Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

"Bow your head and bend your knees to a king of Caribbean cul­ture ...when he was born all the var­ied el­e­ments of the cul­ture smiled, know­ing he would save them from the threat of obliv­ion and Eu­ro­pean cul­tur­al dom­i­nance bring­ing them out of the shad­ows in­to the spot­light: Amerindi­an, African, French in­flu­ence, Bon­go, Bele, Kaiso, Lavay."

–PEARL EIN­TOU SPRINGER

Our rich and di­verse cul­tur­al her­itage that cross­es over the civil­i­sa­tions of Africa, In­dia, Chi­na and Eu­rope and has come to­geth­er in the Caribbean of our Amerindi­an an­ces­tors "have al­ways been in­side of us, they nev­er left us," John Cu­pid told me, re­main­ing strong in that faith.

The cul­tur­al re­ten­tions of the an­ces­tors re­main, notwith­stand­ing the Mid­dle Pas­sage, cross­ing the Kala Pani or ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the dom­i­na­tion creed of Eu­ro­pean colo­nial­ism which en­trapped both the colonis­er and the colonised.

John Glad­stone Cu­pid's life­long work has been to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to al­low our na­tive-na­tion cul­tures to be re­sus­ci­tat­ed in our con­scious­ness and for them to be demon­strat­ed to the world. When we par­tic­i­pate in and ap­pre­ci­ate anew Car­ni­val Fri­day's re-en­act­ment of the Can­boulay cel­e­bra­tion of free­dom from be­ing de­prived of the na­tive forms of ex­pres­sions, when we see Wild In­di­an mas, Mo­lasses Dev­il, Fan­cy Sailor, Drag­on and Bat mas (and we must re­mem­ber, too, Edgar Wi­ley) Bur­ro­keet, and lis­ten anew to the blood-cur­dling tall tales of the Mid­night Rob­ber as he scat­ters the in­no­cent, we must be grate­ful for the work of John Cu­pid.

It was John who re­vived the tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters for the gen­er­a­tion of to­day. To do so, John Cu­pid scoured the coun­try ar­eas to find a man play­ing Jab Jab and a woman who knew of the Dame Lor­raine char­ac­ter, the Book­man and the Moko Jumbies who have once again be­come in­te­gral to the Car­ni­val.

Thank­ful­ly, this year the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion has tak­en it up­on it­self to recog­nise John and his life­long work while he is still with us and can ap­pre­ci­ate that we care.

Wist­ful­ly, John, from his home in San Juan, re­mem­bers his time in East Dry Riv­er: "I don't take too much cred­it for Can­boulay; peo­ple I met were on the way there (to reen­act­ing the Can­boulay). They were recog­nis­ing what they al­ways had. Those who for­got, I brought themb back with­out any re­al ef­fort, be­cause it (cul­tur­al mem­o­ry) nev­er went any­where.

"Each time I moved out in the coun­try I felt the need for more of us to recog­nise the se­ri­ous things we did in the his­to­ry books. The priests we met, the Shouter Bap­tists, the whole com­mu­ni­ty."

John de­scribes East Port-of-Spain, where he had his be­ing on Nel­son Street, as "a whole pro­duc­tion area where peo­ple came and left but the cul­ture they ex­pe­ri­enced there nev­er left them. Lat­er in life peo­ple would say: 'John, oh God boy you still with that?' "

"How you mean I still with that? It ent leav­ing me, so I can't not be with that," would be his more than in­dig­nant re­tort to those who would seek to rob those parts of the so­ci­ety of their cul­tur­al her­itage.

I met peo­ple like Mr De Suze, French: "What French peo­ple do­ing in East Dry Riv­er?" John chuck­les at the ig­no­rance of the thought that there were no French peo­ple in East Dry Riv­er.

"Bon jour madam...We said it with­out think­ing it, but we un­der­stood what each oth­er was think­ing, and that was the im­por­tant part," says John.

"I think that is what helped me. I did not have to go and in­vent any­thing– Toute monde (moon), we had every­thing there, we had Chi­nee, Japan­ese...toute moon. Most of us came from dif­fer­ent parts and we set­tled there." John has told me on sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions in the past that "the his­to­ry of the coun­try is wrapped up in pa­tois."

"Every­where I went in the coun­try I met some­body from East Dry Riv­er; that was a nurs­ery for peo­ple who went every­where, and they were com­fort­able in them­selves (in their skins of who they re­al­ly are) be­cause they nev­er left it. So I did not have to hold any mir­ror up to them," says Cu­pid, now in his 87th year.

John in­sert­ed the re-en­act­ment of the Can­boulay in­to the Port-of-Spain Car­ni­val more than ten years ago, but this was af­ter he gave it a tri­al run in Point Fortin back in the 1980s.

Dur­ing sev­er­al in­ter­views I con­duct­ed with him over the years of the Can­boulay in the city, John al­ways dwelled on the im­por­tance that the eman­ci­pat­ed Africans in the East Dry Riv­er placed on hav­ing their cel­e­bra­tions (1880s) in the man­ner they chose to. And this was notwith­stand­ing what Cap­tain Bak­er (the British po­lice cap­tain) mount­ed on his steed at­tempt­ed to sup­press. They pro­tect­ed their goatskin drums and oth­er el­e­ments of the an­ces­tral cul­ture to lam­poon Mas­sa and lament be­ing awok­en in the fore­day morn­ing to out the fires on the sug­ar cane es­tates.

But if John Cu­pid had done noth­ing else but re­vive the Can­boulay and in­sert tra­di­tion­al mas in­to the mod­ern street pa­rade, that would have been suf­fi­cient to have made his con­tri­bu­tion to the restora­tion of our cul­tur­al her­itages.

How­ev­er, he in his ear­ly years in cul­tur­al clubs, es­pe­cial­ly the Bara­juan Lit­er­ary and Cul­tur­al Club (Barataria/San Juan), John was lim­bo dancer, ac­tor, short sto­ry writer, he took T&T cul­tur­al con­tin­gents to the 1967 Mon­tre­al Ex­po, to Eu­rope, to sev­er­al parts of Africa in­clud­ing Nige­ria's Fes­tac, to all over the Caribbean and to dozens of once for­got­ten com­mu­ni­ties (be­hind God back is how they were once de­scribed) in rur­al T&T.

"John was an or­gan­is­er of ex­treme com­pe­tence and he was al­ways on the look­out for caus­es," re­tired in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive Pe­ter Sal­vary said of John.

In be­tween all of his ven­tures to re­vive and show­case the cul­ture, John read for a de­gree in eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Saskatchewan in Cana­da. There he or­gan­ised car­ni­val street pa­rades which were the fore­run­ners to Tri­ni-in­spired car­ni­vals abroad.

But John did not utilise that de­gree to work in ab­stract fig­ur­ing, rather, he worked with large cor­po­ra­tions such as Trin­toc/Petrotrin and Cli­co, from where he put the fi­nan­cial and hu­man cap­i­tal of these or­gan­i­sa­tions to work on dozens of com­mu­ni­ty projects in­volv­ing the cul­ture.

Back in 1969, John re­searched and de­vel­oped the His­tor­i­cal Vil­lages in T&T project based on the art and craft and the way of life pe­cu­liar to those vil­lages– San Raphael and the bas­ketry of the in­dige­nous peo­ples, Lopinot for its his­to­ry and Parang mu­sic, and Paramin for its cul­ture and songs. Not sur­pris­ing­ly,

John re­searched and pro­duced the first Parang LP record with the Lopinot Sis­ters Road Groups. Al­most 40 years ago when I first met Mr Cu­pid as a young re­porter, he in­tro­duced me to Pa­pa Goon, he has not stopped talk­ing about that Co­coa Pa­ny­ol parang orig­i­na­tor from Lopinot. "Cul­ture is not on­ly the fruit but the root of de­vel­op­ment that must be con­sid­ered in every phase and as­pect of the de­vel­op­men­tal process," John told a re­porter on a trip to Grena­da where he (John) had dis­cov­ered roots of the Tri­ni mas amongst the peo­ple there.

His awards vary, from those for his con­tri­bu­tion "to the sur­vival and evo­lu­tion of T&T Parang;" to com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment in places such as Tal­paro, Point Fortin and To­ba­go.

John re­mem­bers his fa­ther who came from a vil­lage in To­ba­go and who was "one of the main men" at the An­gos­tu­ra fac­to­ry on Nel­son/George Streets and his moth­er who was from East Dry Riv­er. When I called him and made the ap­point­ment for the in­ter­view on a Thurs­day, he re­mind­ed me that "rum shop and Chi­nese shop close half-day on Thurs­day." That par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al tra­di­tion re­mains with him on his ban­is­ter in Barataria/San Juan.