PETER MINSHALL -
MILLENNIUM MAN OF
MAS
By Vaneisa Baksh
Express
Section 2
January 1, 2000
Page 16
No
artist in the Caribbean has divided or united a people as
formidably as Peter Minshall has in Carnival.
Traditional
Carnival bandleaders, those who interpret Carnival to be "pretty mas"
full of colour and glitter and borne joyfully by revelers, raged against his
introduction of a conscience and message to the mas. He saw it as theatre, and has enlarged the concept of mas from
the mass production of feathers and sequins into something that tells a
story. It has not been a concept that
other bandleaders have rushed to embrace.
There had been threats to boycott competitions if his work was
appearing, and judges have often ignored him completely.
People
either love him passionately or hate him; but they have not been
indifferent. Priests have condemned him
for merging what they see as the sacred and the profane. Just a few years ago, his band Hallelujah!
elicited such an outcry that 208 pastors signed a petition asking him to change
the name of the band because they felt it was blasphemous. He resisted, despite the enormous pressure
being exerted by churches and even newspaper editorials. For all the years of his mas making, he has
had more than his share of pressure for the new concepts he was bringing to the
mas.
He
has maintained an integrity to his art throughout the callaloo of emotions he
has stirred up in the Caribbean cauldron.
It required a deep commitment to his vision of what mas meant and he was
prepared to not produce mas bands at all rather than compromise on this. "If the mas is worthy, as we believe it
is, we must do it to the best of our ability.
That is our duty," he wrote in 1991, threatening not to bring out a
band because of poor judging qualifications, restrictive practices and the
petty rivalry by other bandleaders whom he scathingly referred to as
"businessmen."
He
did bring out a band that year, but as the saying goes, Carnival is not
Carnival without a bacchanal; and Minshall has never been one to disappoint.
For
all the bacchanal, Minshall himself is a Caribbean specialty. His family came to Trinidad from Guyana when
his father answered an advertisement for a cartoonist, and Minshall attended
the top school at the time, Queen's Royal College. He grew up in Port of Spain, Carnival City, and was always
obsessed by the theatre.
He
studied at London's Central School of Art and Design and became deeply involved
in West Indian theatre in England. It
developed his sense of what made "good theatre, or good art and what
didn't," he said. But his roots
were calling.
"I
began to ask myself why this Carnival thing was more rewarding than what I was
doing in London. Eventually I realised
it was because Carnival authentically achieved what such groups as the French
National Theatre had been trying to achieve for years: audience
participation."
He
returned in 1976 to a job as a radio announcer, hosting a morning show called Around
the Town, and began gathering material for a Carnival band.
He
designed Paradise Lost for Stephen Lee Heung and it won the Band of the
Year title. On his own, he started with
a band called Zodiac and hit pay dirt with Carnival of the Sea,
which won in all the categories in 1979.
It began a movement away from the colourful, gaudy, sequined mas, which
had traditionally dominated Carnival.
He
returned to Trinidad after a 1982 Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship and
plunged into his designs with renewed fervour and a confidence, which would be
tested by the tremendous opposition to his ideas.
He
spurned the term "Carnival," preferring what he saw as purity in the
world, "Mas," and he criticized the glossy, tourist-brochure approach
to the festival, saying that it left people thinking that the higher they
jumped, the more spirit of Carnival they had.
To him it was a form of theatre.
Theatre in their mas.
Minshall's
designs reflected issues and offered their own social commentaries. He often stripped his mas of colour, using
muddy browns and blacks to depict suffering and misfortune, and when the
critics screamed that this was not Carnival, his sarcastic response was the
1987 band, Carnival is Colour, making mas with their criticism.
His
bands were coming forth: in 1980, Danse Macabre; 1981, Jungle Fever;
1982, Papillon; the trilogy staring in 1983 with The River,
followed by Callaloo and The Golden Calabash in 1985; then in
1986, Rat Race; 1987 Carnival is Colour; and in 1988 Sans
Humanité.
Callaloo spawned the Seven Deadly
Sins and one of its individual costumes, Madame Hiroshima, a mass of flames
and gases, an ugly, contorted face, made her way menacingly to Washington to
mark the 40th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in
August 1945.
But
street theatre on this epic scale was not appreciated by the local Carnival
judges, and while Minshall had a huge following, not one of the official
competitions acknowledged the breadth of his work. His band, Callaloo, went to the Biennial Art Exposition in
Brazil, and art critic, Professor Nicolau Sevcenko, wrote, "This is an
historic moment. It is the first time
that the popular expression of the people has invaded the art gallery."
The
Brazilian newspapers described his works as sculptures, which had acquired
life. Minshall had incorporated into
his costumes much more than a concept of fabric, colour and texture. Using his engineering skills, he had found
ways to make his costumes kinetic creatures, utilizing and magnifying the
natural movements of the body to make his costumes live on stage.
His
1990 Carnival band produced the world famous Saga Boy and Tan Tan figures, who
have since travelled the world in high style, appearing at Bastille Day
celebrations in France, and paving the way for Minshall's creations bidding
hello to the world at the Barcelona Olympic Games.
He
was also one of the artistic directors for the opening ceremony at the Olympic
Games in Atlanta, bringing his larger than life costumes to the Olympic stage
with all the skill and flamboyance that came from years of designing for the
enormous street theatre that he had long recognised as the very heart of
Carnival.
Carnival
bands have gone through several eras, from the early French creole costumes, to
those depictions of ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt, to the biblical, the
African, the copper and other metals, and then the troops of plumes, bikinis
and endless glitter. Several
bandleaders have dominated each era; but none has so profoundly affected the
concept of mas as Minshall has, and for putting thee art back into the mas, we
pay tribute to him.