Carnival and J’ouvert have come to Guyana, and as they do, they provide another opportunity to analyse Mashramani. Cultural phenomena are dynamic, especially those driven by the popular culture. Cultural change is normal and will come into play. While Mashramani has been evolving as a national tradition, it has been significantly affected by normal cultural change, but its development has been equally retarded by both cultural intrusion and official action.
Carnival and J’ouvert are examples of cultural change in Guyana, but they are both borrowed from other cultures and other festivals and are imitations. While cultural change will run a natural course, the advancement of Mashramani is suffering.
Carnival came to Guyana officially in 2016 when the government fashioned a version of it to celebrate the nation’s Jubilee – the 50th Anniversary of Independence on May 26. It was then fully embraced in May 2018 when mainly commercial interests adopted it as a permanent feature running from May 18 to 28.
J’ouvert had been around for a little bit longer, having, like carnival, been imported from Trinidad a few years before to be a part of Mashramani. It is now entrenched as a borrowed festivity which can take place at any time during the year. There was a J’ouvert on the night of New Year’s Eve 2018, and others have been held at different times, particularly to enhance revels in public holidays over the past 5 years.
But what of those traditional events that have been a part of the Guyana Mashramani Festival? The grand Steel Band Final or Panorama, the Calypso Monarchy, the Soca Competition, the Chutney Monarchy, the Children’s Mashramani and the Schools performance competitions all took place last week as the Mashramani season accelerated, reaching its peak yesterday, February 23, Mashramani Day – the 49th Republic Anniversary.
The Calypso Monarchy showed a number of positive signs. There was a view that this item was moribund, and over recent years, one was tempted to fear that was true. But the 2019 event was a definite rise above all those years; the Mashramani Calypso Finals, for a change, looked viable and promising.
First, there was a very large crowd – by far the largest seen at these finals for several years. The audience has returned. Second, the organisers returned the show to the National Park, giving it a bit more status. Third, they moved from seating in the stands, to filling the tarmac, making the performance more participatory and involving the audience in a livelier experience.
Of great importance was the quality. It has been very true that in the 21st century, the quality of the Guyanese calypso has declined. 2019 provided hope of a resurgence. The Mighty Believer turned what he seems to believe in into a winning composition to claim the crown. It was nationalism that was an important component of a number of compositions in the calypso and soca and chutney competitions this year, as if the national social conditions influenced a need for positive and unifying messages. There are times when art responds to the prevailing national/social/political environment with creations to sustain the people in trying times.
The Mighty Believer proclaimed Guyana is a paradise. It was a well-balanced composition with each stanza celebrating Guyana’s resources, strengths and natural wealth. The country was compared to its Caribbean neighbours and acknowledged as superior. Believer found good, measured lineation, a steady rhythm and rhymes that worked in a melody easy to listen to. This was decidedly superior to the sum of the tunes in recent times.
One recalls serious questions about these very qualities over the years when the Guyana calypso languished in the depths of dubiousness. The formula for popularity was merely to belt out political criticism, and, it seemed, not to bother about creativity. There appeared to be no command of shaping and structuring a song using the proven techniques of the art known as calypso.
The Soca Finals were at last an attempt to assemble a package that was presentable, attractive and impressive. Any attempt to shape the show was previously lacking in past years. The crowd response was formidable. Multitudes of the popular audience returned in considerable numbers. Soca is decidedly audience driven and this was much in evidence at the Finals in the National Park.
There was a marked effort to engage the audience and some of the contestants achieved it effectively. There was outstanding spectacle in the use of set, costuming, dance and lighting to accompany performances making them colourful and able to excite the crowd. These included gimmicks, fireworks and confetti and another device which added local identity and a sense of tradition. This was the appearance of stilt walkers/dancers from the masquerade tradition and carnivalesque costuming with masques on stage. This gave the show a glimmer of local tradition which was a significant development.
The art of soca as performance that whipped up the audience in a participatory gear was evident in such contestants as Steven Ramphal, Vanilla, Jumo Primo and Brandon Harding. Ramphal, especially, presented a spectacular soca performance experience with total theatre. In keeping with the trend, his theme was also nationalism – he stressed unity, racial and human harmony. His lyrics in “Soca in Me Vein” were strong and illustrated that soca for party and revelry can at the same time address social issues. This all contributed to an effort to make the event memorable.
Another extraordinary success was the Panorama – the Steel Band Finals – at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall. 2019 has to be a resounding record in terms of audience attendance at a steel pan event. There was a mega-crowd that turned out to an event that had faded out of Mashramani and was revived many years ago.
The Finals of the Chutney Monarchy, however, were again held very far out of town – in Anna Regina, Essequibo. This relegated it to relative obscurity, considering that all stages of the chutney – the Preliminaries and the Semi-Finals were also placed far away in the countryside. There was the usual principle of decentralisation and not confining Mashramani to Georgetown only, but including the regions. However, this was done with the preliminary rounds of both soca and calypso placed out in the regions, while the finals were in the capital city. The same needs to be done with chutney if it is to properly and fully occupy its place as a Mashramani tradition.
At the moment it remains a Cinderella in the shadow of its two sisters, calypso and soca. There was an argument that chutney was located in areas where there was a constituency. Not only does that contradict the very theme of the leading songs – unity and oneness of a nation and its people – but it deprives the festival of any attempt to promote chutney and sell it to the widest audience as a Mashramani event equal to the others. Promoting and regularising chutney would help in the festival’s desire to be traditional and to evolve.
It was noted that there was corporate sponsorship, particularly from Carib Beer. It is to be hoped that if ever there is no private sector sponsorship for any of the three, the government will take up the costs in order to preserve the event and sustain developing traditions. The Soca Monarchy was cancelled in the past because there was no sponsor.
There was a carnival in Guyana in the 1960s, and a Guyana Carnival was even used to celebrate Independence in 1966. This was radically altered and transformed into Mashramani in 1970 to mark Republican status. Mashramani, therefore, has its roots in the carnivalesque and a version of carnival, but over its 49 years of existence it has tried to become an indigenous tradition. However, it has suffered because of too many artificial changes imposed upon it, which interrupts the cultural evolution and the festival’s development.
Apart from official ministry decisions, these affecting factors include carnival and J’ouvert. For example, as stated above, Guyana returned to a carnival to celebrate Independence in 2016. It was decided to cut the float parade, the road march, the ‘mas’, the parade of the bands out of Mashramani in February in order to put them into the Independence Carnival in May. That was a serious interference with a growing tradition.
Moreover, the road march – the route taken by the bands was changed three times between 2016 and 2019. What was a fixed, familiar tradition with an identity, a sense of permanence and economic spin-off benefits, was suddenly turned into uncertainty, dissatisfaction and loss of income. The kinds of developing traditions that were hinged on the road march route and the general space occupied by people on Mashramani Day were curtailed.
Notably, the carnival in Trinidad never changes the road march route.
Guyana borrowed the word J’ouvert (pronounced joo-vay) from Trinidad Carnival. The popular culture has taken to it and it is now a very common factor of cultural change. In Trinidad it is a cultural tradition – from the French Jour Ouvert (opening of the day) – the early morning of the first day of carnival Monday. It has its own traditions, including revelry and “Ol Mas”. But the meaning and traditions have not been borrowed. In Guyana a J’ouvert is simply a party; it is a fete that goes through the wee hours of the morning, or it is a concert of soca artistes that runs late into the early morning followed by a fete.
Both Mashramani and the Guyana Carnival have a series of J’ouvert. A very grave irony is that Guyana was prepared in 2016 to truncate and disrupt its own tradition Mashramani, in order to bolster a borrowed imitation – the Independence Carnival.
Another irony is that many of the leading, popular and prominent Guyanese soca artistes do not take part in the Mashramani Soca Monarchy. Yet they all perform in and promote the carnival and the J’ouvert. It is true that these new events provide them with additional opportunities to perform and earn money and make a name. But they do not consider Mashramani important enough. The fact is that they do not have to choose one over the other; they can perform in both to mutual benefit. The ironies multiply because all – and I mean all – of the leading, famous Trinidadian soca artistes compete intensely for the Trinidad Carnival Soca title. They consider it important and a boost to business.
Cultural change is a factor, but it is unfortunate that Guyana has a festival of its own that it is prepared to neglect, mutilate, play down, and keep back in order to build one that has been borrowed and imitated. Carnival and J’ouvert are money earners and have been embraced by the popular culture in the process of cultural change, but Mashramani is the Guyanese invention with which liberties are too easily taken. It is not given all the opportunities to grow into the powerful festival that the Trinidad Carnival grew and evolved to become.
