In stark contrast to this is another part of the varied and colourful tradition to be found every Christmas season on Bay Street in the city of Nassau. That is the Jonkanoo festival in the Bahamas, which is the most vibrant, lively and spectacular of the Caribbean masquerades which still exist. In fact, it is surpassed in the region only by carnival.
Masquerades have been highlighted here in Arts on Sunday a number of times, but it is revisited now because of its importance, because of the derelict state of the performance in Guyana, and because of the efforts to revive interest in it through a symposium which is now in progress in Georgetown.
This is an event titled the Masquerade Lives Symposium being staged by the Guyana Cultural Association (GCA) and the Ministry of Culture Youth and Sport. The GCA is based in New York and headed by Prof Vibert Cambridge of the University of Ohio; they link with the ministry to offer academic papers by international scholars, workshops and performances in a gesture to promote the masquerade tradition and revive interest in Guyana where it is moribund.
This folk performance is a form of street theatre and a genre of the varied traditions known in Jamaica and Belize as Jonkunnu or Maskarade, and in Guyana as Maskarade. Dating back to the 17th century in Jamaica it evolved to be (in the 19th and early 20th centuries) the largest of these festivals in the Caribbean outside of the Trinidad Carnival. The Guyanese maskarade when it was active and vibrant was very similar to Jamaica and Belize, and also shared characteristics with the Tuk Band of Barbados.
The masked, costumed performers dance along the streets at Christmas time accompanied by a small ensemble of musicians. Foremost in the dance are the flouncers who perform the steps and manoeuvres peculiar to the maskarade flounce. They are largely dressed in colourful costumes somewhat like jesters and are joined by the tall stilt dancers or stiltsmen towering above the band. Along with them is a cast of stock characters. These include the long lady, effigies of white Europeans, Mother Sally and Bam-bam Sally a female figure played by a male in European fancy dress with an exaggerated ‘bumper’ (rear-end), who dances to show off her assets to the amusement of the spectators. The Bad Cow or Mad Cow is a costumed figure in the form of a bull with large horns leaping about dangerously and threateningly. The performance includes a ‘doctor play’ in which a man with a malady (often an oversized ‘goady’) seeks to be cured by a doctor to the amusement of the crowd.
There are ‘toasts’ recited at intervals – four-lined verses in iambic metre (septametre or octametre) on varied subjects, such as
Christmus comes but once a year / and every man must have his share
But poor Brother Willy in the jail / drinking sour ginger beer (ale)” Or
“My name is John Devour / I eat no fish nor flour
But send those young girls one by one / I devour them by the hour
Each recitation is followed by the shout of “Ban !” which is a signal to the band to resume playing the music which usually stops to allow the vocal performance. The music is a very fast-paced rhythm played by a boom or bass drum, a kettle or kittle drum played with sticks and a flute (a folk instrument called a ‘fife’ in Jamaica) which improvises, but often plays the melodies of known songs, including Christmas carols. The Jamaican jonkunnu is a much larger and more elaborate affair, and there are variations in Belize and in the Bajan Tuk Band.
It is highly unlikely, however, that any of these performances will be witnessed today in Guyana where the participants who are seen today never learnt the skills. In the past spectators would throw coins to the band and the art of flouncing includes the dexterity of picking them up off the ground in fluent movements which must be executed without breaking the rhythm or flow of the steps and the dance. The stiltsmen dance with high skill and balancing acts, while the mad cow (bad cow) charges and frightens the crowd.
One East Coast village, Victoria, is known for its knowledge of maskarade skills, while the only worthwhile performances at present are to be found on the Essequibo Coast.
The Caribbean masquerades have their origins mainly in West Africa but there are also European roots and influences as well as forms and characteristics that evolved in the Caribbean, including several that developed out of the local social environment. Several African roots have been identified by Sylvia Wynter, Kamau Brathwaite, Martha Beckwith and Judith Bettelheim who provide thorough accounts of Jamaica’s jonkunnu and its various roots.
It was first described by Sir Hans Sloane as an African derivative in the 17th century, but by the 19th century it had accumulated several influences from the literature, legends and politics of Europe, in addition to elements arising from contact with the local society.
These various causal combinations resulted in the evolution of different forms within the tradition, some of them remarkable in their appropriation of European literary and cultural performance integrated with African theatrical form or religious ritual and Caribbean performance. English naval/military factors, for example, gave rise to Barbados’ Land Ship, while English theatricals, legends and literature accounted for the Mummies of St Kitts and the Speech Bands of Tobago. These combined with local traditions to form the Shakespeare Mas of Carriacou (Grenada) and Papa Jab or Flavier the White Devil of St Lucia.
Social factors rendered the folk forms much more intricate and sophisticated and it is possible to sort them out according to their form, content and the driving forces behind them.
These characteristics include spectacle, language, satire, themes of education and elements of rivalry, violence and fear. Spectacle, for instance is the most striking feature of jonkanoo in The Bahamas and in Jamaica; satire is strong in the Bahamas, English literature is recited in Jamaica, in the mummies, the speech band and in Shakespeare Mas where the theme of education may be discerned, while this theme is very strong in Trinidad’s Pierrot Grenade.
At the same time rivalry, violence and fear have been prevalent in most of them because of what they have taken from Europe, such as the dramatic conflicts of St George, the Turkish Knight and pretenders to the throne that find their way into maskarade, junkannu and the mummies.
Papa Jab (Flavier)’s sons fight among themselves and kill each other, with similar battles occurring in various Maskarade Doctor Plays, all followed by resurrections performed by the ‘doctors.’
Yet many of these may also be attributed to the African origins – the killings and revivals, the satire, the rivalry, violence and the fear that they generate. This is because they may be traced back to their African forebears, particularly in the Kalabari and Rivers area and Yoruba-land in Nigeria, since maskarade was based on religious and spiritual ritual from the 17th century and for at least two centuries after.
These and many other powerful factors were dramatic characteristics of the masquerade tradition, including that of Guyana which these symposia, workshops and exhibitions are seeking to revive.
