THE HISTORY of the African in the Caribbean did not begin with enslavement. The African who manages to escape the myth of Eurocentric superiority can claim all of the Great civilisations of all Africa going way back in time; for the diaspora African is privileged in that all of Africa can be claimed.

In Sparrow’s brilliant summation of the education system "Dan is the man in the Van"’ he quips, "If mih head was bright, I woulda be a damn fool".

Indeed our education system in its present form continues to be part of the process of alienation of self for the African; a process which began with the uprooting. So little is known of the great African civilisation; those from which the diaspora African is directly descended, as well as those of other areas of that vast continent.

So now, Desperadoes is going to gather the tribes for 1999 Carnival.

I remember 30 years ago, 1969, Desperados came down from the hills with a presentation entitled "Pages of Africa". That was the year of Bailey’s "Brightest Africa"’ which some people have put among one of the finest carnival bands ever. It won both Band of the Year and The People’s Choice that year.

The year 1970 was the first and last time I played mas. In the Carnival of 1970, one could feel the excitement, the increasing polarisation between disadvantaged young

Africans and the rest of the society. We descended on the city from East Dry River. Our jouvert band was Pine Toppers-The Truth: Before, Then and Now. The band was sectionalised as follows: The section "Before" referred to the glory of Africa before the holocaust. "Then" was the period of enslavement. "Now" reflected the militancy, the mood of the Sixties and Seventies. All the icons of revolution were there, from Che Guevera to our own Kwame Ture; from Huey Newtkon to Malcolm X. In that section, the costumes were heavily militaristic, complete with guns. We marched and pranced to the music of the African drums. No tourists joined that band!

Now no great African bandleader straddles the Carnival landscape. The mas-maker has been reduced largely to being hewers of wood, drawers of water for the Carnival entrepreneurial class; and African children in Laventille and St. Barbs spout the bandied self-contempt.

"Carnival is bacchanal": I doh like carnival "is too much commess". The children of Laventille, cannot name three steelbands. While the steelpan is being given reverential status worldwide, Laventille wallows in poverty and national disdain.

Such are my thoughts in this African History Month, as Desperados seeks to put the steeband back in the middle of the mas.

Reclamation, prior to understanding the need for reparation!

The gathering of the tribes!

One of the peoples to be portrayed is the Yoruba.

There is that especial link between the Yoruba people and Trinidad and Tobago, because of the survival of the Orisa religion, the traditional religion of the Yoruba.

The Yoruba is one the largest ethnic groups of Nigeria, about 24 million in number and located largely in the south-western part of the country. These people have been in existence for more than a millennium. They had several kingdoms; each centred in a city-state and ruled by a king or Oba. The largest of the kingdoms is Oyo.

Ile-Ife is the spiritual and mythological heart, the place where the world began.

Craftsmen, poets, philosophers; the creators of a great long lasting and complex civilisation. We still practise the economic institution known as sou sou that we inherited and learned from them; their moko jumbies are an integral part of our past and present.

This relationship between Desperadoes and the Emancipation Support Committee that is the Gathering of the Tribes must indeed tickle Ogun’s grim sense of humour with its sense cyclic regeneration. For it could hardly have been unexpected.

Those at the leadership level of that 1970 revolution have now taken many of the elements of the carnival and are in the process of evolving a festival of pride, pomp and pageantry without the elements of abandon that characterise Carnival, and have given to the entire African diaspora the celebration of Emancipation as a new icon osmotising tradition and modernity. August 1, the first carnival of the people, celebrated the emancipation. Then the carnival was switched by an officialdom seeking to tamper with a people’s sense of their history. And August 1 was then dedicated to the memory of the errant Genovese whose misadventure began the confrontation between Europe, Africa and the Americas. A confrontation based on enslavement, domination, exploitation, deculturisation and self loss. The pan, forged in the crucible of search of self; gift of warriorhood evolving from societal ferment to national instrument, must now take pride of place in a re-established consciousness.

I think I will play mas, once again, in 1999.
 

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