Santa has trekked back north and stocks of black cake are diminishing as swiftly as foreign exchange and whatever you thought you had in your bank account. Here in the foothills, it's unnervingly quiet. School and nursery have claimed the most vocal members of the household and the only sounds audible above the rain-soaked breeze are a pair of kiskidees squabbling over a nest they've commandeered from some smaller birds.
"Gyul Ah done talk. Jes' res' yuh bumper right dey and lay lady lay!" "Humm yuh dotish or Russian or wha? Yuh bline? Dis nest nasty, Ah not leggoin no egg till yuh done duss it out an bring me some clean leaf an ting tuh park up in." "Hear quarrelishiciousness an procrustination (sic). Do fast befo' dem udder bud come back an ketch we. Yuh eh know Carnival jes now an if yuh feel Ah go play watchman an miss me mas, yuh eh no bud yuh is ass an Ah not playin no burrokeet to please yuh fancy. Put dong de egg nah gyul an lewwe go fete in de bush."
So while the flighty and more colourful sections of the national community prepare to turn deaf eyes and blind ears to the parlous state of the economy and vote with their waists and feet–becor de party more important dan de Party and no one, not Doc R nor de Pope self could interfere wit we constitutional rights an freedom from oppression an religious expression tuh jump up an wine dong, the more stale drunk among us do have one last gasp left before we tighten our belts till our stomachs hit our spines or our necks pop–becor no one eh tell we which part to pull de belt and if it cyar fit rong de belly den neck more thin, ent?
The lagniappe I have in mind will be with us Sunday, although it will probably be lost in a barrage of soca. Lewa(h) from the French Creole (the Kings)–or Dia de los Reyes as it's known in the Spanish Caribbean and Latin America–is another of those fading aspects of our culture. Although I'm not an apologist for maintaining tradition mindlessly and I realise that some traditions die natural deaths, to be replaced by others which are more current or relevant, here in T&T we often let things slip and slide away and only recognise them by their absence.
Of course once someone or thing has gone here, it's usually permanent, as we still haven't addressed the obvious task of documenting culture, high or low, popular or idiosyncratic. There are no biographies of kaiso icons from King Radio, Atilla, Invader, Lion, Caresser onwards through Spoiler, Kitch, Pretender, Shorty and many others. Thanks largely to the efforts of Dr Kim Johnson, steelpan has fared much better–but there is little to read from local authors about Indo-Trini musical genres or the less audible and visible Spanish genre covered by the umbrella of "parang."
Besides the familiar figures of folklore–La Diablesse, Papa Bois, the Soucouyant, Lagahou–currently there are few vestiges of the French Creole culture which shaped the development of what we could call modern Trinidad–from the 1780s on. There are still some older heads in Paramin who can talk "Patois," but like so many other marginalised languages in today's world, it's definitely a dying language here, despite recent efforts to popularise Creole folk songs and free language courses.
The Lewa tradition predates our premier national festival and I suspect is an example of creolisation many have missed. For Catholics and paranderos alike, the religious symbolism–the journey of the three wise men/kings Melchior, Casper and Balthazar and their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for the Christ child–remains. It's the twelfth and final day of the Christmas, as well as a New Year's celebration combined. The devout will attend mass, while die-hard paranderos in the cocoa panyol enclaves of St Joseph and the Maracas Valley will be rumbling till midnight, with all the energy and cacophony of a J'Ouvert band.
Our parang champions Los Alumnos de San Juan recently went down a storm at Womex, a prestigious international music festival and years ago I remember the amazement of an audience at New York's Lincoln Centre when they heard the San Jose Serenaders. Contrary to some local opinion, "parang", or more correctly, music of Spanish heritage (the parang repertoire is full of half-remembered Latin classics like the 1912 Cuban composition El Manisero–the Peanut Vendor), is not merely a seasonal gimmick, but a genre to itself, with virtuosos like Robert Munro and Clarita Rivas. Parang has even found its way into the Royal Opera House at Convent Garden (courtesy Trini composer Dominique Le Gendre).
What we might consider, instead of letting Lewa slip into terminal obscurity, is a rebranding, and making it the climax to a communities-based festival of Creole Spanish music, drawing on the rich traditions from neighbouring Venezuela and Colombia and further flung cousins in Puerto Rico, the DR and Cuba.