Bav­ina Sookdeo

I was re­cent­ly asked, “Do you re­mem­ber those cars from long ago that car­ried mikes on their tops and made an­nounce­ments through­out vil­lages? Do those still ex­ist? Have you seen any of those re­cent­ly?” Well, it is said that when you speak of some­thing, the uni­verse has a way of bring­ing it to you.

While dri­ving through Cen­tral one Sun­day evening, I got to Preysal and was head­ing to Gran Cou­va. I heard mu­sic blast­ing but I knew there were no hous­es in that par­tic­u­lar lo­ca­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly, I fol­lowed the sound un­til I got to an emp­ty piece of land and to my amaze­ment, gath­ered there were no less than 20 ve­hi­cles all car­ry­ing mikes atop.

Mikes were used long ago in Trinidad as a form of pub­lic ad­dress. The sound from a mike can be heard for miles. Many days were al­so spent with the mike men dri­ving around rur­al com­mu­ni­ties blast­ing mu­sic in an at­tempt to en­ter­tain the pub­lic. The en­tire sys­tem was made up of a mi­cro­phone, an am­pli­fi­er, a turntable and topped off with two gi­gan­tic and very no­tice­able fun­nels.

The mike men were most­ly hired by East In­di­an fam­i­lies for wed­dings, fu­ner­als and the like. Dur­ing a Hin­du wed­ding in par­tic­u­lar, the du­la­ha’s (groom) fam­i­ly goes to the du­lahin’s (bride) fam­i­ly home for the mar­riage cer­e­mo­ny. Long ago, the boy’s fam­i­ly would take with them a mike which played tra­di­tion­al wed­ding songs. When they got to the bride’s house, they were met with an­oth­er mike and a huge blast off of In­di­an mu­sic oc­curred—this blast off is prob­a­bly re­spon­si­ble for the evo­lu­tion of mike com­pe­ti­tions which were ex­treme­ly pop­u­lar in the old days. To­day, how­ev­er, while such things can still be wit­nessed, it is in­deed rare. The mike men are of a dy­ing breed.

For­mer trea­sur­er of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mike As­so­ci­a­tion, Ve­jai Kissoon, told REC that the Mike As­so­ci­a­tion ex­ist­ed for many years (over 40) but was formed un­der sev­er­al oth­er names. He has been in­volved in the mike busi­ness for al­most 25 years. Al­ways in­volved in cul­ture, Kissoon fell in love with the mike sys­tem and that love grew un­til to­day he owns his own mike and proud­ly car­ries the name ‘Star Boy’. It was a nick­name giv­en to him by a teacher many years ago and since it is a norm for mike men to have these “mike names”, ‘Star Boy’ was ide­al for Kissoon.

These mike men are still hired for small jobs such as death an­nounce­ments and by com­pa­nies to an­nounce a break in ser­vices such as the sup­ply of wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty or even an on­go­ing sale at a su­per­mar­ket. As for if the mike men are com­pen­sat­ed prop­er­ly, rais­es an­oth­er is­sue be­cause a tru­ly good mike sys­tem can cost up to $30,000.

De­spite any chal­lenges that they face, the mike men of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­sist on gath­er­ing every Sun­day from about 3pm. Kissoon told REC, “In the past we have gath­ered at Ca­roni, Debe and oth­er places. We have been gath­er­ing in Preysal for about eight years now be­cause we sim­ply do not have a des­ig­nat­ed place to gath­er. What we do is just for the love of the mike and we are re­al­ly try­ing to keep the cul­ture and tra­di­tion alive.”

But what do they do when they meet in Preysal? Kissoon re­lat­ed, “If there is good weath­er, we get about 15 to 20 mikes show­ing up and we play mu­sic, greet each oth­er, host a small meet­ing and dis­cuss any is­sues that we might be hav­ing.” Next, is the high­light of the evening. “We test out our sys­tems and we have a lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion of our own. We play long time 78-pitch records – gramo­phone records – which were out be­fore records and al­bums. We most­ly play re­al­ly old In­di­an songs. The com­pe­ti­tion it­self is judged on whose mike plays the clean­est, sweet­est and loud­est mu­sic.”

Loud­est mu­sic? Wouldn’t the mike men en­counter prob­lems and com­plaints from vil­lagers when the mu­sic is that loud? Posed with this ques­tion Kissoon ad­mit­ted, “Some­times we do have com­plaints from vil­lagers so right now we are try­ing with the gov­ern­ment to get a suit­able place to have our events where we will not dis­turb any­one. This is dy­ing in one way be­cause we do not have a des­ig­nat­ed place where we can come out and play the mikes and many peo­ple do not come out be­cause they find it dis­turb­ing to oth­ers.”

The T&T Mike As­so­ci­a­tion still per­se­veres and hosts fam­i­ly days, card com­pe­ti­tions, fund rais­ing events, cho­ka and sa­da roti com­pe­ti­tions and mike com­pe­ti­tions every In­di­an Ar­rival Day. While the jobs which they get are few and far be­tween, Kissoon ad­mits that many peo­ple pre­fer the DJ sys­tem than that of the mike sys­tem. “We ac­cept the com­pen­sa­tion giv­en be­cause we sim­ply love what we do.”

Sur­pris­ing­ly, many young peo­ple turn up for Sun­day mike evenings and Kissoon is over­joyed to see that be­cause the mike men are try­ing to pass this bit of their cul­ture to the next gen­er­a­tion. “It is hard to re­vive the mike busi­ness in Trinidad” he said, “but giv­en the in­ter­est and the space, it might leave a per­ma­nent mark.”

The mike men face many oth­er chal­lenges, one be­ing get­ting the rel­e­vant (ve­hi­cle) li­cense to car­ry the mikes on their ve­hi­cles. How­ev­er, de­spite any bumps in the road, these mike men are in­tent on stick­ing to what they know and love and on gift­ing this beau­ti­ful part of their cul­ture to their chil­dren. While it is a work in progress to get Trinidad and To­ba­go to ap­pre­ci­ate this sys­tem once more, the mike men con­tin­ue to live out loud.