9th International Conference on Carnival Arts and Cultures

Caribbean Carnival was born in an extremely patriarchal society. Yet, while its cultural forms have replicated some of the gendered binaries at its heart, it also remains a space in which established rules or gender and sexuality are turned upside down. Today women across the Caribbean and its diaspora are changing carnival and using it as a platform for feminist empowerment, to call for social and racial justice and to challenge preconceived ideas around sexuality and femininity. Based on research conducted during the international, diasporic AHRC-funded research network project ‘Women in Carnival’, this keynote will explore how carnivals in Trinidad, New Orleans and Leeds are challenging boundaries through ‘mas intersections’ and taking politics and intersectional feminism on the road.

Bio: Dr Emily Zobel Marshall is of French-Caribbean and British heritage and grew up in the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales. She is a Reader in Postcolonial Literature at the School of Cultural Studies at Leeds Beckett University. She is a expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields. She plays mas in Leeds West Indian carnival and has established a Caribbean Carnival Cultures research platform and network that aims to bring the critical, creative, academic and artistic aspects of carnival into dialogue with one another. She has had poems published in several international journals and anthologies. She is Co-Chair of the David Oluwale Memorial Association, a charity committed to fighting racism and homelessness, and a Creative Associate of the Geraldine Connor Foundation.

Typically, when discussing Carnival as a socio-political cultural force, the ritual potency of Traditional mas—Fancy/King Sailor, Fancy/Wild Indian, Midnight Robber, Jab Jab, Jab Molassie, and so on—is acknowledged and discussed. Pretty Mas, however, is usually considered mere spectacle, undermining the seriousness of traditional mas. The irony of this binary formulation is three-fold. First, most of the traditional mas characters started as Fancy (pretty) mas, a response to colonial aesthetic pressures. Second, this separation speaks to the lingering colonial hegemonic definitions of culture—we are using Eurocentric ethnographic definitions to distinguish ritual from spectacle. Yet, in Yoruba tradition, for example, ritual is spectacle and spectacle can be ritual. Third, while the word ritual is evoked, the spirituality of the festival is underexplored. This paper seeks to shift the framework from Eurocentric ethnography to Afrocentric ontology and epistemology as a means of interpreting the latent ritual potential of all carnival masquerading practices, traditional as well as pretty.

Bio: Kela Nnarka Francis, assistant professor at the University of Trinidad and Tobago, earned her PhD in Caribbean Literature from Howard University in 2012 and continues to research topics in Caribbean literature, culture, and society, with particular focus on secular rituals in the Caribbean and the wider African diaspora.

Discussants: Ruth Tompsett (Carnival Archive Project), Christopher Laird (Banyan Archives), Annabel Valentine (Paul Oliver Archive of African American Music), Tola Dabiri (Museum X and Brick by Brick Communities), Laila Shah (Carnival Village Trust Youth and Windrush Memorial Committee), Stephen Spark (Soca News)

Moderation: Rachel Barbaresi

Digital technology offers an unprecedented range of possibilities to archive arts and culture, bearing potential to decentralise and pluralise the archive as well as risks related to data protection, copyright and accessibility'. Many key issues in the digitisation process, however, are the continuation of broader challenges in archiving performing arts. This roundtable explores experiences and strategies in navigating the challenges to record, preserve and provide access to collections. Carnival highlights these challenges probably more than any other art form with its wide range of creative practices, their ephemeral character and the struggle of funding independent archives in response to the misrepresentation in the UK press and lack of credit for artists. In conversation with archivists of the Paul Oliver Archive of African American Music and other initiatives at Oxford Brookes University, Carnival practitioners will discuss the possibilities of archiving and visions for future projects.

Photo Credit: Projection in Junie James' Caribbean Living Room. Collaboration with Junie James, Rachel Barbaresi and Oxford Brookes Foundation Art & Design students 2020.

After two years of moving events online and hosting smaller community gatherings due to Covid restrictions, the charity Cowley Road Works announced that they would take a break from delivering a Carnival in 2022 and take time to consider the future. This roundtable seeks to provide a platform to reflect and envision the change needed in this pivotal moment for Carnival in Oxford. How can the festival be reshaped and reinvigorated? Who will participate in the regeneration process? And how can it be grounded in the rich heritage of Caribbean Carnival in the city and the UK? In the light of the cancellation of other parades such as Reading and Huddersfield Carnival, reflections on Cowley Road Carnival are relevant beyond the local context. Drawing on the expertise and experience of conference participants, this roundtable seeks to develop strategies for the next Carnival season.

Photo Credit: Junie James

Chair: Meleisa Ono George (University of Oxford)

Junie James (ACKHI – Afrikan Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative): Carnival in Oxford

Michelle Harewood (University of East London): Exploring narratives of power and rights in Notting Hill’s Carnival: Masquerading for humanity

Roger P. Gibbs (Canada): Toronto Carnival: from the streets to the stadium

Chair: Andrew Martin (Inver Hills College, Minnesota)

Andrew Martin (Inver Hills College, Minnesota): Sunday Carnival: Traditional Music in the Caribbean Church

Paul Massy (Florida Atlantic University College of Education): Post-pandemic - The return of the Panyard and its role in advancing steelpan teaching and learning

Wanda Atkins (The French Panorama IG): The French Panorama 2022: We Love Pan - the French Touch

Photo Credit: Stephen Spark

Chair: Haroun Shah

Roger P. Gibbs (Canada): Rhythm in Calypso

Alexander Loewenthal (aka Alexander D Great (UK)

Jeffery Hinds (aka De Admiral (UK)

Vincent John (UK)

Chair: Lynda Rosenior-Patten (Maestro7 Creative Management Consultancy)

Janice Fournillier (Georgia State University) and Stacey Leigh Ross (University of the Arts, London): The Legacy Lives On / The Mas’ Lives On

Tola Dabiri (Museum X and Brick by Brick Communities): Singing the Past - Singing the Future

Greta Mendez MBE: ‘Come on Fish, sing to me’: Traditional Mas and Carnival in the art film ‘Ah! Hard Rain’

Chair: Marvin George (The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts)

Alpha Obika (University of the West Indies, Mona): Exploring the use of Digital Technology in Trinidad's Virtual Carnival 2021 and Beyond

Kai Barratt (University of Technology, Jamaica) and Kearn Williams (Carnival Institute of Trinidad and Tobago): We Outside?...” Perceptions of Virtual Presentations of the Trinidad Carnival 2022

Camille Quamina (University of the West Indies, Mona): Lavway: (Per)Forming Cultural Citizenship in the Virtual Space

Chair: Kela Francis

Krisson Joseph (University of Trinidad and Tobago): The barrack yard communal education site

Roger Henry (University of Trinidad and Tobago): Codifying Steelpan Music

Mia Gromandy-Benjamin (University of Trinidad and Tobago): Merging the barrack yard with traditional education

A collaborative, diaspora centred, development approach towards a decolonised, community focused strategy for arts and cultural development and production: a "call to action" for creative sector professionals: thought leaders, strategic managers/planners, academics, educationalists, trainers, designers, crafts people, makers, technicians and festival specialists.

This presentation will focus on leadership, collaborative partnerships, skills exchange, training & development and innovative approaches to production, monetisation and presentation that will directly benefit professional arts practitioners. It is hoped that this presentation will facilitate new conversations and interactions with creative practitioners in the UK and their counterparts in the diaspora (Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, North and South America).