Ridiculous taunts during Carnival

THE EDITOR: This is in response to public reaction to the performance by Denise Belfon dressed in the sari. Many readers and the organisation “WARD” have expressed displeasure at the use of the sari on the calypso stage, but I regret to say that a consideration of the source would greatly diminish their dismay. The use of calypso by Afro-Trinidadian singers to put down other races is nothing new. I am of Portuguese descent, and I remember a calypso from the ’50s about the Portuguese population’s view of the carnival with the chorus line using the word “fero,” short for “lucifero” — “lucifer” or the devil. This ridiculous effort at music is replete with taunts at the other races on the island of Trinidad, with the most vicious of all being the “road march” of 1948.

The great freedom fighter who helped the people of Africa with his policy of civil disobedience and pulled out the underpinnings of the British Empire — Mahatma Ghandi — was assassinated on January 30, 1948. Carnival fell on the 9 and 10 of February that year. All the free world was in mourning for this tragic loss, and the contribution of Trinidad, if one were to think of the cultural expression as official, was embodied in the phrases of the road march,
“Mahatma Ghandi went to fass (fast)
And dey buss a bullet up his ass.
Who dead, Ghandi”
Who dead, Mahatma Ghandi”

This was just over one week after the murder of the greatest freedom fighter in history. I remember seeing a few characters dressed like the Mahatma, complete with shorn heads, spectacles and loincloth, jumping around with their gesticulations of “tribal “fertility rites,” the “bump and grind now called “wining” from the expression “winding of the waist.” There has also been mention about Indian men needing the experience of sexual encounters with African women, and I wish to remind them that the Kama Sutra and the art of Tantric love came out of India, where the newly “discovered” Gratenberg of “G” spot was written hundreds of years ago.

TONY  CORREIA
Port-of-Spain