Carnival and Vanity Fair

By Onwubiko Agozino 

 Why Did C.L.R. James Read Thackeray Repeatedly? I asked and Co-Pilot responded (with some gaps and some neglected connections in the existing literature): 

 C. L. R. James loved reading Thackeray (especially Vanity Fair) because he saw the novelist as one of the greatest teachers of how society really works—not just as a novelist. Here’s why Thackeray mattered so much to James (without a hint that the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival that started in the 1780s during slavery could have inspired Thackeray in the first place) [8], [9]: 

📚 1. Thackeray exposed society honestly. James admired how Thackeray showed ambition, greed, and hypocrisy, and how he represented the behavior of elites without romantic illusions. Unlike writers who idealized society, Thackeray revealed its flaws, which James valued deeply. 

🧠 2. He was a “teacher” of social reality James believed Thackeray taught readers how to understand class structure, recognize how people use power, status, and influence. For James, reading Thackeray was like studying real-life politics and human behavior. 

🎭 3. Complex, realistic characters James was fascinated by characters like Becky Sharp, who are intelligent, ambitious, and morally ambiguous, and who navigate society through skill and manipulation. These characters reflected real human complexity, not simple “good vs evil.” 

✍️ 4. Literary excellence and style As a writer, James admired Thackeray’s clarity, wit and irony, and narrative control. James reread him to learn how to write with precision and depth. 

🌍 5. Relevance to colonial life Even though Thackeray (who was born in colonized India) wrote about England, James—growing up in Colonized Trinidad—saw the same class structures and values shaping colonial societies, and the same obsession with status and imitation of British elites. Thackeray helped him understand empire and colonial society indirectly. 

🎓 6. Part of his intellectual formation James treated great novels as tools for self-education and for training in thinking critically about the world. Rereading Thackeray helped shape him into a historian, critic, and political thinker. James admired Thackeray not just as a novelist, but as a master observer of human behavior and social systems. 

But, of course, James was more influenced by Karl Marx, a contemporary of Thackeray, who went beyond satire to address enslavement and liberation. James directly cited the methodology of conjunctural analysis from Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte as the framework for his analysis of The Black Jacobins, citing Marx and Marxists seven times without a single reference to Thackeray in the magnum opus [10]

How Relevant is Vanity Fair to Trinidad and Tobago Carnival? 

 The concept of the "carnival" in William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair shares a powerful literary and thematic relevance to the culture of Trinidad and Tobago, particularly through its world-famous Trinidad Carnival. [1] While Thackeray wrote about a metaphorical, European social carnival, Caribbean literature directly adapted these exact structural ideas to examine post-colonial society. [1] 

The relevance is best understood through three major lenses: 1. Literary Lineage: The Dragon Can't Dance The most direct bridge between Thackeray's "carnival" metaphor and Trinidad and Tobago, apart from Minty Alley the only novel written by James (4), is Earl Lovelace’s landmark 1979 Trinidadian novel, The Dragon Can't Dance. [1, 2] 

• The Shared Motif: Lovelace uses the real, physical Trinidad Carnival as a structural framework in the exact same way Thackeray uses his metaphorical fair. Both authors populate their "carnival" with a massive, vibrant cast of characters who represent different societal archetypes. [1, 2, 5, 4, 6] •

The Performative Identity: In both novels, life is a stage where people perform. Thackeray's characters put on masks of wealth and upper-class snobbery. Lovelace’s characters—living in the poor, urban slum of Calvary Hill—put on elaborate Carnival masquerade (Mas) costumes, like the Dragon, to claim a status, power, and human dignity denied to them by society. [1, 2, 3, 6] 2. 

The Power of "Mas" and Masks Both contexts rely heavily on the duality of the mask: • Thackeray’s "Vanity": In Vanity Fair, characters like Becky Sharp use deception, charm, and social masks to climb the ranks of a corrupt hierarchy. [1, 2] 

• Trinidadian "Mas": In Trinidadian tradition, masking ("playing Mas") has historical roots in resistance and rebellion against colonial oppression. While Thackeray views masking as a sign of moral superficiality, Trinidadian culture views the Carnival mask as a tool of liberation, letting the ordinary citizen become a king, a god, or a fierce dragon for two days. [3, 2, 3] 3. The "Upside-Down" Social Satire 

• The Leveling of Class: Thackeray’s carnival is a equalizer where kings, buffoons, and pickpockets are ultimately shown to be equally foolish. [1] • The Carnival Temporary Reversal: Trinidad Carnival historically operates on the concept of carnivalesque—a brief window where the rigid social, racial, and economic hierarchies of Trinidad are turned upside down. The poor rule the streets, and the elite are satirized through traditional characters (like the Piskoeb or Dame Lorraine), echoing Thackeray’s satirical dismantling of the British ruling class (that also ruled the enslaved and colonized Trinidad and Tobago). [1, 2] 

I filled some gaps. Feel free to fill in more gaps. Rest in Power to James who passed to the land of ancestors on May 31, 1989. He is rightly known for his classic historical work, cultural studies, and political activism than for works of fiction. 

 References: 

 1. https://literariness.org/2025/05/21/analysis-of-william-makepeace-thackerays-vanity-fair/#google_vignette 

2. https://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:495212/FULLTEXT03.pdf 

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbnEM5ubxM&t=11s 

4. https://archive.org/details/mintyalley0000clrj 

5. https://www.google.com/search q=product&prds=pvt:hg,productid:12460536715102676400&ibp=oshop 

6. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/vanity-fair-analysis-setting 

7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YegxpaQ8E0 

8. Sherwood, Marika (2012-07-26). Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-89113-7.

9. Brereton, Bridget (2002-06-06). Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad 1870-1900. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-52313-4.

10. https://politicaleducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf 

 Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech. He Directed and Produced a 15 part Documentary on 'The Black Jacobins Sociology of CLR James Series'. NCC Television, Trinidad and Tobago, 2008 (7).

Appreciation for Kasala Kamara’s Tribute to African Civilization

By Biko Agozino 

I received a signed copy of A Tribute To African Civilization (Atlanta, Sene Press, 1995) from the author, Kasala Kamara, on 10/11/2006 in St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago shortly after sharing a panel with him at the Center for Black Arts and Culture conference with delegates from Nigeria. He had just spoken about the energy sector and later that evening, the Honorable PM, Patrick Manning attended an evening reception where he promised to offer help in the energy sector to Nigeria. I shook hand with him later to commend him for the policy of publicly-funded university education for the citizens. 

Some of the Nigerians came with samples of their produce - roasted groundnuts in plastic bottles but with a dose of sand. One wanted to know how he could export cashew nuts to Trinidad and Tobago. Did they not hear the Prime Minister offer help with energy sector? I asked myself. I had just arrived the country a few months earlier to take up a job as a Professor of Sociology at the University of the West Indies. Brother Kasala must have been impressed with my modest contributions as a chair of the panel in which he presented; for he wrote in the autograph to me: ‘To Brother Onwubiko Agozino Positive Vibrations’ and singed. 

That was very touching for a reggae lover like me who understood what groundings with Rasta mean by positive vibration, popularized by Bob Marley and the Wailers in that iconic song. I purposively went to the Caribbean partly to reconnect with brothers and sisters whose ancestors were kidnapped from Africa for four hundred years without any expectations that we would survive and meet again, survivors of the slave raids and survivors of slavery, survivors all. And here was a brother I was meeting for the first time, and he called me, brother. 

 When I read the book, it struck me as an original contribution to knowledge in many different disciplines. Structured into five parts, the book covers in Part I, what is now a consensus among scholars in different disciplines that Africa is the genesis of civilization, science and technology. Such a thesis was argued by Cheikh Anta Diop in the 1950s with three successive Ph.D. dissertations before he was reluctantly passed in France. Like Diop, the author maintains that Black Africa built the ancient Egyptian civilization contrary to skepticism by Eurocentric authors. Kasala went beyond Diop’s theory of state building origins in Africa by delving into his own specialization in International Relations, in which he has published several other titles, to highlight the ancient African origin of diplomacy and international law. 

 Part II highlights the contributions of Africa to the development of world spirituality, morality, ethics and wisdom and how the African conception of God is related to other contributions to civilization. Part III profiles personalities like the Pharaoh, Akhenaton, and Imhotep, the first recorded multi-genius in the world who thrived in a civilization that respected the rights of women without slavery as a mode of production, without prisons, and without racism. 

What jumped out at me most, as a criminologist, is Part IV where the author offers a definition of national security based on the welfare of the people and the roles of Africans in the development of humanism, the family and the wider world. I have cited this part of the book in several of my publications because of its alignment with the decolonization paradigm that I am credited as having helped to develop in criminology following my book on Black Women and the Criminal Justice System: Towards the Decolonisation of Victimisation and also in my book, Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason. 

In an editorial essay for the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies which I edit for the African Criminology and Justice Association, I answered the question: ‘What is Criminology?’ And I stated that it is ‘A Control-Freak Discipline’. I was invited back to The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine to present this paper as a Keynote Address for the International Conference on Penal Abolitionism. I was told by one of the organizers that the police officers attending were eager to challenge me, and I said to them, bring it on. When one lady officer objected that the national safety officers did not like being painted as the bad guys, I responded that the same bosses that pay them also pay us scholars but the difference is that we are hired to apply our critical thinking to the order of things while they have the mandate to impose order. 

The Chief Judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice who chaired the session privately agreed with many of my recommendations. A radio DJ had made a joke earlier about my call for Reparative Justice by using it as the subject of his daily ‘Tings that make me vex’. This time, he interviewed me live on radio about my call on the Prime Minister to legalize marijuana as reported that morning in The Guardian,  and I answered those who called in to say that it was a gate-way drug by asking them to help to take it out of the gate by making it legal. 

 One of the sources that supported my critique of the obsession with controlling others by criminologists is Kasala Kamara. I cited his revelation that in ancient Egypt, it was reported to the Pharaoh that the principality of Damascus was rebelling and demanding their independence from Egypt. The advisers recommended crushing the rebellion militarily to teach a lesson to other would-be rebels but the Pharaoh invited the rebellious prince to dinner instead. 

After liming (feasting and philosophizing) with him in the royal palace, the rebel prince was asked what his people wanted. He answered that they wanted to be free to govern themselves by themselves. The Pharaoh shook his hands and told him to go and tell his people that they were now independent and free to rule themselves as they saw fit. Compare that with the constant waging of wars through invasion, enslavement, colonization, genocide, and exploitation engaged in by the imperialist West for five hundred years at a huge cost in lives to poor Europeans who were used as cannon fodder around the world and also at home where militarized policing gave rise to the BlackLivesMatter movement worldwide.  South Africa massacred poor people protesting the jailing of President Jacob Zuma for alleged 'state capture' while the proven criminals of apartheid land, gold, and diamond theft and mass murder are forgiven to walk free in a deeply corrupt South Africa.

By forgiving the rebels and granting their request for freedom, the rulers of ancient Egypt avoided putting the lives of their own soldiers at harm’s way and avoided creating enemies abroad through the mass killings of the loved ones of others. The wealth that could have been wasted in such wars were instead devoted to education, the development of canals, science, arts, architecture, medicine and philosophy in the longest lasting dynasties ever recorded in history. I was also borrowing indirectly from this book when I Directed and Produced an award-winning documentary on the banning and eventual liberation of Shouters Baptist Faith in Trinidad and Tobago. 

The documentary, ‘Shouters and the Control Freak Empire’ asked criminologists to explain what crimes the Shouters committed that made the colonial administration to proscribe them, arrest, and harass them just for praising God in their own bell-ringing ways. In accordance with the decolonization paradigm, I suggested that the Shouters were right to see themselves as people who were victimized and abused by the imperialist state for their freedom of conscience, a people who resisted non-violently by holding services secretly in the liberation struggle to regain their freedom, making them deserving of reparative justice. It premiered on Gayelle TV and later won the International Best Short Documentary Prize at the Columbia Gorge Film Festival, USA, 2011. 

 As I look back at the book and the author, I now understand better why he is named Kasala Kamara, which literally means in my Igbo language – complain (Kasala) and let it be known (Kamara), appropriate meanings for the rebellious Igbo man who led a rebellion in Guyana, and the common West African name for great teacher from whom he took his second name. However, the name could also be meaningful in other African languages. 

I came to hear from those carrying commerce that he was one of the Sixth Form student activists who supported the 1970s Black Power revolution in the country to end discrimination against people of African descent. On graduation from the St. Augustine campus of UWI in 1975, he became one of the leaders of the National Joint Action Committee and the book emerged from his 30 part radio program series that he narrated in 1988 in his capacity as Director of the Caribbean Institute of Regional Affairs and International Relations in observance of  African Liberation Day and with a commitment to the re-emergence of Africa as a leading world power. I heard that when the activists were rounded up and put on trial, a Nigerian genocidist army officer who led the genocide against the Igbo in Biafra (in which an estimated 3.1 million died in 30 months, 1967-1970) was said to have been seconded from Nigeria to be one of the military judges that tried the activists. 

I heard that he recommended the death penalty as appropriate because that was what he would do in Nigeria to coup plotters. Prime Minister Eric Williams rejected the death penalty and all but forgave the activists while implementing some of their demands to see Africans hired as bank tellers or air hostesses in Trinidad and Tobago, the only country in the world where people of African descent are officially known as Africans. 

 The forgiveness of the unforgivable is common among people of African descent who went through slavery, colonialism, apartheid, neocolonialism, and internal colonialism without seeking revenge, only reparative justice i9n accordance with the Africana philosophy of forgiveness, compared to Abrahamic traditions that rule out the forgiveness of the unforgivable, according to Derrida. Such apparent forgiveness was not rare in the Caribbean for Fidel Castro was spared after the June 26 Movement failed to capture state power and he, in turn, forgave the captured Bay Of Pigs invaders and sent them back to the US whereas Che was executed after being wounded and taken prisoner. 

Hugo Chavez was forgiven by Venezuela, the first country in the world to abolish the death penalty, and Chavez forgave the military officers who had briefly overthrown him. Granada has also released from the death row, members of the New Jewel Movement who had been sentenced to death for the killing of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and others that prompted the US to invade the country. Mandela abolished the death penalty while the killers of Chris Hani were awaiting trial and possible sentencing to death. He launched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to hear confessions and offer forgiveness, but no offers of reparative justice there. 

 Twenty years after the Black Power revolution in Trinidad and Tobago, the July 27, 1990 uprising by Muslimeen activists again rocked the government at the Red Building in Port of Spain. Instead of detaining the leaders without trial or assassinating them as was common practice across the world, the government went to court to try and evict the group from a piece of land that they were occupying without authorization. 

If the government leaders had read this book by Kamara, they would have allowed the Muslimeen to occupy the land and grow their own dasheen or okra and things as they wanted. The government should not be evicting citizens from land where they want to grow food while the same government spends huge resources to import foreign food that the poor people may not be able to afford, or just not wanted by people who want to grow their own. 

 This book was at the back of my mind as a journalist, Nazma Muller, interviewed me for The Express Newspaper on policy options to reduce the mass violence in the beautiful country. I told her that the people were brutalized by history and so it was not surprising that they would be violent.  I suggested that the government could help to reduce the violence by ending the death penalty which brutalizes the conscience of the people, as I argued in a paper written in the country; by ending the war on drugs which escalates violence, by legalizing sex work, abortion, and same sex marriage, the prohibition of which promotes toxic masculinity, and by offering reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans who got nothing at the end of enslavement. The corrupt, brutal, neocolonial regimes in Nigeria have been prone to be overthrown despite the use of the death penalty as a punishment for failed frequent coups. 

 I heard that some preachers preached against me at church after reading the interview but if they had read this book by Kamara, they would have agreed with at least some of my recommendations. Someone reproduced the interview as a booklet with an artist impression of my interview photograph on the cover and with the title, The Big Bad Book, with copies sent to all the banks in the country, just for so. I was informed that a credit company used the article as the cover for their annual report on bad debts. Huh? Eventually, Prime Minister Keith Rowley bowed to reason by accepting the recommendation of the Caricom Cannabis Commission to decriminalize marijuana for medical uses. I hope that the people of Trinidad and Tobago will have the courage to push for full legalization of marijuana to allow poor women and men to grow it and sell it to tourists during carnival and thereby earn legitimate wealth from which they would pay taxes, as I argued in a written submission to the commission. 

I hope that they will have the courage to abolish the death penalty as we recommended (in a joint paper with David Greenberg of New York University) published in the British Journal of Criminology. When the country of The Gambia proposed to execute 37 people at once, this paper was sent to them with the observation that it was the colonial administration that imposed the death penalty that African countries have retained long after the colonizers abolished it as barbaric in the metropole, partly because there is proof that it is not a deterrent. I hope that this was one of the reasons that made the government to suspend the mass execution. Ent (no be so)? 

 In agreement with the final Part V of the book on the present-day riches and potentials of Africa, I invited Kasala Kamara to guest teach my political sociology class for Graduate Students. The students evaluated his teaching to be of very high quality and if I had stayed longer in the country, I would have recommended that he should be hired as a permanent lecturer. Readers can support his work by asking their libraries to order copies for them if they cannot afford it. Students can also use inter-library loan to access the book and they can write to various departments on campus to raise funding to bring the author as a speaker by Zoom or in person. I recommend the book to all levels of readers. 

 Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Blacksburg, Virginia.

Open Letter to TT Prime Minister

The Office of the Honourable Prime Minister of TT

Through

The Office of the Honourable Attorney General

Through

The Office of Law Revision Commission

lawrevision@legalaffairs.gov.tt

Dear Honourable Dr. Rowley,

AN OPEN LETTER ON POLICY CHANGE

I wish to commend your government for maintaining the status of Trinidad and Tobago as a High Human Development Index country, along with most Caribbean countries, according to the annual ranking of the UNNDP. I hope that you will increase the rate of development, say in the area of gender equality, to help TT to join the Very High Human Development Index countries soon. I also hope that you will share your secrets to success with African countries that continue to hug the Low Human Development Index ranks with a few exceptions.

I worked at UWI St. Augustine from 2006 to 2009 as a Professor of Sociology. During that time, I was fortunate to receive a government of Trinidad and Tobago researcher-initiated grant to study the ‘Causes of Crime in the Country, the Region and Globally’. The major activities were mentoring junior researchers, the formation of the Caribbean Criminology Network across the three campuses of UWI, and the hosting of an international conference on the theme of Developing a Caribbean Criminology.

I am writing to share one of the policy implications of the findings that you may wish to consider to help the country and the region to reduce the high rates of violent crime and serve as a shining model to other developing countries and regions. Similar policy recommendations have already been published and so you may already be familiar with them but I am using this opportunity to urge you to summon the political will and courage to implement them at little or no cost for the benefit of the people.

In April 2016 The Honourable Faris Al-Rawi, the Attorney General of TT, told The Guardian Newspaper that in Trinidad and Tobago, “A remand cell has nine people in it, four of whom are in for charges of murder and the rest there for possession of two joints of marijuana. They share the cell for two and three years and then you have to ask yourself if you are encouraging recidivism or criminality by association.”

From the statistics that he cited, it can be estimated that marijuana remand prisoners cost the government 75 million dollars annually for remand prisoners alone. Given that criminologists have for a long time validated the theory of differential association by Edwin Sutherland according to whom criminality is learned through association with other criminals, the detention of nonviolent drug users and other petty offenders with violent offenders could only lead to the petty offenders becoming more violent when released.

The government can change this overnight by instructing the Law Revision Commission to immediately reclassify marijuana as a legal substance to be regulated in the same way as tobacco and alcohol which kill lots of people every year while marijuana has never killed anyone.

We educators can be relied upon to teach young people to say no to all drugs and when they suffer any adverse effects, the hospitals will help to reduce the harm without involving the criminal justice system as is the case with the much more dangerous tobacco and alcohol.

Besides, doctors are willing to recommend marijuana for medicinal uses to patients and so the government should allow this option to be exercised legally instead of forcing patients to patronize drug gangs. Raffique Shah wrote a passionate plea in The Express of March 13, 2017 seeking permission to be allowed to use cannabis oil to treat his Parkinson’s disease.

As you may already know, Jamaica has taken the lead in the region by decriminalizing the medical uses of marijuana. Trinidad and Tobago can afford to take a step further by legalizing it for recreational purposes and regulating it to ensure that underage children are not able to purchase it from licensed dealers contrary to the current situation where anyone can buy from dealers who do not check the age of the buyers.

The only ones benefiting from keeping marijuana illegal are the drug gangs and they will be forced out of business by legitimate dealers who would be licensed and who would pay taxes on their sales to generate more revenues. Other products could also be manufactured from hemp to help diversify the economy.

The government will also save money from ending unnecessary prosecutions by directing police officers to cease and desist from going after non-violent marijuana users. This move will earn police officers more respect and love in the community and they may no longer be called Babylon. Instead, more ladies will wine on them during carnival.

This policy has bipartisan support with Mr. Basdeo Panday once expressing his support for re-legalization since he remembered when sugar cane field workers were paid part of their wages with marijuana during the colonial days. Dr. Peter Hanoomansingh supports this with evidence from his doctoral dissertation in History.

Internationally, South Africa and Israel have decriminalized medical marijuana this year with huge business potentials, the Italian army is authorized to grow medical marijuana and supply to hospitals, eight states and the District of Columbia in the US have voted to legalize it for recreational uses and 26 states have authorized the use of medical marijuana, Portugal has decriminalized all drugs since 1997 and The Netherlands has been experimenting with legalized marijuana sales in coffee shops since 1976. Uruguay recently legalized marijuana for recreational uses.

If the government is afraid of the electoral consequences of legalization, then call a referendum on the policy and let the people decide. Otherwise, encourage a bipartisan bill to be presented in parliament for legalization. Or encourage citizens to sue the government for the deprivation of liberty and let the courts decide. The more courageous move would be for the Honourable Prime Minister to lead the policy change with an immediate directive to the Law Revision Commission to reclassify marijuana as a legal substance.

Since the law against marijuana was imposed by colonial officials without justification, it is time for Trinidad and Tobago to echo the mantra of the founding father, Dr. Eric Williams, by telling the people that Massa Day Done so that law abiding adults can use their freedom to decide what to consume without posing a threat to themselves or to others in a democratic society.

Yours truly,

Dr. Onwubiko Agozino

Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies

Virginia Tech

Blacksburg

VA 24061

USA

540-231-7699

agozino@vt.edu

CC:

Omatie Lyder, editor in chief, Express: omatie.lyder@trinidadexpress.com

Fazeer Mohammed, host of Morning Edition, TV6: fazeer2001@gmail.com

Jones P. Madeira, editor in chief of Newsday: jones.madeira@gmail.com

Anthony Wilson, EIC, Guardian: anthony.wilson@guardian.co.tt

Carisa Lee, producer of The Morning Brew: lee.ccarisa@mail.com

Joshua Seemungal, reporter, TV6: jseem001@fiu.edu

Satesha Mahabir: satesh@cnc3.co.tt

Varun Bhagerty, CNMG: varun@cnmg.tt

Sandra Maharaj, CNMG: smaharaj@cnmg.tt

LESSONS FROM TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO’S SWEET CARNIVAL

By Biko Agozino

In Trinidad and Tobago, I witnessed what many locals tell me is the ‘true’ carnival unlike the version in the Notting Hill Carnival of London where I first saw this phenomenon in the 1990s. The one in Trinidad and Tobago was not as huge as the London ones that I have seen given the fact that the population of London is more than three times the population of the whole country and that the carnival in TT takes place all over the country and not just in one city like London. But as in most things in life, size is not everything since the Trinidad and Tobago carnival still serves as the model for most other carnivals. I heard that delegates were sent from Cross River state to study this carnival and take back lessons for a better organization of the Amazing Grace Carnival that has since taken off in Nigeria. Typical of Nigerian ethnic rivalry, the result was that there are separate carnivals in Abuja, Calabar, Lagos and Port Harcourt on different days instead of having one weekend when there will be a national holiday to allow the people to 'play a little mas' in different towns at the same time as they do in Trinidad and Tobago to make for a bigger international tourist attraction. Here are a few tips for the cultural industries in Africa from my own observation of the events in Trinidad and Tobago:

The carnival starts months in advance as the Pan Yards get busy with rehearsals for the panorama competition. This is a key element of the carnival and it is based around the steel drum or ‘pan’ which was invented by poor Africans of Trinidad and refined to the extent that it has been adopted as the national instrument of the country, shown on the symbol for the highest national awards. Does any African country have a national instrument and if they do, is there an annual competition in which young and old play together to keep the national folk music alive while trying to win huge sums of money for their efforts? South Africa is probably the exception not only with the vuvuzeela that annoyed some World Cup commentators but also with contests in gospel music but I doubt if it is a national contest sponsored by the government rather than by civil society.

In addition to the panorama in which most orchestras use the magical steel drums to play all modern instruments and also ‘sing’ songs instrumentally, there was also the ‘Calypso Monarch’ competition in which singers go through quarter finals, semi finals and finals in front of judges to determine who would wear the crown as calypso king or queen for the year. Even prisoners had their own monarch competition and many government departments and educational institutions organized fetes in which people bought tickets for food, drinks and music as fund-raising efforts. Every weekend from early January till carnival weekend, there are multiple fetes (with top local bands) to choose, from the high priced all inclusive fetes favoured by the middle classes to mass gatherings like the Fire Fete (hosted by fire fighters) where there were once fights with axes and knives one year.

I know that many African countries are proud of the musical genres that they invented just as Trinidad and Tobago is proud of calypso, soca and rapso music that African people invented therein addition to chutney music invented by the East Indians in Trinidad but how many of African countries are organizing competitions in which children will vie for, e.g., Afrobeat, Juju or Highlife Monarch of the year to keep the talents growing? On the contrary, it was left to the children of the Afrobeat king, Fela Kuti, to organize the annual Felabration events in remembrance of their father who was repeatedly jailed and nearly killed by military dictators in Nigeria for his patriotic lyrics.

I was amazed to hear that many of the Calypsonians were serving police officers or teachers and yet they had the courage to ‘yab’ or abuse their government in their songs without losing their jobs. One police officer actually went to court to say that the reason why he was not selected as one of the semi finalists was because his song was critical of the Prime Minister and the court actually agreed that he should be allowed to sing in the semi finals where he again failed to impress the judges even though he already won in some other competitions, beating some of the monarch finalists. How many African countries would proudly promote music with political and social commentary as part of the culture of the people?Bob Marley was ambushed and shot with his wife while Peter Tosh was brutalized by the police and later executed by unknown assailants for rebellious lyrics in Jamaica.

There were also competitions in Soca music or the dancehall version of calypso and the Soca monarch one year surprisingly was a singer from Barbados. The Mighty Sparrow made this link clear in his 1978 soca hit song titled, ‘Dudu Yemi - Natasha From Nigeria’. I am aware that many African musicians sing versions of soca but how many of them would be sponsored by their countries or by businesses in their countries to participate in the annual soca competitions in Trinidad and Tobago where this genre originated among the urban poor Africans (they call themselves Africans officially) or host such contests in Africa to help promote the talents of the youth?

Apart from the musical competitions, there were costume design competitions, big band, small band, mini band and all sorts of different contests that started well in advance of the carnival itself. Then on the morning of the first day of Carnival, Jouvert morning, people went out as early as 4:00AM to roll in the mud and paint their faces blue or red and party on the streets until sunrise. This is part of the ritual of letting go of inhibitions and being free to explore your fantasies as part of the carnival culture. Although I have not played Jouvert, I saw many faces with mud and paints when I went to see the carnival processions in the afternoon of Monday but I did not see any of the fights that used to characterize the rivalry between the big bands in years gone by. To get a better literary description of all these, just read Earl Lovelace’s novel, The Dragon Can’t Dance.

Scantily-clad beautiful women and men file past in costumes that cost them thousands of the local dollars to buy. They dance and ‘wine’ their waists seductively with smiles of pleasure. Some of the costumes depicted dessert scenes with snakes and camels, some ‘masqueraders’ wear skimpy soldier costumes, some played ‘Old Mas’ as pirates, some as sailors, some as kings and queens, some as black Indians, some as African Tribes, while others present a coffin for some industrialization policies they did not like and the huge sound systems boomed from truck after truck to see which musical composition would be played most frequently and therefore be awarded the road march prize. Notice that men and women are encouraged to play mas or wear masks whereas the enthronement of patriarchy in Africa by colonialism now means that only men are allowed to play masquerades (including female masks like Agbonma or Gelede, played by cross-dressing Igbo and Yoruba men, respectively) as Nwando Achebe indirectly documented in her book, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria with the case of the woman who brought out her own masquerade only for the men to seize it with the support of the Colonial administration.

Among the revelers were many tourists and many of the spectators too were foreign in appearance. You guessed right, the costume business and the income from tourism, not to mention the many street traders hawking the winning tunes, food, drinks, memorabilia and allegedly pirated popular copies of Nigerian films must be adding a lot to the country’s economy annually. Trinidadians could also learn filmmaking from Nollywood.

The second day of the carnival is often more enchanting and is characterized by ‘pretty mas’. The costumes appeared more elaborate, the dancers appeared more daring as they would sometimes leave their troupe to wine on a spectator. The wining seemed to follow a rule that women were in control of the wining and the men were not allowed to touch the women wining in front of them except with their equally wining waists. Many of the women were playing ‘mas’ with their husbands or boy friends and any touching could result in a fight, I was told. Yet, I discovered that the no touch rule was also aesthetic because grabbing the waists of 'winers' could cramp their styles.

There were more female masqueraders than male ones and so I also found many women wining on each other. Most European couples wined together but a few of those black men that the Mighty Sparrow called ‘Congo Boys’ wined with European women; East Indian couples also wined together mostly in band sections all by themselves and African couples also wined together as if there was an informal rule that segregated the masqueraders by race and ethnicity. I was later told that people signed up for bands in groups of friends and family members and tended to dance together not as a result of discrimination but just as people who planned to party together.

Overall, the carnival is fun to watch and I am told that it is even more fun to participate in by playing mas or masquerading. There were rumours that some people were leaving the country out of fear that crime would be on the rise during the carnival but carnival was remarkably safe according to official reports. How many African countries could boast of such incident-free street carnivals that would attract tourists under the watchful eyes of security officials who were not distracted by the greed for kolanuts or bribes from spectators and performers alike?  Yes, some police officers have been charged with involvement in kidnapping for ransom but it was unbelievable to watch a soldier or police officer stand at attention while a woman was wining provocatively in front of his waist.

I am fully aware that Africa is rich in culture but we may have to learn from the African Diaspora, better ways of maximizing the returns from the culture industry. The African Trinidadians would be quick to tell you that their ancestors brought many of the cultural icons with them from Africa and so we should not be shy to study how they have evolved them into major industries with the support of public policy.

The key to the marketing is to open the doors to all who wished to participate instead of continuing with exclusionary practices that suggest that only men or natives could play masquerades with whips to chase women and children and intimidate them along the streets or fight each other physically or remotely without a cause. Yes, I was told that in previous years, there were fights between carnival bands but these days, such fights are merely symbolic in the sense that the sound systems clashed to see whose sound would be heard and loved by more dancers. Let us learn from their successes in sustaining a multi-racial democracy of Africans and East Indians, Europeans and Amerindians and avoid any mistakes they may have made.

Dr. Biko Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Professor of Africana Studies, Virginia Tech.