Music competitions, public pedagogy and decolonisation in Trinidad and Tobago

ABSTRACT

This article examines music’s role in decolonising processes in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on postcolonial national identity politics with reference to the country’s two largest ethnic groups: those descended from enslaved Africans and those from indentured labourers from India. First, the article traces the nationalisation of Creole culture – defined in terms of African-European syncretism – from the 1950s onwards, and it describes the state’s use of music competitions and educational programmes to institutionalise Carnival, calypso, and steel pan, all associated largely with African Trinidadian culture. This impacted on Indian Trinidadians by excluding them from inscriptions of national identity. The article concludes with a discussion of Indian Trinidadian cultural resurgence, tassa competitions, and the growth of public pedagogy from the 1970s that established tassa as an icon of Indianness; and all illustrating how music was used in a complex decolonisation process (relating to colonial rule and the Creole mainstream).

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonialism
• nationalism
• creolisation
• calypso
• steel pan
• tassa
• Indian diaspora

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Christopher L. Ballengee is Associate Professor of Music at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland, USA. His research interests include Indian Caribbean musical traditions, world music pedagogy, ethnographic film, and theatre sound design. He holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Florida, Master of Music in ethnomusicology from Bowling Green State University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Lenoir-Rhyne University.

Notes

1 For simplicity, throughout this article I refer to the country as Trinidad and Tobago and citizens of the country as Trinidadians.

2 Video of this performance can be accessed on YouTube at the following address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdQbbsx5jEw.

3 Frank Korom illustrates such assumptions about African Trinidadian influence when he observes that dingolay is ‘a hybrid hand influenced by indigenous soca rhythms’ (2003, 167). This is unlikely since recordings of tassa by Emory Cook in the 1950s captured dingolay in its present form well before the advent of soca in the 1970s. Both Peter Manuel (2015) and I (2013) argue that dingolay corresponds to an Indian Trinidadian source rather than having any significant African Trinidadian influence.

4 Bèlè refers to a range of African Caribbean contradance styles common in the francophone Caribbean and areas, like Trinidad and Tobago, that featured significant francophone influence prior to British colonisation. In Trinidad and Tobago, bèlè is usually danced by women only (though men participate on occasion), either solo or in synchronised groups, using an easily identifiable folkloric style featuring sweeping choreographic gestures and colonial-era dress.

5 Trinidad and Tobago has elected two Indian Trinidadian prime ministers, Basdeo Panday (1995–2001) and Kamla Persad-Bissessar (2010–2015). In each case, anxieties about Indian infiltration into the highest ranks of government were expressed in various public forums.