Playing mas with real issues

So let us toss away our worries and concerns, if only for the next two days—and of course tonight when we will fete until dawn, when the first iron rings in the pre-dawn darkness to set J’Ouvert shuffling and jumping through the streets. But to really enjoy the fete, we would have to ignore the fact that the “sameness” which grips my writing has gripped and smothered all of the one-time inspiration and creativity of mas. And for years now! While I admit to not having followed the offerings of calypso, my understanding, from reading comments, is that the selections this year are largely forgettable, and this sadly has been a trend over the past few years. If I am wrong, please do correct me and point me (and many of us) to the songs that have people roaring with laughter in the tents and jumping in the streets. I accept that soca Road March offerings do have the players jumping in frenzy but there is hardly much with which they can sing along as they jump.

I watched some of the Kings and Queens on television, and the truth is, that if you had never seen Kings and Queens before, you might find the colours, the movement, even the inspiration to be magnificent.

However, if you have been around the past few Carnivals you will acknowledge that these are almost repeats, with change of colours and fancy names, of what we have been seeing year after year now. And are they costumes or carts? Almost every presentation, with all the brilliant colours and “movement”, is a wheeled carriage which is pulled or pushed by a masquerader harnessed into the device. These are not costumes to be carried and displayed by masqueraders but wheeled floats which could just as well be pulled by a donkey.

But all that said, they are still beautiful works, which light up our Savannah stage with colour and movement, and create enjoyment for the players and spectators, which is really the point of it all. Hopefully inspiration will return to these creations and Dimanche Gras will once again become a truly magnificent and original spectacle.

But much of J’Ouvert has become refined with almost formal presentations and most of the old picong excised, so one wonders how to describe it—its intent and its portrayals? Carnival Monday has faded as the T-shirt presentations look like leftovers from J’Ouvert. But Carnival Tuesday has expanded in terms of numbers of bands, players, music trucks, support trucks—like wee-wee trucks, bars, and boudoirs-- and apparently enjoyment, which is the most important thing! But costumery and presentation has disappeared, replaced by endless Las Vegas styled sequinned and feathered dancers.

Can anyone really tell one presentation from another? Or even this year’s costumes from previous years? But does it even matter? People are enjoying themselves and band presentation is an industry, far removed from the historic and mystical themes of years gone by and the skills of specialist individuals.

Regardless of the pleas to “bring back the old time days”, Carnival has evolved and is evolving whether I or the NCC like it or not. Maybe that is why the judges bestowed Band of the Year on All Stars steel orchestra who play traditional sailor mas in the same costumery every year? So, unless we can, by creativity now hiding, bring music and bands which are new or even nostalgic enough to recapture the imaginations of all who create or play mas, we better just settle for and enjoy the experience of “wining of a sequinned bumsee!” But whatever and however we play, it all comes to an end by Ash Wednesday morning and we will still have a nation and a society reeling with (reasonably peaceful so far) anarchy, corruption at every level of endeavour, rampant, unstoppable crimes of murders and now kidnappings, a judiciary unable to cope with case loads, filth everywhere and the ongoing destruction of our beautiful and world-acclaimed natural environment. But none of our calypsonians nor our J’Ouvert are able to properly comment on these ills any more. So how will we ever be able to lift our society to carry on until the next Carnival? The days and weeks ahead will tell.