David E Bratt MD

Trinidad be­ing Trinidad, you can­not not have a jokey cat­e­go­ry

The good: the Car­ni­val spir­it. So lit­tle yet so the lit­tle means so much. The or­di­nary peo­ple who come out to watch and who smile and joke and move through the Car­ni­val crowds with ease and style, a nudge here, a side step there, at ease with them­selves, a "yes, broth­er, no prob­lem," take a lit­tle chip when the jam­ming gets se­ri­ous, step aside to let the granny through, and what can you say about those fab­u­lous old­er cit­i­zens who come out every Car­ni­val and do their thing, danc­ing down the road in the same cos­tume, year af­ter year, in­tent on keep­ing the mas alive. Pelau, pholourie and co­conut wa­ter. To keep the en­er­gy lev­el up. Kid­dies Car­ni­val. If you want to see cos­tume, re­al cos­tume, go to Kid­dies Car­ni­val. The chil­dren "car­ry" the cos­tume, no wheeled sup­port here and the cos­tumes are well made. Sil­ver Stars on J'Ou­vert morn­ing, beat­ing pan the way it was meant to be, with en­er­gy and skill and be­hold. In­ter­act­ing with the mas­quer­aders be­low, al­most a call-and-re­ply ses­sion, the mas­quer­aders lift­ing their hands to the play­ers and the play­ers re­spond­ing with re­newed vigour as the band crossed Roberts Street. Sweet! So too La­dy Africa and Du­ane O'Con­nor. Eighty per cent teacher turnout on Ash Wednes­day morn­ing. Shame on the par­ents. The bad: the jook­ing. Win­ing is dif­fer­ent. Win­ing is an art, al­most. Keens-Dou­glas said it best in 1984: "It have wine an' it have wine. If yuh move yuh waist from left to right dat is art, but if yuh jook it for­ward and back­ward dat is vul­gar."

Some women can flip their back­sides from side to side in time with the mu­si­cal beat with a rip­pling, al­most lu­bri­cat­ed ease. Even a wine back can be a pleas­ant, col­lec­tive thing if eas­i­ly and ex­pert­ly done. The full forced wine down is sim­ply a sim­u­lat­ed sex act and is now out of con­trol. There are pic­tures on the In­ter­net of our Car­ni­val that make you cringe. Peo­ple must now de­cide how far they want this to go. I for one have no de­sire to see an­oth­er per­son's bed­room be­hav­iour every­where in the street, un­der the guise of "is we kul­tur." It's bor­ing. The lack of air­play for steel­band tunes. The demise of pan round the neck steel­bands. The stu­pid­i­ty that is Panora­ma Fi­nals. Twen­ty-one bands for a fi­nal? That's mad­ness. A half-emp­ty North Stand and one in four of the most­ly "ma­ture" peo­ple around me in the Grand Stand sleep­ing by mid­night sure­ly sends a sig­nal to the or­gan­is­ers. Eight or nine bands should be the max­i­mum. Start at 7 pm and we know who win by mid­night. Ste­ups. The Non-School Panora­ma champs? Does any­one know what this means? No pan on the road, to push. The Di­manche Gras show. Same same dancers. Bor­ing, bor­ing ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. Ap­par­ent­ly some judges have de­cid­ed that ca­lyp­so has to be sung slow, slow, so slow that they send you to sleep. Huge awk­ward floats, mas­querad­ing as cos­tumes, that spend too much time on stage and look good but in the light of day ap­pear drab and tired as they are dragged and pushed, emp­ty of their hu­mans, down Ari­api­ta Av­enue. The or­gan­i­sa­tion for the "stage march." Bands play­ing one song on the road and abrupt­ly chang­ing for the stage. Some­one must be pay­ing the DJs.

The jokey: the me­dia. Mark Lyn­der­say's Bit­Depth col­umn char­ac­terised pho­to­graph­ic cov­er of Car­ni­val as "one pic­ture... repli­cat­ed a hun­dred thou­sand times, that de­scribes friend­ship, joy and a wan­ton Caribbean par­ty" which BC Pires de­scribes as that of "a wide-eyed, wide-legged, biki­ni-clad woman, not play­ing, but dis­play­ing her­self." Add in a cou­ple of pic­tures of mud-cov­ered big-bel­lied men on J'Ou­vert and that's Car­ni­val cov­er­age for the writ­ten me­dia. TV pre­sen­ters who man­age to make the mas bor­ing with their ob­vi­ous and pa­thet­ic lack of prepa­ra­tion, their in­abil­i­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween com­men­tary on the mas and de­scrip­tion of the mas (not need­ed with a vi­su­al pre­sen­ta­tion) and the overuse of clich­es. How long will we have to lis­ten to them say­ing "she's hav­ing a ball on stage;" "it's a labour of love;" "melt­ing pot" and the peren­ni­al "danc­ing the mas?" Then you have the de­scrip­tions of the var­i­ous fetes which all read like press re­leas­es and prob­a­bly are: "The all-in­clu­sive event host­ed by...was tru­ly mem­o­rable for all in at­ten­dance. The fete gave guests a mem­o­rable ar­ray of sump­tu­ous food op­tions which in­clud­ed mouth-wa­ter­ing sushi, cur­ry and Cre­ole meals as well as suc­cu­lent crab backs etc etc." Copy and save for next year. Te­dious. There's more jokey stuff: the de­ci­sion to al­low Tribe back on stage (dis­ci­pline or tol­er­ance?). The amount of ad­ver­tise­ments dur­ing Di­manche Gras (who paid for them?). The pop­u­lar choice steel­band com­pe­ti­tion for Pan-ora­ma fi­nals that be­gan on Fri­day be­fore the bands played and end­ed at 1 am Sun­day be­fore the last three bands played. Kitch­en­er was right. Car­ni­val is over. It died from medi­oc­rity and bore­dom.