Carl Jacobs
I looked at newspaper and television coverage of the Carnival with a deep sense of sadness. What I saw was a mindless copycatting of Rio's pulchritudinous bacchanal.The "masqueraders"–if we can call them that–were hordes of women cavorting in "costumes" made predominantly of multicoloured bikinis, beads and large feathers which were clearly designed to reveal as much of their bodies as the law would allow. Although there were many who, in their bacchanalian abandonment, obviously didn't care about such limits.
The spirit that animated them was one of anything goes as they used the occasion to expose themselves and to display their special talents in the art of wining.Good heavens, I asked myself, whatever has become of our once magnificent Carnival? Is the golden age of mas gone forever?
Will our national festival which proudly earned the admiration of the world as "the greatest show on earth" ever come back? I had to resign myself to the inevitable. The creativity, artistry and imagination which made our Carnival so brilliantly unique have gone the way of all flesh. Indeed, the compulsions of the flesh have now taken over as our Carnival's motivating force.Perhaps that was inevitable. After all, history tells us that golden ages come and go. The splendour of the Renaissance could not last forever. Still, we must wonder.
Was it just a passing phenomenon that our country was able to produce a group of legendary bandleaders whose designing genius flowered during several decades after World War II producing a stream of epic portrayals seen no where else in the world? Put another way, why could we not have had, for examples, more Saldenhas, Baileys, Lee Heungs, Harts, McWilliamses, Velasquezes, Ammons, Minshalls and McFarlanes? Where have all our great Carnival entrepreneurs gone?
T&T's Carnival did not achieve its greatness by the imitation of others. Rather it was an event with a tradition and efflorescence of its own, one that emerged out of the creative spirit and energy of our people, a unique celebration of our cosmopolitan genius and joie de vivre. It was the unique product of a unique society made up of people of almost every race on the globe, each contributing in different ways to its cultural melting pot.
With its roots buried in the emancipation fervour of the middle 19th century, our Carnival evolved into an annual festival that mirrored the talents of an emerging society. In his classic volume, Beyond Boundaries, historian Prof Selwyn Cudjoe covers the formative features of the festival thus: "Essentially, Carnival tried to recreate, reassemble and resurrect an African way of life that the colonial authorities attempted to stifle during slavery. Trinidad Carnival, however, was not merely a caricature of white society or the mere transformation of the French mardi gras.
In the hands of Africans, Carnival turned out to be a festival in which the culture of the people gestated, became a stage where many talents were fused together, and turned into a springboard for exploring cultural heritage."
From that culturally eclectic beginning in the early 19th century, T&T's Carnival developed a creative energy and motivation of its own, blossoming eventually into a brilliant festival, produced by a range of artists and designers who employed the medium of the costume to portray some of the great events of history, the power of conquering nations, the world's leading civilisations and, of course, the wondrous beauty of nature, including our very own.
It also produced a wonderful cast of characters born out of the society's colourful historical emergence.At the climax of its glory, T&T's Carnival produced a unique moving, dancing, technicolour spectacle that was truly the wonder of the world. But look at what our magnificent festival has now become? Clearly it has lost its soul, its raisons d'�tre, its relevant creative impetus. Instead, tragically, it has gone the way of all flesh.