1st Edition
Carnival Culture in Action – The Trinidad Experience
This beautifully illustrated volume features work by leading writers and experts on carnival from around the world, and includes two stunning photo essays by acclaimed photographers Pablo Delano and Jeffrey Chock. Editor Milla Cozart Riggio presents a body of work that takes the reader on a fascinating journey exploring the various aspects of carnival - its traditions, its history, its music, its politics - and prefaces each section with an illuminating essay.
Traditional carnival theory, based mainly on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Victor Turner, has long defined carnival as inversive or subversive. The essays in this groundbreaking anthology collectively reverse that trend, offering a re-definition of 'carnival' that focuses not on the hierarchy it temporarily displaces or negates, but a one that is rooted in the actual festival event.
Carnival details its new theory in terms of a carnival that is at once representative and distinctive: The Carnival of Trinidad - the most copied yet least studied major carnival in the world.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Foreword: Carnival (Theory) after Bakhtin Introduction: Time Out or Time In?: The Urban Communities of Carnival Carnival Timeline Tobago Carnival - From the Nineteenth Century to the Present Part 1: 1. The Carnival Story - Then and Now: Introduction to Part 1 2. Cannes Brulées 3. The Trinidad Carnival in the Late Nineteenth Century 4. The Martinican: Dress and Politics in Nineteenth-century Trinidad Carnival 5. Indian Presence in Carnival 6. Chinese in Trinidad Carnival Part 2: Playin' Yuhself - Masking the Other: Tradition and Change in Carnival Masquerades 7. 'Play Mas' - Play Me, Play We: Introduction to Part 2 8. Peter Minshall: A Voice to Add to the Song of the Universe An Interview 9. Amerindian Masking in Trinidad's Carnival: The House of Black Elk in San Fernando 10. The Blue Devils of Paramin: Tradition and Improvisation in a Village Carnival Band 11. Paramin Blue Devils: A Photographic Essay 12. 'The Jouvay Theatre Process': From the Street to the Stage 13. Carnival People, 1998-2002: A Photographic Essay Part 3: Pan and Calypso - Carnival Beats 14. We Jamming It: Introduction to Part 3 15. The Emancipation-Jouvay Tradition and the Almost Loss of Pan 16. Voices of Steel: A Historical Perspective 17. Notes on Pan 18. Reinventing Calypso 19. On Redefining the Nation through Party Music Part 4: Carnival Diaspora 2 0. The Festival Heard Round the World: Introduction to Part 4 21. Globalization in Reverse: The Export of Trinidad Carnival 22. Carnival in Leeds and London, UK: Making New Black British Subjectivities 23. 'New York Equalize You?' Change and Continuity in Brooklyn' Labor Day Carnival 24. Trinidad Carnival Glossary Contributors Works Cited Index
Biography
Milla Cozart Riggio is the James J.Goodwin Professor of English at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. Her publications and research interests focus on Carnival, medieval drama and Shakespeare and her essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of journals, including The Shakespeare Quarterly and TDR. She is the editor of The Wisdom Symposium, Ta'ziyeh: Ritual and Drama in Iran and Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance. She has also worked as a consultant to the National Carnival Commission of Trinidad and Tobago and in 1999 held a government-appointed post on the World Conference on Carnival organising committee in Trinidad.
