Ray Funk

Un­til June 7 at the Con­tem­po­rary Arts Cen­ter (CAC) in New Or­leans, the new ex­hib­it En Mas': Car­ni­val and Per­for­mance Arts of the Caribbean de­liv­ers what nine very dif­fer­ent artists with roots in the Caribbean and the Unit­ed States of­fer up as a kalei­do­scope of how artists see and in­ter­act with Car­ni­val as per­for­mance.

Cu­rat­ed by Claire Tan­cons in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Krista Thomp­son, the ex­hib­it is cur­rent­ly be­ing sched­uled to trav­el to the Caribbean start­ing this sum­mer. This ex­hib­it is not about the world of biki­nis, beads and feath­ers; nor about the his­to­ry of mas. It is an ex­hib­it that start­ed with new com­mis­sioned per­for­mance pieces which then had to be cor­ralled in­to mu­se­um space; the re­sult is an ex­hib­it that tries to cap­ture per­for­mances through pho­tos, cos­tumes, and video.

Mount­ed at the CAC in a cir­cu­lar path de­signed by Gia Wolff, you go from the Trinidad to the Ja­maica with stops on the way through Mar­tinique, New Or­leans, and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.The Trinida­di­an piece is by the Guggen­heim win­ner Mar­lon Grif­fith, now based in Japan, who has been putting on Car­ni­val based per­for­mance pieces from South Africa to South Ko­rea, from Lon­don to the Ba­hamas, of­ten in projects cu­rat­ed by Tan­cons.

This sum­mer will be cre­at­ing a piece for large-scale pub­lic street pro­ces­sion pro­grammed in con­junc­tion with the Para­pan Am Games and an ex­hib­it in Art Gallery of York Uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to this Fall. The ex­hib­it fea­tures cos­tumes, the mov­able stairs, pho­tos and a short video. It doc­u­ments a per­for­mance piece that took place on 2014 Car­ni­val Tues­day evening. As night de­scend­ed and peo­ple were mak­ing their way home on Las Lap this very dif­fer­ent mas band made its way from de­sign­er Robert Young's stu­dio in Bel­mont to Al­ice Yard in Wood­brook.

Mar­lon Grif­fith's Po­si­tions + Pow­er fea­tured two mas­quer­aders in cos­tume on a mov­ing lad­der. One worn by a woman, was the Over­seer with a hel­met with two pierc­ing bright lights. An­oth­er, worn by a man, and of­ten po­si­tioned at the bot­tom of the stairs, Dober­man, with hel­met and video of teeth bit­ing with a hand­ful of mas­quer­aders in black with pow­dered sten­cils on their chests an al­most oth­er­world­ly de­sign to their out­fits.

The video de­picts the strange mix of re­ac­tions as those on the streets face the ex­haus­tion from a joy­ful day jump­ing up to see as they head­ed home some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, this solemn pro­ces­sion pa­rad­ed down the streets. There was no so­ca mu­sic play­ing, in­stead an elec­tron­ic heart­beat com­ing from a small mu­sic cart. I was one of the mas­quer­aders, it was a strik­ing and mys­te­ri­ous band to be in and equal­ly so re­liv­ing it in the ex­hib­it.

Two of the oth­er sec­tions of the ex­hib­it are films, unique, dis­tinc­tive artist's films. One is an hour-long piece from Mar­tinique that is best ab­sorbed in a cou­ple set­tings; the oth­er a short piece on New Or­leans that is easy to watch in one set­ting, both are run­ning con­tin­u­ous­ly.

Paris-based mu­si­cian and artist Christophe Chas­sol's Big Sun is a med­i­ta­tion on Car­ni­val in his home of Mar­tinique that moves on the roads of the is­land, there are times when you are so close that you seem part of the move­ments dri­ving on the roads in the moun­tains, on the streets of the town with the Car­ni­val bands, or up in the trees singing with the birds. Big Sun fea­tures a hyp­not­ic, promi­nent, un­set­tling mu­sic score; in­deed, that is not un­ex­pect­ed giv­en his back­ground.

Chas­sol has com­posed sound­tracks for al­most 20 films, be­sides record­ing al­bums and do­ing unique per­for­mance events. Af­ter over a decade of do­ing film scores for oth­ers and hav­ing a home stu­dio set up to do film scores, it was per­haps nat­ur­al that Chas­sol want­ed to cre­ate and film im­ages he want­ed to choose.

Big Sun is the third of a tril­o­gy of films that start­ed with a com­mis­sion from Tan­cons about New Or­leans for the CAC in 2011, then one in 2013 in In­dia be­fore this last of the three. He refers to these ef­forts on his web­site as "ul­tra­scores" and they have been is­sued as al­bums and dvds.

The short 12-minute New Or­leans film, H-E-L-L-O (In­fra-Sound/Struc­ture) by film­mak­er Cauleen Smith is an evoca­tive piece that I re­turned to watch sev­er­al times. It fo­cused on bass notes in the land­scape of New Or­leans, in­deed a nat­ur­al as­so­ci­a­tion for the vi­brant brass mu­sic that is a ma­jor part of Car­ni­val and in­deed al­most all as­pects of mu­sic life in New Or­leans. Cauleen Smith has pre­vi­ous­ly em­braced the rich mu­sic of Sun Ra and Afro-fu­tur­ism and that serves as a back­ground to this piece.

This med­i­ta­tive film is a rum­bling joy, al­most a decade post-Ka­t­ri­na, the land­scape of the city seems peace­ful, rich in veg­e­ta­tion and con­struc­tion and re­new­al. The city moves across the screen to sites key to the mu­sic his­to­ry of the city and on the shore of the Mis­sis­sip­pi riv­er with the se­ries of mu­si­cians pre­sent­ing over­lap­ping bass so­los played on sousa­phone, bari­tone sax, bass sax, con­tra­bas­soon, cel­lo, and trom­bone by nine lead­ing mu­si­cians from the vi­brant New Or­leans mu­sic scene.

Each mu­si­cian plays the same five tone se­quence of notes that com­pos­er John Williams cre­at­ed for Steven Spiel­berg's film Close En­coun­ters of the Third Kind in the fa­mous scene in­volv­ing com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the moth­er­ship. The lo­ca­tions for the scenes cho­sen came from a map, Bass Lines; Deep Sounds and Soils from an amaz­ing book, Re­bec­ca Sol­nit and Re­bec­ca Snedek­er's Un­fath­omable City: A New Or­leans At­las, which is filled with maps and es­says on very non-tra­di­tion­al ways of look­ing at the city of New Or­leans.

This map is a per­fect ex­am­ple not­ing im­por­tant lo­ca­tion in the city as seen from the view of "bass notes". The film places the bass soloists at sites that res­onate with New Or­leans mu­sic and so­cial his­to­ry from Con­go Square in Louis Arm­strong Park to Preser­va­tion Hall. The loops and move­ments of the film make it seem sooth­ing and con­tem­pla­tive, a city dri­ven by bass rum­blings. Deep bass notes are a con­stant in a city like New Or­leans, which is ex­plod­ing with brass bands and may have more tu­ba and sousa­phones per capi­ta than any­where in the world.

This brass and bass heavy mu­sic is part of the con­stant mu­sic on the streets, in the parks and the con­stant Car­ni­va­lesque pa­rades through the city. I don't know if I felt a Sun Ra/Close En­counter oth­er­world­ly "Space is the Place" sense from it but def­i­nite­ly the root­ed­ness of bass notes sink­ing in­to the rich New Or­leans soil.

John Bea­dle, a dis­tin­guished artist from the Ba­hamas who had grown up around Junkanoo and as an adult has spent al­most three decades work­ing as a de­sign­er and builder/fab­ri­ca­tor in first the Sax­ons and now the One Fam­i­ly junkanoo band. His project In­side/Out­side is about those who play mas and those who come to watch mas and pho­to­graph it as mas has evolved in the Ba­hamas.

His two pieces of mas were al­so part of a larg­er mas project that was just part of the first ever Junkanoo Car­ni­val, which took place from May 7-9. Junkanoo oc­curs tra­di­tion­al­ly with two night time pa­rades on Box­ing Day and New Year's Day with dif­fer­ent themes where the mas bands cre­ate dif­fer­ent mas for each event. Now there is this new event in May that seeks to mon­e­tise and cre­ate a day time Car­ni­val more of the mod­el of Trinidad Car­ni­val. As Bea­dle not­ed re­cent­ly, the tra­di­tion­al Junkanoo com­mu­ni­ty will have to wait and see how this new event ef­fects the tra­di­tions.

The evo­lu­tion of Junkanoo, from the night­time mas where par­tic­i­pants took on the per­sona of oth­er char­ac­ters to the new fo­cus on every­one be­ing just them­selves in a day­time Car­ni­val in scant out­fits where they take on no oth­er per­sona but are just them­selves and the voyeurs–those watch­ing the mas but tak­ing pho­tos of mas­quer­aders, and pho­tos of them­selves with mas­quer­aders and self­ies. The two mas pieces in the ex­hib­it are stylised rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the bar­ri­ers on the streets, the ma­son­ry and fences that of­ten di­vide mas­quer­aders and ob­servers.

The two elab­o­rate head­pieces of mas in the ex­hib­it are fi­nal­ly de­tailed and make you want to wear them and bring them to life. The two pieces are un­paint­ed, com­plex and lay­ered. They are light­ed to cast evoca­tive shad­ows; in the ex­hib­it, they seem al­most like pro­to­types in a mas camp be­fore they come alive, await­ing their ap­pear­ance on the streets.

John Bea­dle's hope was that the ex­hib­it could be done in such a fash­ion that ex­hib­it at­ten­dees could put on these pieces and walk through the ex­hib­it with them. His con­cept was for at­ten­dees to see the ex­hib­it through the bar­ri­ers they car­ry as mas, thus to be them­selves part of the mas as they pro­ceed through the ex­hib­it.

Al­so giv­en the mas­sive pho­tog­ra­phy that is now part of every Car­ni­val both by folks lin­ing the streets and the par­tic­i­pants them­selves to then have the ex­hib­it vis­i­tors be pho­tographed wear­ing his mas with these pho­tographs be­com­ing part of the ex­hib­it, to be viewed by oth­ers wear­ing his mas! This could not be re­alised in New Or­leans. Per­haps it can, when the ex­hib­it goes on the road.

�2 Ray Funk is a re­tired Alaskan judge who is pas­sion­ate­ly de­vot­ed to ca­lyp­so, pan and mas.

�2 CON­TIN­UES TO­MOR­ROW