The street becomes the stage in Trinidad and Tobago
Beyond the jollity, color and other typical aspects of carnival, these festivities in Trinidad and Tobago are a living memory and encapsulate a centuries-old popular legacy. Let's learn more about these celebrations with our special envoy, Gladys Quesada. teleSUR
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Usually we think that the carnival just comes and goes and it's just celebration, the lights, the feathers, the dances.
00:07 But the carnival is much more. It's also history and it's also a social archive of what is happening in every country.
00:14 In this case, we went to the Cambule, a celebration that mixes the carnival history and roots with the social issues of this island.
00:22 Let's see.
00:26 Just before carnival at 4 am on Friday morning, a humble block in the center of Porto, Spain, in Piccadilly Greens becomes a stage.
00:35 In spite of the darkness of the early morning, the audience crowds the bleacher steps.
00:40 The streets becomes the stage, the actors wait for their moment.
00:45 The play begins. This is the Cambule.
00:48 [Singing]
00:57 Members of the Ida Kera group follow the script written by Nto Pearl Springer and staged for the first time in 2004.
01:07 Over the course of two decades, effects, contrasts, arrangements have been added, but the plot is the same.
01:15 The slave uprising of 1881 against the mistreatment of the English masters.
01:20 Those who besides subjecting them to work without rest, deprived them of celebrating the carnival.
01:27 On that remote date, also before the light of day, not a few died in order to gain dignity.
01:34 Their names, although unknown, are not forgotten.
01:38 Firstly, we acknowledge that we are only here today celebrating Trinidad Carnival in the way that we celebrate our carnival, with all of these lovely traditional forms, because of the efforts of our ancestors.
01:51 If those persons, those sick men, those jammets, they do fight, they do stand up to the police and say, "No, we want to celebrate in the way we want to celebrate," then all of this wouldn't have been.
02:05 So it's about acknowledging that.
02:07 The relevance of doing it in the streets is in the streets it happens.
02:11 It's not just a play that was just thought of by somebody.
02:14 It is our own creative representation of a piece of history that actually happened.
02:20 So doing it in the streets is part of the ritual of acknowledging all the blood that was shed for us to be able to have our carnival.
02:28 Acknowledging all of the sweat that was shed, all of the tears, all of the fighting, all of the people who died for us to be able to have the carnival that we have today.
02:37 The term "Camboulé" is a popular adaptation of the French phrase that means "burnt canes," because the beginning of the carnival coincided with the end of the sugar season when the cane fields were burnt to eliminate pests and clear the vegetable waste.
02:54 This celebration derives in the Black Carnival with a humble origin.
02:59 For this reason, there are no grandiloquences in the production that recreates it.
03:04 It values our central and the typical customs that characterize the time, the live music with the African drums as fundamental base.
03:14 Behind it, the theory and the academy.
03:17 We do a lot of research on the time.
03:22 So of course, because we are talking about people who didn't write their histories down, they're not very present in the history books and they're certainly not present in the newspapers of the time.
03:36 And so we have to dig into the oral histories, we have to dig into the songs of the time and that sort of thing.
03:43 Dawn breaks in Port of Spain and with the daylight the play ends and now we'll go to schools and community centers.
03:51 The actors said goodbye to the late night audience that then joins a small parade of typical carnival characters that are already a symbol of the Caribbean and Trinidadian identity.
04:04 Characters that will accompany the carnival from beginning to end, and then start again and wait for another morning of Cambly.
04:12 For Telesur English, as a special envoy from Trinidad and Tobago, Gladys Quezada.
04:18 (upbeat music)