These are The Facts Mr Afong

01, Feb 1999
Mr Afong, Chairman of the Carnival Bands Association, took offense with our column in which we dealt with an overview of the genesis of Carnival to indicate why we will never agree at this time with any exclusive day for Pan in the midst of Carnival.

What did Afong say? In a nutshell, he said the following: that the original idea of a Pan Day was proposed at the inaugural meeting of the National Carnival Commission (NCC) in 1988 which was chaired by people like Roy Augustus and Arnim Smith, and was supported by the Pan Trinbago representative, Owen Serrette; that such goodly gentlemen, notable for their involvement in Carnival and the Steelband Movement, will be "quite hurt" to know that they are being considered party to a middle-class anti-steelband "conspiracy".

Our advise to Afong is that he should seek to speak only for himself. Roy, Owen and Arnim are quite capable of speaking on their own behalf. But of what relevance are these supposed "facts" to the overview of Carnival that is central to our position? And strange enough, the concept and notion of a middle-class "conspiracy" is of Afong's own making.

No such notion existed in our column of January 12. Indeed, we made it quite evident that all that had happened in Carnival happened openly without the slightest suggestion of stealth on anybody's part. Listen to what we advanced in that column:

(1) That there were always two Carnivals vying for space; the Carnival of the masses and the middle-class Carnival; that the natural tension between the two has been crucial to the very genesis and essence of the festival, moreso given the tendency of both sides to mimic each other. We are not even sure whether "mimic" is the appropriate word because the free mutual transposing of chemistry would suggest a psychosis much deeper than mere mimicry.

Our father, Percival T Rennie always talked about having had his three-piece suits made for each day of Carnival back in the 30's and 40's. That was the trend then for many like him.

What they did not know then, as they posed in their finest lounge suits, was that the "keen observers up in the balconies", the citizens of substance, were hankering to do the opposite, ie strip themselves naked and "misbehave" like the jamettes down below in the streets.

The actualisation of this deep desire did not come until the late sixties, early seventies, with white people playing ole mas J'Ouvert morning and jumping up in Desperadoes. We started the "North Stand" in the early sixties as a place from which to pay respect to the art forms and to heap umbrage on all those who did not meet the expected standards.

North Stand became a popular "lime", the place to be. Suddenly there came a white middle-class invasion into the North Stand and with that came the indiscriminate "boo-ing" . We left in droves for the Grand Stand. In effect, a migration exchange was actualised.

Isn't this fact, Mr Afong? Are you denying the interplay of the two Carnivals, the interplay of social categories of people, the tension between genuine, creative endeavour and philistine nakedness? The latter takes us to the second point of our article.

(2) That the commercialisation of Carnival naturally brought the supremacy of the middle-class Carnival agenda tied to which is the obvious gender question. The sheer weight of numbers of women now involved in Carnival was overstated by us in Mr Afong's view. However the point is that women have been superseding men in all areas of social activity and the Carnival merely reflects what is already quite evident in everyday existence. That surely cannot be disputed.

The last bastion of male dominance in Carnival lies in the area of design. Yet, what these men are forced to design year after year is feminine in conceptualisation and that is so even in terms of what they manufacture by and large for the few mas-playing males to wear.

(3) That this development was not the work of some diabolical genius or geniuses hiding behind the scenes. Rest assured, Mr Afong that we are not blaming you and yours for the disaster that Carnival has come. Absolutely not. And we quote: "Objectively, the commercialisation of Carnival with the impact of million- dollar investments, dictated certain structural and conceptual change and ruled out the poor and the dispossessed who before, in order to be 'kings' for the day made mas literally out of nothing." We are not disturbed by the fact that the mas camps have become centralised factories, for we understand the requirement given the demands of the "tens of thousands that participate to-day," unlike yesterday, to quote Afong.

What we lament is the poverty of designs, the lack of creativity, the middle-class philistinism, the feminine emptiness, the "sickening sameness", the rip-off, and it was in this context that we suggested the return of the steelbands into the thick of things as a measure to save Carnival from itself.

Those three points, to all who can construe language, constituted the framework of the column on January 12 titled "No to pan day!" And now we can extrapolate further.

For steelbands to save Carnival, there must never be an exclusive day for pan. Steelbands, as Mr Afong quite rightly knows but does not say, do not possess the financing to make an exclusive day into anything significant and still come back to participate fully on Monday and Tuesday.

An exclusive day on Sunday is the surest way to guarantee that steelbands are nowhere to be seen on Monday and Tuesday. And that is part of the middle-class agenda as revealed by any objective analysis of the genesis of Carnival in TT.

We feel strongly that steelbands will serve to raise the level of the creativity of Carnival if we engage once again with "critical mass" sufficient to make the desired dent. Our exclusive days are Panorama Preliminaries, in fact the total extent of Carnival involvement for people like us, and Point Fortin Borough Day. Anything else particularly during the week of Carnival will be a distraction.

We have to question why this suggestion for an exclusive Carnival Sunday is being pushed now precisely when steelbands are talking about forming amalgams to make an impact once again in the costume parade.

Will it mean that the 8,000 strong Poison and such bands will now have a clear run on the roads? Eh, Mr Afong? Mr Advani of Berger is reputed to be one who buys out whole sections of Poison for his personal friends and associates, and Mr Aleong of BWIA is now due to do likewise, having sent out communications to BWIA staffers for "people of a Poison stature" to be part of his already bought section.

And we can only hazard a guess as to what is meant by "a Poison stature": height, maybe, length of legs, colour of skin, eh Mr Afong, maybe you can provide us with the facts? One wonders if this is not another ploy to rope oneselves off from the plebs!

Lastly, Mr Afong suggested that we "playfully skipped" periods of Carnival history, paying no heed to the likes of Jack Brathwaite, George Bailey, McWilliams, Ammon, Awon, Saldenah etc, because it "did not suit our argument".

Ah! What memories! Jack Brathwaite and Sheppy and company singing "Vive La France, lewwe jump up and lewwe dance!" Sally's "Imperial Rome" and George's Glories, as we used to say in approval: "Mas, Father!" We played in George's "Kings go forth", the first and only time we left All Star, and by 2 pm we were bored stiff and fed up hearing the rhythm guitar of our brother, Winston.

By 3 pm we were the only sailor in All Star dressed in silver larme and embossed velvet. The pan tabanca was too great. What we recalled most of that experience is this. We were playing Roman Senators behind Julius Caesar, portrayed by Alvin Bailey who never spoke to us for one single moment, treating us with the disdain that was typical of Caesar, for he had researched the character, and we were on stage reading out proclamations in Latin.

This period did not suit our argument! You have got to be crazy, Mr Afong. That period is the argument! That was the period when Carnival creativity was at its heights. You prepared yourselves to play your mas. Dragons could not touch water and the Bookman had to know his dance.

The middle-class trends, though present, had not yet completely taken over. And, Mr Afong, we could say tongue in cheek, men played mas.