De­siree See­baran

"The spir­it of Ce­dros lives on in Hosay." Trinidad and To­ba­go is home to many fes­ti­vals, but maybe none as fas­ci­nat­ing and as con­tro­ver­sial as Hosay.

The fes­ti­val is just over a week long, and com­mem­o­rates the as­sas­si­na­tion of Has­san and Hus­sein, the grand­sons of the Prophet Mo­hammed, who were both killed by the Umayyad Caliph in a bid to seize po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

A new doc­u­men­tary called The Ten Days of Muhar­ram, writ­ten, di­rect­ed and pro­duced by Ernest Che Ro­driguez, ex­am­ines the fes­ti­val in very com­pre­hen­sive de­tail. It's a crisp, colour­ful film, with sev­er­al sources, from imams to fam­i­lies who have played Hosay for gen­er­a­tions to those who build the tad­jahs (mau­soleums) to tas­sa play­ers to mem­bers of the Ce­dros Hosay as­so­ci­a­tions. There are long, lin­ger­ing cut­aways of the ac­tu­al cel­e­bra­tion nights, build­ing of the jew­eled tad­jahs; long pro­ces­sions of stern men car­ry­ing the mau­soleum repli­cas through the streets of their vil­lages. And the boom of the tas­sa drums forms a dis­tinc­tive sound­track to the film.

Al­though the struc­ture of the film is sim­ple–Ro­driguez ex­am­ines the fes­ti­val's ac­tiv­i­ties day by day to build to the cli­max –the film does ex­am­ine...

the com­plex is­sues sur­round­ing a fes­ti­val like this, which arose out of Mus­lim re­li­gion and his­to­ry, but is not a re­li­gious rite. What is es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ing is that the play­ers of Hosay and the re­li­gious fig­ures all ad­dress the di­vi­sion be­tween de­vout Mus­lims and play­ers of Hosay and the bas­tardi­s­a­tion of fes­ti­val away from re­li­gious roots in­to fete-like fes­tiv­i­ties. One re­li­gious con­sul­tant, Sat­nar­ine Balka­rans­ingh, open­ly com­pares Hosay to Car­ni­val in street pro­ces­sion, cos­tum­ing and the elab­o­rate props.

"We do not con­trol the pub­lic," ex­plains one white-beard­ed Hosay el­der. "What we can con­trol are the mem­bers of the var­i­ous Hosay camps, that they stay with­in cer­tain pa­ra­me­ters. We can­not tell a bar own­er not to open his bar; that is his pre­rog­a­tive. We can­not tell a man not to drink on Hosay." He al­so as­serts that al­though those who build and car­ry the tad­jahs do ob­serve re­li­gious rit­u­als like fast­ing from food, al­co­hol and sex dur­ing their work, Hosay is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a re­li­gious fes­ti­val but is a memo­r­i­al for the grand­sons of Prophet Mo­ham­mad.

The Hosay par­tic­i­pants are al­so very much aware that Trinidad Hosay is cel­e­brat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly from the memo­ri­als done in Is­lam­ic coun­tries. Even the name 'Hosay' is spe­cif­ic to T&T.

"It's just like dou­bles; you'll nev­er find dou­bles in In­dia but you'll find dou­bles in Trinidad. You would not find the word Hosay in an Arab coun­try. It's just the mix of the Caribbean and In­dia com­ing to­geth­er," said Imam Gai­fud­din Ti­jani, a strong leader in the cel­e­bra­tion of Ce­dros Hosay.

For those per­sons who have been fas­ci­nat­ed by the fes­ti­val and its sym­bols but could find lit­tle in­for­ma­tion about why cer­tain things are done, the film ex­plains each rit­u­al in ex­haus­tive de­tain.

For ex­am­ple, the eighth night is the small Hosay street pro­ces­sion, which com­mem­o­rates the death of Imam Hus­sein's six-month-old son. A minia­ture tad­jah mau­soleum is pa­rad­ed. Day 9: tad­jahs are fin­ished, and the spin­ning of the tad­jahs com­mence. This is done to rep­re­sent the Imam's cease­less back and forth vis­its to the tents of his peo­ple and sol­diers. On day 10, Hus­sein and sup­port­ers are mar­tyred. In Ce­dros, there is a pro­ces­sion of the dead to dis­pose of "bod­ies" by burn­ing and putting them out to sea. This prac­tice is not strict­ly Mus­lim; it's ac­tu­al­ly re­lat­ed to the Hin­du rit­u­al of drown­ing the ef­fi­gies of deities in wa­ter, the film's sources say.

The doc­u­men­tary does have some flaws. While the tas­sa mu­sic is al­ways in the back­ground at any Hosay cel­e­bra­tion, it may be a mat­ter of opin­ion as to whether or not such a dis­tinc­tive per­cus­sive in­stru­ment is re­al­ly con­ducive to help­ing an au­di­ence take in new and com­plex in­for­ma­tion. Us­ing the tas­sa as punc­tu­a­tion along with a more melod­ic orig­i­nal sound­track may be more ef­fec­tive.

There was al­so some rep­e­ti­tion of in­for­ma­tion with­in the film, so it risks los­ing the at­ten­tion of au­di­ence mem­bers who are not diehard his­to­ry and cul­ture buffs. And, at one hour 46 min­utes, that is a lot of his­to­ry and cul­ture to take in. Last­ly, hav­ing start­ed the film with stand-up nar­ra­tion from Ro­driguez, his ab­sence is no­table through­out the lat­ter two-thirds of the film. Maybe the nar­ra­tion should have con­tin­ued through­out, to break up the types of shots and to help con­dense the reams of in­for­ma­tion that the au­di­ence has to ab­sorb.

But the film is an ex­per­i­ment, and a large­ly suc­cess­ful one at that. There are many more cul­tur­al anom­alies in T&T that are dy­ing out and be­ing re­placed by more mod­ern con­cerns, just like Hosay. It would be ex­cit­ing to see Ro­driguez at­tempt more of this type of work in the fu­ture.