OUR PROBLEM is that
we’ve never understood
our majesty. Never understood
how large our
cultural footprint is in the world.
Never internalised the hundreds
of heroes we’ve uttered into the
universal pantheon. Never understood
the power of the things
we created. Never understood
the billions just awaiting our
reaping—if only we embraced
who we are…
It is not just Trinidad’s Carnival
that’s falling. It is all 300
we’ve spawned…And it is not
Carnival alone that falls—but all
T&T’s cultural forms…
For 12 years the Artists Coalition
(ACTT) has led battles
against four successive administrations
to get the commonsense
facilitating systems for
culture in place. These are systems
the rest of the world put in
place since World War II. ACTT
inherited the struggle from two
generations before us. Pioneers
like Beryl McBurnie and Charles
Applewhaite died without seeing
it. Warriors like James Lee Wah
threw their hands up in disgust
at the paralysis…Every single
political administration since
Independence has refused to do
the right thing. Now we’re paying
the price in every facet of
our life.
Every single collapse we
are witnessing in the Carnival
is related to generational collapse—
to what happens when
you fail to build institutions to
honour your legacy, and manage
the succession of traditions and
knowledge-systems from one generation
to another. We are thus
always re-inventing the wheel,
always victim to every invader,
conman and gimmick…And have
less authentic knowledge each
year to create with…Our tragedy
may be that our colonial rulers
cared more about our landscape
and culture than our post-Independence
politicians…
As a nation—no, as a civilisation—
we are firmly in the age of
institution-building. We either
build or we perish. The solution
to a host of our problems—from
crime, to gangs, to unemployment,
to the collapse of Carnival,
to diversification of the economy,
is in building the missing institutions.
This is a map of some
that are necessary in the Carnival.
The architecture and programming
of these institutions
must come from a place that
understands the ‘ritual’ source
of things. The ‘business’ will
emerge from this. Here we go:
Establish secret societies for
mas traditions. Create architecturally
appropriate houses for
each tradition within the communities
with the highest concentration.
The House of the
Midnight Robber. The House of
the Sailors…Build it and they
will come…The people who want
to belong to those select orders
will find themselves at their
doorstep. These will be lodges
with their own initiations, rituals.
Our own Carnival priesthood…
Fund the Guilds of Masters
and grant it a Heritage
Warehouse. The
guild is the vehicle to
pass on traditional skill. It is a
workshop where master artisans
work with master apprentices
recreating masterworks, where
the entire process is documented
and codified. A completely indigenous
curriculum from primary
to university level can be extracted
from this.
The secret of the genius of
T&T mas-making was the fact
that Trinidad possessed probably
the region’s greatest skillsset
cluster of ex-slave master
artisans in traditional, rural and
urban industrial skills. Tailors,
carpenters, metal-workers…It
was the application of this phenomenal
skill-set to structural
and costume problem-solving
that gave rise to the Golden Age
of Pan, Mas, and Calypso. That
artisan class—their secrets and
their skills—were decimated by
our post-Independence governments.
Whereas in Italy tailors were
supported and subsidised to become
Armanis and Guccis, we
spat on that class of our workers
and gave them no facilitative
economies. It was this class who
went into exile and created the
300 Trini-styled carnivals worldover.
We must set up guilds of
master carpenters, masons, tailors,
etc in disenfranchised communities
like East Port-of-Spain
to recreate this Golden Age of
talent and halt the collapse of
our folk arts. It will also be an
answer to crime.
Of all interventions in Carnival—
and even for our economy
—nothing is as important as the
creation of the Carnival, Steelband,
and Festival Museum. The
centrepiece display must be the
recreation of the 100 greatest
costumes of the past—one each
will be danced every day in the
massive courtyard in the Museum’s
interior restaurant. This
cathedral to our best self must
be built in the Savannah with an
underground reservoir/aquifer
which also generates some of its
power. Landscaped into it will be
the Carnival stands. Multi-media
exhibitions will be the cornerstone.
This facility will be the
heart of Carnivals worldwide—
and the planet’s leading repository
and investigator of costume
traditions.
This institution is equally
important as process and
as product. The processes
that would be engaged in
the four years necessary to build
it would provide the engine for
the Renaissance in every single
field of the Holy Trinity of Pan,
Mas and Calypso—and our arts.
It will be the cornerstone of our
national Renaissance.
We are at the end of an age.
The end of the Age of Nostalgia.
Farewell to the Golden Age. Let
the New Age begin. Neglect bred
the fall. Attention will breed the
rise. Build the missing institutions!
• Rubadiri Victor is
a cultural activist
rubadiri@yahoo.com