A celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 special issue of Caribbean Quarterly devoted entirely to Trinidad Carnival, Garth Green’s and Philip Scher’s co-edited volume, Trinidad Carnival: The Cultural Politics of a Transnational Festival, depicts Carnival as a historical product as well as a product of global forces. The work deals not only with Carnival in Trinidad but with related celebrations in New York, Aruba, and Toronto, situating it as, at once, a local and international cultural festival. The bulk of the introduction written by Scher and Green is a thorough history of Carnival in Trinidad, with special attention paid to the way that changes in the festival and the economic conditions and changes in gender norms are intertwined. The co-editors also discuss the anxiety among many Trinidadians that “traditional” Carnival is being commercialized and co-opted for wider local and global consumption. They see this anxiety as stemming from “an ideology of Carnival as national culture is itself shaped by global and transnational forces, and that these resulting ideologies themselves necessarily shape the Carnival as they become increasingly institutionalized both in the Caribbean and abroad” (23). It is this interplay between national culture and global forces that most strongly ties the essays into a cohesive whole.
Pamela Franco in her essay, “The Invention of Traditional Mas and the Politics of Gender,” discusses the ways in which the aforementioned 1956 Caribbean Quarterly special issue affected later scholarship on Carnival. Franco claims the authors in that issue constructed the “traditional” Carnival with men and persons of African descent implicitly at the center of the discussion. In the past twenty years, Carnival in Trinidad has become an increasingly female-dominated festival, and Franco quite convincingly argues that the paradigm for understanding Carnival that comes out of the CQ issue is not suited to the contemporary iteration of the festival.
The next essay, “The Masquerader-Anthropologist,” by Patricia De Freitas, is a personal reflection on the role of the anthropologist in studying Carnival, though her ideas could be applied to any sociocultural setting. She meditates on her experience as a “native” anthropologist and questions the anthropological history of native-insider vs. anthropologist-outsider views.
Garth Green then examines the so-called decline and commercialization of Carnival in the context of current political and economic agendas in his contribution, “Authenticity, Commerce, and Nostalgia in the Trinidad Carnival.” Green uses anthropological and sociological work on nostalgia to frame his two case studies: Viey la Cou, a “traditional Carnival stage show and competition that emerged out of a desire to preserve what the organizers believed was the Carnival of the past” (67), and the woodcarvings of Leighton James, which are based on Carnival scenes and themes.
Philip Scher’s piece, “When ‘Natives’ Become Tourists of Themselves: Returning Transnationals and the Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago,” investigates the impact of transnational migration on Carnival in Trinidad. He, too, employs scholarly work on nostalgia as he examines the intersection of migration, changes in musical styles, and changing economic realities in Trinidad.
Then come two essays in which Carnival-like celebrations outside of Trinidad take center stage. Puff Daddy’s appearance at Toronto’s Caribana festival gives Lyndon Philip a point from which he can historicize the festival in the context of the expressive traditions of the black diaspora in his essay, “Reading Caribana 1997: Black Youth, Puff Daddy, Style, and Diaspora Transformations.” Victoria Razak then examines the little-studied tradition of Carnival in Aruba, particularly the ways in which Trinidadian forms have been appropriated and re-interpreted in locally-specific ways.
Ethnomusicologist Shannon Dudley then traces the historical trajectory of steelpan in Trinidad through the career of Ray Holman, who is credited with beginning the practice of composing an “own tune” (original composition) for steelbands to play in competition. His essay serves as a model for examining the role of individual artists and performers within traditions that are usually examined collectively.
The next essay, co-authored by Ray Funk and Donald Hill, examines calypso in the context of the United States, Harry Belafonte, and the Andrews Sisters, and enunciates the conditions that allowed calypso to briefly become a craze in the U.S.
Robin Ballinger’s discussion of intellectual property laws in Trinidad shows how “implementation of intellectual property legislation must also be analyzed in relation to transnational class consolidation and deepening inequality and instability within nations” (199). Ballinger’s fascinating essay discusses copyright through Trinidadian notions of authorship, as well as the moves by Parliament and the COTT to implement policies in accordance with international copyright laws.
A wide-ranging afterword by noted scholar Roger Abrahams in which he reflects on themes drawn from the earlier essays closes out the collection.
This collection of essays is a fascinating look at contemporary Carnival as, at once, a national and transnational institution. Many of the essays would be useful for readers interested in transnational movement of music and festivals, as well as in Carnival and the Caribbean specifically.
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[Review length: 814 words • Review posted on August 25, 2009]