Going Caribbean.

One of the reasons for holding the Triennial in the Virgin Islands was that we were able to schedule it to coincide with the celebration of Carnival in St. Thomas. Because I am a scholar of Caribbean culture, there are certain nonacademic events that stand out, Carnival among them. I shall discuss these before the panel presentations. What I immediately recall, however, is generosity and hospitality of our hosts. What a marvelous welcome!

On Thursday night, after the first full day of panels, we were invited to a special viewing of the exhibition "Africa in the Heart of the Virgin Islands," sponsored by the University of the Virgin Islands and the Virgin Islands Cultural Heritage Institute. Held at the Grand Galleria, a renovated stately hotel overlooking the seaside section of Charlotte Amalie, the exhibition displayed the work of seventeen contemporary artists whose varied styles and subjects reflect the multiple ways Caribbean peoples express their Caribbean reality and African heritage. We were also treated to a buffet dinner and the music of an exciting drum ensemble--plus, I must add, some pretty terrific impromptu dancing by several ACASA attendees.

The next night we went to the Reichhold Center for the Performing Arts, an imposing contemporary open-air theater, to attend a version of The Killing of Arthur Sixteen, by Antiguan Edgar O. Lake, that was produced especially for the ACASA gathering. Originally written as a commemoration of the famous 1736 Antiguan Conspiracy, which was staged as a "Coramantee play" to fool the British authorities, the playwright restructured his drama to reflect aspects of the famous folk tradition of jumbull (a horned Christmas festival masquerader). Lake, who was himself at the performance, told us that he had "restored an African folk tradition--a traditional folk play--into a contemporary theater piece." The play incorporated elements from a griot's monologue, a ritual preparation for burial performed by a chorus of women known as "washers," and a eulogy performed by a company of horned masqueraders for one of their own. The eulogy was interrupted by the appearance of Arthur Sixteen himself, revealing that the deceased had been misidentified and that the tradition prevailed.

The next day we saw how Caribbean people know how to enjoy themselves while proudly performing their culture. I am of course referring to Carnival. In St. Thomas this celebration has grown in participation and attendance every year since it was first revived in 1952. By Saturday afternoon, after the final set of Triennial panels, I went downtown to the Adult Parade, which culminated two weeks of festivities. I arrived just in time to see the first sets of paraders, the numerous queens and a few kings representing various organizations. The parade incorporated troupes of baton-twirling girls and bands of schoolchildren, many of whom had performed the previous day during the Children's Parade. That's one of the many things that impressed me about St. Thomas Carnival--the integration of age groups, from adorable children to older, wiser, and, yes, flauntingly exuberant women.

By force of habit I walked up the parade route, counter to the direction of the participants, until I reached the point where the bands convened to begin their march. And where was this? At the crossroads in front of the cemetery! How perfect, and how Caribbean. Standing there for about an hour, I got to see final costume preparations, friends greeting friends, lone band members running to find their troupes, and an assortment of spectators mingling with costumed participants. Toward the end of the parade some of the most famous St. Thomas troupes appeared, lining up in front of the cemetery, including a large band representing "The Splendour of Africa," complete with spears, yellow feathered headdresses, zebra-striped costumes, and gold lame boots.

What do I remember most vividly? A pretty terrific school group of pan players, their truck carrying the motto "I Promise To Obey The Rules Of The Rising Stars, To Stay In School And Educate Myself, And To Conduct Myself In A Moral Manner At All Times"; leprechauns wearing fake fur; wonderful Hershey's-kiss headdresses; the University of the Virgin Islands band dressed as computers, monitors, satellite dishes, and TV antennae; a substantial variety of Mocko Jumbies (in St. Thomas these are stilt dancers), and Barbara Frank (of course) asking if I noticed (I did) that one was wearing a Fulani hat; and a band of male and female clowns(?) appropriating the New York Yankees' logo, blue and white colors, and players' names on their costumes. There was also a solo masquerader, dressed in white with long dreads and a red-and-white-striped cap. Flags from around the world were pinned to his costume, and he pulled an enormous bookstand which supported a huge open book containing a "Community Chant to Jah." I spoke to another young man who appeared to be the leader of a distinctly St. Kitts-style Indian Masquerade band, and indeed, he told me that he and the others in the troupe were children of St. Kitts immigrants. They had performed during the play on Friday night, and I noticed that this young man was a terrific dancer and was precisely executing very Jamaican Jonkonnu steps. I wished I had time to interview him further. I missed the famous St. Thomas Indians, but saw them on TV at the hotel.

Now to the conference itself. The number of concurrently scheduled panels seemed particularly overwhelming, or maybe I just wanted to hear too much--after all, we get together only once every three years. So I panel-hopped, rarely sitting through an entire session. Things got off to a terrific start on Thursday morning, when, bleary-eyed from jet lag, I heard the indomitable, silver-tongued Don Cosentino begin his discussion of contemporary art with references to "holy shit," "toilet seats and Duchamp," "chat lines with dung reports," and conclude with a reference to the "orgasmic ecstasy" of Bernini's St. Theresa. By then I was wide awake. I popped in to hear Peter Bloom's discussion of Ghanaian horror films, which was immediately followed by Katherine Hagedorn's elucidations of Afro-Cuban drum talk and the use of coded terms to describe drumbeats that refer simultaneously to dance and sex. And then Bennetta Jules-Rosette provocatively suggested that since many contemporary popular African artists produce paintings that are actually storyboards, their narratives could become interactive elements in virtual galleries where anybody could "collaborate" with the artist, animate the art, and change the narrative. I don't mean to imply that these presentations weren't serious, but I certainly wondered if this was a new ACASA: innovative, loose, cool, and with a sense of humor.

On the other hand, there were certainly quite a few disappointments. I admit that because of my particular interests, Caribbean and African Diaspora arts, I dropped in on a very specific selection of papers, but among these I found--in greater proportion than I anticipated--inadequately researched presentations, paraphrasings of previously published articles with no new intellectual contributions, and just plain ill-prepared and strictly descriptive offerings. Before the next call for papers, we might discuss mechanisms for some kind of quality control, using perhaps the model of the College Art Association or the Latin American Studies Association. In both these organizations, panel proposals are carefully scrutinized, and not all of them are accepted. Panel organizers are urged to be firm with the requirements for clear abstracts with bibliographies, and in some cases papers must be handed in ahead of time. Do my colleagues who attended other sets of panels agree with this appraisal?

But let me return to some more highlights. There were two fascinating papers on aspects of Trinidad Carnival. Candice Goucher introduced me to scholarship on a little-known celebration on board slave ships and then, after Emancipation, among black sailors, many of whom it turns out were Africans. The name of the ritual, "crossing the line," referred to crossing either the Equator or the Tropic of Cancer. Goucher suggested that these on-board "performances" may have been a yet unresearched source of some rituals performed by Trinidad sailor bands, such as "stoking the furnace." And the recipient of ACASA's Caribbean Artist's Award, John Cupid of Trinidad, spoke nonstop like a true Caribbean griot, giving us an insider's narrative of the history of Trinidad's Carnival. Cupid, a practitioner who has made it his work to research and lead what he calls "traditional bands," holds enormous admiration for the original inhabitants of the land, the so-called Guarahoons (these "uncivilized people" were scientists who could extract poison from cassava roots), and for the early African slaves and their descendants, who from a "tiny spot in the Caribbean" have generated celebrations as far away as Toronto and London. Cupid's sarcastic wit carried his narrative along, as he commented on the "vulgar fractions of insanity" that produced statistics used in land distribution, or on the fact that certain Trinidadians preferred to send samples of excavation material for dating to Venezuela rather than to Britain, because "you know what the British will do with statistics."

I cannot conclude without comment on the intellectually thrilling set of papers by Flemming Harrev, an independent scholar from Copenhagen, and John Collins, of the University of Ghana. Both took us on an elaborate transatlantic and pan-African ride, boogying to the beats of gumbay and related music as they wove an intricate tale of a musical culture that was originally influenced by important contacts with the Caribbean, and was pan-African by the 1880s. And last, but certainly not least, my special kudos to the "E.E Girls," the Excellent Emory scholars who, early Saturday morning, closed the conference on a high note with a group of seriously researched and professionally delivered papers on the panel "Travelers to the Stream: African-American Artist-Travelers to the Caribbean, 1930-1960."

JUDITH BETTELHEIM, Professor of Art History at San Francisco State University, has conducted fifteen research trips to Cuba since 1985. She is the editor of the forthcoming Cuban Festivals: A Century of Afro-Cuban Culture (Ian Randle Publishers, fall 2001) and the curator of "Jose Bedia: Of the Spirit: Afro-Cuba Meets Native America," a major exhibition opening in fall 2002.