted to leap out

of herself into her self, a self in which she could stay for ever, in which she

could be for ever. He watched her dancing into the inside of the music, into the

Carnival‘s guts, into its every note, its soul, into every ring of the tall ringing

iron; her whole self a shout, a bawl, a cry, a scream, a cyclone of tears rejoicing

in a self and praying for a self to live in beyond Carnival and her slave girl

costume. (Lovelace 127)

Sylvia feels the rhythm of drums with her whole body. She lives the Carnival. She also wants to be visible and heard. Tressler suggests that ―Aldrick confuses his desires for Sylvia with his desires to see Carnival renewed‖ (23). As Riggio explains: ―On these islands Carnival is more a way of life than a festival. Carnival fills and transforms the road … all these characters make a place for themselves on the Carnival road and in the alternative temporal and cultural order that this road epitomizes‖ (7). Every person living on the Hill plays a different role in the Carnival. They are all interconnected through their participation in preparation for the

Carnival and for actual playing the mas. As Deepak asserts: ―The novel deploys the Carnival to reveal the entire picture of the ritual, accompanied by the picture of song and dance, the

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costume, and the masquerade jump, celebration of the self and the novelist‘s careful study of the nature of the self‖ (201). Tressler asserts that Aldricks‘ feelings about her dance are confused with her feelings about the future of the Carnival. Aldrick wishes to go back to the past and experience again how the Carnival felt when it had a purpose. He does not realize that, ―he has romanticized her movements because he is beginning to fall in love with her‖

(23). After Aldrick‘s release from prison, he approaches her: ―Now I ain‘t no dragon . . .

Funny, eh? Years. And now I is more than just to play a masquerade once a year for two days

. . .‖ (Lovelace 198). But it is too late for them as Sylvia chooses practicality with a man who can offer her material security over her own emotional fulfilment.

The novel presents different historical aspects relevant for understanding Carnival.

Carnival is a symbol of ethnic equality and a commemoration of African collective struggle.

Aldrick and Fisheye embody the understanding of Carnival‘s tradition and its importance to their identity as individuals and as members of a larger community. Aldrick‘s dance of the dragon and Fisheye‘s steelband stick fighting represent the nineteenth century warrior tradition which both value instinctually and both want to preserve (Belghiti 183). Aldrick especially dedicates his whole life to making his dragon costume for the Carnival. His identity is strongly connected to performing his ancestral dance. He sees the strong connection between self, Carnival and community. He sees Carnival as an ideal outlet for people to perform their selves and express their voices. However, both Aldrick and Fisheye struggle to find purpose when commercialization hits the Trinidadian Carnival. Both are afraid of what is going to happen to people and their communal identity if they lose their traditions and if

Carnival is transformed into something shallow and meaningless. Philo represents the possibility of Carnival becoming something that furthers the advancement of the individual and the community in a different way. It is not clear whether Philo‘s decision to write and perform popular songs is a total rejection of Carnival as a symbol of identity and defiance or

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whether it is merely a pragmatic response to the inevitable. In many ways, Philo embodies a survival and self-preservation instinct that always existed within the identity and adaptability of the African community. Similarly, this instinct exists in Sylvia who chooses material security over passion. Yet in Sylvia, there remains the ability to enter into the Carnival with complete abandon and to represent the ancestral identity while adapting to current reality.

3.3 Moses Migrating by Samuel Selvon

The third analysed book is Moses Migrating by Sam Selvon. In contrast to the first two works, this novel‘s main character deals with issues of exile and expatriation. This novel is the third book in the trilogy about Moses who was born in Trinidad and Tobago but who immigrates to London where he starts a new life. After twenty years of being an immigrant in

London, he decides to go back to Trinidad and Tobago for Carnival. He does not reveal the real reason why he wants to go back, but Smart and Nehusi suggest that ―the anonymity and alienation of the big city and foreign country, together with the ever-constant threat of giving up aspects of the self through confirmation in the dominant culture, have always sharpened this drive to return, to go back home‖ (5). Klimova asserts that this is a post-colonial novel about exile and expatriation and thus Selvon describes a postcolonial experience of an immigrant, but also that of an expatriate trying to return to his home country (93-94).

Similarly to the other works, Moses Migrating addresses Moses‘ struggle to establish his real identity. He is split between being loyal to England, which offered him a new home, and to his motherland. Smart and Nehusi suggest that ―for Caribbean people and many others, the ultimate representation of home is the Carnival‖ (1). He chooses Carnival as the time to go back home because his memories are closely connected to this festival. He is going home but he cannot decide which one of the places he belongs to, as he expresses his worries: ―Just entertaining the idea of leaving Brit‘n gave me the creeps‖ (Selvon 1).

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It is very difficult for Moses to leave Britain after so many years of re-creating a sense of community and identity. He creates a purpose for himself when he stands out on deck leaving England:

I had come to the conclusion as Brit‘n faded on the horizon that I would be a

credit to the country, an ambassador not only of goodwill but good manners …

I now had a purpose, which was to show the outlanders in the Caribbean that

Brit‘n was not only still on her feet, but also still the onlyest country in the

world where good breeding and culture come before ill-gotten gains or calls of

the flesh … This self-imposed undertaking not only steeled me but fired my

ambitions. (Selvon 30)

When he arrives to the island he struggles to relocate himself into his old home. Smart and

Nehusi describe home as ―the place of familiarity and of family that remind us of the ancestors‖ (1). However, Moses has no family left and the place of familiarity is now London for him. He stays at ―de Hilton‖ (Selvon 65) like a tourist would do, but runs into Tanty Flora

(the woman who raised him). He begins to visit her in her home and finds Doris, the new orphan Tanty has adopted just as she took in Moses, with whom he falls in love. Moses visits

Tanty and Doris frequently because he feels at home when he interacts with them. According to Smart and Nehusi things connected to senses like ―food, music, drink and dress‖ become important ―badges of belonging‖ (6). Therefore, Moses has evidently maintained his island culture and he still remembers and understands the ways and manners of the island.

However the feelings of displacement and cultural shock start to grow as he contemplates his tragic situation while walking through the city:

Are you not now, at this very moment, among your countrymen, and do you

mean to say that you do not know one single soul, male or female, or a

juvenile, or even a tot, in all these crowds? Are there really no friends to look

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up, no particular spot or place in this colourful city which you remember?

(Selvon 83)

Even Tanty accuses Moses that he forgot his native language and speaks like a white man, to which he replies: ―I could talk like we when I want to. It‘s just that I am a man of many parts‖

(Selvon 90). Moses is evidently aware of his split identity and its multiplicity.

When Carnival starts, he takes Doris out and he feels again the power of Carnival and the connection he holds to his ancestral past. Poynting asserts that, at the time of Carnival,

Moses‘ ―sense of home becomes powerful‖ (qtd. in Nasta 262).

And in truth, I don‘t know what come over me that morning, if memories of

bygone Jouvert return after all my years in stuffy old Brit‘n, or if it was that I

was in the midst of my countrymen now, the pulse and the sweat and the smell

and the hysterical excitement, but my head was giddy with kind of irresistible

exultation like I just get emancipated from slavery. (Selvon 164)

Irobi suggests that Carnival ―reinforces the concealed spiritual, more esoteric, religious concerns of the culture that produces it and strengthens its notions of identity, communality, liminality, and continuity‖ (903). Carnival awakes in Moses memories of home and belonging. Klimova states that:

The omnipresent feeling of ‗the Carnivalesque‘ is further supported by other

features of calypso—its rhythm and music, irony, sexuality, machismo and

picong that are quintessential for West Indian identity. In the same way he

speaks about his final choice of language and form, Selvon describes

calypsonian elements as coming naturally. (99)

The author‘s literary techniques are used to describe Moses‘ identity hybridity and his position of displaced exile where he does not truly comprehend all the Carnival traditions

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(Klimova 100). Like Aldrick, Moses‘ cultural and individual identity is also defined by

Carnival and his memories from childhood. The thoughts come to Moses‘ head as from some deep ancestral memory:

All of we chanting and slaving to out the fire in massa sugarcane plantation;

foreday morning come; Jouvert, Canboulay, Massa come to play mas too, mas

in your arse; slave ancestors jump out of their graves and come play too, Oh

God Massa, play mas, play mas … (Selvon 164)

Smart and Nehusi note that ―home is not so much a physical place outside of us, but fundamentally it is a state inside of us‖ (5). Moses has not experienced Carnival for many years but it stayed within him like a memory which comes alive when he celebrates bacchanal.

Nevertheless, Moses wants to follow up with his purpose to portray England in a good light and he gets inspired to impersonate Black Brittania from the British pee coin in the

Carnival procession. Tanty and Doris offer to make him a costume, so he can go and parade before the Carnival committee. Poynting in Nasta suggests that Carnival stands for the novel‘s key motif: ―impersonation and its opposite, the ideal of authenticity‖ (260). Moses behaves like a black Englishman and people around him perceive him as an impersonation and imitation of somebody he is not. Salick asserts that Carnival ―allows Moses the greatest opportunity to indulge his penchant for masquerade‖ (153).

Moses is always masquerading in his life in England, where he mimics16 the behaviour of an Englishman. In Trinidad he mimics a Trinidad-born individual. However, it is a ridiculous concept in post-emancipation time for a black male to represent and celebrate the

16 In postcolonial theory, mimicry is understood as the colonized subject‘s imitation of the colonizer‘s cultural values and customs. The mimicry of the colonized has been analyzed as an ambivalent phenomenon, because his/her imitation of the colonizer‘s culture may also entail a passive rejection or mockery of this culture. Therefore, the colonized will never be like the colonizer; and it is in this sense that some critics, such as Homi Bhabha and Bill Ashcroft, perceive the mimic colonized man as a flawed copy and a menacing identity to the colonial system: ―This identity of the colonized subject means that the colonial culture is always potentially and strategically insurgent.‖ (Ashcroft 141) 57

British Empire. It is evident that Moses struggles with his distinctive personas. Even his other friend from England questions his intentions and loyalty blaming him for being a ―whitey- lover and anglomaniac‖ (Selvon 154). Moses does not really know who he is. Salick, however, states that Selvon shows how Moses by playing mas as Britannia spends his ―time, money, and physical and creative effort … in quest for personal fulfilment‖ (147). Salick also adds that Selvon‘s use of Carnival shows how it is a ―permissive, liberating, yet deceptive in its sensual ease; and above all, repetitive‖ event which never changes (147).

When the time for the parade comes his two white English friends help Moses with his performance. Bob pulls the cart and Jeannie is an obsequious subject at Britannia‘s feet. A tape recorder hidden under Moses/Britannia‘s robe plays Rule Britannia as he passes the committee‘s stand. When he participates in the parade, his thoughts focus on appreciation of

Britain‘s purpose in his life:

Perhaps some of my loyal spirit must of infected the cheerers, for after all,

Brit‘n was once the head of a great Empire, Mother of the Commonwealth, and

it was nothing short of a stroke of genius on my part to think of depicting

Britannia, the symbol of every man, woman and child who ever shelter under

the Union Jack. (Selvon 171-172)

When he wins the prize for the most original mask, Moses feels proud about his representation of Great Britain and feels that he has done a good service to his adopted country. In reality, however, the jury awards him the prize for a satirical impersonation and mimicry of their former colonial rulers.

Moses‘s feeling of displacement reaches its peak when his feelings for Doris leave him caught in a kind of midpoint between two countries, symbolic of his uncertainty towards their cultures. When he is with Doris, he behaves like a local; but, when he parades and interacts with his friends from Britain, he behaves like an Englishman. Moses does not seem

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to fit anywhere. As Walcott states: ―that wrestling contradiction of being white in mind and black in body‖ (qtd. in Salick 153). His identity is torn between his memories and connections to his motherland and feelings of gratitude and loyalty to Britain. The author portrays an individual transformed by colonial discourse and he calls him ―the whitewashed Black man‖

(Salick 160). At the end of the novel, Doris says to Moses that ―[his] Carnival will never over‖ and that he is ―playing mas all the time‖ (Selvon 151). As Poynting adds, Moses

―through one kind of impersonation discovers part of himself, through another he loses it‖

(qtd. in Nasta 263). Moses becomes an ―embodiment of that confusion of identity, the denigration of all that defines the authentic self that colonialism breeds in the colonized‖

(Salick 153). Moses returns to Britain with his prize and trophy but simultaneously loses part of his self.

The novel portrays the issues connected to exile and expatriation which cause Moses‘ split identity. The plurality of his experience and problems establishing his cultural and ideological identity are overwhelming. His multiple identities are clashing together and he struggles to distinguish between being Trinidadian, black British Caribbean, or British

London cosmopolitan. All three identities bring out different memories and emotions, but

Moses has no option but to adapt to a place he calls home and thus has had to develop multiple identities to survive.

This analytical part of the thesis draws from three works by three different authors complemented by theoretical works about Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. The novels and theory provide perspective in tackling the notion that identity is shaped and reinforced by

Carnival. The examined works are similar in many respects, and together they create a detailed examination of Carnival in the Caribbean region and its influence on people‘s collective and individual identity. Khan skilfully portrays Carnival time in Port of Spain and

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further elaborates on its consequences in defining Zampi‘s identity and his quest to better understand his purpose in life. Lovelace‘s original account describing the community of

Calvary Hill offers a detailed description of various characters‘ struggle during Carnival time to validate and hold on to their identity, which is strongly connected to their ancestors and their traditions. Selvon offers a similar take, but with a focus on the issue of colonization and immigration. He portrays the main character Moses as split between his motherland and his adoptive land. The theoretical work written by Smart and Nehusi helps to interconnect all three novels and reveal how Carnival works as a mirror of society and a tool for examination of our collective and individual identities.

Carnival‘s origin in the history of the African diaspora was one of an oppressed people‘s longing to maintain their own identity and refusal to accept the identity being imposed on them by a dominant culture. The very fact that slaves knew they had a voice and found a way to keep that voice alive was an act of rebellion in itself. The music, dance, costume making, and performance that slaves created became a means of keeping their history a living thing that could be passed down to the next generation. Carnival allowed

Africans to act out their will to survive, even under impossible conditions. It provided the means of transformation from powerless slaves to creators of the powerful forces of memory, identity, community, tradition and hope.

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Conclusion

As this thesis has revealed, Carnival is a greatly significant event in the history and culture of the Caribbean region. In Trinidad and Tobago, Carnival has a long history the development of which has shaped the country‘s culture and the identity of its people. This history is of course considerably associated with the legacy of colonialism. European settlers in the New World brought with them many aspects of their former lives in Europe, including cultural traditions, but perhaps the most significant thing they introduced to the New World was the institution of slavery and the slaves captured in and transported from Africa. Buoyed by a sense of superiority, the European enslavers constantly attempted to exert their dominance through various forms of oppression and subjugation. Confronted with this harsh new reality of oppression, African slaves struggled to preserve their traditions and roots not only to maintain their identities but also as an act of defiance against their European oppressors. This dichotomy was evident in all aspects of plantation life, including culture.

Thus cultural practices such as Carnival celebrations became a vehicle through which the struggle between the European elites and African slaves was acted out.

Of course, such cultural struggle has invariably led to opposing views regarding the origins of Carnival traditions especially in such countries as Trinidad and Tobago. On one side is the Eurocentric view connected to Christian pre-Lenten traditions. On the other is the

Afrocentric view which draws connections between modern Carnival traditions and their apparent roots in similar African practices. While the concept of Carnival as a festival associated with Lent clearly originates from the European Carnival tradition, an analysis of the historical origins of Carnival and of the specific modern traditions and practices associated with Trinidadian Carnival unequivocally reveals the African roots of this celebration. The European Carnival tradition comes from a pagan celebration adopted from the Greeks who themselves borrowed their ideas from the Egyptians. Thus, European

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Carnival itself has African roots. Furthermore, the specific Carnival customs in Trinidad such as the Cannes Brulées, stick-fighting, masquerading, and calypso and steelband music have developed over time from similar African practices preserved by the slaves. Thus we can definitively state that the Trinidadian Carnival stems from African roots and has been shaped by the legacy of colonialism in which African slaves incorporated their own traditions and practices into the dominant European culture in the form of Carnival in order to preserve their roots and maintain their identity.

This idea of Carnival as a means of asserting identity continues to be relevant to this day in the Carnival celebrations of Trinidad and Tobago, as is reflected even in literary works of Trinidadian authors. In The Obeah Man, The Dragon Can’t Dance, and Moses Migrating, the authors bring to life through the eyes and experiences of their characters the various traditions of Carnival from calypso to steelbands to making and playing mas. Each character in his or her own way embodies an aspect of Carnival‘s importance in the development and maintenance of personal and cultural identity. Carnival is the pivotal experience which challenges the characters to question who they are and who they want to be. Carnival sprang from the struggles of a people to survive both physically and spiritually. So too do the novels characters engage in a similar existential struggle to find an integral sense of self and, in so doing, help their culture to survive.

The history of Carnival is fundamentally linked to the history of the African diaspora in the Caribbean. It is a history of a people who show remarkable resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Not only is Carnival a symbol of this resilience, it is a symbol of a creative spirit that takes the stuff of a mundane, everyday struggle to survive and turns it into a multifaceted art form. Perhaps the conclusion that is most true about Carnival and the Afro-Trinidadian people is that the history examined in this thesis holds out hope that

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the same spirit of resilience will survive now and in the future and ensure that the culture and identity of a people will endure.

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Summary

The object of the thesis is to discuss the role of Carnival in shaping Afro-Trinidadian identity as reflected in three fictional works set during Carnival. The theoretical part of the thesis presents the reader with a background of carnival history and development and examines the true origins of this festival. It discusses various Carnival features like steelbands, calypsoes and different characters. The theoretical part serves as a background to the analysis of concrete narratives.

The main goal of the analytical part is to discuss three novels: The Obeah Man by

Ismith Khan (1995), The Dragon Can’t Dance by Earl Lovelace (1998) and Moses Migrating by Samuel Selvon (1983), which I have found suitable for analysing different portrayals of

Carnival concerning identity. All three novels depict and highlight Carnival‘s role in Afro-

Trinidadian history and the lives of these people. The authors portray the main characters‘ journeys from oppression to empowerment through their participation in Carnival festivities.

The thesis challenges our understanding of Carnival‘s role in shaping Afro-Trinidadian history and cultural identity.

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Resumé

Hlavním cílem této diplomové práce je analýza vlivu karnevalu na historii Trinidadu a

Tobaga. Teoretická část práce zkoumá historii a vývoj karnevalových slavností a zabývá se také jejich původem. Dále se tento oddíl věnuje různým prvkům karnevalu, jako jsou bubnové kapely, kalypso či karnevalové masky. Teoretická část pak slouží jako pozadí pro analýzu jednotlivých románů.

Analytická část práce pojednává o vztahu mezi karnevalem a identitou a k analýze používá tři romány odehrávající se v oblasti Trinidadu a Tobaga v době karnevalu - The

Obeah Man od Ismitha Khana (1995), The Dragon Can’t Dance od Earla Lovelacea (1998) a

Moses Migrating od Samuela Selvona (1983). Tyto díla zobrazují roli karnevalu v africko trinidadské historii. Jejich autoři nahlíží do životů hlavních představitelů za průběhu karnevalu a popisují jejich cestu od koloniálního útlaku k sebepoznání. Cílem této diplomové práce je poukázat na roli karnevalu ve formování africko-trinidadské historie a kulturní identity.

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