By M. PHILIP NOURBESE
Born in Tobago, M. NOURBESE PHILIP is an award-winning independent poet, essayist, novelist, playwright and scholar living in Toronto’s space-time where he practiced law for seven years before becoming a poet and writer. Among her published works are five collections of poetry including the seminal She Tries Her Tongue; The Silence Challenge Softly Breaks, the speculative prose poem Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, and the book-length poem, Zong!, A groundbreaking, innovative genre-breaking epic that explodes the legal archive as it is’ it is about slavery. Other works include the young adult novel, Harriet’s Daughter; the play, Coups and Calypsos, and four collections of essays, the most recent of which is BlanK. Among her numerous awards are the prestigious Chalmers Prize (Arts Council of Ontario), the Pushcart Prize (USA), and the Casa de las Americas Award (Cuba), the Lawrence Foundation (USA) Award, the Toronto Institute of Arts Writing a). Her fellowships include Guggenheim, McDowell, and Rockefeller (Bellagio). M. NourbeSe Philip is the 2020 recipient of the PEN / Nabokov Prize for Achievement in International Literature.
Editor’s Note: This essay was first carried at Harper’s Bazaar on February 16, 2021. Reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.
The morning of the day is what they call it. That time before dawn, when darkness is still running singing but he knows it’s almost time. Day mornings, when the air is sweet, sweet as a baby’s breath and full of so many painful possibilities. Is it daytime morning when we come out to play Ole Marse. Duty Morfa. Mors marse. Blue-devil hill-of-Paramin marsh. Anyting-goes marse. Ole Marse, where it’s up and down and a man dressed like a woman with the big, big bulbs and the Lord-did-you-ever-see-behind Lady Lorraine. Marse, where the sharp picong is like a cutlass and cutting a politician down to size and making fun of everything that takes itself too seriously. The morning of the day is when Jouvert starts.
Jouvert, Jour Ouvert, Jour O’vert, Jouvay – the words that reveal the history of an empire and its demise in their moving orthography. Jouvert, the French word shrink, jour ouvert meaning “open day” – the first day of the two-day Trinidad Carnival, which starts for a Monday morning and continues over to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday – is one of the remaining words of French or Creole batois that was once widely spoken on the island. First claimed by Spain after Columbus “visited” in 1498, Trinidad remained relatively undeveloped for years, until 1783 when the Spanish monarchy allowed settlers from French refugees fleeing the Haitian Revolution. The rest, even Ole Marse, could be said to be Carnival. As usual, French settlers staged their Carnival just before the start of the Lenten period, a white-only festival that imitated the racial and class hierarchies of these colonial societies.
The only role for Black people, free or bonded, was as a musician or a worker. And, like their American counterparts, French slave owners also dressed in black as jardins negues, imitating the very slaves to whom they had expressed such contempt. With the enslavement of slaves in 1834, however, the island having by then passed to the British in the empire’s constant game of chess, the newly freed Africans took to the streets, bringing in their memories of hiding Africa to the pre-Lenten celebrations, costume, procession, performance, dance, and spectacle. And as they, the newly franchised, took to the streets, the whites withdrew, clutching their pearls collectively in fear, with the festival’s disapproval and condemnation of its tastelessness and danger, and they all find a prominent voice in the print media of the day.
Jouvay, that cramped time when anything seems possible in the topsy-turvy sub-noon-morning world
“Camboulay! Camboulay! ”The people – formerly the slaves – shouted in 1881 as they ripped off an attempt by the colony’s governor to end the Carnival. Camboulay, another native expression of the French patois, of cane beads, refers to the practice of carrying torches of burning cane stems during the riot.
But look, I’m tired, tired of all this history, because it’s morning, and the Carnival jumbie grabs me and I have a band to meet just like a cool, cool dawn breeze meets with me and begging me to sashay down the street as if there were no tomorrow. Was 2015, the last time I played marse, and I’m staying with the outfit I’m making myself and the shiny white dress I’m wearing just calling out someone – anyone – to throw paint, mud, anything to make a mess of the ordinary, the expected. I stay in a park with all the other masters – waiting for the music to start, waiting for the wind to slowly wind up the street in the morning fresh air, waiting for the unexpected feeling of “This is what I’ve been waiting for” – Hearing pan music riding the soft breeze – waiting to meet inside, deep inside, the sound of four bands coming from the four cardinal points to meet the crossroads, home of Esu, god of crossroads; four bands at the heart of possibility, sound and life. Feel and know what it is like to be inside sound – to be solid – for a moment.
Is Jouvay’s time when you see Midnight Robber (though less so these days), a wide-brimmed hat with fringes and sitting on top of a skull or coffin, and it’s black, black like his clothes; is Jouvay and Midnight Robber’s time carrying a gun or dagger in one hand and a box for gifts in the other, and he stops you with his words about worlds beyond the imagination. Gatekeepers, heralder prophecies broken by a whirling whistle, Midnight Robber ridicules colonial power as he declares it to have come from other spheres, created in worlds unknown to us. “When I was born, the earth stands still and all animals wind down and sleep, even the dem birds stop singling and my mother weeping tears that create the rivers of the world . ” Is Jouvay’s time here and waiting to hear Midnight Robber announce to everyone: “Watch me here, see me here – I’ll come and kill all yuh, de ole and de young; I’m coming to make tuners weep under dey mudder and dey fadder – fo de pickin dem; I get to close a business, stop a photo show; I come to bring my sword between family, between man and woman; I come to stop sweet talk, hookup and hookdown; I even come to stop the Carnival, I come to perform the impossible – I bring nations to their knees. Watch me, see what ‘pon mi head’ is dat crown and he calls C, he calls O, he calls R, he calls O, he calls N, he calls A – he calls CoronaaaaH! Watch me, I say, how I movin all roun de world, no passport, no nothin – I’m coming to the full south of a cemetery! ”
But this is just talk of robbery. Is Jouvay’s time and Jab Jab’s masqueraders whip cracking dangerously – dreadfully in the air. As did the overseers’ whips on the slave plantations, but what did we know about that when we as children watched these masqueraders parable and demand money? What do we care to know now? Is Jouvay and Baby Doll time dressed up in a frilly, frilly nightgown carrying her baby doll and going to men saying that this is who the baby daddy is and demanding money from them.
Is Jouvay’s time: “Brang! busy! ”The sound is harsh and frightening. “Pay de devil, pay de devil!” He rushes forward the black pitch oil tin, gesturing with a pointed black beam like us. I grab my mother’s skirt – hard, the fabric curled into my little fist – it’s shiny, its skin lubricated, black glistening in the sunshine, with tail, horns, and a long red tongue. “Brang, brang! Pay a devil! Pay a devil! ”This is Jab Molassie – Molasses Devil – who insists you pay him. According to the demands of life we pay the Devil in other ways. But at the age of four or five, I understand fear alone, hiding behind my mother’s skirt and refusing to look the Devil in the face.
Jouvay Time – the furthest thing from the fancy or pretty reed that comes later in the day on Monday and all day on Tuesday, when the bands are marching in all their fine tunes; when women, now mostly unveiled in beads and the style of Rio de Janeiro bikinis, stroll along the streets of Port of Spain, Toronto, Notting Hill, Miami, or – city choice. Jouvay, that limiting time when anything seems possible in the world of men playing women, when the high is brought low and the mighty are ridiculed; when dirt and mud are embraced in understanding that we come from that and we will, at last, return to it; when we surrender to be captured by Midnight Robbers or intimidated by Jab Molassie; when demons, red, black, blue, or white rule the day (with our silent consent) and the Moko Jumbies on stilts, as still as our dreams, stalking us. Now is the time, though – the time to play marse. Like there’s no tomorrow. Plenty of time to pay devil tea later.