Power, Performance and Play an International Conference on Caribbean Carnival Cultures WEST INDIAN 19 – 21 May 2017 CARNIVAL

CENTRE FOR CULTURE & THE ARTS Power, Performance and Play An International Conference on Caribbean Carnival Cultures WEST INDIAN 19 – 21 May 2017 CARNIVAL

Booklet of Abstracts

Contents

Arthur France MBE and Colleagues The Carnival Rebels in Leeds, UK: On the Road for 50 Years ...... 1 Dr Beccy Watson and Sabina Khan ‘We representing …’: Perceptions of the significance of RJC Dance at Leeds West Indian Carnival ...... 2 Camille Quamina and Marvin George In Search of the Third Actor - Amidst Community, the Contemporary, and the Classic ...... 4 Gervais Marsh ‘Mi Jus Come Fi Play Ah Mas’: Engaging Soca Music and Carnival Spaces as Sites for the Performance of Quare Caribbean Catharsis ...... 5 Sam Pearce, Cindy Willcock and Yandiswa Mazwana eMzantsi-pation! Can the practice of carnival create and sustain an egalitarian culture in the profoundly unequal society of Cape Town? ...... 7 Kai Barratt ‘We own something that’s worth more than oil and gold’: Transporting the Trinidad Fete Model to Jamaica ...... 9 Paul Miskin Thoughts on Carnival Authenticity and Integrity, Tourism and Planetary Well-being ...... 10 Adeola Dewis Mas’: A Journey Towards a Definition ...... 12 Natalie Zacek The Carnivalesque Before The Carnival: Samuel Augustus Mathews as Trickster, Masquerader and Man of Words ...... 13 Emily Zobel Marshall ‘My Tongue is the Blast of a Gun’: The Midnight Robber and the Carnival Trickster Tradition . 14 Shabaka Thompson The Emergence of a Tangible Carnival Industry ...... 15 Zakiya Mckenzie Carnival and the Politics of Emancipation and Practices of Resistance ...... 16 Eintou Pearl Springer Carnival and the Politics of Emancipation and Practices of Resistance ...... 17 Max Farrar Solidarity, Jouissance, and the Free Carnival ...... 18

Guy Farrar and colleagues Harrison Bundey on the Road: Social Comment, Performance and Humour in Carnival Style .. 19 Ekeama S. Goddard-Scovel ‘Machel Selling Rum, And Iwer Selling Boat Ride’: Commercialization and Carnival Musics ..... 21 Darrell Baksh ‘When Last Yuh Went To Party An’ De Music Grip Yuh?’: Reviving Retro Aesthetics in the Soca Chutney Bacchanal ...... 23 Meagan Sylvester ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’: Locating Trinidadian identity in the soundscapes of Trinidad’s music Calypso and Soca ...... 24 Karen Mears and Celia Burgess-Macey Diasporic identity and Creativity: Children performing and playing in Carnivals in the Caribbean and the UK...... 25 Natalie Creary-Aninakwa Carnival as a site for conviviality, pleasure and social cohesion ...... 28 Emily Kate Timms ‘Like an Earthquake in Motion’: Revising Older People’s Roles in Carnival Culture in Pauline Melville’s The Migration of Ghosts ...... 29 Nikoli Attai ‘Ah Come Out to Play’: How Caribbean Bullers Use Trinidad and Tobago Carnival to Resist Dominant Heteronormativity Politics ...... 31 Giuseppe Sofo Jouvay of a Culture: Performance and Resistance in Trinidad and Tobago's Carnival ...... 33 Leah Gordon Jamet Studies: Beingness in Contemporary Trinidad – The Way of the Jamet ...... 34 Cathy Thomas Defiling the Fête: The Utopian Potential of Drag, Disease and Diaspora in Oonya Kempadoo’s Carnival Imaginary ...... 35 Christian Høgsbjerg ‘The Independence, Energy and Creative Talent of Carnival Can Do Other Wonders’: C.L.R. James on Carnival ...... 36 Claire Westall Calypso and Cricket, Earl Lovelace and CLR James: Or, the Carnivalizing of Performativity, Responsibility and Political Becoming ...... 38 Victoria Jaquiss The Importance of Live Steelbands at Carnival ...... 40 Andrew R. Martin Steelpan Tourism in the Twenty-first Century: Carnival and diasporic identities, transcultural relationships and the commercialization of Carnival...... 42

Jared Allen The History and Pedagogy of Trinidad’s Junior Panorama: Forging the Steelpan Tradition for Future Generations ...... 44 Hughbon Condor and family ‘The flight of the Condors’: nearly 50 years of three generations of carnival costume design .. 45 Lawrence Scott, Patricia Murray and Polly Pattullo Celebrating 25th Anniversary of a Caribbean Classic ...... 47 Keith Nurse, Suzanne Burke, Joanne Briggs and Nestor Sullivan The Trinidad Carnival Complex: Creating New Pathways for Constructing Socio-Spatial Identity ...... 48 Danalee Jahgoo The Role of Calypso and Sailor ‘Mas’ in resisting American neo-imperialism in Trinidad, 1945- 1960 ...... 50 Rudolph Otley The Globalization of Calypso ...... 51 Chris Slann and Frankie Goldspink Colliding Cultures: (Local) Power, Politics and Empowerment ...... 54 Jeanefer Jean-Charles and Liz Pugh Spotlight on Manchester Day – civic celebration in the public realm ...... 55 Angela Chappell Analysing 42 years of the Arts Council’s funding and supporting of Caribbean Carnival in England ...... 57 Khadijah Ibrahiim, Malika Booker and David Hamilton Creative Writing and Dance: An Interacted Workshop ...... 59 Rudolph Ottley Carnival and the Body ...... 61 Ann-Marie Simmonds From ‘Styley Tight’ to ‘Kick in she back door’: An Antiguan Band’s Discourse on Women’s Bodies...... 62 Réa de Matas Diasporic Culture: The Sensory and Embodied Experience of Negotiating Space, Place and Identities through UK Carnival Festivities ...... 63 Adela Ruth Tompsett Roots and Routes: African Retentions and Influence in the Caribbean-derived Carnival ...... 65 Tola Dabiri Our Archives, Ourselves ...... 66 Mahalia France and colleagues Family life and Intergenerational Issues in the Leeds Carnival ...... 67

Keri Johnson A Manus ut Machina (From Man to Machine): An Examination of the Commercialization of the Trinidad & Tobago Carnival Masquerade...... 68 Abby Tinica Taylor The Commercialization of Carnival: Tobago’s Mudern Mud ...... 69

Arthur France MBE and Colleagues The Carnival Rebels in Leeds, UK: On the Road for 50 Years

This key panel will allow some of the founding members of the Leeds Carnival to explain why they created the first Caribbean-style street carnival in Europe, 50 years ago, in 1967. They will be in conversation with Dr Max Farrar, who has photographed the Leeds carnival since 1972 and participated in the Leeds carnival since the early 1980s. The panellists were the original carnival rebels, insisting against some opposition within the Leeds Caribbean community that a carnival was necessary and possible, despite the climate of racial hostility and police malpractice that the community encountered in those days in Leeds. They succeeded in fine style. Not that everything was plain sailing among the founding group: little rebellions took place as key decisions had to be made about a location for the Queen show and the route of the parade. Interlacing the hilarity, the creativity and the multicultural meaning of carnival, this panel will revisit the past and discuss the future of carnival in Leeds.

Arthur France MBE, Ian Charles MBE, Hyacinth and Calvin Beech, Rashida and Willie Robinson and Professor Patrick Watson (tbc).

Dr Beccy Watson and Sabina Khan ‘We representing …’: Perceptions of the significance of RJC Dance at Leeds West Indian Carnival

Drawing on focus group and interview data (collected in 2016) we examine dance as a site of celebration and negotiation for young people who participated in Leeds West Indian Carnival 2016 through their affiliation with RJC Dance (who promote Black British Heritage through dance), based in Chapeltown, Leeds. We draw on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) ‘communities of practice’ and to an extent the distinction between ‘heritage communities’ and ‘interest communities’ (Freedman, 2006) to explore how RJC Dance is particularly central in forming and reforming as a ‘dance community’ that is a dynamic constituent of the collective memory of Carnival in Leeds. We consider this via young people’s participation and commentary about their embodied practices and performances of dance. Participation is a ‘live practice’ in this context and dance as an embodied act is a practice in which heritage is participatory (Robertson, 2012). Data suggest that RJC Dance provide a sense of being and belonging that is heightened during Carnival because participation is an example of heritage as active, as something people do. Data also indicate how people identify with and perceive intergenerational uses of dance as central at Carnival, illuminating how ‘unofficial’ or ignored heritages of dance in the city inform debates on diversity, difference, community (Littler and Naidoo, 2005) and the importance of the arts to community wellbeing.

Dr Beccy Watson is a Reader in the Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University. Beccy’s research focuses on interrelationships between gender, 'race' and class and informs work on identities, leisure, changing cities and intersectional approaches in the critical, social analysis of leisure and sport. Beccy was a Managing Editor on the Routledge journal Leisure Studies between 2007 and 2014. She teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate modules focusing on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in the broad contexts of leisure and active recreation. She is an experienced PhD supervisor and is currently working with Research Students across sport, dance and performance.

Sabina Khan is a dancer, percussionist and academic. For the past six-years, Sabina has worked as a costume designer/ creator and dance practitioner for SWICA (South Wales Intercultural Community Arts) delivering medium and small-scale carnival arts projects in South Wales and the West. Sabina has undertaken study trips to Rio de Janeiro and Salvador de Bahia where she has researched Brazilian carnival practices,

carnival costuming (fantasia), and embarked on immersive dance training.

Sabina is currently working on a carnival-inspired collaborative installation- performance entitled Liminal Spaces, and continues her PhD research exploring the relationship between, gender, dance and Islam.

Dr Beccy Watson [email protected]

Sabina Khan [email protected]

Leeds Beckett University

Camille Quamina and Marvin George In Search of the Third Actor - Amidst Community, the Contemporary, and the Classic

This paper responds to the fact that there is no comprehensive body of writing dedicated to the study of Caribbean acting. Acting, like theatre, cannot escape the historical circumstances that invariably impact it. As such, this paper seeks to fill a lacuna in the literature and analyses of the dialogue created through practice between the director and the actor. It uses two processes: one from a devised work and the other from a Greek classic. In both cases the idea of a Caribbean carnival aesthetic, built on resistance, is privileged.

What has been bequeathed to the region as the intrinsic understanding of ‘theatre’ is essentially Occidental. In an environment that would not acknowledge the cultural practices of the Other as art, and obversely where the art of the Other was employed in acts of resistance, power negotiation, and survival, the Caribbean thespian is compelled to engage in processes that decenter Western praxes. In Trinidad and Tobago, the avant-garde theatre favours the use of indigenous/traditional cultural forms that draw from the carnival tradition in theatre-making. It is against this backdrop that this paper proposes to analyse the dialogue created through practice between the director and the actor in two processes — one a devised work, the other a Greek classic — that privileged the idea of a Caribbean aesthetic. The paper hopes to contribute to the emerging discourse on acting praxis in the English- speaking Caribbean, and examines the implications for actor training institutions in the region as a result. The article thus speaks to the question: ‘how is contemporary training being negotiated institutionally, programmatically, practically, and/or theoretically outside of Europe or North America by using some of the traditional carnival forms?’

Camille Quamina and Marvin George are both theatre practitioners who have worked locally and internationally with a special focus on theatre in education. They are founding members of Arts in Action which is a performance based collective, based at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, that uses drama as a mechanism for empowerment, self-realization and critical thinking. The group has won major awards for their work. Individually the presenters have received the highest acting and directing accolades in Trinidad and Tobago, including the Cacique Award for Best Actress (Camille Quamina) and the Best Village Award for Best Directing (Marvin George).

Ms. Camille Quamina MPhil - UWI, St. Augustine

Mr. Marvin George MA Leeds, Lecturer, Edna Manley College

Gervais Marsh ‘Mi Jus Come Fi Play Ah Mas’: Engaging Soca Music and Carnival Spaces as Sites for the Performance of Quare Caribbean Catharsis

For queer people of color (QPOC) in the Caribbean, Carnival season and Soca music allow for the manifestation of spaces that promote a momentary freedom of sexual and gender expression. Queer individuals who often face marginalization may experience cathartic moments of solace while they, ‘play ah mas’. I draw from my work done in the New York House and Ballroom scene, where I coined the term ‘quare1 catharsis’, to refer to the affective responses that QPOC experience in ritualistic spaces. At a Ball, a cathartic moment may be winning your category and getting your life from the audience. These performative moments of quare catharsis — the releasing of strong emotion in quare community — simultaneously create and disrupt the potential for a distinct Caribbean quare identity. The ephemerality of Carnival provides a brief opportunity for QPOC, such as the Gully Queens in Jamaica and the Dress-up Girls in Trinidad, to more publicly express identities that are otherwise ostracized by society. However, this liberation is offset by the moments when these spaces fail to provide a sense of safety, empowerment and freedom of expression, leading to violence. Through this paper, I engage with the implications of these affective structures as they bear testament to the idea that Carnival ephemerality might be one condition upon which a quare Caribbean resistance and survival become possible.

I am Gervais Marsh, a first year graduate student in the Northwestern University PhD program in Performance Studies. I was born in Barbados and grew up in Jamaica until I came to the U.S. to attend Pomona College. My undergraduate research documented queer of color performance in the context of the House and Ballroom scene both in Los Angeles and New York. My graduate research engages with queer of color critique in order to understand the performative acts of survival and creation utilized by queer people of color diaspora, with a particular focus on the Caribbean. This work stems in part from my own experiences as a queer Black male growing up in Jamaica, as well as the courses I’ve taken in queer, feminist and critical race theory. My goal for my

1 Johnson, E. Patrick. “ ‘Quare’ Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother.” Black Queer Studies. Duke University Press, 2005, pp. 125. I utilize E. Patrick Johnson’s term, “quare,” because it acknowledges the unique intersectional experiences of QPOC and calls for a queer politic that seeks the liberation of all communities of color.

graduate research is to move outside of purely Western conceptions of queerness, in part by locating queer of color performance in larger cultural, geographic and postcolonial contexts.

Gervais Marsh [email protected]

Northwestern University

Sam Pearce, Cindy Willcock and Yandiswa Mazwana eMzantsi-pation! Can the practice of carnival create and sustain an egalitarian culture in the profoundly unequal society of Cape Town?

‘It’s not what we do, it’s how we do it – together’ is the founding principle of the eMzantsi Carnival. eMzantsi means ‘in the South’ in isiXhosa, and the Carnival has been celebrating the diverse cultures of Cape Town’s south peninsula since 2005. eMzantsi works principally between three historically and geographically divided areas: the ‘black’ Xhosa-speaking township of Masiphumelele, the ‘coloured’ Afrikaans-speaking community of Ocean View and the infamously conservative ‘white’ English-speaking coastal suburb of Fish Hoek.

The Carnival is the culmination of a year-round community-building process that encourages youth to cross boundaries and collaborate with each other to create a shared intercultural identity. For many children, participating in an eMzantsi schools twinning workshop in drumming, dance or recycled costume-making is the first time they are given the opportunity to enter a neighbouring suburb or township. eMzantsi was born of a PAR project, and this paper documents how eMzantsi’s Mapiko, music and schools teams developed the organisation’s core principles together using participatory methods such as Open Space. Twelve years on, maintaining our founding pillars of ‘Respect’ and ‘Positivity’ at all times continues to be a challenging proposition in a country with the widest gap in the world between rich and poor.

With burning tyres and protest marches all too frequent events along the road we first paraded along, our commitment to dialogue and time-consuming ‘process over product’ sustains our unity in the face of an increasingly fragile social contract. The need for a practical utopian alternative makes the final eMzantsi principle: ‘If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it properly’ more defiantly dignified and fundamental than ever.

Sam Pearce was born in Coventry but in 1994 moved to South Africa due to ill health. In 1999 she founded the Cape Comedy Collective with her stand-up comedian husband, mentoring South Africa’s first indigenous comics and taking them to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2003. They have a biological daughter and an adopted son of Xhosa heritage. Sam founded the eMzantsi Carnival in 2005 to create a space in her neighbourhood where kids like hers could play together. She is an Oxford graduate, whose Masters in Diversity Studies at UCT in 2007 focussed on the intersection

between carnival theory and intercultural communication theory. In 2013 her family embarked on a journey Africa Clockwise trying to break the Guinness World Record for the longest journey made on alternative fuel. So far they have travelled 23,000km and crossed 20 countries up the West Coast on waste vegetable oil. They aim to set out back home down the East Coast in September 2017. She continues to serve as Strategic Director on the board of the Harlequin Foundation, the NPO that runs the eMzantsi Carnival project.

Cindy Willcock née Carelse was born in Ocean View and was a member of the first non-white class to attend Fish Hoek High School in 1990. As secretary of Ocean View’s oldest arts organisation, Arts Vibrations II, she was a volunteer coordinator of the first eMzantsi Carnival in 2005. After working her way up to managing the optician’s she worked at, she resigned due to boredom and Sam headhunted her for the new post of Ops Manager at eMzantsi when she finally landed Lottery funding in 2009. A logistics maestro, by 2011 Cindy was project managing the eMzantsi twinning programme, involving ten primary schools and five high schools. In 2013, she took over the post of Managing Director till she left to accompany her husband to UK in 2015. She is currently assistant manager at the Phoenix Youth and Community Centre in Prestwich as well as volunteer parade liaison on the Prestwich Carnival committee.

Yandiswa Mazwana was born in the Eastern Cape and came to live in Masiphumelele in 2000. She worked in Coastal Management at KEAG, the Kommetjie Environmental Awareness project, from 2001 and was trained as a recycled artist by Junkanew. In 2003 she started her own recycled crafters group Ilitha Lomso and has exhibited at the Design Indaba in SA, the Melbourne Home Gift Fair in Australia in 2007 and Massion Art in Paris in 2008. In 2009 she joined eMzantsi as a founding member of the Mapiko recycled art crew and by 2011 she was senior schools facilitator. In 2013 she was project manager for the UNESCO IFCD-funded programme to train 30 single mothers and learning-disabled people from Masiphumelele and Ocean View to join eMzantsi’s Mapiko crew. Currently she is studying with the Butterfly Art Project in Vrygrond to become an art therapist.

Sam Pearce, Cindy Willcock and Yandiswa Mazwana eMzantsi Carnival, Cape Town [email protected]

Kai Barratt ‘We own something that’s worth more than oil and gold’: Transporting the Trinidad Fete Model to Jamaica

As more carnivals across the region and in the diaspora try to gain legitimacy and attract local and foreign patrons, they have been mimicking the Trinidad Carnival model. For instance, the celebration in Jamaica has always been heavily influenced by the carnival in Trinidad. The annual carnival revelry at the University of the West Indies Mona campus was organized by the students from Trinidad and other eastern Caribbean countries. By 1990, musician Byron Lee and the groups that formed Bacchanal Jamaica, and who had regularly attended the Trinidad Carnival, started their own carnival in Kingston that drew on elements from the activities in Trinidad. More recently, promoters from the twin island republic have been taking advantage of the appeal of the Trinidad-style fete and hosting their own fetes in Jamaica alongside those held by Jamaican party organizers. Even so, the import involves mostly recreating the commercial aspects of the Trinidad Carnival which makes the festival in Jamaica only accessible to a few. Unlike Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, where the celebration is positioned as a momentary destabilizing of dominant norms, the import of the Trinidad model also serves to sustain social inequalities in Jamaica. And such, it operates as a performance of brown middle class values. The paper, then, relies on an ethnographic framework to examine the socio-economic opportunities and implications for the carnival culture in both countries.

Kai Barratt is a lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Jamaica. She completed her PhD in Cultural Studies at the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Her thesis, ‘Redefining the Jamette in Trinidadian Soca Music’ examined the performance of sexual autonomy by Trinidadian female soca artistes. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in soca music and representations of Carnival in social media. Some of her research is published in a chapter titled, ‘Locating the Indo-Trinidadian Woman in Trinidadian Soca Music’ in the book, Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean (2009). The articles, ‘“Ah want ah Rolly Polly?” Female Soca Artistes and the Carnival Body’ and ‘No Lie; no mamaguy: An Examination of Machel Montano’s Representation of Women’ have been published in journals. Kai is a social media enthusiast and has her own blog.

Kai Barratt [email protected]

University of Technology, Jamaica

Paul Miskin Thoughts on Carnival Authenticity and Integrity, Tourism and Planetary Well- being

This paper will examine questions such as: What are the essentials of Carnival and what types of cultural authenticity are there? How are the following carnivals placed in relation to that? What is the relation between Carnival authenticity and tourism, enriched meaning of life, and planetary well-being? Applying concepts such as the ‘temporary autonomous zone’, liminality, de-futility, authenticity, integrity and transgression, It will consider: • Cultural social economic criteria for assessment of Carnival. • Organisational trends and support. • Community involvement and creativity, elite cultural club creative autonomy • Reversal of societies hierarchies. • Transgression of norm, and gender and culture clash. identity loss change possibility and concealment come out be who you are • Altered consciousness Vertigo and ecstasy, liberation madness party and fun. • Critique of society, theme , message and political satire. • Planetary warming and rising oceans; local versus international, carbon footprints etc of performers and tourists. • Local tourism/ international tourism

Paul Miskin is based in Newcastle, UK, and supports its carnival. He has performed in or researched the Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Sydney, the Nice carnival and Las Fallas in Valencia.

1969-74 University of Newcastle upon Tyne. BA (Hons) II-1 Greek and Roman Culture & Philosophy. MA Jacobean & Elizabethan Drama (DES Scholarship).

2014/15 Working for the Middlesbrough Council. Created and trained a Carnival parade element and a stilt troupe `The Iron Giants` for the Middlesbrough mela.

2014/15 Created and trained two Xmass style carnival parades in Crook County Durham in collaboration with Jack Drum Theatre company.

April 2012 – June 2012 Taught the Trimdon Concert brass band funky tunes and singing and created a visual musical parade finale for the Durham Brass Festival by combining the carnival-costumed brass band with our giant Ant Orkezdra, a 14 piece brass and percussion ensemble of giant insects on stilts.

1994-2016. Formed Neighbourhood Watch Stilts International (NWSI). It has performed in 500+ international tours in 49 countries. These include five visits to Nice Carnaval, four to Genk Carnival, several carnival parades in Spain ‘Tres res’ Madrid, five to Dunfermline gala (carnival), four to St Patrick’s day parade, London (carnival), two to Cleethorpes carnival.

1993-94 Formed the West End Carnival Arts Forum, a vehicle for developing expertise and expression for novices in the Carnival Arts.

Paul Miskin [email protected]

Newcastle Carnival

Adeola Dewis Mas’: A Journey Towards a Definition

Mas’: A Journey Towards a Definition looks at my research on Carnival and some of the ways in which elements of mas’ (masquerade/mask) can be interpreted. This paper reflects on what constitutes a concept of mas’ based on interviews with revellers, literature and personal experiences within specific Carnival environments in Trinidad, such as the early morning Jouvey. The search for a definition also considers the use of the word mas’ outside of the Carnival context, in order to ascertain intrinsic, recognizable elements that can be interpreted within art spaces. The paper proposes an innovative reading of the word mas’, offering perspectives that can serve as a nucleus for ways of engaging with and analyzing Carnival. Mas’ as a performance activity with traits that can be manifested within and outside of the Carnival environment is highly relevant in considering how re-interpretations of mas’ can address feelings of displacement in the diaspora.

Adeola Dewis is a Visual Artist and Research Fellow at the University of South Wales. Originally from Trinidad, I completed PhD research at Cardiff University. My current research engages with Trinidad Carnival performance and the translation of its self- empowering effects for art-making and art presentation within the UK. This examination of the ways in which Carnival performance may be interpreted within art- making and/or presentation is geared towards generating accessibility to a form of experience traditionally only available to Carnival revellers, for people in the diaspora. I have a strong interest in modes of transformation and in exploring ways of representing self, especially in relation to performance. My life and experiences as a mother/wife/immigrant have informed aspects of my practice and continues to contribute to the ways in which my work takes shape.

Mama dat is Mas’ http://mamadatsmas.blogspot.co.uk/ Mama Mas’: Conversations for Transformation http://masmama.blogspot.co.uk/ Play Yuhself http://playyuhselfexp.blogspot.co.uk/

Adeola Dewis [email protected]

University of South Wales

Natalie Zacek The Carnivalesque Before The Carnival: Samuel Augustus Mathews as Trickster, Masquerader and Man of Words

This paper focusses on the multivalent figure of Samuel Augustus Mathews, a non-elite white man who travelled and resided throughout the Caribbean in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and who became famous for his knowledge of the ‘West-India Negro English’. Although he lived prior to the establishment of notable Carnival traditions in Trinidad, Jamaica, and other parts of the Caribbean, Mathews was in many ways a progenitor of some of these traditions, as, according to his autobiographical work The Lying Hero (1793), he travelled through the islands learning the folklore of enslaved and free people of colour. Not only did he transcribe the lyrics of some of these songs, stories, and dialogues, presenting scholars with some of the earliest examples of the creolised speech of Afro-Caribbean men and women, but he performed these songs in venues ranging from an assembly honouring a visiting British prince to taverns in which he mingled with people of colour and, he claimed, spoke and sang in ‘negro language’ so convincingly that his auditors could not believe that he was a ‘bocra [white] man’.

By focussing on Mathews’s account of his picaresque life, my aim is to locate this unusual individual within the carnival traditions that were in the process of formation in his lifetime, specifically those of the trickster, the masquerader, and the ‘man-of- words’. By celebrating his social liminality and immersing himself in creolised cultural practices, Mathews represents a unique precursor of traditions of masculine performance that would play a crucial role in the emergence of carnival practices throughout the Caribbean.

Natalie Zacek is Senior Lecturer and Subject Leader in American Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. Her first book, Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670-1776 (Cambridge University Press, 2010) won the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize. She is currently working on several projects, including studies of horse-racing in the nineteenth-century United States and of the experience of white, black, and racially mixed West Indians in eighteenth-century London.

Natalie Zacek [email protected]

University of Manchester

Emily Zobel Marshall ‘My Tongue is the Blast of a Gun’: The Midnight Robber and the Carnival Trickster Tradition

‘My tongue is the blast of a gun!’ is one of the many threats directed to carnival revellers by traditional Midnight Robber masqueraders. The Midnight Robber is a quintessential Trinidadian carnival ‘badman’. Dressed in a black sombrero adorned with skulls and coffin-shaped shoes, his long, eloquent speeches are passed down orally and descend from the West African griot tradition. He holds passers-by to ransom and revels in detailing the vengeance he will wreak on his oppressors in exchange for a prompt cash payment. He exemplifies many of the practices that were central to Caribbean carnival culture: resistance to officialdom, linguistic innovation and the disruptive nature of play, parody and humour.

This paper combines interviews conducted during the Trinidad carnival in 2017 with the analysis of Midnight Robber stories by twentieth-century Caribbean writers Nalo Hopkinson, Keith Jardim and Earl Lovelace. Through the examination of the contemporary trickster figure on the street and the page it asks if the Midnight Robber still possesses his potentially revolutionary energy. In his war of words does he still challenge damaging racial representations and authoritarian rule — or has increasing commercialization and the touristic ‘beads and bikini’ mas drained him of his influence and power?

Dr. Emily Zobel Marshall [email protected]

Leeds Beckett University

Shabaka Thompson The Emergence of a Tangible Carnival Industry

I am keen on engaging practitioners, designers and general carnivalists on exploring the emergence of an industry that is recognisably Carnival in all its manifestation. As much as there is growing commercialization of the Carnival, especially around the masquerade, there are little career opportunities or entrepreneurship available within the scope of the Carnival Arts. Today Carnival has spread across the UK yet there is no central institution catering for the intellectual and academic development of the artform.

With all respect, The University of Trinidad and Tobago has the Masters in Carnival Arts programme, but little focus is given to the development of the industry . . . or is it an industry that is bubbling as an underground activity not worthy of recognition?

This workshop will address the theme: Commercialisation of the Carnival. However the Carnival Industry as you will appreciate is much bigger than this sole factor and should be recognised as such even within the scope of the conference.

Shabaka Thompson is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Philosophy with an emphasis on the Carnival Industry at the University of Trinidad and Tobago having completed the Master’s programme. I am a British Citizen working globally in Carnival Arts and as a Carnival entrepreneur I have contributed to the development of the artform in Britain (Carnival Village, London); Trinidad (De CORE Mas Band); Nigeria (Consultant/artist to Carniriv and Calabar Carnival River State and Cross River State).

Shabaka Thompson [email protected]

University of Trinidad & Tobago

Zakiya Mckenzie Carnival and the Politics of Emancipation and Practices of Resistance

The three regions involved in the Trans-Atlantic trade allowed very particular sounds and sights to come together to create new forms of music and performance. The history of carnival in the Caribbean is rooted in using art for resistance on 17th century plantations. ‘Playing Mas’ happened across the region as enslaved Africans incorporated the masquerade tradition introduced by their European enslavers to ridicule and critique them. In Jamaica, Junkanoo ‘Mas’ parade during the Christmas season always included a royal court intended to mock the monarchies, while Trinidad’s Canboulay (which originated as a harvest festival) had many of the same characters and was the space where calypso music and steel pan were born. Early calypso griots were clever storytellers who were often satirical and sardonic in their songs.

While these forms of agency developed as acts of resistance during slavery and colonial rule, their use as tools against oppression has rapidly disappeared. It can be argued that the present day annual carnival celebrations are seen as a frivolity of the middle and upper classes in Jamaica who take to the streets of the island’s urban centre for one day only, before the Christian Lent period. Contemporary celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago are much more inclusive, and the week-long festivities are advertised all over the world as the true home of carnival and calypso, but this very fact makes the future of carnival arts as resistance unclear since appropriation and commercialisation threaten its sustainability.

Zakiya Mckenzie is a post-graduate student in Environment, Energy and Resilience at the University of Bristol looking at climate change and food security in Jamaica. Her undergraduate studies in Anthropology and Language & Culture at Purchase College, New York examined the cultural assimilation and fragmentation of West Indian immigrants to the city through a thesis paper and a short documentary. She has kept busy in media in Kingston, New York City and Johannesburg and has contributed to publications such as Backayaad Magazine, the Jamaica Observer, Gal-Dem.com and MzansiReggae.com on issues of Caribbean and African culture. She is an Ujima Radio Green and Black ambassador.

Zakiya Mckenzie [email protected]

University of Bristol

Eintou Pearl Springer Carnival and the Politics of Emancipation and Practices of Resistance

The Kambule Riots of 1881 in Trinidad exist at the very fulcrum of resistance. This paper will explore the concepts of cultural retention and cultural resistance in response to attempts during enslavement and colonialism to demonise and marginalise all facets of African culture. In fact, it will contextualise the riots as a continuum to the process of resistance to enslavement, and discus and highlight other examples of cultural resistance, less well known than 1881. The elements of African spirituality, present in the traditional masquing traditions, not only in Trinidad at the time, but also elsewhere in the Caribbean, will be discussed. The performance of KAMBULE, which has evolved from simply being a re-enactment of the riots will be dissected, as to content of the script, the philosophy behind the production, the cast composition, the responses to the production, and how it has impacted the carnival landscape, especially its impact on the stick fighting tradition. The reasons for the change of name of the production, from Canboulay, now formally referred to as KAMBULE, and the fact that the production now embodies elements, that places it as a serious ritual of remembrance to the ancestors of the mas, performed at 4 am every Carnival Friday morning will be discussed. It is hoped that, ideally, key members of the cast would be able to attend the festival, and do workshops with students, with a view to presenting an abridged version of the production, and/or, simply do workshops and demonstrations, of a production that is now an important and successful element of the carnival.

Eintou Pearl Springer is a poet, playwright and storyteller. She is a librarian by profession. As a librarian, she established the National Heritage Library. She is a former member of the Regional Committee of the Nat.Carnival Commission of Trinidad and Tobago. She has a national award for her contribution to the arts and culture, as well as a Vanguard Award for her contribution to the development of theatre. She has four collections of adult poetry and two collections of stories and poems for children. She was one of the first poets from the region to perform at the Edinburgh Festival. She was Poet Laureate of the City of Port of Spain from 2000 to 2009. She was a founding member of the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago and recently retired as its Director of Culture. Her collection of plays ‘SURVIVOR: Caribbean Plays for Children and Young People’ (2016), will be available by the end of the year. Her play, KAMBULE, now performed every year, is produced for the NCC by her family company IDAKEDA, and is performed to huge crowds of locals and tourists, and has become one of the highly anticipated and critically acclaimed productions of the carnival season in Trinidad and Tobago.

Eintou Pearl Springer [email protected] www.idakedagroup.com

Max Farrar Solidarity, Jouissance, and the Free Carnival

This paper builds on the paper ‘Carnival: Conviviality, Jouissance and Change’ that I presented to the 2014 conference at Leeds Beckett University which led up to this one in 2017. It will develop my proposal that ‘jouissance’, the impossible state of perfect pleasure, is at the heart of the Caribbean form of carnival arts. It will argue that because we live in societies that are regulated at each level (economic, cultural and psychological) by forces which suppress humans’ basic urge for freedom and sensual delight, we devise strategies to subvert those forces and achieve a measure of free expression, pleasure and power. Carnival, it is argued, is one of those strategies. This paper will examine some of the critical practices we see at carnival today and some of the more revolutionary moments in carnivals of the past. It will show how the solidarity inside carnival (in families, in mas bands, in pan orchestras, in the popular assemblies around carnival, in the committees that organise carnivals) exemplify an ‘everyday conviviality’ that helps us to resist the depredation of life under capitalism and to stifle its pain. The paper will point to the intensity of the pressure from the capitalist consumer industry to contain carnival within its own parameters of synthetic fun, licensed freedom and commodified pleasure. Its conclusion is to suggest that our task within the movement for ‘free carnival’ is to reject the pressures for ‘commercial carnival’ and to clarify and artistically express our urge for jouissance.

Max Farrar has participated in carnival in Leeds since 1973. Despite his radical views, he allowed himself to be cast as Prince Charles and as William Wilberforce in staged masquerade performances. Another role has been to photograph and write about carnival in Leeds ever since his first magical encounter with Caribbean carnival arts. He has written about the black-led social movements that have contributed to the transformation of Leeds and published a paper with Geraldine Connor on carnival in the UK in Milla Riggio’s edited collection Carnival: Culture in Action (2004). He retired from Leeds Beckett University in 2009 and now devotes his time to family, friends, politics, and the work of the Remember Oluwale charity. More at www.maxfarrar.org.uk and www.rememberoluwale.org

Max Farrar [email protected]

Guy Farrar and colleagues Harrison Bundey on the Road: Social Comment, Performance and Humour in Carnival Style

This carnival troupe has been established for over 15 years. We are sponsored by Harrison Bundey, the solicitors’ office on Chapeltown Road in the heart of carnival territory. Ruth Bundey, one of the firm’s solicitors, has participated in almost every carnival since 1970.

The Harrison Bundey troupe has taken part in Leeds West Indian Carnival in various ways. Occasionally we design Queens, Prince and Princesses, but we always make sure a mixed troupe of adults and young people and sometimes babies in pushchairs are ‘on de road’ on Carnival Monday.

Relying entirely on participants’ volunteer work, our inclusive troupe displays a wide range of races and ethnicities, people of all ages (from babies to elders), and is formed from extended families and their friends from out of town, carers and the children they foster or adopt, and sometimes new people we meet on the road.

Our troupe is known for its edge — we combine ‘bling’ with social comment, performance and humour. That political edge is reflected in our troupe names, such as ‘Blood Ah go Run — Save the NHS’, ‘Shame on You BP’ (after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), ‘Free Dem — Shut down Guantanamo’, ‘Migrant Masqueraders’, ‘Love Ghetto Connection’ and ‘All Ah We is One’. For the 2017 carnival we plan to make a King costume (referencing David Oluwale) and a troupe representing our welcome to refugees.

A small core team works collectively to explore the contemporary issues we want to display in our costumes and our performance. We meet regularly to plan and design costumes. Then a series of evenings, weekends and holidays are used to construct, embellish and realise the designs. Troupe members participate in this, designing banners and slogans in the a context of discussion and sometimes heated debate. We celebrate Carnival with attitude, fun, good food, dance and soca rhythms.

To explain this process, our workshop will use photographs, music, video and personal accounts from our troupe to explore:

• our historical involvement in Carnival

• our motivations for participating

• the skills we have learnt

• the feelings and emotions that arise for our our eclectic mix of individuals,

• and the legacy we contribute to.

Workshop led by Guy Farrar and members of the troupe including Agnes Richards, Claudia Hobson-Smith, Grace Hixon, Mary Bojang, Anita Bannerjee, Joan Jeffrey, Aneesha Green, Maureen Jones, Kiera Galloway, Ella Farrar-Durrant, Emily Zobel Marshall, Rose Farrar.

Ekeama S. Goddard-Scovel ‘Machel Selling Rum, And Iwer Selling Boat Ride’: Commercialization and Carnival Musics

Trinidad’s successful commercialization of Carnival musics (calypso and soca) denies the broader Anglophone Caribbean a fuller history of its musical past because of the power it wields internationally. In the current Caribbean diaspora, Carnival carries the Trinidadian brand, leading revelers of foreign and Caribbean countries alike to believe that Trinidad’s version is the authentic Carnival celebration. This branding is rooted in the 1940s and ‘50s when Trinidadian calypsonians gained regional popularity by performing their songs in surrounding islands like St. Lucia. Calypsos became integral to the fledgling Carnival celebrations in St. Lucia, setting the standard for acceptable Carnival music. This standard was reinforced by the budding tourism industry spreading throughout the Caribbean, where the tourists expected to experience Trinidad-like Carnivals and hear Trinidad-styled calypsos. But the assumed history and development of Carnival and calypso became problematic as they deviated significantly from St. Lucia’s history.

When Trinidadian-styled calypso entered St. Lucia, its hallmarks included English lyrics and fun themes, all geared toward American and British tourists. But introducing this version of calypso to the broader Kwéyòl-speaking St. Lucian society and encouraging them to accept it as part of their heritage and culture for commercial reasons led to an escalation of already existing tensions between rich and poor, English and Kwéyòl- speakers, women and men, and light- and dark-skinned St. Lucians. These tensions affected the development of St. Lucian calypso in that Trinidadian calypso history was superimposed onto St. Lucia’s with the hope of mimicking Trinidad’s success. This left little space for the possibility of a multiplicity of Caribbean Carnivals. By discussing St. Lucia’s problematic history with Trinidad-styled Carnival music, I seek to lay the groundwork for a more ready acceptance of alternative Carnival musics and histories, thereby encouraging a more equitable sharing of power and influence over Carnival practices in the Caribbean and its Diaspora.

Ekeama S. Goddard-Scovel recently completed her Ph.D in English at Purdue University, Indiana. Her identity as a Caribbean female from St. Lucia greatly influenced her work which centers on the intersection of the lived realities of Caribbean women in contrast to their culturally accepted stereotypes. The lyrical response of female soca performers to the burgeoning soca international market is her primary focus and is also the focus of her dissertation, ‘Functions of Gender in Soca: An Historical and Lyrical Analysis of St. Lucian Soca', and her MA thesis, ‘Women, Soca,

and Globalization'. Her interests include postcolonialism, feminism, gender issues, transnational studies, ethnomusicology and music videos.

Ekeama S. Goddard-Scovel [email protected]

Purdue University

Darrell Baksh ‘When Last Yuh Went To Party An’ De Music Grip Yuh?’: Reviving Retro Aesthetics in the Soca Chutney Bacchanal

Home to the English-speaking Caribbean’s most illustrious Carnival celebrations is Trinidad. Powering the yearly bacchanal are the heartbeats of soca and chutney soca — sounds and rhythms remembered and reconstructed from the experiences of African enslavement and Indian indenture — that call revellers to dance, to fête, to play. As young forms of popular Caribbean Carnival music, soca and chutney soca have evolved quickly in a relatively short space of time, pushing musical and socio-cultural boundaries. However, when these developments are taken too far, there is a need to revisit former and more familiar musical territories. In this paper, I use textual and content analysis to explore how the contemporary revival of retro aesthetics in soca and chutney soca is revitalizing Carnival music; re/energizing community; and bridging generational gaps and ethnic rifts in Trinidad. By means of striking musical examples, I show how new synergies are being produced through the re-cycling and re-mixing of older energies to create cultural relevance, while considering the implications of tradition on modern contexts. As such, I foster critical dialogues on the politics and Caribbean discourses of performance and identity negotiation, enriching the body of scholarly inquiry on Caribbean Carnival cultures, by examining how ideas of nostalgia and memory are deeply connected to the production of Carnival music and the Carnival ethos in Trinidad.

Darrell Baksh is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies program at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad. Born in Toronto, Canada to Indo- Caribbean immigrants, he is completing a dissertation on the evolution of chutney soca music as a transgressive form of re-mixed culture in relation to the tensions and negotiations of changing identity formation in Trinidad.

Darrell Baksh [email protected]

The University of the West Indies

Meagan Sylvester ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’: Locating Trinidadian identity in the soundscapes of Trinidad’s music Calypso and Soca

Trinidad’s Carnival is colloquially called ‘The greatest show on Earth’. Primarily, this paper will provide descriptive accounts of Trinidad’s Carnival celebrations in an attempt to highlight the historical and sociological meanings associated with both the physical and sonic display of the festival’s music. Secondly, focus will be placed on issues related to the spectacle, the profane and the sacred as themes which emerge out of the display of the carnivalesque. Thirdly, an analysis will be undertaken of the lyrics of selected Calypso and soca songs in an effort to locate the ways in which the Carnival music is able to reveal aspects of both ethnic identity and national identity.

Meagan Sylvester is Senior Lecturer, Research with teaching responsibilities for Quantitative and Qualitative Research and Sociology at the Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies in Trinidad and Tobago. She also holds the portfolio of Adjunct Lecturer at The College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago where she lectures in Sociology, Gender Studies and the Sociology of Music. To date she has twelve publications including journal articles and book chapters. Her research topics of interest are Music and National Identity in Calypso and Soca, Music of Diasporic Carnivals, Narratives of Resistance in Calypso and Ragga Soca music, Steelpan and kaisoJazz musical identities and Music and Human Rights in the Americas. Ms. Sylvester is the recipient of a Bachelors of Science (B.Sc.) in Sociology and Government and a Post-Graduate Diploma in International Relations. She also possesses a Masters of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in Sociology of Development with a special emphasis in Research, Development and Political Economy of the Caribbean from The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and Mona campuses, respectively. She is in the penultimate phase of her dissertation in fulfilment of her pursuit of a Ph.D. in Sociology with special emphasis on Music and Identity in Trinidad and Tobago at her alma mater at the St. Augustine Campus.

Memberships in professional organizations include the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Association of the Study for Popular Music, Caribbean Studies Association and the Association of Black Sociologists. She is currently the Newsletter Editor of the Caribbean Studies Association (see link) http://www.caribbeanstudiesassociation.org/csa-committees/newsletter-editorial- team/ and Member of the Editorial Board for the Commentaries Journal, Dutch Sint Maarten (see link) http://pearlfmradio.sx/2016/03/17/university-of-st-martin- officially-launched-their-online-journal-entitled-commentaries/

Meagan Sylvester [email protected] UWI, St. Augustine

Karen Mears and Celia Burgess-Macey Diasporic identity and Creativity: Children performing and playing in Carnivals in the Caribbean and the UK.

Our presentation will explore the relationships between carnival and the development of diasporic identities. We start with the premise that identity is not a fixed concept, rather that identities will be explored, co-created, performed and changed throughout life. We will look at examples of children’s playful explorations, their pleasure in performance and opportunities to co-construct and celebrate shared cultural heritage. This will include working with experienced adults in schools, community groups and mas camps.

We will cover the following themes. In each case we will compare and contrast examples from the UK, Trinidad and Dominica. We will consider how the themes and characters portrayed enable children to explore and take on aspects of diasporic identity.

• Carnival costumes and national identity • Flags, colours and national identity. Enabling children to negotiate both British, Caribbean and local identities • The importance of stories • Carnival as a place where imagined identities hold sway. Folk heroes and heroines, old mas characters and popular culture • Stories that crossed oceans, the case of Anansi • Exploring historical identity through costume • Using the ‘languages’ of carnival to express the politics of the environment • Aspects of performance and the exploration of identity. Masquerade, gender and popular culture • The importance of taking space for performance. Children and young people in playgrounds and the street • Marginalisation versus Inclusion

We conclude that there is a need to take carnival seriously. Playing mas is more than dressing up and can be a vehicle for expressing multiple identities.

Karen Mears’ Current role is Primary tutor and lecturer UCL Institute of Education, UK Specialisms : Art and Design, Design and Technology, History. I have worked as a teacher and museum educator in London schools since 1986. I have coordinated borough wide school carnival events in both Lambeth and Wandsworth. This included

co-curating exhibitions at the end of each project and designing a carnival-in-education pack and web-site. I was also responsible for British Council funded projects to research approaches to including carnival in the curriculum in both Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica. I have also led carnival workshops at The Horniman Museum in South London and have contributed to teaching resources related to their African Worlds exhibition. Contributions to the publications of Papillote Press include traditional stories of Dominica and a Caribbean history resource pack for teachers.

Celia Burgess-Macey is a retired lecturer from the Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths college, University of London. She has spent a lifetime in London primary schools, as a classroom teacher, as an advisory teacher and a local authority education adviser and inspector. She has a long-standing interest in Carnival and regularly plays mas in Notting Hill Carnival. She has helped introduce Carnival into the curriculum of many primary schools and in 1998 designed a carnival course as a compulsory component of the Initial Teacher Education courses at Goldsmiths. This component still continues. She has researched the development of Carnival as an aspect of the school curriculum both in the UK and in Trinidad and Tobago and from 2005-2007 directed a funded research project on Carnival and Performing Arts in Initial Teacher Education and Schools. This was part of a national research project on the place of the arts in higher education and schools (HEARTS). She has published widely on Carnival arts in education.

Publications on carnival:

Burgess-Macey, C., Mears, K., Snaith, C. & Shepherd, C. (1995) ‘Putting carnival at the centre of the curriculum’, Multicultural Teaching Journal, Vol. 14 No.1 pp.23- 30.

Burgess-Macey, C., (Jan 2001) ‘Carnival as Inclusive Education: exploring carnival arts in the curriculum’ Forum Vol 43 no 1

Burgess-Macey, C. (Feb2002) 'Carnivals' in Early Years Educator Vol 3 No10 Mark Allen publishing

Burgess-Macey, C. (2003) ‘School Mas — catching them young’ Chapter in ‘On Route — the art of Notting Hill carnival’ (Arts Council publication)

Burgess-Macey, C. (Jun 2005) 'Not Just dressing up: carnival and young children's learning' Early Education journal no 46 Summer 2005

Burgess-Macey, C. and Loewenthal, A. (2008) ‘Creative learning and calypso: documenting children’s meaning making’ in Craft, A., Cremin,T. and Burnard, P. Creative learning 3-11 and how we document it. Trentham, Stoke on Trent

Herne, S., Burgess-Macey, C. and Rogers, M. (2008) ‘Carnival in the curriculum: The HEARTS project at Goldsmiths’ in International Journal of Art and Design Education 27.3, Blackwell, Oxford

Burgess-Macey,C. (2008) ‘Children learning to use the creative languages of Carnival’ in Kenner, C. and Hickey, T. (eds) Multilingual Europe, diversity and learning. Trentham, Stoke on Trent

During many years’ participation in carnival on the road at Notting Hill and as educators and researchers in London schools and museums we have gathered visual evidence of children and young people participating in carnivals in both the UK and the Caribbean. We have previous experience of devising curriculum materials for schools and have run courses and designed exhibitions on carnival themes. We have worked in partnership with carnival artists, designers, parents and community groups.

Karen Mears [email protected]

UCL Institute of Education

Natalie Creary-Aninakwa Carnival as a site for conviviality, pleasure and social cohesion

This paper reinforces that Carnival is more than a street party, it is an integral part of Caribbean identity and community wellbeing. It argues that Carnival is an overlooked opportunity to provide culturally specific psychosocial support for Black communities. There is an urgent need to address the overrepresentation of Black communities in acute mental health services. The drivers to reduce health inequality should go beyond the financial implications for public services to include the wider social costs experienced by the individual, their families and wider society. The underlying causes of mental ill health are complex. Action is required to address the structural barriers, as well as challenges that may be within an individual’s sphere of influence. Social prescribing has shown some promise as a preventative method to support individuals experiencing mental and social health problems.

Voluntary sector organisations are seen as key players within the social prescribing arena. However, the needs of Black communities and the role of BAME voluntary organisations in the provision of services requires further attention. Building upon the notion of Carnival as therapy, this paper provides theoretical support for the emotional and social health benefits offered by Carnival, according to different levels of participation. Carnival creates the space for individuals with shared identities, values and challenges to come together as a community with a shared purpose. It empowers through the celebration of culture and tradition, fostering a sense of belonging which improves ones sense of wellbeing.

Natalie Creary-Aninakwa is a PhD researcher within the Institute for Health and Human Development (University of East London, UK). Her research adopts an intersectional approach in the exploration of health, wellbeing and physical activity among African and Caribbean communities in London.

She has a background in community development and health promotion. During her career she has worked collaboratively with communities living in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in London. Together they have influenced services and developed interventions that build upon community assets in order to address local health needs. Her connection to Carnival stems from her childhood where her father took her to Notting Hill Carnival each year. Into adulthood this tradition has continued and in recent years she has become interested in health benefits that Carnival provides.

Natalie Creary-Aninakwa [email protected]

UEL

Emily Kate Timms ‘Like an Earthquake in Motion’: Revising Older People’s Roles in Carnival Culture in Pauline Melville’s The Migration of Ghosts

Organisers in the UK and Caribbean increasingly seek to recruit younger participants to secure carnival’s cultural legacy. Yet rising numbers of Caribbean and black British ‘Grey Heads’ has prompted attempts by carnival mission statements and social care policies to incorporate older people into manifestos for intergenerational cultural exchange. Within these frameworks older people are conceptualised as fixed and passive cultural symbols, rather than independent and active cultural participants. British-Guyanese author Pauline Melville’s short story collection The Migration of Ghosts (1998) dramatises intracultural anxieties surrounding older persons’ participation in carnivals, and re-envisions their contribution to carnival culture. This paper demonstrates that in the story ‘Mrs Da Silva’s Carnival’, costumes, dance, and playing mas in the Notting Hill Carnival, typically associated with chaos, transformation, and self-determination, paradoxically restricts and regulates the ageing body to conserve carnival traditions. However, older people’s unruly, disruptive bodies provide unique opportunities for renewal and vitality during the carnival and after. As such this paper argues that elders’ contributions to carnival’s cultural legacies reside in their ability to transform their own and their community’s experiences continually. The paper then scrutinises how older people forge transcultural roles for themselves in Guyanese, Surinamese, and Spanish communities by manipulating carnival activities in ‘The Duende’ and ‘Erzulie’. Consequently elders’ innovative participation in carnival cultures debunks homogenising concepts of intergenerational cultural exchange. The performative power of aged hands and feet calls for a revised appreciation of the cultural potential of ‘Grey Heads’ in Carnival activities, Caribbean and Black British writing, and social care policies alike.

Emily Kate Timms graduated with an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature from the University of Leeds, UK, where she currently works. She is an editorial assistant for Stand: A literary Quarterly (http://www.people.vcu.edu/~dlatane/stand- maga), and a former editorial assistant for Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writing (http://www.movingworlds.net). Her review of Caryl Phillips’ latest novel The Lost Child has recently appeared in Moving Worlds’ 'The Postcolonial Arctic' issue (September 2015). She has since received a White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities PhD studentship award and will commence her studies in October 2016 at

the University of Leeds. Her working title is ‘Ageing, Health, and Social Care Policy in Caribbean and Indigenous Pacific Island Literature (c.1990-present)’.

Emily Kate Timms [email protected]

Leeds University

Nikoli Attai ‘Ah Come Out to Play’: How Caribbean Bullers Use Trinidad and Tobago Carnival to Resist Dominant Heteronormativity Politics

Tourism scholars have explained at length the ways that the Caribbean provides a particular brand of sweetness via the pleasure-related services rendered to those who disembark on the white-sand beaches of the region (Allen, 2011; Kempadoo, 2004; Padilla, 2008; Ramírez and Casper, 1999; Sheller, 2003; Shohat, 2001). They have also written extensively about how the industry is molded by particular neo-colonial constructions of the region and its people, and argue that Caribbean people have been ‘deeply inscribed into particular gender, racial and moral orders’ (Sheller, 2012, p. 9), even as the region is re-packaged as a fetishized land for consumption by ‘voyeurs of the exotic other’ (Crichlow, 2004, p. 41). Unfortunately, many accounts of regional tourism economies remain heteronormative when they problematize the inherent colonial legacies and fetishized interactions between the visitor and the native. Even less attention is paid to accounts of gay tourist experiences in the Anglo-Caribbean.

This paper examines how gay intra-regional tourists participate in Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival tourism industry as particular types of tourists who resist the country’s dominant heteronormativity politics. To do so, it problematizes how gay carnival activities become sites to push against seemingly rigid boundaries of (hetero) respectability, in ways that may be otherwise unavailable in different social, cultural and political contexts. This research is guided by the theory that praxes of resistance are articulated in carnival spaces, and in the performance of sexualities that contest and embody hegemonic notions of acceptability. It is therefore through circuits such as carnival tourism, that people can transform assumptions about sexual autonomy, while being protected by the revelry of carnival.

Nikoli Attai is an International PhD student, writing for a degree in Women and Gender Studies at the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto, Canada. He is currently pursuing research on Canadian homoimperialism in the Anglophone Caribbean, and is supervised by Professors Rinaldo Walcott and Alissa Trotz. Nikoli completed a Master of Philosophy in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine in 2013, where he was supervised by Dr. Gabrielle Hosein and Professor Rhoda Reddock, and submitted his thesis titled: ‘Trans-T&T: An

Investigation of Transgender Identities and Communities in Trinidad and Tobago’. His research interests include: Trans communities in Trinidad and Tobago and the Region Politics of belonging for sexual and gender minorities in the post-colonial Caribbean Gay carnival tourism in Trinidad and Tobago Trans praxis and the destabilization of hegemonic Caribbean masculinities

Nikoli Attai [email protected]

WGSI, University of Toronto

Giuseppe Sofo Jouvay of a Culture: Performance and Resistance in Trinidad and Tobago's Carnival

The carnival of Trinidad and Tobago is a performative ritual of cultural resistance and awakening, claiming a space and celebrating freedom from any kind of oppression. The history of this ritual is strictly connected to the process of cultural decolonization and political independence of the Caribbean country; it is in carnival and for carnival that Trinbagonians have successfully fought British colonialism to gain their freedom. Brought to the Caribbean by French planters, as a ritual of amusement and temporary freedom, through the encounter with other rituals such as African masquerade and canboulay, Trinidad Carnival became, for the first time in the world, the instrument to earn an actual and nontemporary freedom, and the space for the celebration of a new interethnic national identity, obtained through the ritual itself. The present of carnival is divided between the memory of this past, and a reality of ‘bikini and beads’ costumes, ironically very close to the ‘pretty mas’ brought to the island by colonizers, and to the better-selling Brazilian carnival. The ritual that more than anything else shaped the national memory and the identity of this country, is now pulled by two ends. Past, present and future have to be discussed together for a real understanding of the relationship between performance and resistance in Trinidad and Tobago's carnival and society.

Giuseppe Sofo, researcher of anglophone and francophone Caribbean literatures and performative arts, is a translator from English, French and German into Italian (Aimé Césaire, Edwidge Danticat, Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, Margaret Fuller) and a writer of fiction. He wrote five books, among which is the narrative essay and travelogue Trinidad & Tobago. Carnevale, fango e colori (Miraggi Edizioni, Torino, 2011), on Trinidad and Tobago's carnival. After graduating in Comparative Literature and Postcolonial Cultures at the Università di Bologna with a thesis on Trinidad Carnival Theatre, and in Anglophone Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle with a thesis on Jamaican short story and language, he is currently enrolled in a Comparative Literature Ph.D program at the Université d'Avignon, France, on the translation of anglophone and francophone Caribbean theatre.

Giuseppe Sofo [email protected]

Université d'Avignon

Leah Gordon Jamet Studies: Beingness in Contemporary Trinidad – The Way of the Jamet

Within the national discourse of Trinidad and Tobago, jamette tends to be used pejoratively to refer to a particular 'class' of woman who behaves in a particular manner. The lesser known term, jamette man, is used for gender differentiation. Historically, the jamettes were a subculture that emerged primarily out of the squalid urban barrack yards of Port of Spain during the post-emancipation period, as a direct response to the oppressive vestiges of enslavement. Part of their legacy was what came to be known as the Jamette Carnival, birthed in the 1860s. Through a trans- temporal/trans-spatial exploration, this paper analyses the dual concept of jamet (te) and jametude (jamet essence/jamet spirit) as a mode of resistance and a coping mechanism in everyday life. It examines the ways in which jamet/jametude manifests in contemporary space and investigates the extent to which it is a necessary way of being. To distil the notion the contemporary jamet and its adjacent concept of jametude, the study investigates the present-day jamet vis-a-vis his/her predecessor. Focusing mainly, but not solely, outside of the Carnival context, the study traces the evolution of the jamet, and investigates prevailing notions about the term to determine the relevance and legitimacy of jamet/jametude within the present-day social and political contexts.

Leah Gordon is an employee at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago, and a postgraduate student completing the MA Cultural Studies programme. In the sphere of the performing arts, I am the holder of national awards for dance and drama, including a Cacique Award for Best Actress. Having obtained a BA English Language and Literature with Education, I am currently conducting research on the jamet in contemporary Trinidad and Tobago. Titled ‘Jamet Studies: Beingness in Contemporary Trinidad — The Way of the Jamet’, I believe that my work might find resonance with the conference theme ‘Carnival and the politics of emancipation and practices of resistance’.

Leah Gordon [email protected]

University of the West Indies

Cathy Thomas Defiling the Fête: The Utopian Potential of Drag, Disease and Diaspora in Oonya Kempadoo’s Carnival Imaginary

The catharsis associated with Caribbean Carnival has always been situated in the body. This paper considers the historical effects and cultural affects of diaspora as experienced by a transnational costume designer, the Queen of the Band (with other queenly incarnations) and a gay reveler living with AIDS in Oonya Kempadoo’s tragicomic novel All Decent Animals (2013). Subversive mixing and ‘carnival misalliances’ such as drag alterity produce the body as allegorical and political sites that are ‘dead so that they become born and therefore part of the future’ (Braitwaithe). This paradoxical assemblage harnesses the utopian potential of carnival to queer masculinist and nationalist ideals. Invoking images from Haitian Defile Kanaval and Trinidad Carnival with this literary analysis, I argue that disease, gender illegibility and diasporic longing are in continuous reflection making carnival’s material and discursive power fruitfully ambivalent in how it constructs the Caribbean as a heterotopia, or even an atopian space.

Cathy Thomas is completing her third year in the PhD program of the University of California Santa Cruz Literature Department (USA). Both her critical work and creative writing examines carnivalesque logic in Caribbean text, image, and performance as well as comic books. She asks: What is the role of the fictive and affective that allows for the radical reconfiguring of ‘bodies’, where is power/dominance being expressed; or simply, who’s producing whom? She has presented her work in both Caribbean and comics’ scholar forums. Prior to grad school, she worked for CBS, NBC, Warner Bros., a few Oscar winners and in a stem cell lab at UCLA. Her interdisciplinary work traces back to her 10th birthday when she received a microscope and a journal. Years later, she is still not sure if she’s a scientist writing poems or a poet doing science. But, likely neither or both is what is happening in her fiction.

Cathy Thomas [email protected]

University of California

Christian Høgsbjerg ‘The Independence, Energy and Creative Talent of Carnival Can Do Other Wonders’: C.L.R. James on Carnival

This paper will examine the writings of C.L.R. James, one of Trinidad’s greatest thinkers and writers, on Carnival as an indigenous popular cultural phenomenon, which for James showed the potentialities for mass mobilisation and self-organisation among the people of Trinidad and Tobago. From a young age growing up in colonial Trinidad, James had been fascinated by calypso singers at Carnival time, and he retained his love of Carnival as it emerged from what Susan Campbell called ‘a shadowy but persistent form of oppositional culture’ under colonialism into a state-sponsored national festival in post-colonial Trinidad and Tobago. James is famous for his writing on ‘Mighty Sparrow’ in his Party Politics in the West Indies (1962), but this paper will discuss James’s rather less well-known writings on Carnival, including his witnessing of signs of an emerging embryonic ‘Carnival culture’ in London during the 1930s and 1950s among West Indian migrants, including at Test cricket matches at Lord’s involving the West Indies.

After returning to Trinidad in 1958, in The Nation (the paper of the People’s National Movement that he edited during the heady period in the run-up to independence), James commented on Carnival in editorials like ‘Trinidad Carnival: World Conquest, New Style’ and articles like ‘Independence, Energy and Creative Talent of Carnival Can Do Other Wonders’. The paper will suggest that James’s analysis of Carnival in 1959 as not only a national festival with the ability to make a transnational impact, but also as a ‘a form of self-activity of the masses of the people, a reaction against the perpetual preaching of foreign doctrines and foreign celebrations’ represents a pioneering and distinctive contribution, not least at a time when, as he put it, ‘the best educated minds were usually concerned with everything except what was under their very noses’. In keeping with the themes of the conference around resistance and emancipation, James suggested that the forces and passions of Carnival revealed the latent possibilities among the people of Trinidad and Tobago for a democratic project of political liberation, and indeed, if given a good enough cause and a trusted leadership, for ‘such a national mobilisation as would put to shame all efforts that have hitherto been made in industrial and social activity’.

Christian Høgsbjerg is a historian and the administrator for Leeds University Centre for African Studies. He is the author of C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain (Duke University Press, 2014) and Chris Braithwaite: Mariner, Renegade and Castaway (Redwords, 2014). He has also edited, co-edited or in the process of editing various works including Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History

by C.L.R. James, World Revolution, 1917-1936 by C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins Reader (all with Duke University Press) and Celebrating C.L.R. James in Hackney, London (Redwords).

Christian Høgsbjerg [email protected]

Leeds University Centre for African Studies.

Claire Westall Calypso and Cricket, Earl Lovelace and CLR James: Or, the Carnivalizing of Performativity, Responsibility and Political Becoming

Caribbean cricket is often described in relation to carnival, and, relatedly, calypso music — whether in terms of praise (e.g. calypso cricket) or censure (e.g. calypso collapso). C.L.R. James, the father of Caribbean cricket writing, was clear on the relationship between carnival, calypso and the aesthetics of cricketing performance, including their significance for a Marxian world-view. This relationship between cricket, carnival culture and political as well as human becoming is also critical to much Anglophone Caribbean literature and particularly, for this paper, Earl Lovelace’s novels Salt (1997) and Is Just a Movie (2011). In these two works the influence of Jamesian thinking is strong and politically as well as aesthetically motivating. It seems that Lovelace’s close engagement with carnival — as the chief means by which the people will be united as a Caribbean people — is intimately bound to a politics of becoming that is performed on the cricket field and/or via specific cricketing roles (batting and umpiring) in a manner akin to Jamesian thinking. Indeed, the weight of batting expectation carried by Sonan in Salt (1997) and the aesthetic exceptionalism of ‘Franklin’s batting’ in Is Just A Movie (2011) recall James’s depictions of Wilton St Hill and Matthew Bondman. Other cricketing episodes, including Alford’s role as umpire and Bango’s role as community and cricketing leader, pinpoint the pressures of individual responsibilization and the difficulties of collective endeavor. This paper argues that the carnival and the carnivalesque must be read in relation to cricketing aesthetics for a full and intimate appreciation of the narratorial and political complexities of these Lovelace novels. And, that such work is emblematic of the gains to be made by reading Caribbean literature’s carnival content through the cricket- based arguments articulated by C.L.R. James.

Claire Westall is a Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at York University, UK. Her work investigates the literary-cultural legacies of British imperialism, in relation to Caribbean literature and wider question of postcolonial/global/world-literary studies, and in relation to debates about England, Englishness and devolution in Britain. She has a range of publications considering cricket and Caribbean literature, including a chapter on ‘Reading Brian Lara and the

traditions of Caribbean cricket poetry’ in The Cambridge Companion to Cricket (CUP, 2011). She is co-editor of Cross-Gendered Literary Voices: Appropriating, Resisting, Embracing (2012), and co-editor of Literature of an Independent England: Revisions of England, Englishness and English Literature (2013). She is also co-author of The Public on the Public: The British Public as Trust, Reflexivity and Political Foreclosure (2015).

Claire Westall [email protected]

York University

Victoria Jaquiss The Importance of Live Steelbands at Carnival

Carnival is important, socially, politically and historically. Playing steelpans at a UK Carnival adds the further dimension of a shared cultural experience. For a black British person, especially of West Indian origin, it validates your position in a country where racism is still an unacceptable presence. For a white, Asian or Chinese person, playing steelpans celebrates, consciously or otherwise, this Caribbean instrument. When musicians play pans at Carnival they get that intense shared experience that comes with ensemble playing of high quality music using the artform that is so important in the culture of that Carnival.

In steelband there are no rules, unspoken or spoken, about age or gender, or [UK] social class, although there has been some debate about ownership. In my presentation I would consider the personal, social and musical benefits of pan, but, above all the pleasure that this very physical of instruments brings to players and audience alike. The old unspoken maxim that if it’s fun, it must be bad for you was, in my experience, knocked on its head by the arrival in Western Europe of West Indian Carnival. Here pleasure is good for you, for your self-esteem and for your mental and physical health. Combine that with playing steelpans, working hard to learn your part then performing to others, feeding on audience reaction, well . . . that is even better.

In my presentation I would argue that pan is the most inclusive of musical instruments, and celebrate how playing pans at Carnival contributes to the feelgood factor in an often difficult world; it brings together musicians from different ages and social and ethnic backgrounds. Because steelpans are rarely taught or played using conventional western notation, playing them particularly empowers the inner-city players, who can either learn by the aural-visual method or using Foxwood Songsheets, or some other letter based system. My own expertise is in teaching and playing steel pans — in schools and community settings. I have led bands for years now at Manchester, Huddersfield and Leeds Carnivals, and I play pans for the pleasure it gives me on so many different levels.

Victoria Jaquiss first played and taught steelpans at Foxwood School, Leeds in the 1980s. Here she first devised the Foxwood Songsheets [a deliberately imprecise notation, for which she received the FRSA] and set up the Foxwood Steel Band. Foxwood soon used pans for GCSE performance and composition, and the band played

all over Leeds and beyond for summer fairs, arts festivals and civic events. Since 1996 she has been Steel Pan Development Officer and Head of Steel Pans for Leeds ArtForms Music Service. In 2000 she set up East Steel [music centre community steelband] and Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows [citywide youth steelband who won Music for Youth World Award in 2009], playing at both Royal Albert Hall and in 2011 the Festival Hall for the anniversary of the Festival of Britain.

The bands regularly play Leeds, Manchester, Huddersfield and Otley Carnivals, and between them, about sixty other concerts/gigs a year.

Victoria Jaquiss [email protected]

Leeds ArtForms Music Service

Andrew R. Martin Steelpan Tourism in the Twenty-first Century: Carnival and diasporic identities, transcultural relationships and the commercialization of Carnival.

This paper will explore the sociological, technology-enhanced, and musical factors of global steelpan tourism in an effort to understand the recent influx of steelpan tourists participating in Panorama in Trinidad and the Carnivals of the West Indian diaspora outside of the Caribbean.

As we now approach the Carnival season of 2017, the steelband sound has firmly asserted itself as the signifying musical voice of the Caribbean on a global scale. Novice and accomplished pannists the world over are eager to try their hand at performing with the various steelbands of the Trinidadian diaspora and the summer months in North America and Europe feature such opportunities in the Carnivals of Toronto, London, and Brooklyn, not to mention those Panoramas in numerous Caribbean islands. One no longer needs to travel to the streets of Port of Spain to witness steelbands in mass or participate in Panorama, and the desire for pannists the world over to trek to the homeland of steelband has likely never been stronger. Each year countless individuals from across the globe travel to Trinidad to perform in Panorama and experience the sights and sounds of Trinidad. But, why now? Recent developments in steelband performance, technology, and literacy have made steelband tourism more possible than ever before, especially for those interested in journeying to the steelpan Mecca of Trinidad. However, scholarship addressing tourism, Trinidad, and the global diaspora is devoid of analysis focused on the mechanics of steepan tourism for the simple reason that until recently steelpan tourism rarely occurred.

Andrew R. Martin, Ph.D., is Professor of Music at Inver Hills College, St. Paul, Minnesota where he teaches courses in music history, music analysis, percussion, and directs the African music ensemble and steelband. Martin’s research explores the global spread of steelpan and steelbands, American music, and popular and folk music and musicians during the Cold War. He has published widely on the above topics and presented numerous lectures and conference papers throughout the United States, Canada, Caribbean, Europe, and China. His research has appeared in several print sources including the journals American Music, Pan Podium: The Journal of the British Steel Band Society, The Journal of New York Folklore, and in reference works such as

the Grove Dictionary of American Music. His most recent book Steelpan Ambassadors: The US Navy Steel Band 1957-1999 was published in 2016. Since 2011, Martin has written a semi-regular newspaper column “Pan Worldwide” in the Trinidad Guardian.

Andrew R. Martin [email protected]

Inver Hills College

Jared Allen The History and Pedagogy of Trinidad’s Junior Panorama: Forging the Steelpan Tradition for Future Generations

The steelband is an innovative and growing world music ensemble in the Caribbean and carries close ties to the Carnival. Founded in the country of Trinidad and Tobago, the steelpan is the only acoustic instrument invented in the 20th century. Since its introduction to the schools of Trinidad and Tobago in the 1970s, many of the primary and secondary schools now have steelbands as part of their school’s music programme. Many of these programmes participate in the Junior Panorama that is a unique component of the Trinidadian Carnival. Due to limited research in these programmes, Jared Allen observed and analysed the pedagogy of steelbands in Trinidad who participated in the 2016 Junior Panorama. An exploration of the history of the steelpan focuses on the Trinidadian people working together against the oppressive powers of the aristocracy. The start and development of school steelbands was a re-creation of this same resistance and an uprising of the youth to take ownership of the national instrument and develop their own social cohesion. The national movement of school steelbands has solidified a longstanding tradition of pan in Trinidad through the support of the community bands and the intergenerational connection of the panyards. This research study encourages the growth of steelbands throughout the world in an effort to inform methodology, promote the instrument, and provide a world music approach to music education.

Jared Allen is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Music Education at the University of South Florida. He is now completing a year of research abroad in Trinidad where he studied the school steelband programs and is earning a Master of Arts in Carnival Studies from the University of Trinidad and Tobago. In addition to his research, he performed with the PCS Nitrogen Silver Stars Steel Orchestra in Panorama and with their stageside band throughout the year. During this month, he will be traveling to Haiti to present at the Caribbean Studies Association International Conference and then will continue on to St. Vincent to perform with the South East Steel Orchestra in their Panorama. In the Fall, he will be returning to the John Hopkins Middle School Center for the Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida where he has instructed the steelbands and world drumming ensembles for the last five years. He also directed the steelbands for Perkins Elementary and Hillsborough Community College.

Jared Allen, [email protected] University of South Florida

Hughbon Condor and family ‘The flight of the Condors’: nearly 50 years of three generations of carnival costume design

In a 30 minute presentation, Hughbon Condor will show slides and film of carnival costumes he has designed since the early 1970s. After the presentation, Hughbon, his son Sephbon and his grandson André will engage in a discussion about the transmission of passion for carnival, and costume design skills, over three generations of the Leeds-based Condor family. The discussion will be facilitated by Max Farrar, who has photographed Hughbon and his family’s designs since 1974. As a young man, Hughbon was lured into the Leeds carnival by Arthur France MBE, founder of the Leeds carnival. Hughbon’s skills as a trained engineer led him to find new materials and new designs for his costumes, and by the 1980 his success in the Carnival Queen competition in Leeds meant that his services were requested by other carnivals. A research trip to Trinidad in 2005 afforded him the opportunity to learn and develop skills by visiting Mas Camps making kings, queens and troupe costumes. He gained knowledge of the materials available for the making of costumes which has enhanced his contribution to carnival arts.

Hughbon Condor had a long and varied professional career starting as an apprentice Mechanical Engineer. He specialised in Production and Industrial Engineering. He was promoted to Production Manager and held such positions in several manufacturing companies. He then moved to the Voluntary Sector and worked as the CEO of a training organisation. In parallel with his full-time job Hughbon designed and made carnival costumes as his hobby and gained a reputation for making costumes involving mechanical and engineering features to create movement and transformation. Hughbon is an internationally-respected carnival costume designer with over 40 years’ experience. He's been closely associated with Leeds West Indian Carnival for many years. In 2005 he was one of three artists from the UK who gained an Arts Fellowship in Trinidad. He has visited and taken part in several Carnival events internationally, spanning the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

2011: Lead designer for ‘Dancing in the Street’ cumulating in a six months display of his carnival costumes in the Leeds City Museum 2011/2012: Arts Council England Assessor, specialising in Carnival as Combined Arts

2014: Designed and made the King and Queen Costumes for the Leeds Pop Up Carnival as part of Le Grand Depart cycle race. 2014: Hughbon started working in carnival arts part-time after leaving full-time employment. 2015: Lead designer for Elevate, a special project for Manchester Day Parade. Artist in Residency and Carnival mentor at the UKCCA. 2016: Hughbon set up the High Esteem Carnival Design Company with his son Sephbon.

Hughbon Condor [email protected]

Lawrence Scott, Patricia Murray and Polly Pattullo Celebrating 25th Anniversary of a Caribbean Classic

New Edition of Witchbroom: The Carnival Tales of Lavren Monagas de los Macajuelos: A novel inspired by The Trinidad Carnival

Lawrence Scott in Conversation with Patricia Murray (John Moores University). Reading By Lawrence Scott followed by a Q&A. Introduced by Polly Pattullo publisher/editor at Papillote Press

Keith Nurse, Suzanne Burke, Joanne Briggs and Nestor Sullivan The Trinidad Carnival Complex: Creating New Pathways for Constructing Socio-Spatial Identity

The Trinidad Carnival Complex represents one of the many expressions of the transplanted carnival tradition that was brought to the Americas by European settlers and re-shaped and re-purposed by the ways of life of those who were indigenous to the area and also by those who were forcibly re-settled and indentured from the continents of Africa and Asia. However, what sets the Trinidad Carnival Complex apart from its peers in Plantation America, is its seemingly singular ability to replicate itself wherever its citizens re-settle, primarily in North America and Western Europe. Some of these new festivals represent the biggest street events in their respective locales, with the attendant impact on the local economies. But more importantly, these Trinidad styled carnivals are changing the socio-spatial identity of the cities and towns where they are happening and are implicated in the place-making strategies of these destinations. More recently, there has been a dispersion of the Trinidad Carnival Complex, which includes masquerade bands, steel band orchestras and popular dance music, to countries further afield such as Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania where their staging is not being driven by a resident Caribbean immigrant community but by local and national state officials. In this way, the globalization of the Trinidad Carnival is evolving and presents unique opportunities for citizens in the homeland and hostlands alike to interrogate the meanings ascribed to cultural citizenship and for them to explore new ways of engaging in creative collaboration, promoting social cohesion, enhancing governance styles and expanding global communities of carnival practice.

The four panelists include:

Keith Nurse PhD — Senior Research Fellow: Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados). He works in many diverse areas of development including cultural industries, climate change, and trade. Currently he sits on the UN Committee for Development Policy, the Economic and Social Council and on the Board of the Economic Advisory Development Board of the Ministry of Planning and Development (Trinidad and Tobago). Dr. Nurse will be presenting a paper on the globalization of Trinidad’s Carnival.

Suzanne Burke PhD — Lecturer: Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies (University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago). She works in the area of cultural policy, arts management and creative entrepreneurship and

design. She recently chaired the Working Group on Creative Clusters/Hub in Trinidad and Tobago under the auspices of the Ministry of Planning and Development. She will be presenting on the global communities of practice that are inhered within the Trinidad Carnival Complex and how this phenomenon unpacks traditional notions of creative clustering.

Joanne Briggs — MA Student: Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies (University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago). Joanne works as a print media journalist with a specific focus on culture. She will be presenting on how the Trinidad-styled Carnival as a cultural product has found its way to Africa. It is not in the context of the Carnival’s return to ‘home’ or ‘the motherland’ but as one culture that has found another route just as Notting Hill, Labour Day, Miami and Caribana, have become Trinidad Carnival-like destinations. Trinidad Carnival’s survival in England, the US and Canada is buoyed by the Trinidad diaspora, who initiated the celebrations as a mean to dissolve homesickness and evoke nostalgia. The Trinidad Carnival’s travels to Africa, however, have nothing to do with the diaspora. The connection between Trinidad and Africa has more to do with passion, diplomacy and possible hope of generating economic value. The Trinidad Carnival has had soft landing in three African countries so far (South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria). While the events are not as grand a scale as in the other countries, the Trinidad presence in the Continent is worth exploring to understand the mechanics of these relationships and the consequential interactions.

Nestor Sullivan MA (Carnival Studies, University of Trinidad and Tobago) is a founding member of Pamberi Steel Orchestra. Mr. Sullivan has functioned in several capacities, as a player, section leader, captain, manager and director of this organization. The band has participated in Panoramas, National Festivals and Community Concerts and has performed, recorded and released CDs in Europe, Asia, North America and the Caribbean. Mr. Sullivan has functioned at the highest levels of steelband administration and served as Vice President of Pan Trinbago and as the Operations Manager of the Trinidad and Tobago National Steel Orchestra (TTNSO). He was also a founding member of the Pan In Schools Coordinating Council (PSCC) that developed programmes to introduce steelband in Schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago, including in Pamberi’s hometown of San Juan.

Keith Nurse

Suzanne Burke [email protected]

Joanne Briggs

Nestor Sullivan

Danalee Jahgoo The Role of Calypso and Sailor ‘Mas’ in resisting American neo-imperialism in Trinidad, 1945-1960

Carnival and the many elements that encompass this festival, such as calypso and other forms of traditional ‘mas’ have been considered forms of resistance against oppression in Trinidad’s history. There is a great deal of existing literature that examines how calypso and other aspects of the festival have been used to resist British colonialism. This paper, however, will examine how calypso and sailor ‘mas’ have been used as tools to resist what was considered to be a growing American imperial influence in Trinidad. It has been argued that World War Two gave the United States an opportunity to impose itself as an imperial force in Trinidad. Although there was indeed a growing American influence during the war and a decline in the existing British influence, locals still did not wish for an exchange of imperial powers. Calypso and sailor ‘mas’ were used to reveal such sentiments. Between 1945 when World War Two ended and 1960, which marked Eric Williams’ March to Chaguaramas, there was heightened nationalism in Trinidad and great disregard for colonialism, both British and American. The themes of many calypsos and sailor bands reflected the idea that locals were not willing to tolerate American neo-colonialism as they mocked Americans with costumes or blatantly stated that they wanted them to leave Trinidad, through the lyrics of calypsos. An examination of such issues will serve to develop the historiography on cultural resistance in the history of Trinidad.

Danalee Jahgoo is from Trinidad and Tobago. I am a twenty-seven year old, Master of Philosophy, History student of the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. My research is focused on examining how the American pursuit of national security impacted Trinidad during World War Two and the Cold War. I am also a part-time tutor at the same university. I conduct tutorials for Caribbean Civilization which is a multi- disciplinary course that focuses on teaching students the importance of Caribbean issues from historical and contemporary perspectives. I enjoy teaching and researching topics in history. I have a long term goal of promoting Caribbean studies and the region at large as an area worthy of study. This is so as unfortunately there is not much incentive in Trinidad and Tobago for young people to pursue studies in history, despite the existence of willing and capable individuals to do so.

Danalee Jahgoo [email protected]

University of the West Indies

Rudolph Otley The Globalization of Calypso

Before 1900 Calypso music was referred to as Ruso, Kaito and Kaiso all with a distinct African linkage that was bastardized by our Colonial experience and then re-named Calypso (Hill: 1972). This presentation will focus on the triangulation and the creation of Calypso music:

• THE AFRICAN RETENTIONS • THE PLANTATION EXPERIENCES • THE EUROPEANIZATION OF THE MUSIC ‘Cross fertilization’

Inclusive of these eight (8) developmental pillars: 1. The commencement of Vocal Calypso recordings in 1914 2. The Commercialization of the Calypso Tents from 1921 3. The RCA and VICTOR recordings in New York in the 1930s 4. The Calypso Craze in North America in the 1950s, the role of Harry Belafonte in this process of Globalization 5. The Europeanization of Calypso music in the late 1940s and 1950s by Lord Kitchener, Lord Beginner, the Mighty Terror, Fitzroy Coleman and Edric Connor 6. The role of the migrant West Indian populations in North America and Europe. Excerpts from the CDs ‘London is the place for me’ (Honest Jon’s Records) will be incorporated in the presentation. 7. Calypso themes addressing male/female conflict; machismo and sexism; gender roles; politics and power play in the Calypso will be highlighted. 8. The impact of the 1970 Black Power revolt in Trinidad: ‘We began looking into ourselves from that period . . . Soca music was symbolic as a mark of that experience, that change’. (Kaiso-Calypso Music, New Beacon Books, London: 1990, p. 9)

Rudolph Otley’s academic achievements include: Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Studies, University of Trinidad and Tobago Master of Education in Vocational Guidance and Counselling, Niagara University, Niagara Falls; U.S.A. Bachelor of Education, Ontario Teachers Education College, Toronto, Canada PROFESSIONAL ASSIGNMENTS Senior Lecturer, Carnival Studies, University of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad General Manager Human Resources, Trinidad and Tobago Postal Services, Piarco, Trinidad Manager Employee Services, B.W.I.A. Piarco, Trinidad

He has published seven books, namely: Women in Calypso, Part 1, Scrip-j1992 Calypsonians From Then to Now, Arima, 1995 Calypsonians From Then to Now, Scrip-j, 1998 Women in Calypso, Part 2, 2007, Scrip-j, 2007 Calypsonians From Then to Now, Scrip-j, 2008 D’Revue @50, Scrip-j; 2012 Celebrating 100 Years Of Vocal Calypso Recordings, Scrip-j, 2014

MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS Owner of the World’s Only All Female Calypso Tent, THE DIVAS CALYPSO CABARET INTERNATIONAL 2004 to 2016. The former Marketing Manager of the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Organization (TUCO) from 1998-2002 and 2014-2016.

CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS Presented a Paper entitled ‘Women in Calypso’ University of Hartford, 1998. Presented a Paper on ‘Women in Carnival’ at the World Conference on Carnival, Port of Spain, Trinidad 1999

Rudolph Ottley [email protected]

University of Trinidad and Tobago

Anjelica Corbett Training Island Guardians: The Junior Calypso Monarch Programme and the National Image of Barbados

Crop Over, Barbados’s carnival celebration, is a space where multiple generations create and experience various forms of Bajanness. During this celebration, Barbados holds junior calypso competitions reflecting the Pic-o-de-Crop competition, the adult counterpart, for Barbadian youths, and allows the youth to express their opinions on society. Barbados's Junior Calypso Monarch Programme (JCMP) is a developmental program and competition for Bajan youths 8-18 years old. The programme consists of a workshop on calypso performances, junior calypso tent performances, semifinals, and finals and teaches the youth about performing heightened and creative displays of Bajanness. The winners receive the title of Junior Calypso Monarch, various prizes, and the opportunity to perform in Trinidad and Tobago during Carnival. Junior calypsonians consequently become Barbados’s new cultural ambassadors. The JCMP, like Pic-o-de- Crop, promotes a convivial, hardworking, reflective, traditional, yet innovative Barbados to local and international audiences. The JCMP participants’ performances practice masquerade on two levels. One, Calypso’s musical aesthetic focused on pleasant and melodious sounds and its association with carnival and bacchanal conceals the serious nature of the social and political criticism within the performance. Two, the junior calypsonians’ performances provide social commentary on topics deemed appropriate by the Barbadian government and society, and reveals youths’ regulated freedom through performance. Through examination of calypsos from the 2014 JCMP and the programme’s role within Crop Over and Barbados’s youth policy, this work shows how carnival uses Afro-modernity and masquerade to allow youths to have an increased role in nationalist projects and increased social agency through cultural performance.

Anjelica Corbett is a PhD student studying ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago. She previously studied at Stetson University and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Music Theory and ethnomusicology, respectively. Her academic interests includes musical performances of the youth, Caribbean masquerade, Caribbean popular music, popular and folk music in Barbados, dance and drum genres, vocal timbres and race, and the globalization of popular music. Anjelica Corbett [email protected]

University of Chicago

Chris Slann and Frankie Goldspink Colliding Cultures: (Local) Power, Politics and Empowerment

We are seeking to explore the rationale for the differing impacts Caribbean carnival has had as it has collided with English parade traditions. The Isle of Wight (IW) hosts the oldest English carnival tradition in the country with 16 summer parades a year. Yet sections of the indigenous community have fiercely resisted global carnival influences introduced through both regeneration and learning agendas since 2000. This has resulted in what is now two competing styles of event — the IW Carnival and the IW Mardi Gras. In Luton however, global, particularly Caribbean, carnival was rapidly embraced by both the local authority and the diverse populations keen to work together to exploit the energy and creativity and create a new celebration for a new age in the town that everyone could be proud of. We will draw upon personal experiences in Norwich, Luton, the Isle of Wight and beyond to explore the impact this collision of cultures has had and how this has been used to maintain (local) powerbases or empower communities.

Chris Slann has spent over 25 years working in mainstream carnival and community arts development, 21 of these within a local authority context. Whilst working for Luton Borough Council from 1989-2002, he, alongside his colleague and partner Frankie Goldspink, established Luton International Carnival as Britain’s Biggest one-day Carnival and, as a consequence, set up the UK Centre for Carnival Arts. Since moving to the Isle of Wight in 2002 he has worked within the council as Principal Arts Development Officer, Arts Lead for the Adult & Community Learning Service and was Development Manager at the Carnival Learning Centre before becoming Executive Director of The New Carnival Company in January 2012. Chris is responsible for implementing strategy and vision of the organisation, developing partnerships, international relations, fundraising and organisational development.

Frankie Goldspink began her career in community arts in the late 70’s, cutting her teeth working in hard-to-reach communities in Norwich and across the Eastern region before taking up an Arts Outreach post in Luton. Her passion for carnival developed there and this has since taken her all over the world creating opportunities and collaborations most notably with Rio Carnival, Trinidad Carnival, Viareggio Carnival in Italy and Junkanoo in the Bahamas. As Carnival Arts Development Officer for Isle of Wight Council from 2002 to 2011 Frankie developed the first nationally accredited Carnival Learning Programme for adults and young people in the country. Frankie is responsible for the development and delivery of creative projects, celebratory events and lead officer for accredited arts learning programmes

Chris Slann and Frankie Goldspink [email protected] The New Carnival Company CIC

Jeanefer Jean-Charles and Liz Pugh Spotlight on Manchester Day – civic celebration in the public realm

Jeanefer Jean-Charles, Choreographer and Mass Movement Director, has been involved in working within communities all over the UK on Carnival & Outdoor arts projects for the last 15 years, with clients including Walk the Plank, Kinetika Arts, Luton Carnival Arts, Stockton and London Olympics 2012. Jeanefer Jean Charles, and Liz Pugh, Walk the Plank’s co-founder, will talk about how they have worked to reach out to specific communities, and with what impact. They will give examples of how they use training to build the capacity of artists within the company and its participatory practice, and reiterate the importance of promoting diversity within all aspects of an organisation, not just in the choice of participating groups for the Parade.

Manchester Day, which began in 2009, now involves one of the largest parades in the North West; and brings together diverse community groups and artists to create costumes, floats and choreography as a way of celebrating all those who live, work or play in the city. As Creative Producers, Walk the Plank’s team work with Manchester City Council is to select groups and support their participation. Crucial in our thinking is the desire to give more visibility to groups often under-represented in civic life, including the LGBT communities, Black, Asian and ethnic minority groups, and community groups from disadvantaged areas who are often excluded from the commercial and business life of the city.

Jeanefer Jean-Charles is a Choreographer, Mass Movement Director and Creative Consultant with over 30 years’ experience of devising, creating, facilitating and directing dance and movement for performance. Jeanefer’s work is celebratory, powerful and exciting to watch. In recent years, Jeanefer’s work draws together and brings to life the talents, strengths and shared stories of local communities, young people and artists in inspiring and unforgettable ways. Jeanefer’s clients and previous projects include London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, Isle of Man Commonwealth Youth Games Opening Ceremony, Greenwich & Docklands International Festival, Walk The Plank, Kinetika, Rugby League World Cup, Walt Disney, Institute of Civil Engineers, East London Dance, Liverpool Capital of Culture, Buckingham Palace Coronation Concert, Derry City of Culture, Big Dance, and most recently FA Cup Final and Roald Dahl’s City of the Unexpected in Cardiff.

Liz Pugh is Creative Producer and Co-founder of Walk the Plank. Liz has been producing outdoor performance, large scale events in the public realm, festivals and community celebrations for many years. She has a talent for making work that invites people to connect, or celebrate, in new ways. She has conceived and directed several outdoor performances that have participation at their heart; produced parades &

processions; and led training for creative practitioners, most recently for the British Council in Brazil and Nigeria. She programmed performance for Festival No.6 in Wales in its first years(Best New Festival 2012 – UK Event awards), led Walk the Plank’s team for Hull’s Freedom Festival for three years, and has been the Producer for Manchester Day since its inception in 2009: all diverse platforms which offer the chance for meaningful exchange between artists and new audiences. She and Jeanefer have worked together on the Commonwealth Youth Games opening, the Return of Colmcille for Derry/Londonderry UK City of Culture, and on Manchester Day.

Jeanefer Jean-Charles & Liz Pugh [email protected]

Walk the Plank

Angela Chappell Analysing 42 years of the Arts Council’s funding and supporting of Caribbean Carnival in England

This paper will examine the history of Arts Council England's (ACE) relationship to the Carnival sector in terms of the cultural history of Caribbean carnival in England as it has evolved over 50 years. It will analyse the rationale of grant funding by Arts Council of Great Britain to support carnival and diaspora identities via carnival arts recognised as a cultural expression for Black and Minority Ethnic communities. It will use examples/case studies of Notting Hill carnival in the 1970’s through to expansion to support regional Caribbean carnivals such as Leeds West Indian Carnival in the 1980- 1990’s and currently. A timeline of ACE funding history and investment into Caribbean carnivals and carnival artists/organisations as a parallel to the history and development of the sector, regionally/nationally will be provided. The paper will examine the application of the Arts Council strategic framework document ‘Achieving Great Art and Culture for Everyone’ to carnival development currently. Definitions of carnival arts have evolved and the Arts Council has become more inclusive in acknowledging broader carnival arts practice. In what way have the Grants for the Arts and our Carnival Portfolio Organisation strategy contributed to the ecology of Carnival sector and support to social engagement and talent development? Angela will reflect upon her personal experience of funding and developmental support to the carnival sector as a relationship manager at ACE. She will also draw upon her experience as an artist and manager previously within the carnival sector. The paper will explain how carnival is changing in terms of public investment, artistic content, and in relation to social cohesion , engagement practice and commercialisation.

Angela Chappell is a BA Honour’s Graduate in Fine arts with community arts- (Dissertation on Carnival). She has a freelance career specialising in Caribbean Carnival work in Preston, Crewe, Liverpool, Manchester, Oldham and Notting Hill 1986-1993. She has visited Trinidad and Tobago Carnival in the Millennium and worked with Mas groups and camps developing skills in traditional and contemporary Carnival. I maintain a passion and interest for Carnival from European to Afro Caribbean forms, costume and visual elements. My carnival arts expanded over eight years informing my work in outdoor large scale festivals and events. I followed a career into local authorities as a Principal officer in four NW local authorities from small districts to city and Met councils over 15 years; including community arts engagement, event management and programming, streets arts, carnival arts and outdoor arts. I have been a national LA representative member of ISAN 2000-2005; regional rep for

NALGAO; (now ADUK). I worked within LEA arts advisory service and Chester performs 2 years prior to Arts Council employment in 2010.

My Arts Council focus/responsibilities include responsibilities for Combined Arts in North with lead specialism’s for Carnival, Mela, Outdoor and Street arts, strategic touring, Festivals, participatory arts, Circus etc. I am the lead relationship manager for six NPOs in the NW region. I work closely with the combined arts sector: artists, small organisations including carnivals, troupes etc to advise on ACE funding schemes, signposting information and opportunities in the sector. Lead officer: Combined Arts national task group for Carnival 2013-2016 current, recently developed the new ACE Gfta carnival advice sheet in 2014, 2016. Chaired two National carnival conferences: UKCCA 2013, EMCCAN 2015 and visited Cape Town Carnival, South Africa on exchange trip in March 2016.

Angela Chappell [email protected] Arts Council England

Khadijah Ibrahiim, Malika Booker and David Hamilton Creative Writing and Dance: An Interacted Workshop

Carnival Masquerade and the body may very well be ‘the way in which rituals become a site of collective memory as it opens a discursive space for expressing communal celebrations of the inner being or consciousness’. Through a series of questions the artists will present a workshop to discuss what carnival means in relation to the body. The aim is to explore the rhythms that are an embodiment of African spirituality. The workshop will attempt to explore some of the characteristic forms of the African body, its natural reaction to rhythms through movements which more often may simply be referred to as dance and wining or 'wuk up', in the language of calypsonian, soca, mento beats, carnival pan and dance. Here, artists Khadijah Ibrahiim, Malika Booker and David Hamilton will highlight the African and Caribbean retention within Carnival, which reflects in the characteristics of African Caribbean dance and mass play through theatre. The workshop will make use of creative writing, theatre and dance, live pan, to demonstrate and address Carnival through the body as a captured performance of skilled dance. The skill dance, and poetic performance will be one of the highlights through play.

Khadijah Ibrahiim was born in Leeds of Jamaican parentage. Educated at the University of Leeds, she has a BA Honours in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies and a Masters of Arts in Theatre Studies. She is a published poet, Live Artist, poetry slam producer and practitioner of theatre for development. Her teaching background includes, EAL specialist teacher, English foundation, Drama and the arts award. In 2001 she founded Sema Grass Roots theatre that produces the work of Leeds Young Authors to which she is the Artistic Director. She is the Executive Producer of the award winning documentary ‘We Are Poets’, and currently the coordinator for Peepal Tree Press, community outreach group for Black and Asian writers. Hailed as one of Yorkshire’s most prolific poet by BBC Radio, Khadijah has toured throughout the USA, Caribbean, Africa and Asia. She has presented her work at a numerous international festivals and conferences, alongside esteemed artist and writers such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Civil Rights Activist Angela Davis. In 2010 she was one of the first international writers to attend the ‘El Gouna Writers Residency’ in Egypt, the same year she toured South Africa and the UK with the British Council as part of the ‘Verbalized Poets’. She was amongst several poets invited to Buckingham palace, where the Queen and Duke honoured the work of Contemporary British poetry. Her recent collection ‘Another Crossing’ was published by Peepal Tree Press

2014 and launched at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Khadijah currently is working towards her national live arts tour and on her body of works — which includes the classical sounds of opera combined with monastery of Ethiopia music. Khadijah's creative work pushes against the boundaries of everyday life, from her Sound System symposium, the art of the DJ, selector and musical dub poet, Hairs Stories — Roots Runnin African women's hair and politics, to Another Crossing — stories of 1970's multicultural (Black Britain). Khadijah makes work which addresses not only the African diaspora cultural retention of time and space, she has found other creative ways to open up dialogue for honest discussion on what it means to be an artist living and working in Britain. Her practice as a theatre maker and poet involves her excavating stories from communities, to use as a stimulus to retell creatively fusing theatre and poetry.

Malika Booker is a British writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist. Malika is the founder of Malika's Poetry Kitchen, a writer’s collective for beginning and emerging poets. Her first stage work ‘Absolution’ was commissioned by The Austrian Cultural Institute and Apples & Snakes and toured nationally. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths University. ‘Breadfruit’ was published by flippedeye in 2007 and recommended by the Poetry Society and her poetry collection ‘Pepper Seed’ was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2013 and longlisted for the OCM Bocas 2014 prize. ‘Pepper Seed’ was also shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for first full collection 2014. She was inaugural Poet in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Malika is currently the Cultural Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds University.

David Hamilton is the founder of Phoenix Dance Company 1981-1987. RJC Dance Theatre 1992-2002 and Regeyeshun Dance Theatre 2002. A freelance teacher performer and choreographer, his experience includes being Dance Artist in Residence West Yorkshire Playhouse 1990-1992. He has worked as an international dancer and director on Trinidad, Jamaica, South Africa and Australia. He is also a research artist in Reggae Contemporary Dance.

Khadijah Ibrahiim Malika Booker David Hamilton [email protected]

Rudolph Ottley Carnival and the Body “C.A.R.N.I.V.A.L. THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE SPELL” from the Road March of 1992, Wine on Something by Superblue.

The spirit that Superblue refers to in the Carnival is the unconscious and uncontrollable movement of one’s body during the Carnival season. ‘Yuh not moving yuh waist by chance . . . No, no it’s the rhythm’, (My House, 2015 by Farmer Nappy).

MY PRESENTATION WILL HIGHLIGHT THE FOLLOWING:

 THE FEMALE BODY as the ‘Mas/Costume’:  CARNIVAL IS WOMAN. The female body has become the costume, the story, the spectacle and the raison d’etre of the Carnival. As a result, some females have been ostracized and sidelined by mas bands that produce costumes that are designed with specific female body shapes and sizes in mind.

The female masquerader, once they are costumed, encounters many ‘OUT OF THE BODY EXPERIENCES’ and ‘transcendental states’ whereby their sense of self is confined to the carnival/costume that they are wearing when she is playing the Mas’ according to Jeff Henry, in his book UNDER THE MAS’ ‘Carnival is a European term: in Trinidad we play mas’ (2008: xv). As Oscar Wilde stated ‘Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell the truth’.

‘Omonike, with the velvet round your hips — just walk the way you feel like walking, walk on the way you like. There is no danger for miles around. Your father is from the Egba tribe. Omonike, hold your head high, just walk on through your life’. (Tunji Oyelana, on vol. 2 of the CD set ‘London is the place for me 2’ (Honest Jon’s Records). (Holland: 2005).

Rudolph Ottley’s full biography is on page 51.

Ann-Marie Simmonds From ‘Styley Tight’ to ‘Kick in she back door’: An Antiguan Band’s Discourse on Women’s Bodies.

Women’s bodies and their representation remain a focus of Carnival discourse. In this paper, I focus on Burning Flames, an Antigua soca band, and their discourse of women’s bodies. I examine song lyrics from the period 1985-2012 and answer the question: How did Burning Flames’ discourse on women’s bodies change between 1985 – 2012 (marked by the release of “Styley Tight” and “Kick in she back door” respectively) and what societal or internal (band reformation etc.) factors contributed to this evolution in their lyrics?

Burning Flames distinguished themselves from other soca bands through their employment of double entendres and sexual innuendos, often seen as a feature of calypso. This was in contrast to the discourse of many soca artists whose lyrics tend toward a very direct sexual discourse. However, in 2012, when the band released the controversial “Kick in she back door”, a song that seemed to condone nonconsensual sexual male aggression, it was evident that the tenor of the band had changed, specifically as it related to women’s bodies and the ‘treatment’ of those bodies.

I argue that coupled with the band’s restructuring, an increased focus on the domination of the female body within and without the Caribbean and Carnival spaces played a role in this evolution in discourse. Thus, whether lyrically or literally, discourse on women’s bodies is intricately tied — sometimes forcefully — to increased male aggression and its normalization.

Dr. Ann-Marie Simmonds is an Assistant Professor of English at the American University in Dubai. She previously lectured at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina and Northern Caribbean University in Jamaica. Her primary research focuses on her native island of Antigua. She is particularly interested in the discourse of soca and calypso music. Her secondary research interest is TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).

Ann-Marie Simmonds [email protected]

American University, Dubai

Réa de Matas Diasporic Culture: The Sensory and Embodied Experience of Negotiating Space, Place and Identities through UK Carnival Festivities

Patrick Manning (2005) suggests that diasporic groups are ‘held together by shared customs’. Stuart Hall (1990) defines the diaspora experience as being held together ‘by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity . . . a conception of “identity” which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity’. David Howes (2005) outlines that ‘embodiment implies an integration of mind and body’ while ‘emplacement suggests the sensuous interrelationship of body-mind- environment’ which emphasises the relationship between space/place, identities and sensory experiences.

This paper explores the syncretic features of carnival, demonstrating that it creates a space for expressive culture that cuts across ideas of nationality and ethnicity, therefore constructing a new expressive culture that is assembled through the UK experience, and is neither wholly Caribbean nor European, but which is a fusion of both. It will also explore the ways in which UK Caribbean diasporic groups are ‘held together’ by carnival’s sensuous culture and the ideologies that support ideas of unity (Nurse, 2004). It emphasises that diasporic identities are constituted discursively and through material practices.

This paper considers the ‘sensuous interrelationship of body-mind-environment’ as a vital part of understanding carnival as a syncretic form that shifts from one state to another. It also considers that the ‘body has a memory’ and is a ‘knowing location’ and examines the strong connections diasporic groups feel towards carnival, and their continued process of embodying and recreating carnival that is not fixed (Howes, 2005; Irobi, 2007; Entwistle, 2009).

Réa de Matas received her Masters in Interactive Multimedia at the University of the Arts London, (LCC) in 2002 which was followed by a Masters from (LCC) in Graphic Design and Typography in (2004). I gained a PGCE in Learning and Teaching Art, Design and Communication with distinction at the University of the Arts London, (LCF)) in

2005. I also hold a Postgraduate degree in Educational Research at the University of Manchester in (2009). My interdisciplinary background provided the opportunity to teach on a range of courses and disciplines. My current research is in Cultural Studies, and focuses on the ‘sensory turn’ and applies it to carnival studies. My research interests include Caribbean diaspora history, diaspora nationalism, heritage and transnationalism, colonialism and postcolonialism, visual and material culture, education, autoethnography, sense phenomenology and attunement.

Dr. Réa de Matas [email protected]

Independent Scholar

Adela Ruth Tompsett Roots and Routes: African Retentions and Influence in the Caribbean-derived Carnival

Africans transported forcibly across the Atlantic by European colonisers were not permitted to bring anything with them, family and tribal units were split up, names were erased. Yet they brought to the Americas all that could be carried in the body, mind and spirit, which was much.

This paper briefly addresses some of the issues involved in tracing and defining African influence in, and origins to, carnival practices in circumstances where written and printed evidence comes mainly from European perspectives. In this presentation these issues are addressed only in so far as is necessary to introduce and context the main discussion of the paper.

The main focus of the paper is on exploring aspects of retained African culture. I propose and consider examples of African practices that influenced the content and development of carnival in the Caribbean in the nineteenth century, and which created traditions and practices that are at the roots of the carnival culture which Caribbean migrants brought to Britain in the mid-twentieth century, and further developed in the UK. My paper seeks to explore aspects of the first three themes listed in the Call for Papers: The cultural history of Caribbean carnival in the UK is significantly (though not exclusively) rooted in African heritage, in the experience of enslavement and emancipation and in using elements from that African heritage in practices of resistance. This paper aims to contribute to ongoing research and discussion about carnival history and aesthetics, current amongst both practitioners and scholars.

Adela Ruth Tompsett [email protected]

Visiting Academic, Middlesex University

Tola Dabiri Our Archives, Ourselves

This paper explores the growing area of archiving contemporary Carnival, and questions whether the developments in formal archiving are helping to document a rich cultural tradition or pose a risk of sealing a spontaneous activity into rigid forms.

Over recent years, interest and development of Carnival archives has grown. From tentative beginnings at the UK Centre for Carnival Arts in Luton, Nottingham, Cardiff and Leeds, there is a recognition and desire systematically to document Carnival culture and traditions. However, as academic and historical interest in Carnival is growing and Carnivalists have deeper interaction with formal institutions including funders, museums and archives, ways of documenting and recording Carnival are also changing.

Archiving Carnival grew out of the community archiving movement, which has encouraged ordinary people not only to document their experiences and heritage, but also to recognise its value alongside the civic and national heritage usually found in formal archives and museums. However, it can be argued that even community archiving is more formal than earlier methods of recording Carnival; informal collections in the loft and in the garage, and before this the oral tradition, described by Walter Ong, which has kept the knowledge, skills and traditions of Carnival alive for centuries.

Since the 1960s, it could be said that Carnival begins and ends with Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque, which states that Carnival allows sanctioned challenges to the status quo, thereby reducing social tensions and reinforcing social structures. However the development of Carnival archives allows us to take a step away from these familiar and predictable descriptions of Carnival, and find the pathways and links shared by all Carnivals. By storing knowledge informally and by using the oral traditions, can we become our own archives, ourselves?

Tola Dabiri is a PhD Research Student in the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities at Leeds Beckett University, UK

Tola Dabiri [email protected]

Leeds Beckett University

Mahalia France and colleagues Family life and Intergenerational Issues in the Leeds Carnival

Carnival is a family affair. Every generation and age group takes part, sometimes in decorated pushchairs, sometimes with a zimmer frame. Involvement in costume- making can be simply wielding the occasional glue-stick or bending a bit of wire. Others will spend hundreds of hours over many months designing and making a full King or Queen costume. Their partners sometimes call themselves carnival widows or widowers. Their children might sometimes think they have been abandoned. Then, as the years pass, these ‘orphans’ start gluing, bending and building, wth their own children alongside them. In this panel, led by Mahalia France, the daughter of one of the founders of the Leeds carnival, we will examine some of these issues. With Mahalia will be others who have grown up in Mas Camps and continue to bring another generation into the wonderful obsession of carnival.

Mahalia France and colleagues

Keri Johnson A Manus ut Machina (From Man to Machine): An Examination of the Commercialization of the Trinidad & Tobago Carnival Masquerade

This qualitative and ethnographic research examines the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, specifically the masquerade or ‘mas’ as it is commonly referred to by the locals and will be referred to in this paper, and its metamorphosis from an entirely man-made/ (manus) created celebration exclusive to the ex-slaves to the international commercial phenomenon (machina) it has become.

There has been many a cry and lament about the yearly accelerating costs of carnival costumes and how very ‘business-like’ mas has become. Playing mas in the twin island republic has become so business savvy and expensive that it can almost be akin to one applying to be in a sorority or elite members club. How has the Trinidad masquerade morphed from manus to machica is the main question that this research seeks to answer.

The paper begins with an historical overview of the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, with specific reference to the masquerade. It will then examine the journey of the masquerade from the post emancipation period to its current present day “all- inclusive” format. It will then delve into the crux of the research by attempting to answer the following research questions:

1. How has commercialization affected the Trinidad and Tobago mas industry? 2. Can the traditional (manus) mas exist alongside the commercial (machina)? 3. Culture versus commerce: which is more important?

Keri Johnson is a 34 year old female who holds of a Bachelor and Master’s Degree in Carnival Studies from the University of the West Indies and the University of Trinidad and Tobago respectively. I am an Immigration Officer by profession but I have a deep passion for Carnival and Carnival Arts. At present, I freelance with a magazine called Mas Quarterly which is a publication from the National Carnival Development Foundation. I was invited by my former professor, Dr. Hollis Liverpool, Carnival Studies lecturer of the University of Trinidad and Tobago to submit this abstract for the International Conference on Caribbean Carnival Cultures taking place on the 19-21 May, 2017.

Keri Johnson [email protected]

Abby Tinica Taylor The Commercialization of Carnival: Tobago’s Mudern Mud

Can Carnival be commercialised? The Trinidad Carnival experience surely has. From its 1839 expressions of freedom which overflowed on the streets post Emancipation to the beautiful fanfare which parades our streets for two days — affectionately known as “The Greatest show on Earth” — Carnival has come a long way from its initial street celebrations. The modern day Trinidad Carnival is a culmination of things other than street rivalry. Carnival is a multi million dollar industry and contributes greatly to the country’s GDP, as their many crafty musical creations were capitalised on: The Calypso, The Steel Pan and Soca. These three are a viable marketable product. However, the economics of Carnival did not only include its raw materials as aforementioned but their by-products as well such as fetes. Where does the Tobago Carnival fit in and has it been commercialised? Unlike the Trinidad, the Tobago Carnival experience has remained virtually untouched by any commercial aspects. It deeply rooted in tradition and formality until the advent of ‘The Mudern Mud’. The mud mas was crudely introduced into the Tobago Carnival experience with hundreds even thousands of patrons from near and far. As it grew it left a horrible taste in the mouths of many of the tradition keepers, as it was deemed as dirty and uncontrollable. Many methods were used to control the mud mas over the years, however the committee behind The Mudern Mud came up with a new and innovative way to not only have a safe and controlled production of the mud mas but to transform it into a commercial product... Mud Packs. The sale of mud packs are exported to Carnivals as far as Miami.

Abby Tinica Taylor is from the small island of Tobago. In this Twin island state, Tobago is referred to as the relaxing island, a vast contrast to its counterpart, Trinidad. I come from a single parent home with siblings who have excelled in various fields ranging from Education to Midwifery. My passion for History and Culture stems from my early childhood while watching movies such as ‘Roots’. My interests has been fuelled by the lack of emphasis on our history. Unfortunately our history has been relegated to holidays with no sentimental meaning. I plan to pursue my PhD in history as the need for revisionism is great. I hope that plans can be implemented to created a historical renaissance in Tobago, as our culture is so historically rich. I am the holder of a bachelor's degree in history from Andrew's University which I completed at the University of the Southern Caribbean in 2012. I attended the University of Trinidad and Tobago where I completed my masters in carnival studies under the stewardship of Professor Hollis Liverpool in 2013.

Abby Tinica Taylor [email protected]

University of Trinidad and Tobago