W O R L D. C O N F E R E N C E. O N. C A R N I V A L

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in September 1998.

PLACING THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF CARNIVAL IN ACADEMIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXTS

Imagine a costume that is the size of a Rose Bowl Parade float but is worn and carried by a single person. Picture a band of a thousand or more masqueraders, accompanied by huge sound systems on flatbed trucks, performing for judges in exhaustive competitions. Consider that an entire population of almost one million people, for a few days each February, plays hooky to participate in these and other activities even though there is no official holiday. Welcome to Trinidad, a place where ¾ regardless of their social status, occupation, or ethnic background ¾ people express a collective national identity through Carnival.

September may not be the traditional Carnival season, but Trinidad’s Carnival spirit will animate Hartford from the 9th through the 13th, when Trinity hosts the first World Conference on Carnival. Showcasing the Afro-based celebrations of the Caribbean and the Americas, the conference will comparatively explore African, Asian, European, and worldwide Carnival and festive practices in a way that has never before been attempted. Both a scholarly forum and a public humanities event, the conference will include lectures and performances and launch Hartford’s first annual citywide street festival.

Cosponsored by Trinity, the National Carnival Commission of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Connecticut Humanities Council, with grants from American Airlines, the conference will bring the authentic Carnival experience to Hartford by importing a number of Carnival experts, "artistes," and practitioners from all over the world, including 25 stick-fighting Trinidadian Boy Scouts and group of students from Trinity College (a high school) in Trinidad, who will set up a "Mas" (masquerade) camp, preparing traditional foods and making carnival costumes.

Professor of English Milla C. Riggio, a key organizer of the project, says that Carnival and other festival activities offer unique insights about a culture. Through Carnival, she says, people "affirm their sense of community, transform their concept of self, and transmit their unique collective identity.

Rooted in Trinidad

Trinity’s Trinidad Carnival connection began with Riggio’s own academic interest in how the rhythms of earlier societies have evolved to accommodate or resist the exigencies of the modern industrial world. Her research has focused on the literary, anthropological, and social aspects of medieval festivals, mystery plays, passion plays, and other forms of drama. After experiencing Trinidad’s Carnival for the first time several years ago, Riggio organized a small conference in Port-of-Spain in 1996, which spawned the current and much larger event at Trinity. Combining her research interests with her teaching, Riggio also took 25 Trinity students to Trinidad’s Carnival last year as part of a course called "Festival and Drama: A Popular Theater Process."

Jennifer K. Dare ’98, volunteer coordinator for the conference, went on the trip to Trinidad, where she participated in the "Jouvay," a Carnival tradition in which organized bands of people, coated in colored mud, roam the streets at night. She also admits to wearing "very little" as a participant in a masquerade band. She attests that losing one’s inhibitions in order to experience the activities of a group "can be a powerful, transformative event." She says that what she finds most fascinating about the Carnival phenomenon is "the way mythology and culture meet and interact."

A City Celebrates!

James M. Baird ’00 remembers his first introduction to A City Celebrates!, the annual Hartford street festival that will be launched on September 12th in conjunction with the conference. He was just looking for a campus job when he was directed to Professor Riggio, who matter-of-factly explained to him "that we were going to bring the world to Hartford for a day in Bushnell Park and I could help make it happen," he recalls.

The concept of the city’s celebration was developed by city leaders who, with help from Trinity, have attended Trinidad’s Carnival during the past two seasons. Baird says that when Mayor Mike Peters and representatives from the Hartford Board of Education, the Artists Collective, the Charter Oak Cultural Center, Guakia, the West Indian Foundation, and the City Council went to Trinidad, they discovered a festival that truly represented the people—and they wanted nothing less for the people of Hartford. Baird has worked with dozens of community groups ("from dance troupes to bagpipe bands to political groups") to solicit their involvement to make the celebration uniquely "Hartfordian." In particular, he says, the hope is for the city’s residents to express themselves and for diverse ethnic groups to rediscover and celebrate their cultural identities, rituals, and histories.

Hartford—and other very diverse communities—can learn a lot from Trinidad, according to conference organizers. In the course of its history, the island has been owned by the Spanish, cultivated by French plantation owners, taken over by the British, and populated by freed slaves. John G. Cupid, conference organizer and head of research for the National Carnival Commission of Trinidad and Tobago, notes that the modern Carnival contains elements from religious holidays, harvest festivals, and emancipation celebrations. The rhythm of the island, he says, is focused on an ongoing sequence of festival seasons, an alternative to the modern, industrialized sense of time. For the most part, he says, members of different ethnic or cultural groups participate in Trinidad’s many festive traditions. It is a multicultural society in which, he says, "everybody goes to everybody else’s celebrations."

Far-reaching effects

While the College will enjoy the cachet of hosting an unprecedented international academic conference, and community members will undoubtedly enjoy the festivities; the Carnival spirit is expected to radiate out in many other directions. Professor Riggio will edit a volume of essays for The Drama Review, discussing what has been learned at the conference that will likely spark further study and discussion of Carnival in academia. Here in Hartford, the Carnival-inspired street festival will become an annual event; and at Trinity, students will this spring have the option of taking a semester abroad in Trinidad.

In the short term, Trinity’s faculty members are finding ways to capitalize on the extraordinary assemblage of people and series of activities brought in by the conference. Professor of Economics Diane C. Zannoni and Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Languages Piero Garofalo, for example, are each teaching a section of the first-year seminar called "When All Roads Lead to the Sea: A Venetian Journey through Space and Time," which explores that city’s history, economics and commerce, art and architecture, and culture. Thanks to the Carnival conference, students in the seminar will have a chance to participate in the lecture/demonstration of Venetian mask-maker Teodoro Dragonieri. Says Professor Zannoni, "This is really a rare opportunity."

One of the biggest benefits for Trinity students, according to James Baird, will be how the conference and related city celebration provide a positive experience that will shape their view of the city and help them to define their part in the larger community. Jennifer Dare concurs, saying that we can all benefit from exploring an experience that helps us understand who we are collectively. She says, "I think people are hungry for a sense of identity.

-Leslie Virostek