No One Is to Be Excluded
Without these festivals
there could be no established society, since it was during the festivals that
human beings made contact with the Creator, the center of their existence. It
was crucial that every human being be allowed to participate fully in the
festival. It was considered a God-given right. So much so that it would have
been a serious sin for any Egyptian to prevent someone from participating in
the festival and following the image of his patron orisha as it was paraded
through the streets on a float. The festival belongs to the people, to put it
another way, “the road make to walk on Carnival day.”
The festival is an
important mechanism for renewing society, for healing and strengthening
society. It is essential that it be open to all, that it be inclusive. The
Greeks never got fully with the program. In general, Europeans have whittled
away at the spirit of the festival. In Trinidad, for example, Europeans of
French extract kept themselves apart from the sweaty African masses. They
played their mas around the Savanah and on trucks. When they did come down off
the trucks, they would rope themselves off from the sweaty masses.
We, the people of
Trinidad and Tobago, have kept faithful to the tradition. Shadow is just one of
the many great oral poets our country has produced. In his 2002 composition
entitled “Stranger,” he reaffirms the distinguishing feature of the Trinidad
and Tobago Carnival, as he advises a visitor on how to play mas:
Buy a little rag
and put it in your pocket.
Buy a little flag,
that’s the way they do it.
Find yourself a
band, find a good position.
When the music
blast, you’ll find out how to play mas.
The tourist to whom
Shadow gives this essential lesson in playing mas had come quite from
Australia. Over the years our great bards have declared in their songs that the
Trinidad and Tobago Carnival is open to all. Our festival conforms fully to the
specifications imposed by our earliest ancestors in the Nile Valley. Lord
Kitchener, for example, sang:
A tourist dame, I
met her the night she came.
Well, she curiously
asking about my country.
She said, “I heard about bacchanal and the Trinidad Carnival,
So I come to jump
in the fun.
And I want you to
tell me how it is done.”
Kitch gives the formula. It is a very simple one, and it is the
same one given by Shadow some three decades later.
Ah said, “Doudou,
come in town Jouvert morning.
Find yourself in a
band.
Watch the way how
the natives moving.
Hug up tight with a
man.
Sing along with the
tunes they playing.
And now and again
you shouting,
“Play mas
bacchanal, Miss Tourist.”
That is Carnival.
Come one, come all,
regardless of race, color, creed, or class, and certainly of national origin.
The special feature of our Carnival is this magical formula for instantly
converting a rhythmically challenged foreign tourist into a full-fledged
participant in the festival.
TO BE CONTINUED
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