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Archiving Caribbean Identity
Records, Community, and Memory
John Aarons, Jeannette A. Bastian, Stanley Hazley Griffin, John Aarons, Jeannette A. Bastian, Stanley Hazley Griffin
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eBook - ePub
Archiving Caribbean Identity
Records, Community, and Memory
John Aarons, Jeannette A. Bastian, Stanley Hazley Griffin, John Aarons, Jeannette A. Bastian, Stanley Hazley Griffin
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About This Book
Archiving Caribbean Identity highlights the "Caribbeanization" of archives in the region, considering what those archives could include in the future and exploring the potential for new records in new formats.
Interpreting records in the broadest sense, the 15 chapters in this volume explore a wide variety of records that represent new archival interpretations. The book is split into two parts, with the first part focusing on record forms that are not generally considered "archival" in traditional Western practice. The second part explores more "traditional" archival collections and demonstrates how these collections are analysed and presented from the perspective of Caribbean peoples. As a whole, the volume suggests how colonial records can be repurposed to surface Caribbean narratives. Reflecting on the unique challenges faced by developing countries as they approach their archives, the volume considers how to identify and archive records in the forms and formats that reflect the postcolonial and decolonized Caribbean, how to build an archive of the people that documents contemporary society and reflects Caribbean memory, and how to repurpose the colonial archives so that they assist the Caribbean in reclaiming its history.
Archiving Caribbean Identity demonstrates how non-textual cultural traces function as archival records and how folk-centred perspectives disrupt conventional understandings of records. The book should thus be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of archives, memory, culture, history, sociology, and the colonial and postcolonial experience.
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Part I Tangible and Intangible Formats
Chapter 1 Soca and Collective Memory
Savannah Grass as an Archive of CarnivalKai Barratt
DOI: 10.4324/9781003105299-3
Introduction: Savannah Grass
Savannah Grass, a song soca from Trinidad and Tobago, performed by Kes the Band and written by Jelani Shaw, was released in 2018 for the 2019 carnival season.1 The composition captures the ritual of arriving at the Queen’s Park Savannah in Trinidad’s capital Port of Spain, in the early morning of the masquerade.2 The annual parade occurs on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of the Lenten period. The song takes its listeners to the parade’s physical environment to experience the climate and rhythms of this moment. Listeners also experience the emotions and movements of masqueraders who wait to parade across the Savannah stage and who bear the impatience of an entire year to perform in this sacred space. Soca songs like Savannah Grass collectively call upon sensations, imaginations, events, energies, or even nuances associated with carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. It has been challenging to document cultural expressions such as carnival practices using official or traditional archiving methods. Griffin (2021) argues that because archival records are only recognized as valuable when written, Caribbean cultural expressions in oral forms are not given official recognition as records.
Although the Carnival Institute of Trinidad and Tobago (2020) is charged with an archiving role, “[t]o store, preserve, classify and make easily retrievable the information and artifacts collected,” there have been attempts to preserve aspects of the festival. The institute mainly collects and stores video and audio recordings, written, and other physical artefacts. In addition, the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago has curated carnival exhibitions such as Carnival of Long Ago that was done in 2017 and is accessible virtually. Unfortunately, these units are plagued with insufficient funding and human resources to adequately store and manage all of the artefacts related to carnival. In a way to “decolonize” record-keeping as only written, as Griffin puts it, this chapter suggests that oral carnival artefacts such as soca serve as a repository to store participants’ memories of carnival collectively and individually.
The chapter proposes that soca is a repository for collective memory that archives the carnival experience in Trinidad and Tobago. Popular music scholar Arno van der Hoeven highlights the significance of music and memories: “The study of popular music memories thus concerns how popular music and its culture are remembered and music’s capacity to induce reminiscence” (van der Hoeven, 2018, p. 208) . The focus of this piece will be to examine the memories soca evokes among its listeners through a content analysis of responses to the song Savannah Grass on social media. It posits that Kes the Band’s Savannah Grass (Kes the Band, 2019) collectively evokes memories of time, place, and people, emotions that characterize carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. It further acknowledges that these memories can be retrieved on social media where listeners record them through their comments.
Background: Carnival and Soca in Trinidad and Tobago
Like other sites where there are Caribbean-style carnivals, the carnival in Trinidad has a complex history that makes it a complicated cultural space for examination. The festival in Trinidad3 is traced to the Catholic French Creole planter class in the late eighteenth century who had settled there to benefit from the sugar industry powered by African slavery. For the European population, carnival celebrations began in December and culminated with huge masquerade balls, dinners, and parties on the two days before Ash Wednesday, which commemorated the beginning of the Christian season of Lent.
During this period, the participation of the enslaved was limited. They, however, created their own spaces of revelry during the Cannes brûlées or canboulay that marked the end of the sugar cane harvest. After complete emancipation in 1838, the festival became critical to the former slaves. Kim Johnson notes that the carnival incorporated many of the African cultural traditions that “had become a focal point for the elaboration of African cultural retentions in music, dance, costume and ritual, and a celebration of freedom” Johnson, 1988, p. xiv).
As the canboulay grew more popular among the former slaves, several attempts to contain it resulted in the canboulay riots4 of the 1880s that responded to the colonial authority’s attempt to ban the festivities associated with the event. The riots highlighted two parallel carnival festivities — one celebrated by the former planter class characterized by European Catholic rituals and another celebrated by the Blacks, which had a strong African influence. Thus, today’s carnival is characterized by the African influenced canboulay that was ultimately subsumed under the French catholic festival.
The musical elements of the canboulay later influenced the development of calypso. This Afro-Creole musical genre involved storytelling and also mocked authoritative figures and brought attention to social and political discords. In addition, the steelband, a musical instrument invented in Trinidad, served as a medium to enact opposition to social ills and unfair political practices. Thus, the musical elements that emerged from the canboulay reflect these elements of resistance and celebration.
By the twentieth century, the carnival had evolved into a national festival by accommodating the social practices of the more respectable middle and upper classes. Even so, the Black lower classes continued to incorporate aspects of their heritage into costuming, steelpan, and calypso. In the period after independence from the British in 1962, the carnival parade came to be largely defined by the masquerade — the costumed street parade or mas and j’ouvert,5 the parties or fetes as well as the music — steelpan, calypso, and soca. Today, the festival, and by extension, its music, has become a repository of memories that reflects and informs social and cultural identity.
Soca drives carnival celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago. Although soca-type songs existed before the 1970s, calypsonian, Garfield Blackman claimed the genre when he mixed calypso with Indo-Trinidadian rhythms calling it soul calypso or sokah. Peter Mason describes Blackman’s soca as “a more uptempo, freer flowing and louder version of Calypso with a more laid back bass line and a touch of Indian drumming, although still with the essential horn section” (Mason, 1998, p. 29). Modern soca is more of a hybrid genre of calypso that draws on various sounds, especially from North America, Jamaica, and other forms of popular music in the Caribbean and other spaces. Soca follows in the calypso tradition but is a livelier version with more emphasis on music than on lyrics, which helps the genre gather significant commercial potential. Soca verses are shorter than calypso, and there is an emphasis on catchy hooks and rhythm that makes it conducive for dancing, and as such, it constitutes the soundtrack for numerous carnival fetes and parties.
Soca is further characterized as seasonal, meaning its popularity does not extend beyond the carnival season. Even so, it preserves aspects of Caribbean culture and identity through collective memory that one could draw on at any moment after the season ends. This preservation is evident at the various carnivals in the Caribbean and its diaspora. Furthermore, digital media, more than traditional radio, is responsible for keeping soca functional beyond carnival seasons.
The Savannah
For Trinbagonians,6 the Queen’s Park Savannah, or the Savannah as it is also known, is a significant physical space for carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. It has various meanings and serves various purposes for Trinidadians and visitors during the season. All major carnival events culminate at the Savannah. Through an intricate performance of freedom and resistance that may not be possible in other social and geographical spaces, the preparations of an entire year are revealed. Over the years, these ideas of euphoria at the Savannah have been captured in several soca songs dedicated to the Savannah or the stage; some of these include Advantage (2011) and Waiting on the Stage (2016) by Machel Montano, Stage Party (2019) by Destra Garcia, Judgement Stage (2019) by Patrice Roberts, De Stage Open (2013) and Make a Stage (M.A.S.) (2007) by Fay Ann Lyons, We Reach (2019) and Savannah (2018) by Iwer George, and Stage Gone Bad (2020) by Iwer and Kes the Band. These songs, like Savannah Grass, chronicle the joy and freedom that peak at the Savannah or on “the stage.”
Historically, the upper echelons of Trinidad’s society used the 200-acre area for recreational activities. The Victory Carnival in 1919 saw the beginnings of carnival activities hosted at the site for the middle classes, while the Black lower classes celebrated in downtown Port of Spain. Today, the Savannah continues to have a recreational purpose. However, an area on its southern side houses what is known as the stage or Savannah stage for carnival competitions and other events during the season. This stage measures about 200 yards by 50 yards. It is the site for calypso and steelband competitions, the King and Queen of carnival competition, the Dimanche Gras7 show, j’ouvert, and the parade of bands for children and adults. The Grand Stand and a North Stand were constructed on the periphery of the stage to host spectators. During the season, the outskirts of the stage are dedicated to vendors selling food and crafts, seating, a village for other vendors, and socializing. Therefore, the physical space of the Savannah is a critical focal point in the collective memory of Trinidadians and other carnival participants.
Like most Caribbean musical expressions, soca songs chronicle carnival as an experience of liberation and celebration, simultaneously highlighting social nuances. With its mesmerizing groovy sound and emotional lyrics, Savannah Grass evokes ideas about the Savannah and its place in the carnival imagination. It demonstrates that collective memory about a carnival moment can be glorified because of the music’s feel-good nature while cultural myths may overshadow its tensions.
To examine the collective memories of carnival in listeners’ imaginations, the research relied on responses documented on social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The 32 comments from Trinbagonians at home and abroad responded to the question: “When you hear Savannah Grass, what memories/feelings about carnival are evoked?”8 Savannah Grass was chosen as a subject for this enquiry because it was one of the most popular songs of the 2019 carnival season.9 Also, social media offers a rich source for data in ethnographic studies on collective memory.
Digital technologies offer a new medium not only for conversation and contact but also for the construction of viable, continuous “memory communities” that creatively reassemble fragments from a shared past into a dynamic reflective expression of contemporary identity (Silberman & Purser, 2012, p. 16). Hence, social media documents the narratives about soca to explore memories such as those that Savannah Grass resonates.
The memories were categorized into themes of playing mas, home, family, other carnival activities, and just general happy memories. These themes reflect a collective idea of carnival as celebratory and fun. They, however, rarely capture the social and cultural tensions of carnival, which also define carnival culture in Trinidad. This cultural paradox will serve as the basis to examine each of these themes.
Playing Mas
For the Trinbagonian, playing mas involves wearing a costume and parading for two days. This action goes beyond this simple description and further involves a complicated performance of transforming into something else while being oneself in many incarnations. Savannah Grass places the culmination of this complex performance on the Savannah stage. For masqueraders, arriving at the stage is the peak of their carnival experience. They perform a release from daily struggles where masqueraders “leh go” (let go) and display their costumed bodies for the world to see. A response on Facebook depicted this evocation:
The lineup to go on stage at d Savannah. My pores raised. ... I got an extra burst of energy, after that blazing sun drained me! That song energised me to go on that stage and leh go!
This excitement is so spectacular that it remains in the participant’s memory. Esiaba Irobi explains how these sentiments are expressed through the body:
What makes Carnival remarkable . . . the body has a memory and can be a site of resistance through performance, is that it is an eloquent example of the transcendent expressed through spectacle, procession, colors, music, dance, and most important, the physical movement of the body.(Irobi, 2007, p. 901)
Resistance in the form of celebration is displayed on stage through a physical release of the body — singing, shouting, raising the arms, jumping, and wining.10 Respondents recalled their body’s subconscious reaction to Savannah Grass through some form of dancing or wining whether they were at home, in the car, or at an event.
Soca songs like Savannah Grass capture masqueraders’ feelings of absolute freedom that many will recall days or years later. However, fun and freedom for all are not always the result of the carnival masquerade. The evolution of the commercially driven “pretty mas” (also called “beads and bikini mas”) in the last 40 years has slowly become representative of the masquerade while traditional art forms fight to stay relevant.
“Pretty mas” designs include a swimsuit decorated with feathers and other applique. They resemble those worn by Las Vegas showgirls or the Samba costumes of the carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Men don swim shorts and sometimes a headpiece. The pretty mas costumes are often mass-produced in China, making it a profitable venture for some bands. The pretty mas bands can range from US$800 to $2000,11 which includes a luxurious mas experience with unlimited food and drinks, pampering, concierge, top-notch security, and other extravagant services, ultimately excluding many. In these bands, the economic Others witness their exclusion as they serve drinks and food or hold the security rope to keep out onlookers. Kerrigan draws a similarity to Errol Hill's description of the pre-emancipation revelry: “At the colonial carnival celebrations, the enslaved were needed for housework, drink service, musical entertainment, and food preparation” (Kerrigan, 2016, p. 11). Therefore, the all-inclusive pretty mas experience highlights the social divisions in Trinbagonian society.
An alternative stage, t...