“Oh shoot, it’s raining!”
They were an odd foursome, gathered to taste the joys of Carifesta. Allison was an Australian who felt alien in London and at home in Trinidad; Mark was a white Trinidadian who reluctantly wrote profitable ads and sculpted cute clay gargoyles in his spare time; Melvina was a dougla (half African, half Indian) from south Trinidad who wrote brilliant, macabre plays; and Krishna was a Trinidadian of Indian descent now living in Tokyo with his Japanese wife.
They had arrived Trinidad time (two hours late) for a play, and managed to see the actors taking their final bow. As the crowd dispersed, they had ended up in the Grand Market at the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain, the big Carifesta meeting-place. The rain came down; there seemed to be only performers, booth owners, security officers and some indefatigable
limers left. They were stranded in a stall selling white ceramics.
Ah was feelin’ ill when ah get ah house call from Dr Cassandra …
The sound of Barbadian calypsonian Gabby’s 1995 Carnival hit echoed from the speakers of the Rum Shop.
She gih me one injection in mih mid-section, I didn’t have to pay . . . One injection and de fever gone right away . . .
Melvina was dancing in the rain. Shoes in one hand, eyes closed, a smile of joy on her upturned face, she was wining and jumping up in the mud. Up to now, she can’t explain what came over her. She usually looked morose.
The other three were taken aback. “Come on! ” she urged them, smiling. Krishna, always ready for a wine and jam, needed no further encouragement. Then Mark and Allison ended up in the downpour too.
Who care bout who see? Shoes off, hands up in the air, they start to “throw waist”, not even noticing when others joined in.
When yuh comin’ back? Cassandra, when yuh comin’ to gih me de medicine . . . ?
Many will remember Carifesta Six. Sure, a couple of contingents got lost or forgotten, but everyone was found in the end.
And something has to go wrong in a Caribbean get-together of 1,000 artists. Throw in Panama, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, and we had two weeks of glorious spontaneity. Everyone came out smiling, and not entirely sober.
The Grenadians were the most jubilant of all. At the Savannah, in St James, down San Fernando, they were kicking up their legs in the “short knees” dance, including a three-year-old boy called Nicholas, who was constantly in the centre of the bacchanal. At one point he was discovered onstage with the top Jamaican band Chalice.
This group was one of the highlights of Carifesta. The audience sat sedately to start with, expecting a traditional folk dance. Well, they got Chalice instead. After the reggae anthem Redemption Song and Broken Wings, nobody was left sitting down. Have you ever heard dancehall performed opera-style? After imitating Jamaican DJs Beenie Man, Shabba Ranks, Tiger and Papa San, the lead singer sang Dun Wife like Placido Domingo.
On a high, we walked outside to the stalls where tie-dyed hats hung beside carvings of African gods. Next to the pelau and roti booths, about 20 Trinis were queueing patiently for Jamaican jerk pork. Others were hunting down the Venezuelan stall for arepas.
Further afield, literary buffs sat at the feet of writers like Earl Lovelace, George Lamming and Derek Walcott, homophobics sat mum through the exquisite Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate, and theatre critics were falling over themselves at Barabajan which wove the poetry of Kamau Brathwaite into a skilful review of Barbados history.
It took Trinidad and Tobago a week to grasp how much Carifesta had to offer. But then people began rushing to the Savannah after work to lime in the Rum Shop or bargain with the Cubans over papier-mâché lizards and Havana cigars. Public servants loitered till two in the morning around the downtown Brian Lara Promenade to see the US and British Virgin Islanders shake their skirts and Moko Jumbles pretend to fall off their tall stilts. By the night the Cubans took to the stage, hundreds were packed under the tent, knowing full well they couldn’t understand a word of Spanish. Except the words to Guantanamera, which we all sang, admiring the Cuban bass guitarist’s waist-work.
The saucy young lady who jumped up onstage and salsa’d till her skirt flew over her head was not Cuban, not even Latin American. At Carifesta, billed as “The World’s Best Cultural Mix”, expect the unexpected. She was a Trinidadian.
