Buss Head from Moruga

Extract from “Buss Head”, Machel Montano & Bunji Garlin

I NEVER thought I would hear the words “Oni vay” or “Joe Talmana” coming from the mouth of a soca artist.

I was hearing it on the radio and still couldn’t believe it. But then it made sense.

Bunji and Machel, two of the biggest bad-johns in music taking guidance from a young visionary stick fighter — of course they would come up with “Buss Head”.

Of course, they would call the name of the legendary bois man, who it is said in 1881 dismounted Captain Baker from his horse in the fight against the colonial administration to save our Carnival.

Doing battle and Carnival are inextricably linked. Local scholars such as Professors Maureen Warner Lewis and Hollis Liverpool have discredited previous writings which gave the impression that Africans had their own Carnival rituals only after full emancipation in 1838. In fact, Liverpool points out that they maintained their own “festive space” from the early 1800s and even before, as they danced the Kalenda or Kalinda and performed stick fighting movements and songs.

Kalenda songs and rhythmic patterns also influenced calypsonians, for example Growling Tiger, who “grew up in a stick fighting area — Siparia in south Trinidad … In addition to the storytelling tradition of the griot, Warner-Lewis notes that kalenda songs were rebellious.

“Chanting in a warlike manner, in the African call-and-response pattern, the singers boasted of their feats …” and the kalinda was “also a means of settling scores between individuals, gangs and villages.” Many villages such as Moruga, Freeport, Couva, Talparo, Gasparillo are associated with retention of stick fight traditions and rituals.

There are several reasons for this.

It became increasingly difficult to hold the gayelles, traditional stick fighting rings, in Port-of-Spain.

The cultural practices of the Africans spread to communities across the island.

There was also the settlement of Africans from the Kongo in areas such as Freeport. As noted by Warner- Lewis, “dancing in preparation for war was so common in Kongo, that “dancing war dance” … was often used as a synonym for “to declare war.” In Moruga, the element of battle was intensified by the presence of African American soldiers, former enslaved Africans who received freedom and land for fighting with the British during the war of 1812- 1814. The British granted land in their colonies to the soldiers and their families; in Trinidad primarily in Moruga.

The “Merikens”, as these settlers and their descendants are called, brought with them their own strong African traditions of healing.

Undoubtedly, as former soldiers, they would have identified with the warlike nature of the stick fight.

So, we have come full circle, because the artist who was instrumental in writing and producing “Buss Head” is a young bois man heavily influenced by the stick fight practices from Moruga.

It was bound to happen though, the shift away from shallow manifestations of our Carnival to a search for the history and purpose behind the festival. The search will continue, because the ancestors will it to be so. Joe Talmana watching and laughing how they calling his name bold, bold in the Carnival.

But more names have to call.

Watch and see … D a r a Healy is a performance artist and founder of the NGO, the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN