Commentary
Dara Healy
Culture matters
DARA AND HALY
“…culture is not a dead thing, nor does it always remain the same. It belongs to living people and is therefore always evolving… What we need is faith in ourselves so that as blacks and Africans we can be conscious, united, independent and creative.”
– Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers
An artist’s WORK is most powerful when the viewer or listener can relate to the story being told, when they can identify with their own pain, their own narrative.
I suspect that the desire for such an understanding is at the heart of some of the frustrations with carnivals in Tobago. Over the past few weeks, as I’ve been watching the various comments, I’ve felt a great sense of deja vu. We continue to face the question: what is the purpose of carnival and how should it empower our nation?
In Trinidad, we are learning many harsh lessons about refusing to answer this question. It was a moment when Carnival responded to the needs of a developing nation. In dealing with topics such as racial equality, the environment or social progress, artists helped us express what we felt through mas, pan and calypso.
Jeff Henry documents that “Emancipation was the beginning of African participation in masquerading as free men and women.” However, as we know, the enslaved brought their centuries-old religious beliefs and practices, traditions of movement, dance, dress and speech. During slavery, they found ways to manifest these cultural traditions, disguising them as entertainment under the watchful eye of plantation masters. Thus, for the enslaved, carnival represented a reclamation of self as “Africans found ways and means to pass on their history through drama, mime, dance, song, and story.”
Culture served a similar purpose in Tobago. As proved by Rita Pemberton and other scholars, local practices “provided the means for a strong assertion of identity for the oppressed African population of the island during and after emancipation.” Music, song and dance were interspersed with work. For example, a Tobago work song in the African call-and-response style goes: “Pull, pull, bark we go/Hold yourself we go down/Pull, pull, bark we go/Hold yourself, we’re going up.”
However, the struggle to preserve African traditions was ongoing. In 1798, the African drum was banned in Tobago. In 1884, drums were outlawed in Trinidad, with elite newspapers of the time describing African music as “barbaric sounds”.
Hollis Liverpool notes that in 1853, Joseph Allen of the Congo Society was accused of disorderly conduct at a dance. In reality, members of the society were holding a traditional African wake, no doubt bongo-style, to honor those who had transitioned.
Congo’s influence on Tobago was also strong. JD Elder wrote about the spiritual elders “Congo Keorke, Congo Leberoot and Congo Peter Jorge”, members of the Congo community who had their own form of music, dance and language. These expressions influence music, speech patterns and spiritual practices on the island today.
The cultural traditions of Africans were described with terms such as “savage”, “excessive” and “disgusting”. African religions were demonized in the eyes of Christian believers, adding another layer of distrust to African cultural forms.
However, the historical record reveals a level of hypocrisy in the reaction of slaves and upper classes to the spiritual and cultural traditions of Africans. Africans were allowed to have their own festivals, work songs, even stick fights, as long as these activities meant they worked harder.
We still don’t fully believe or understand Carnival. Our institutions have not yet formally learned about the influence of Africa on clothing, masking traditions and festival rituals. Today, some of the comments in newspapers from so-called decent members of society bear a disturbing resemblance to the comments of the 1800s. Many authorities still see Carnival as an occasion on a calendar of events, rather than a cultural heritage with the potential to empowered beyond fixed dates. And, significantly, carnivals are still offensive to many religious sensibilities.
But if we’re unhappy with the aggressive sexuality on display during the festival, perhaps it’s time to address our resistance to teaching healthy sexual attitudes and behaviors, our world’s top ten ranking of Internet pornography, and the prevalence of child sexual abuse by adults.
So what is the purpose of the carnival? It is an essential aspect of what defines us as a whole.
Until we establish its cultural foundations, feelings of frustration are inevitable.
Dara E Healy is a performance artist and founder of the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN
