Pichakaaree: Songs of experience

The air is punctured by a variety of coloured water darts that find marks on walls, on people, on grounds.

Gulal (coloured powder) floats on the wind, lightly falling on white T-shirts.

Not everyone gets off so easily with sprinkles of water or powder or with the hands of some stranger smearing colour on your face, white teeth showing through dark purple face.

No, sometimes you find yourself soaked by children charging at you from behind with halffilled buckets of abeer (coloured dye). A chowtaal song floats through the air, the clash of the jhaal (small metal cymbals) announcing and celebrating the arrival of spring.

The mood is lively and dynamic.

At the Hindu Prachar Kendra (HPK) grounds on Ragoonanan Road, the stage is set and contestants are getting ready to present to judges and audience, the messages of the year.

The pichakaaree singing competition, has been, for the past 27 years, the voice of the Indo-Trinidadian community. What began as the Kendra Phagwa Festival in the 80s, eventually turned into the competition by the 90s. It has become a forum where the Indo-Trinidadian experience in Trinidad is recorded in songtexts and the competition is now a permanent part of the Kendra Phagwa Festival.

Over the years, some iconic songs have emerged from the pens of pichakaaree songwriters.

In keeping with the HPK vision, Home First — the building of community and nation — has been a common theme in songs.

Mission to the Caribbean, written by Raviji, then head of the HPK, speaks of the indentureship experience and, in his own words as he explains in a paper, the song demonstrates “that there is a mystery behind indentured history.

We really came here by the will of God, that is the interpretation, beyond history, a purpose beyond history. It celebrates itself and festivals and it interprets the festivals.” While Mission to the Caribbean advises the jahaji of his duty, Halla Bol on the other hand, continues the interpretation of history with a missionary zeal. Penned by Dr Kenneth Vidia Parmasad (now deceased), a history lecturer at the University of the West Indies, the song is a rally cry for the jahaji to continue fighting.

“Have no fear and fight for justice, Halla Bol Jahaji Bol.” The controversial 1995 Letter to Chalkie, by Geeta Ramsingh, caused a stir on the Carifesta stage and got its singer booed offstage by an incensed crowd.

That reaction has now itself become a part of the social documentation of Indo-Trinidadian experience here. But the pichakaaree not only addressed issues of national relevance. It also turns its gaze inward to the Hindu and Indian community.

Such songs like Bhoujie Say The Maan Lie for instance reflected the indignation of sections of the Indo-Trinidadian community towards Sonny Maan’s hit Lotayla and his desecration of women, while Mohip Poonwassie’s Chutney Soca Causing Controversy (1996) addressed the degeneration of chutney soca lyrics and the lewd behaviour that it encouraged. In 2011, Ravan Ki Raaj attacked the $2 million prize money awarded to the first place winner in the Chutney Soca Monarch competition and lamented the degeneration of values.

In this year of the centenary celebrations of the end of Indian indentureship, pichakaaree singers and songwriters have become even more relevant. With the exception of very few old songs that once documented life on the plantations, many of which have been lost; academic material that remains inaccessible to the common man; pichakaaree has to a great extent, taken up the challenge of making some of this history and experience accessible to the masses through song.

Though there are also songs that are festive and focus on the Phagwa festival, in our politically sensitive society, the social and political commentaries gain more mileage. Many are noteworthy in their straightforward and dispassionate appraisal of, and addresses to the nation as well as the Indo- Trinidadian community.

As a genre of music, pichakaaree songs have now established a place in the literature of the land.

Set within the festival of Phagwa, the songs find an appropriate environment.

Where the festival of Phagwa represents rejuvenation, a part of this rejuvenation is the ability to release pent up feelings of anger, disenchantment, disappointment as well as the ability to rejoice and celebrate.

All emotions find a release and expression within this festive time of Phagwa through the pichakaaree songs. And the song texts will remain for generations to come, a document of various eras of the island’s socio-political and cultural development.

T h e pichakaaree competition takes place today at Gilibia Trace, Ragoonanan Road, Enterprise, Chaguanas.