——— SERIES ———
JOUVAY REPRISED
It is far too easy to claim that Caribbean society is comprised largely of people who wish to be fooled. Or, that in the unlikely absence of someone to fool us, we devise means for fooling ourselves. Our luminaries dare to curse the ones who feed them and allow them to forget. We forget. This, we hear and learn to repeat, is Trinidad. This is how it is in the Caribbean. But, I wonder, how are we unlike any other society that responds to the distraction of spectacle, embracing the illusion as if it were real, and committing a great deal of time, effort, space, and material in the process? We are people, too. I’d like to think there’s more to us than the obvious problems being people entails. I have to think that our citizenship—our bone-deep belonging to this place—is more than a pappyshow. That the blindness is long, but temporary.
—PORT OF SPAIN, 2015
Fabrice Barker performs a Red Devil Mas, a modification of the Jab Molassie, Brian Lara Promenade, Port of Spain, Emancipation Day, 2015.
Keon Eccles blows fire at a Crossroads (Keate St. & Frederick St.), Port of Spain, Emancipation Day (August 1), 2015.
Orlando Hunter as Jab Molassie/Lansetkód. Brian Lara Promenade. Port of Spain, Emancipation Day, 2015.
Tracey Sankar and Joel Chimming as Blue Devils. Brian Lara Promenade, Port of Spain, Emancipation Day, 2015.
Brittany L. Williams as modified Lansetkód, Brian Lara Promenade. Port of Spain, Emancipation Day, 2015.
Orlando Hunter as Jab Molassie/Lansetkód. Brian Lara Promenade. Port of Spain, Emancipation Day, 2015.
Jabari Taitt as Jab Molassie/Lansetkód with wireframe horns at a Crossroads (Park St. & Frederick St.). Port of Spain, Emancipation Day, 2015.
Tracey Sankar and Joel Chimming as Blue Devils at Besson Street. Port of Spain, Emancipation Day, 2015.
Larry Richardson, a longtime Mas man, in handmade mask of wiremesh, painter’s tape, painter’s mask, and a plastic 2-liter soda bottle cut to fit his mouth. Frederick Street, Port of Spain, Emancipation Day, 2015.
