Fuh Carnival: in the bush againn - the Peter O'Connor commentary

--> Some years ago, just before Carnival, I was in a cell phone service store when Crazy walked in. It was around the time when he was singing “Paul: Your mother come” and other kaisos which played on words, and which if “you had the vice in your own head” you might have deemed smutty. 

I told Crazy that I was going camping in the forest for carnival. He said he liked that and rolled off the line “Fuh Carnival! I going in the bush”! I do not think he ever developed it, but it stuck in my head, and while the city throbs today as it revs up for the Mas’, I am safely ensconced in Brasso Mountain Estate, under the North face of Cerro del Aripo.

So Fuh Carnival! You play your Mas’, dirty or nice, I am staying up in paradise.

And it is not as though I did not once love her, but Carnival changed. Me too, for sure, but we changed in different ways. She has more rules now, and I have less, so we have become incompatible and have drifted apart, but without rancour.

Forgetting old roots, Carnival now has new routes, and the big bands will no longer swelter in the Savannah where wining girls, impatient to get on the stage will accost maturing spectators like me and “put dong a wine”, testing my spine and sanity. And as beautiful costumes gave way to beautiful bodies exposed, the lock-on-to your-loins by women too beautiful to even take me on in real life became a real fascination! And with so many of them to see around me, an old man could end up with a stiff neck---or something.

But wining is being lost as well. That and its reverse counterpart “roll back” have been culturally hijacked by aliens in America. And have been renamed—“Twerk”! How can we allow this to happen?

From the time that skinny little girl did a little roll-back at some big show in Foreign, our “wining”, done poorly toobesides, has become an international fad without acknowledging and crediting from where it came. I even saw Trinis who wine down and roll back on me all in the Savannah, claiming on FB how disappointed they were with Miley, for behaving so. And it was not the poor quality of the roll back that offended, but that she was doing it “publicly”. And now the whole world is twerking as if Miley and America invented that, because we had failed to copyright and market the thing under its proper names.

So, Fuh Carnival! I doh want no skinny little bamsee twerking back on me/ If I cannot get a RollyPolly “back back”, I just keeping off the track.

And the “Track”, where one time you could lime, quite inside the steel and hear the iron ring, now you have to wait outside. And when Pretty Mas’ passing, or even waiting, you could have jumped inside and take a wine. But now it have security and rope to keep you out. And I understand why, OK, because too many people was (sic) going in among the music and the Mas’. So now I have to look on from outside, and it is not the same for me. “Long ago, It din’ used to happen so / You could jump and play / Anywhey”. Popo sing that, long ago, yes, but it has all become even stricter, more rules oriented, and therefore more difficult for me to enjoy.

And it is not only the new rules in the road, but the fighting about everything! Who not arguing, quarrelling. Who not protesting, suing. And more people whining than wining, and we have to wonder, Machel Montano notwithstanding, where has the joy gone? Calypso is no longer clever, but ugly, in both its sexual and political innuendo.

But back to the bacchanal, and the desire to object and protest and sue, just like modern carnival requires, I urge you all, the NCC, NCBA, COTT, T&TCO, TUCO, Denise, and all the Wining, Backing Back Bumsees of the Carnival Race: Sue “twerk”, “twerkers”, Miley Cyrus and all the skinny bamsee women who have badly plagiarized our hallowed ritual of Wining and Rolling Back, and reduced it to shameless ridicule. Insist upon an international ban on twerking and let the world be aware of the mesmerizing skill of the Winer Girl of whom we can only plead, and proudly sing (Thank you, Sparrow):

“Doh do dat…. Doh do dat… Doh back back on me, doh back back, She look so pretty, really sexy, Bum Bum look so sexy, Jammin’ on me purposely, Dahlin’, Doh do dat to me …….. ” .

And when we bring back that, then I may come back for Carnival!