wI was a kid so driving a Santa Cruz was the most special trip. My family took it on a regular basis. In that magical world (the back seat of the car) we could feel a cool rush of breeze as we entered the valley. A herd of black buffalipsos that passed through the green and red leaves of cocoa trees, through the river, if you were lucky, often grazing on the calm slopes along the road.
Something about those giant creatures always fascinated me – called me. But as the years went by, I looked at them less and less. Maybe they were culled to curb the spread of brucellosis, like most of the island’s Buffalolipso (a type of buffalo developed in Trinidad in the 1960s). There were very few animals that were first raised here and domesticated in the wild, but now only flourished in other countries (exported).
In Trinidad, creation seems to come very easily for us. It’s too easy, perhaps, we can’t really value what we made.
My first cow MAS (short for masquerade ball) was Buffalolipso. It seemed appropriate – depicting traditional characters that no longer adorn the city of Trinidad Carnival…memory memory. That year I was the only cow in the Spanish harbor, in a sea of ​​feathers and sequins, in a cloak with dried banana leaves and black buffalo heads. It was my first time crossing the stage in a costume I made myself, but it was far from my first foray into MAS.
I was a carnival baby. I loved every part of the festival. But the traditional mass with its distinctive character always had my heart. At age 3, I squealed the streets chased by the Blue Devils, hid between my dad’s legs, climbed up to the stage at Little Caribbean Theatre, handed over a clown’s hand ren, told me how much I loved him, and returned to my seat in the back to escape when the midnight robber appeared. At school, I tried my own midnight robber cloak and a babydoll bonnet, but nothing seemed right. Until I found a cow. It was called to me.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, my grandmother played MAS as “Milkmaid.” In a way, my cow was a homage to her, but in my typical genderless way, I avoided the femininity of magical milk production due to the anonymity of cow animals.
Under the costume, I was freed from my human identity and, as many others had before me, I became something else. But in order to become the custodian of this art form, I had to learn where it came from.
cThe OW band was once a collective portrayal. In 1956, anthropologist Daniel J. Crowley described “a cow or cow band” as “extinct” MAS. “These bands no longer appear in Spanish ports, but are said to appear in some rural villages,” he wrote in an article. Caribbean Quarter.
He described the band as wearing dry plantain leaf from neck to knees, with cow horns fixed around his head. It is likely that most cow wearers were taken away from the abattoirs where traditionally worked. This was at the Carnival on Monday. On Tuesday they were decorated with colorful yellow and pink ensembles, and even flashy jackets and stockings.
However, cowmas was not extinct. It was holding it like a sturdy buffalo. In my second year I played, I met Norris Noel after crossing the stage during the traditional MAS competition. His cow looked closer to traditional Tuesday clothing – a suit of brightly coloured, full-bodied fabric (with cow heads, of course). It was my first sighting of a cow in the wild. I used EC.
In Trinidad, creation seems to come very easily for us. Easy, perhaps, to truly cherish what we made.
After that I managed to get in touch with another mass man who carried the cow’s heritage: Reish Baboolal. He no longer lives in Trinidad, so there is no outlet, although obviously his passion. “I still miss Carnival,” he told me. “There is a calling… Trinidad has a spirit,” he told me about a retired jabujab who told him something similar. “He said that when it was time for carnival, he had a spirit that called you.”
I knew exactly what he meant. His childhood at the Cedros Carnival was visible in my childhood in Port of Spain, but his story felt very familiar to me. Like me, he observed the animals he drew. Watching the cows recharge, and backing in a nearby field where he previously worked, he influenced the energetic “Mad Bull” performance that he became known.
In Cedros, they called MAS Con Boeuf (Patois of the “Cow Horn”). He dragged a vivid memory of a man covered in a straw suit with a crocus bag above his head, and a biscuit can tied to his waist. “You didn’t know who he was or what he was,” Baboolal recalled.
Baboolal’s Mad Bull has been realized at Viey La Cou, hosted by the Creative and Festival Arts Bureau at West India University. He said he was not playing in the streets because of the risk of drunken Level lighting his outfit against fire. It reminded me of reading Jeff Henry’s book. Under MAS Dominican tradition Sense Trouts were banned in the 1960s after three young men were fatally burned, just like the lush ensemble and cow horns. This is why Babcole said he was wearing a leaf cloak that could easily be thrown out if the cow was on fire.
People once respected MAS, he said. But it’s not that much anymore.
In Local history books, I found a sparse record of the origins of the coumas in Trinidad. But before that, there’s nothing. It came to believe that the presence of regional forms of MAS with cow heads, or dry leaves, or both, must have had a West African connection.
I was looking at pictures of bovine-directed dancers of the Dogon people in Mali and Burkina Faso, and I contacted several African museums around the world to see if they had similar portrayals in their collection. Naturally, I have found the shame of wealth. Where the cows were there were cow masks. Plant costumes were also widespread. The path to the Caribbean was also seen for animal MASs, such as bulls, donkeys and raffia bears, in particular using raffia fibers.
I chatted with Jane Uraard from the Savannah Africa Museum, who shared photos from the collection of bush cow masks in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Ghana/Ivory Coast. “Many traditional African cultures use plant fiber to create costumes and masks,” she said. “There are many subgroups of cultures that share practices.”
However, cowmas was not extinct. It was holding
Robert Wyndham Nichols’ books Jumbies PlaygroundI found another possible source of information: horn-adored clothing of the people of Mandinka, Jola, Biannang, Bagan, Balanta, Baga and Temne.
It is difficult to identify the specific groups that will bring about what will become cow mass in the Caribbean. It could have been a cultural fusion. Nichols also describes “bush masquerade” and “horned masquerade” throughout Europe.
What I was expecting was a deficit in information about local traditions, with a wealth of information on Sensei Bull, Cowhead, Pai Bangnan and the cultures in which our ancestors were born, introducing cousins ​​from different regions. They brought them the story of not only the first cows to arrive in the Caribbean, but the cowmass.
I realized that I am forced to not only play this MAS myself, but also find and match it as much history as possible. Allow them to save it and create their own portrayals and stories that tell their reality. This is because cultures move, breathe, evolve, and reflect the evolution of their people.
