Trinidad and Tobago
- works
- 17
- 14 books · 3 films
- period covered
- 1824–1992
- language of writing
- English
The steelpan is the only acoustic instrument invented in the twentieth century. It was born in the yards of Port of Spain, at the end of the nineteen thirties, when the authorities had banned skin drums: the musicians fell back on dustbin lids, wheel rims, cans, then discovered that a hammered oil drum could be tuned note by note. An industrial object abandoned by the oil companies became a chromatic instrument, with its orchestras of several dozen musicians, its national competitions and its scores.
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That kind of recycling is the island's mark. Trinidad received Spaniards, French, English, deported Africans, then, from 1845, Indian workers under contract who today form nearly half the population, plus Chinese, Syrians and Venezuelans. Nothing there is original and everything there is local: the carnival with its inherited characters, the calypso that comments on political news to the point that singers have been prosecuted for sedition, soca, chutney which mixes Indian and creole rhythms.
Literature drew from it a form of ironic observation. C. L. R. James published in 1936 the life of a Port of Spain yard seen by a middle-class tenant, Samuel Selvon recounted in 1956 West Indians landed in London in a creolised English that was then an audacity, Naipaul built his first novels on a small swindler become a notable, and Earl Lovelace placed in 1979 a man whose only work is his carnival costume. Derek Walcott, born in Saint Lucia and settled in Trinidad, founded a theatre there and won the Nobel.
What awaits the reader is a precise social comedy, without indulgence and without contempt, in which everyone plays a part they did not choose. The novel that opens this page tells of the comic rise of a schoolteacher turned mystic healer, and it is its author's first published book.
A way to begin
The Mystic Masseur
V. S. Naipaul · 1957
The first published book by V. S. Naipaul, future Nobel laureate: the comic rise of a schoolteacher turned healer in Trinidad.
In colonial Trinidad, Ganesh Ramsumair, a schoolteacher without vocation, returns to his village dreaming of being a writer, or a masseur, at a time when masseurs are worth little. He marries the daughter of a shopkeeper from whom he extracts a dowry, reads hundreds of books, self-publishes a little treatise on Hinduism, then discovers a gift as a mystic healer, and success comes, with money and ambition.
Timeline
- 1824–1854Before abolitionJean-Baptiste Philippe and Michel Maxwell Philip plead for the free coloureds.
- 1936–1957The London generationC. L. R. James, Selvon, Naipaul. Trinidad is written from England.
- 1974–1990Return homeHugh Robertson's Bim; Lovelace writes the carnival and the street.
Reading keys
- Afro-Trinidadian names are British or French, inherited from slavery; Indo-Trinidadian names indicate the region of India, the caste and the religion.
- Chinese, Syrian and Portuguese names bear witness to later migrations, and the composition of the name places a character socially.
- Afro-Trinidadian families are often matrifocal, Indo-Trinidadian families rather patrilineal with arranged marriages, which gives two systems in one country.
- Creole kinship terms extend the family to the neighbourhood, and an aunt is not necessarily a relative.
- The political rivalry between Afro-Trinidadians and Indo-Trinidadians structures public life and is expressed by detour.
- The attempted coup of 1990 and the recent criminal violence are sensitive subjects.
- The calypso is the place where one may say what the press does not say, provided one sings it, and that convention is understood by all.
- The carnival authorises for two days reversals of role and words impossible the rest of the year.
- Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Islam coexist, and the festivals of all four are public holidays.
- The Orisha cult, inherited from the Yoruba, and the Spiritual Baptist Faith, long forbidden, are Afro-Trinidadian religions recognised since 1951.
- La Diablesse, a woman with one cow's foot who leads men astray at night, and the Soucouyant, an old woman who leaves her skin to fly, are a living bestiary.
- The jumbies, spirits of the dead, and Papa Bois, guardian of the forest, complete that cast.
- The wake with songs, rum and narratives is held at the home of the deceased, and a ceremony at forty days closes the mourning.
- The carnival of the two days before Lent is the event of the year, with its bands, its costumes and its traditional characters, including the blue devil and the Midnight Robber with his codified monologue.
- Divali and Eid are public holidays on the same footing as Easter, which produces a shared calendar.
- The steelband, the neighbourhood orchestra, structures social life and local rivalries.
- Anansi and the tales of the region, collected by Parsons in the nineteen thirties, form the Afro-Caribbean stock.
- The Ramayana, brought by the Indian indentured workers and performed every year as Ramleela, is listed as intangible heritage of humanity.
- La Diablesse, the Soucouyant and Papa Bois are a bestiary common to the Lesser Antilles.
- The calypso and its repertoire, with its singers and their stage names, are a reference that every text assumes is known.
- The steelpan is not a makeshift instrument but a tuned one, with a classical repertoire and conservatoires.
- The Indo-Trinidadians are not recent immigrants: they have been there since 1845 and form nearly half the country.
- The carnival is not a tourist festival but a social device with its inherited characters and its functions of contestation.
- The calypso is not light music: it is a genre of political commentary whose authors have been prosecuted.
Tales and mythologies 1
- NovelCrick Crack, MonkeyMerle Hodge · 1970Eight years after the country's independence, a young Trinidadian woman publishes in London the story of a childhood spent under the colonial school.Literature
A selection to begin with 10 / 17
- NovelMinty AlleyC. L. R. James · 1936No black West Indian has yet published a novel in England when a teacher from Trinidad arrives there with a manuscript in his suitcase.Literature
- NovelThe Lonely LondonersSamuel Selvon · 1956Britain has opened its doors to the subjects of its empire, and West Indians are arriving in London in large numbers.Literature
- NovelThe Jumbie BirdIsmith Khan · 1961Three generations of Indo-Trinidadians in the capital, between the dream of India and Caribbean rootedness.Literature
- NovelThe Year in San FernandoMichael Anthony · 1965The narrative appears in London, written by a Trinidadian who had been settled in England for about ten years and was employed at a press agency.Literature
- NovelThe Humming-Bird TreeIan McDonald · 1969The book appeared in London seven years after the independence of Trinidad and Tobago and looks back on the colonial island of the forties.Literature
- TheatreDream on Monkey MountainDerek Walcott · 1970In the years of independence, a Saint Lucian poet based in Trinidad stages the self-shame that colonisation left behind.Literature
- CinemaThe Right and the WrongHarbance Kumar · 1970Eight years after independence, the island at last produces a fiction feature film itself, with a crew and actors from the country.Cinema
- CinemaBimHugh A. Robertson · 1974Four years after the Black Power revolt and an army mutiny, Trinidad looks at itself through its rivalries between Indians and Africans.Cinema
- NovelThe Dragon Can't DanceEarl Lovelace · 1979A few years after independence, the Trinidad carnival becomes commercialised, and the poor of the capital ask themselves what is still theirs.Literature
- Feature filmThe Hummingbird TreeNoella Smith · 1992The BBC television adaptation of a classic of Trinidadian childhood, shot on the island.Cinema