By *Jomo Thomas
If SVG was on a slow boil over the last few weeks, carnival fever is expected to rise to deliriously dangerous levels from today until next Wednesday, when young and old go out spreeing and dancing with their heart and soul.
Carnival is fundamentally a youthful affair, and Vincentian young people and their friends from home and abroad are expected to have a jolly good time.
There was a time when carnival was much more than a fete. Carnival was a package of cultural entertainment experiences where mas, calypso, soca, and sweet pan music took pride of place.
The Carnival Development Corporation (CDC) continues to offer official events. Still, these have been relegated to side shows while the “official days” of carnival have been reduced to a huge fashion show where mainly young women dress up in splendour, and men follow sniffing and sifting. Who knew that little SVG could afford and entertain so many events in so few days?
Carnival is now nothing but a fete. Chalkdust, the legendary Trinidadian calypsonian, warned of the degeneration years ago when he belted out, “Man ah say, they gone commercial exploiting the carnival.” Carnival was always about nakedness and rum, but there was more. The age we live in represents the triumph of nakedness and rum.
Last year, the CDC discarded Fantastic Friday and marketed rum. Good sense prevailed, and Fantastic Friday, with its traditional emphasis on calypso, reemerged. But calypsoians and their tent organisers are killing the art form and driving away calypso lovers. Calypso writing is fast becoming a dying art. Many of those singing calypso slap a few verses together without rhyme or reason, barely a melody and more often than not insult our intelligence.
Beyond that, calypso tent night begins close to 9 p.m., breaks at 10:30 for a 30-minute intermission supposedly to allow for the sale of drinks and idle chatter and ends after midnight. One has to be a diehard calypso lover to endure that level of punishment. Small wonder that tent life is on the wane and calypso is on life support. If we remember who is the reigning monarch, we would be hard press to recall the name of the winning song or anything more than a few lines? In years past, the lyrics of calypsos that got to the finals were recited long after the event.
And then there is soca, more appropriately labelled Soca Madness, because the young people go wild. Maybe I am dating myself as one from another era; the music is mostly bad, and the singing, if we can call it that, is more akin to a primal, incoherent shout. The beat is at a frenzied pace, and the sexualised lyrics are a little much.
How and when did rum take such a prominent place in our lives? It has been slow in coming, but it’s now a deluge. For much of my life, excessive alcohol consumption has always been frowned upon; not any more. Rum is now king and queen. Men and women alike hold their own bottle. Across the country, young and old get drunk every day. Many are simply burning off steam, but alcohol has rapidly gained favour.
The soca songs celebrate rum meetings, tell us that rum is better than women, that my rum woman never butt me yet, and call for a mixture of rum and pum pum. Everywhere is rum, rum, rum… Some have argued without merit that rum is part of our culture. Rum may be socially acceptable, but it is culturally inappropriate. Culture is memory and can be a tool in our further advancement as a people. Rum is the erasure of memory.
In much the same way a campaign is waged against cigarette smoking, an urgent and determined assault must be launched against alcohol consumption.
Carnival was intended as an escape from reality. The cropping season was over, and as massa took time to count his earnings, the enslaved got a chance to let off steam: different times, same playbook. The people work themselves up with frenzied pleasure; the commercial class laugh all the way to the bank. People are now taking loans to play mas. For several years, SVG’s carnival was marketed as the hottest in the region. This year we summoned the world to our “great escape”. The slippery road we are sliding are urgently in need of speed bumps lest we lose a generation.
Each age has its darkness, and we may be going through one of the darkest periods since independence. Our cultural expression draws its energy from the moment. Wild abandon is the order of the day. Discipline is shaky, and caution is thrown to the wind. Social prostitution runs rampant, and reckonings are adjourned to an indefinite future.
We are experiencing a cultural degeneration whose toll in wasted bodies and scarce resources is incalculable. Have your fun if you must, but don’t lose yourself in the process. Self-respect lost may never be regained. Our youth are our treasures; we have a responsibility to warn, guide and protect them.
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
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