PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

Maude Dikobe

Make no mistake Frenchy
This is not a bedroom glance
I’m a Trinbagonian
And this is the way we dance
Mama doin’ it
Papa doin’ it
Sister doin’ it
Brother doin’ it…

--“Frenchman,” Cathy Ella and Taxi

Performing one’s gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides the reassurance that there is an essentialism of gender identity after all.

--Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, and the plasticized sensation.

--Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power

The Bottom Matters: “This Bumsie is Mine”

The woman’s “bottom”[1] matters a lot in calypso, and in real life in Trinidad. This essay focuses on movement, and the bottom is central to that discussion. It is subject, object, and instrument. One has only to recall songs like Lord Kitchener’s “Sugar Bum Bum” (1977):

Audrey, where you get that sugar?
Darling there is nothing sweeter
Audrey, every time you wiggle
Darling, you put me in trouble
You torture me the way you wine
I love to see your fat behind…
Gi’ way your land, gi’ way your car
But let no man touch my sugar…
Gimme the bum bum Audrey…

Or, there is Iwer George’s recent “Bottom in de Road”[2] (1998):

If you see the shape on the sister
Bottom in the road!

Ironically, while Iwer has recently been singled out as the “bum bum master,”[3] men have always sung about women’s body parts, especially the bottom, which points to the high premium associated with this particular part of female anatomy.

This primacy of the bumsie (also bum bum, bumbulum, and bam bam) spotlights the explicitly sexual character of the Carnival celebration. Not only is Carnival widely characterized as a celebration of the life force, but it is generally expected that every woman will go home at the end (or even in the middle) with at least one man, and vice versa. The phenomenon of the “Carnival baby,” a child conceived at Carnival time, puts a significant bump in Trinidad’s birth-rate bell curve in November, nine months after Carnival. While much of the sexual activity has been formalized and tamed (as, for instance, in the standardized teenie-weenie bikinis worn by the majority of mas-playing women), it still breaks out in surprisingly vital form as bawdy comedy (delivered by women), street dancing that’s hard to distinguish from sexual intercourse (aside from the lack of penetration), and erotic stage performances that are clearly threatening – at least to the conservative middle class.

Nonetheless, one thing that’s particularly important about men’s vision of women’s bumsies is that it is deeply contradictory: simultaneously celebrating and denigrating. Scores of carnival songs extol the joys of wining on women’s big bottoms, and portray women’s writhing, rotating bumsies as the most desirable sexual targets in the fete. Mighty Duke’s “This Bumsie Is Mine” (1993) offers a classic treatment of this male obsession. He claims and owns his woman’s bumsie, and warns his mates in the party not to touch his “property.” He starts by talking:

All you men who come to wine on man’s woman in this party, you must be crazy! Not with my woman! I don’t play so!

And then he sings:

My bumsie, I tell you, is my bumsie
This is my bumsie mister…
You come out to party like village ram
And everybody you want to jam[4]
You come out to flim, you come out to flam
On every woman you want to jam
Go ahead brother have a ball
That’s no interest of mine at all
Jam yuh jam that ain’t bother me
Once you ain’t jam on my property
This bumsie is mine
This bumsie is mine
Find your own to wine behind
This bumsie is mine
You could wine on Esther, grind on Cynthia-Paul
But besides war declare don’t touch my bumsie at all
You leave your woman watching TV
Come and wine on my property
Some men accept it, I don’t say no
But I doesn’t play round my ooman so.

Along similar lines, David Rudder (in his subtly satirical “Trail of The Bumsie”) searches Port of Spain and combs through a crowded party looking for a particularly captivating bumsie, which he depersonifies by referring to it as “the” bumsie.)

I’m on the trail of a bumsie
Camouflaged in this party
Camouflaged in this party
Has anyone seen the bumsie
I know it right in this party...

The bumsie was in a red maxi
HFX5520
Drop off in front of Kentucky[5]
And that when it start to torture me...

When I see the bumsie on Wrightson Road
My temperature start to overload
Somebody call me, I look around
When I turn back, Oh! The bumsie gone!

Fixating on a big butt is no longer limited to “black bottoms.” Indo-Trinidadian women are also targets. “Bottom in de Road” is ostensibly about Chanchanee, a Trini girl that Iwer meets at a party:

If you see de shape of the sister
Bottom in de road
Something in me head tellin’ me
Bottom in de road
She come from de bum bum family
Bottom in de road…

While the woman’s bottom has always been a staple in calypso lyrics, Iwer’s “Bottom in de Road” attracted considerable critical media attention at the time of its release.[6] Women’s groups in general took offense, but Indo-Trinidadian women in particular felt targeted since the song lamented the fact that the calypsonian has had all kinds of bottoms, but had never had “ah Indian woman yet.” This is suggested by the fact that the heroine in the song, Chanchanee, tells Iwer that she is from Bangladesh – which can be considered synonymous with India. At another level, as Rohlehr says, “there is also a race issue of the African male and the Indian woman”[7] – a contentious problem that Iwer is aware of as he suggests that the woman wants to have a “dougla” with him.

But that is only one side of the contradiction. On the other side, the “bottom line” is that many men are terrified of women’s sexuality – as symbolized by their bumsies. For example, in George Victory’s “Biggie Bam Bam” (1994), the big-bottomed heroine is implicitly criticized because she offers to cheat on her blind husband with the “reluctant” calypsonian:

Let me tell you about this Trinidad tart
Living up on top of Lavantille hill...

She said, “Music Man, I want to dance with you now”
I said, “Your boyfriend here, I don’t want no row”
She said, “That’s all right, my boyfriend’s blind”
If you see me jam she from behind
Watch me jam biggie bam bam
She just tell me, “Rock me from side to side
This bam bam is yours to ride
And if you feel that I winin’ plenty
Just wait ‘til after the party…”

Her big bumsie signifies her uncontrollable (and therefore dangerous) sexuality. A big bottom presents a fundamental challenge to the male calypsonian since it stands in for women’s insatiable sexual appetite. Men find this appealing, but at the same time they fear that they might be unable to satisfy their big-bottom woman – and should they fail when put to the test, the woman will realize that their sexual bragging was nothing but big talk.

Rather than acknowledging this fear, male calypsonians distance it by seizing the public forum of calypso to objectify women with big posteriors. And this reveals another contradiction: While in public many Afro-Trinidadian men claim to prefer pale, proper, “bottomless” women, in private they actually favor partners who personify the African image of female sexuality: big-bottom women with a lusty sense of female self. Indeed, this is a traditional Carnival archetype, personified in the familiar characters of the Dame Lorraine and the Jammette (and her modern version, Bubulups, a real, historical jammette who died a few years ago).

In order to understand the prominent role bottoms play in men’s calypso lyrics, one must understand how women singing today regard their own, and their sisters’, bottoms – and how they are challenging the song lyrics that have traditionally muted female expression of erotic desire. This, as Audre Lorde argues, has been done through trivialization, misnaming (as psychotic), and mistreatment of women who dared to claim their erotic powers (Lorde 1984).

Today, most female performers refuse to accept this limited, contradictory, male version of their own sexuality. In their performances, whether they write their own lyrics or appropriate songs written for them by men, they insist on celebrating their own sexuality. Even though, prior to performance, the female body might be perceived as already “marked” and packaged for male appreciation and consumption, it is still sometimes to the women’s advantage to celebrate their own bottoms and use them to fulfill their own ends. What happens then is that female performers take center stage and invite the audience to share their own enjoyment in the grunt and wine as they work the butt, giving instructions to shake it, roll it, tremble it, and “kaka laylay.”[8]

The preponderance of academic commentary devoted to calypso has focused, until recently, more on lyrics than on movement—and has generally ignored the interrelatrefess of these two modes. Previous research fails to adequately account for the aggressive, assertive resistance implicit in the wining female body, and how such a performance makes female bodies both desirable to men and, at the same time, self-sufficient.

My analysis of movement, sexuality and agency in this chapter draws on Lorde’s notion of “erotic autonomy” as a domain of repression but also as a site of pleasure (1984). She sees “the erotic as a source within each of us that lies in a deeply female spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or recognized feeling (Lorde 1984:53). Using “erotic autonomy” as a point of departure, the chapter examines the performances of two female calypsonians, Denise Belfon (Saucy Wow) and Destra Garcia. These two performers, and the lyrics of their songs, “Kaka Laylay” (1995) and “Tremble It” (2001), will be scrutinized to reveal the complex dynamics that lie behind gender roles and sexuality in calypso.[9] I believe that the continued quest of female calypsonians like Belfon and Garcia to explore and express their sexuality through erotic dances such as wining establishes a female power related to the erotic.

Wining and Jammettes: In/Decent Exposures

A drastic change has recently come about. Instead of men being the ones singing about women’s private parts, especially the bumsie, now it is women themselves who claim the right to celebrate this anatomical part by wining. This becomes an interesting feminist intervention if we follow Mary Russo, who notes the ambivalent nature of female bodies in performance – especially during Carnival as women “flaunt the feminine.”[10] Russo states that to “‘act like a woman’ beyond narcissism and masochism is, for psychoanalytic theory, trickier. That is the critical and hopeful power of the masquerade” (Russo 1986:224).

Yet, the fact that the female body in motion is subject to scrutiny makes it difficult to take the “transgression” suggested above for granted. In calypso/soca, female performers and female revelers in the audience all enjoy wining their bumsies, so female performers often encourage their sisters in the audience to wine by giving them specific instructions as part of the song lyrics. Audience members are ordered to concentrate on the “middle section” of their body and to shake the bumsie, wuk the bumsie, push back the bumsie, bend down and wine, wuk it down to de ground, and so on. Belfon’s “Kaka Laylay,” for example:

Dis a big bum bum party so flaunt it
Ah want see all rude posse
Shaking the middle section
Of your gorgeous body
When you move it you must look sexy
Now make the bum bum pounce
Make the bum bum jump
Make the bum bum roll, roll
Kaka laylay, kaka laylay
Kaka laylay, kaka laylay
Kaka laylay, kaka laylay
Kaka laylay, kaka laylay.

Male calypsonians like Kitchener and Iwer George also give wining instructions to audience members, but neither the newly assertive female performer nor her female audience are waiting to get their orders from the likes of them. Nor will they allow their bottoms to become the sole property of a man, as in Duke’s paean to patriarchal control, “This Bumsie is Mine.” It is revealing that even Duke, a highly-honored calypsonian who has won Calypso Monarch at least four times, and a handsome man who dresses with striking style in long coats and color-coordinated finery, is deeply worried about losing “his” bumsie.

By proudly wining, and celebrating the wine in her lyrics, the female calypsonian reclaims responsibility, control, and ownership of her own body. Likewise the woman in the audience follows suit and seizes control of her own sexuality, choosing her wining partners to suit herself – wining on another woman, wining on a man, allowing a man or a woman to wine on her, wining as part of a multiple-partner dance group – or wining proudly in front of an audience.

Even so, when women embrace their own bottoms through wining, men (and some women) still find this threatening. Such behavior is met with striking ambivalence by both male calypsonians and the public, and is often criticized in newspaper editorials: “Women are their own greatest enemies at Carnival time. Carnival is no excuse to forget your dignity.”[11] Wining is often held to be inconsistent with respectability, especially where women are socialized to play the role of mother, submissive wife, and protector of national morality. As Pamela Franco eloquently notes in her essay “The ‘Unruly Woman in Nineteenth Century Trinidad Carnival,” the “unruly woman is the antithesis of societal norms, her performance style is usually loud, boisterous, inflammatory and sometimes erotic” (Franco 2000). A link can be established with the erotic performances of modern day female performers whose performances have attracted a lot of media attention.

Given the explicit sexual implications of rotating your bumsie in contact with, or even in view of, a member of the opposite sex, wining is associated with both lust and repulsion. Women as well as men often feel they must apologize for engaging in this lusty dance, which has long been associated with the stereotype of the jammette. Initially, the term jammette was used to refer to the women who accompanied canboulay bands (Brereton 1975). Mitto Simpson tells of the legendary jammettes of the 19th century such as Bodecia, who “would fight other women and roll in the mud, fighting to keep rivals away from her stick-fighting man.” She’s also known to have torn off her dress and waved it as a banner, singing a captivating ditty. Simpson further notes that, “At one stage of her life…Bodecia became so notorious that any girl showing wayward traits was told by her parents, “You playing Bodecia.”[12]

In the 1880s, jammettes gave their name to the so-called “jammette carnival,” a bawdy, sometimes violent, intensely Africanized celebration that terrified middle-class Europeans and was almost immediately outlawed.[13] In Michael Anthony’s book, Parade of the Carnivals of Trinidad 1939-1989, he notes that there were bitter complaints about women gyrating as though they were spineless, and comments on the meaningless jargon of the lyrics that accompanied the vulgarities. (Anthony 1989). Even today, there are regulations on the books designed to control improper calypso and vulgar performances.[14]

Jammette carnival was a revolutionary response to white suppression of African Carnival celebration, and to a certain extent Afro-Creole women’s sexual freedom. Despite all this reaction and because of the cultural mélange that informs the character of the Caribbean, carnival involved integration of indigenous dances with European classical forms. As Anthony confirms above, there was lots of wining, though probably not by that name. It was a wild ritual in which men dressed as women and performed the street game known as Pis en Lit. This cross-gender mas, which involved flinging fake “menstrual rags” at spectators, was probably the single most provocative aspect of jammette carnival, the one that caused the colonial powers to forbid its performance. These exaggerated and reversed forms of gendered identities, typical of the topsy-turvy world associated with Carnival, also serve to underscore the social constructrefess of gender. They are crucial in understanding, as Butler argues, that agency lies in performing differently, deliberately, and transgressing expectations (Butler, 1990). But what is hardly mentioned in Carnival scholarship in Trinidad is the fact that women, too, took part in the Pis en Lit masquerade. Pamela Franco and Natasha Barnes, in their recent works, are among the few scholars who bring this aspect to the fore and show “how and why jamet women used the unruly woman as an empowering voice of protest” (Franco 2000: 62).[15] Dame Lorraine, another street game originating in jammette carnival, involves a character (dressed as a woman with exaggerated breasts and bottom) accosting the male member of a middle-class couple, accusing him of being the father of her (imaginary) illegitimate child, and demanding a few coins for child support.

The middle-class Trinidadians of the late 19th century (especially the white ones) had a great fear of “vulgarity,” although the jammette carnival was probably not a great deal more explicit than what goes on in Carnival today. These recalcitrant elements, typical of West African performative and cultural activities (i.e., celebrations from the places where most enslaved people originated), frightened the Europeans because they didn’t understand them.

Taxi’s song “Frenchman,” quoted in the epigraph, makes this lack of understanding explicit. In the song, a visiting European man misunderstands the implication of the sexy wining dance being done by a Caribbean woman. He assumes she is offering herself as a sexual partner, but she insists that’s not the case. “I’m a Trinbagonian,” she explains, “and this is the way we dance.” Unfortunately, this fear of vulgarity has not entirely disappeared. One can see it in the fact that the notion of “getting on bad” during modern Carnival is both explicitly encouraged and viewed with reservations when carried to extremes by daring revelers at Carnival fetes.

Upon taking classes in folk dances of the Caribbean with Hazel Franco, a lecturer in the Creative Arts Department at the University of the West Indies, this connection was easy to understand. It allowed me to connect the sensual movements of the hips and torso in Caribbean dances, such as the bele,[16] with the African dances I grew up watching and participating in myself. In this context, as Kariamu Welsh Asante argues in her essay “Images of Women in African Dance: Sexuality and Sensuality as Dual Unity: Dance Forms in Traditional African Societies,” “Feminine movements indicate the sensuality of women, which is a sense of freedom rather than the frenzied sexuality as misunderstood by Western society” (Asante 1994: 4). This is where I feel Clifford Geertz’ notion of “thick description” becomes crucial. Geertz reminds us that, “The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which anthropologists strain to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong” (Geertz 1973: 452). Or, as Taxi puts it, “This is the way we dance.”

Hence, it is critically important to foreground the stereotype of the jammette in order to understand the constellation of popular conventions that have come to determine performers’ “vulgarity” or lack of it. How, for example, do cultural or class factors affect the acceptance of sexuality in dance? Although the word “jammette” is now used in a new context, and has come, to some extent, to represent an increasingly appealing sort of subversion (the rebellion against repressive social structures), it has not yet entirely lost its ties with its original meaning: the unruliness and disrespect for law associated with lewd sexual characters and costumes. This has caused a subtle differentiation in the way different female performers embody the jammette, and the way they are viewed by audiences and critics – as will be seen in the case of Belfon and Garcia.

The modes through which the agency of these two performers are expressed differ significantly, as noted in their divergent presentations on stage. For instance, while both Destra Garcia and Denise Belfon embody what Pamela Franco calls “the “unruly woman” persona, Denise leans more towards the original, archetypal jammette, while Destra offers a sanitized version of this character (the “sophisticated” jammette) which is nonetheless not devoid of subversive potential.

I believe that Denise presents a far more dangerous and complex version of the jammette. Her first big hit was boldly titled “Wine Like A Dog” (1994), and she has on several occasions been threatened with arrest for her “lewd” and “vulgar” dance performances. Yet, as one commentator noted, “Something is deemed acceptable depending on who does it and when it is done, and completely unacceptable at another time and by another person of less stature.”[17] In fact, both these performers pose different issues in the areas they choose to perform in or comment on, thus highlighting their different images and personalities.

Erotic Autonomy: Kaka Laylay and Wine Like A Dog

As noted earlier, today the jammette image is “honored” and perceived in a new and powerful light by some men and women who see it as a way to celebrate both African culture and the rebellious role of Carnival as a form of resisting cultural and political oppression. For instance, in Rudder’s “Long Time Band” (1992), the jammette clearly represents the revolutionary cultural power of the original “long time” Carnival that has been lost:

Enid bawl out like she insane
Lord I never thought my times would come again
When we jammettes used to rule these people town
The hoity toits used to run when we around
She forget she was cookin’ fus she amazed
This lookin’ like a band from my jammette days
She pull up she dress and she cock she mouth
And start to work up she belly inside and out
People really try to cool she down
They even send for she man. They say he strong
He was an Indian from Belmont they call Caruth
He really try to cool she down for truth
She fling him off, not for hell she wouldn’t listen
Then she start to wine like she never christened
Like she body made from blood and bacchanal
And that bottom come to mash up the carnival.

Denise Belfon presents a perfect example of how the archetype of the jammette can be used to claim one’s erotic autonomy. Most of the women with whom I discussed her performances ended with uneasy comments such as, “I like her but…” or “She is different,” or “To tell you the truth, this year she was worse than last year…” While Belfon is perfectly aware of comments like these, she refuses to “clean up her act” and insists on her right to embrace her erotic autonomy. Her song lyrics intentionally draw attention to movement.

For many years there has been on-going debate in Trinidad between those who believe calypso and soca lyrics should be “serious” social commentaries, and those who think that at Carnival time it is more appropriate for music to inspire dancing and wild behavior (Liverpool 1986, Rohlehr 1998). In fact, both are correct. In my opinion, Carnival is a time to celebrate the life force in dance and sexual play – but traditionally, even serious calypso lyrics used humor, clever word play, double entendre, and other oral/literary elements to make their political and social points. A dull, rhyming list of political complaints may satisfy the narrowest definition of serious calypso today, but it is a far cry from the great, classic calypsos. While many critics today dismiss “party” soca lyrics as meaningless noise, a shallow, repetitive incitement to jump, wave, and shake your rag, Belfon’s lyrics show that it is possible to write party songs with clever words that inspire people to move while still leaving the political themes for other people. She continues in “Kaka Laylay”:

Everybody in here have ah bumsie
Big enough to wine up on somebody
Me ain’t come here to curse politicians
In dis hot hot rude party session
Make de bum bum bounce
Make de bum bum roll
When de horn men blow
We going down low, low, low, low
Kaka laylay kaka laylay (8x)

Belfon explicitly states that her mission is to dance, and to involve her audience – not to deliver a political commentary: “Me ain't come here to curse politicians.” In fact, she is a fabulous dancer, and her ability to sing while wining so strenuously (pushing her butt high, legs wide apart, moving every body part with perfect control while emphasizing the mid-section, rolling her bumsie low like a limbo dancer) really does require a lot of talent. While she focuses on a celebration of the body (as is appropriate at Carnival time), her song includes both humor and even a bit of light social commentary – noting that there is time to curse politics, but that time is not now – since Carnival is known for leggo (let go), freeing up, getting on bad, and going down on the ground.

Before yuh stand up and start to criticize
Come and give yuh bum bum some exercise
Party hot hot and sweet soca…

However, it is not her lyrics that have earned her a “bad” reputation – it is “the way she dances.” Her stage performance features a unique brand of intensely erotic wining. Her bicycle style, in which she lowers her body, points her butt to the sky, and rolls her belly clearly demonstrates that Belfon is an awe-inspiring dancer. In fact, several popular (and more “sophisticated”)[18] band singers have borrowed Belfon’s most provocative moves and used them in their own stage performances. When she “rides the bicycle,” little is left to the imagination; it is an explicitly sexual dance, very close to simulating sex on stage. (Or as the cliché goes, sex is like riding a bicycle: Once you learn, you never forget.) Like a good calypso, her provocative performances stay in your mind until the following Carnival season.

Nonetheless, wining is not implicitly or exclusively disreputable. In fact, it is important to remember that young children in Trinidad learn how to wine as soon as they can walk. Many Caribbean children’s dance-games, like “Brown Girl in the Ring,” include repeated exhortations to “show me your motion,” which is an invitation for each child to wine enthusiastically. Even so, most female calypsonians find it expedient to distance themselves from Belfon’s aggressive jammette persona. Square One’s Allison Hinds, whose bumsie-rolling stage show has borrowed a lot from Belfon, says, “It is part of the act but I never go overboard. You’ll never see me go down on the ground or lift my leg up. That’s not even part of me. You can be sensuous and sexy without being slutty.”[19] Interestingly, while Hinds and her “sophisticated” sister performers feel it necessary to control their own wining, and justify it to moralistic members of society, Belfon answers only to God. In response to early critics, she cheerfully pointed out that she prays to God before each performance. Indeed, her unapologetic, earthy authenticity is precisely what makes her a unique performer, and what allows her to personify the original jammette archetype so comfortably.

It is also extremely important to note that Denise differentiates between offering herself to her male audience as a sexual object, and celebrating her own sexual power. “I might call a male audience member up on stage to dance with me,” she says. “What I ensure though is that he wines with me…not on me.”[20] The distinction Belfon draws between “with” and “on” reflects the complex rules, customs, and traffic regulations that surround social “wining” in Trinidad. In a party, for instance, a woman may rotate her bumsie all alone, for the sheer pleasure of doing so, or she may back up against a partner’s front (or rear) to wine together. If a man (or another woman) approaches her from behind and presses against her gyrating posterior, he or she is wining on her. This approach may or may not be welcome – and the woman may request that her suitor back off. However, he may or may not do so. Many calypsos (written and sung by men and women) address the intricate verbal and non-verbal negotiations surrounding this common situation. Belfon’s comment makes it clear that she will be the one to control the wining encounter. As Twiggy (Anne Marie Parks) explicitly states, “Doh Put Your Hands on My Property.” In other words, you can’t touch this!

That is just as well, because, indeed, Belfon’s “engaging performance has been known to move men out of the crowd onto the stage.”[21] Her insistence on control reflects an increasing awareness as women with big bumsies affirm their new, self-defined identity. The United Sisters, a quartet of talented female calypsonians, even sang a song called “Big Woman Time” (1994) encouraging large women with large bumsies to come out and wine. Now female performers (and their female audiences) can internalize the jammette and celebrate their own sexuality and body parts – even if ambiguously – through wining, costume, song lyrics, and stage presentation.

In fact, Belfon struck erotic sparks with her 2002 Carnival rendition of “De Jammette,” written by Adrian Hackshaw (known as Third Base in calypso music circles), in which she took a stereotype that was already entrenched in the memory of the Trinidadians and transported it into a new context, while engendering it with nuanced meanings and sensuously confrontational moves:

Ah need a man to come…to come
No matter where yuh from…yuh from
Could be blind or deaf and dumb and bump
He need plenty not just some
Bring out de jammette in meh (4x)

Make me wine to de ground
And see you later
Twist and turn it around
Cause we do cater
Shake yuh body around
Like you’s a blender
Bend down and touch
And make them holla

For the jammette, de jammette, de jammette, de jammette
Sexy jammette
Saucy jammette
Hottie jammette
Pretty jammette.

In addition to the list of requirements, and explicitly sexual dance instructions, Denise insists that the “banana be ripe,” meaning the penis. (It is curious that in several recent calypsos, phallic vegetables are described as being ripe, presumably meaning “ready to use,” whereas in reality ripe bananas are soft while unripe ones are hard.). In live performance of this song, Denise is usually joined by a male dancer who rams her bottom as Denise is possessed by the spirit of the jammette – presumably inspired by the male dancer who successfully brings out/wakes up the dormant jammette in her.

The question is: What happens when the jammette isn’t really a jammette? Some critics feel that this stereotype has been co-opted by the middle-class to the extent that it has lost its resistive impulse. But one cannot discount the impact of Denise, who really does embody the total jammette in her performances. By embodying the stereotype so artfully she makes this song (written by a man) her own. In “De Jammette” she turns the stereotype on its head, as she subverts sexual stereotypes by playing with the boundaries between the actual and the illusory: Is she really a jammette, or is this just an act?

Tremble It: The “Sophisticated” Jammette

In my view, a lot of women in Trinidad, including some of the female performers, remain schizophrenic about the image they project during Carnival: They enjoy the freedom of “getting on bad,” but then feel the need to apologize for their frank sexual behavior. For example, Marcia Miranda told me in an interview, “There is a place for everything. That year I ‘misbehaved’ and I don’t think I will do that again.”[22] Perhaps, this self-surveillance explains why female soca singers embody two kinds of jammettes: Belfon’s earthy, unapologetic, “energetic and erotic performances,”[23] and the sanitized, “sophisticated” version embodied by the “divas” like Destra Garcia, Allison Hinds, and Sanelle Dempster. What is interesting, though, is the fact that both kinds of jammettes are subversive, each in her own way, and have much to contribute to debates on identity politics and sexuality.

Destra (who is usually referred to by first name only) has performed as lead singer with the popular Roy Cape band, and Atlantik. She is one of the biggest soca stars in Trinidad; her “Tremble It” was extremely popular in 2001, coming third in the Road March competition. Among others, she pays homage to Sanell Dempster, the lead singer with Blue Ventures who, in 1999, was the first woman after Calypso Rose to win a road march.

I arrived at the notion of the “sophisticated” jammette after reading newspaper articles that described Destra, Allison Hinds, and Sanelle Dempster as “divas,” a term that was, initially, seldom used to describe Denise Belfon.[24] I wondered whether this had to do with body type, color, class, popularity as an artist, or some other criterion. Then I came across an article in the Trinidad Express by Terry Joseph in which he remarked that, “Performers of the indigenous music are no longer looking the part of the ‘nomadic, struggling’ artiste dressing down to engage empathy. Instead they are now fully wired and opting for designer outfits – such is the state of the art.”[25] This article was accompanied by a full body picture of Karla Gonzales, lead singer with Kassav,[26] who has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I decided that it would be useful to make a distinction between the original jammette and the ”sophisticated” jammette, especially since looks, costume, and a slim body are becoming part of a marketing strategy for soca that one cannot ignore. If there was once a lot of talk about Denise’s wild gyrations, the media now seem even more preoccupied with Destra’s outfits – as will be seen below.

Just as calypso is not locked up in time, neither are the new artists. Terry Joseph draws our attention to the shift from “nomadic, struggling” to “designer-wired artiste.” Destra’s success as a soca artist can be attributed in part to her looks, costume, and chiseled body. She embodies a familiar Carnival ritual: that of dressing up in a sexy costume and looking good. Most women in Trinidad (at least middle-class women who can afford it) take time and spend money preparing for this annual ritual – specifically preparing their bodies to be presentable. Destra uses her body in the same way, flaunting her excess femininity as a potential political maneuver.

Mary Russo further contends that “flaunting of the feminine” and “putting on femininity with vengeance” suggests the power of taking it off (1986: 224). For Destra to perform in an almost pornographic style in a largely Catholic country requires a lot of daring, and cannot be totally discounted as self-commodification. Still, Natasha Barnes offers several cautions about costuming: “Because Carnival is a period that it is licensed for the reversal of social order, women’s subversion and appropriation of male-identified forms of sexual display may actually serve to reinforce patriarchal structures that it otherwise critiques” (Barnes 2000:95). With these reservations in mind, one has to be careful in ascribing subversive agency to some performances and not others, because such easy dichotomies discount the agency of the performer and emphasize instead what is already in place or expected.

In an article in the Sunday Trinidad Express, Angela Martin-Hinds writes: “Garcia, who brings in a honeyed sexuality combined with a kind of exuberance and enjoyment, is proud of her femininity and the fully blown luscious sex appeal she displayed during her act.”[27] The ability to flaunt her sexuality as she pleases is also the celebration of her erotic autonomy, that power inside us which Audre Lorde feels is under-utilized because we have been made to devalue it.

Destra usually dresses in revealing stage costumes. In fact, during 2002 Carnival, her see-through body suit garnered so much comment in newspaper reports that her songs were almost ignored. Her sexy stage persona is widely celebrated as well, as in this headline from the article written by Angela Martin-Hinds: “She is Sexy, Cool, Smart — This Girl Is Hot” (Trinidad Express 2 January 2000: 16). Nonetheless, in spite of her sexy outfits, seductive wining, and suggestive lyrics, she has (unlike Belfon) managed to remain within the limits of “respectable” female performance in Trinidad. She is always depicted as sexually desirable, as the objectifying headline adjectives suggest. If Denise’s power lies in her movement, Destra earns points with her looks, body and costume.

Far more than Dangerous Denise, Destra inhabits a conventional niche as a sex symbol – one associated with comfortable European pop icons of beauty. She’s careful about how far she goes: Unlike Belfon, she would probably never sing anything as crudely titled as “Wine Like a Dog.” However, her stage appearance and costuming present a new kind of assertive woman who celebrates her femininity for herself, and is not just responding to the pressures of the male gaze. The struggle through which gender roles are exposed and subverted remains a complex one. To consider one mode of subversion in the absence of the other is to overlook the politics of pleasure, empowerment and subversion.

Ultimately, Destra should be seen as tactfully ushering in a sexy, liberating model – one that is well understood by the revelers at Carnival, who celebrate their own hard-won, perfectly-toned bodies by dressing them in thongs. Many women in Trinidad work out and go on dangerous diets in preparation for Carnival, which is the prime moment to show off the results of their hard work.

During my field work I visited three gyms and asked women why they were working out. Some actually admitted to doing so for the sole purpose of looking good, while others said they were doing it to develop stamina for the physically demanding Carnival parades. Whatever the reasons, starting as early as September, the four places I visited were packed with exercising women.[28] Writing about the significance of costuming at Carnival, Natasha Barnes observes that, “Carnival costuming [has] precipitated a dramatic rise in the numbers of women of all races and classes participating in Carnival” (Barnes 2000). While the numbers have increased, economic factors still limit the manner in which women display their bodies. Someone who cannot afford to visit the gym, or come up with the money to join a “skin band”[29] (whose skimpy costumes are costly), may feel inadequate competing with women with “perfect” bodies in cute Carnival costumes. However, it should be added that, by and large, the lack of a “perfect” body seldom stops Trinidadian women from having a great time playing mas. I saw women of all shapes and weight playing mas in Legends, which is one of the notorious skin bands.

Still, the focus on “pretty mas,” as it is called in Trinidad, tends to marginalize big women; United Sisters’ “Big Woman Time” was long overdue. Marva explained the idea behind its inception: “It is our way of encouraging big-size women to come out of the shadows they’ve hid in all these years. They have nothing to be ashamed of. It is they who make the Carnival in any case. Yuh ever see any man looking at magga-bone[30] woman in costume? Nah!”[31] Even if, as Marva suggests, no men are looking at skinny women, the TV cameramen and newspaper photographers certainly are. The photographs offered by the Tourism and Industrial Development Company (TIDCO) to travel magazines, etc., generally focus on showing slender women with European features.

While wining can subvert social and cultural hegemonies, it can also reinforce them. By ignoring the complexity of the female performer’s contradictory situation, one risks reading the baring of one’s skin as inevitably-liberating regardless of circumstances. If bikinis were a mark of freedom, Peggy Phelan is convinced, “almost-naked young white women should be running Western culture.”[32]

In her song “Tremble It,” written by Kernal Roberts, Destra remains firmly within the “jam-and-wave” party format. Her repetitive and unimaginative lyrics (rags and flags and rags and flags, plus cliché phrases like “we come out to fete” and “we behaving bad”) lack the nuanced political commentary found in the words to Denise’s song. The following excerpt serves as a good example:

Yes we come out to fete
Tremble up your rag ‘til yuh wuk up sweat
We waving ‘til we mad mad mad
We behaving bad
Whoa yo yo yo
So let me see yuh rag
Let me see yuh wave yuh flag
Let meh see yuh rag
Whoa tremble it…

Nonetheless, Destra scores a lot of points with the crowd for her ecstatic, high-energy performance and the driving band arrangement that accompanies it. The music builds to an irresistible crescendo as Destra tells the women in the audience to “shake it, and tremble it up like an earthquake.” She reminds her sisters in the crowd that they own their own bodies and can use them for their own ends, their own pleasure. What remains different between Destra and Denise is that while Denise sings she “trembles it,” Destra concentrates on the wining and never does the two things simultaneously.

While the lyrics repeat the phrase “let me see yuh rag,” the song (and especially its title) emphasize trembling the bottom. If there is any question about what this means, Destra takes center stage and rolls her bottom enthusiastically as the band continues with:

Tremble it and raise it up
Tremble it and raise it up
Up, down, up, down
Yes we going on de stage
Look how Destra mashin’ up with Roy Cape…[33]

As the lead singer, she can command the audience as she rolls her bottom, inspiring other women to join her in a call-and-response interaction done in movement rather than words. Men roll their bottoms too, but the most ecstatic reaction I saw came from women.

Self-Surveillance: Doggy Dancer No Rude Girl

Having drawn the distinction between the two kinds of modern jammettes – the explicitly bawdy “original” ones like Belfon, and the sexy “sophisticated” ones like Destra – it is now possible to highlight how both of them are similarly tormented by acts of self-surveillance in their effort to draw a distinction between their private and public selves. This self-policing normally takes two forms: recourse to piousness, and distancing oneself from other performers who are thought to be vulgar.

The second part of the sub-section title is taken from a caption which appeared under a picture of Denise Belfon in Kaiso Chronicles, February 13, 1994, four weeks after she had performed her controversial “Wine Like a Dog” in a calypso tent for the first time. Attempting to defend herself against accusations of immorality, Belfon pointed out that, “I am not a lewd, loose person at all, and I am not selling sex with what I do on stage.”[34] Later she added, “Every woman knows what God expects of them, and they should ensure that they observe these moral values when they are out publicly.”[35] Her ultimate defense against the accusations of lewd character was to swear that she always prays before she goes on stage.

In a similarly defensive interview, recalling the controversy over the flesh-colored body suit she wore at the Soca Monarch finals in 2002, Destra told Laura Dowrich, “People judge me by the clothes I wear. When I am on stage I am putting on a show for you. It is entertainment. I still have my self-respect, I will not go overboard.” She added, “I plan to have kids someday, and I don’t want them to look back and say ‘God, mummy that is you?’”[36]

All this might sound inconsequential, but it sets the stage for a discussion of these neurotic acts of policing oneself. Trinidadians harbor both a strong sense of spirituality, and a powerful urge toward sexuality. Traditionally, religious leaders find it necessary to point out the devilish qualities of wining and popular music. Many performers recall times when they could not wine in view of their parents. One possible explanation for this behavior might be that “as women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and non-rational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to use it in the service of men…” (Lorde 1984:54). This self-doubting, and the need to justify one’s behavior as a performer, becomes detrimental as it limits oppositional uses to which the erotic autonomy might be deployed. The suppressed energies, as Judith Butler points out, undoubtedly owe to the insider’s knowledge of cultural punishments and rewards that await one, depending on how badly the appropriate gender was performed (Butler 1990).

Understanding how gender is constructed can shed some light on cultural dictates –for instance, how the artist transgresses or upholds culturally appropriate behavior, and the clash between ideal behavior and reality. In this case, writes Gordon Rohlehr, “The vision of the ideal was employed time and again to impose an abstract morality on women and control their behavior, and deny them the sexual and or social freedom which men themselves enjoyed and cherished” (Rohlehr 1990:226). But this does not altogether discount the fact that there exists a tug of war between collusion and subversion as women react to changing times and performance expectations. Nowhere is this more apparent than during Carnival itself, with its playful and serious elements. But also women seize these opportunities to enjoy the fleeting freedoms, be they real or imagined, as an occasion where “a topsy-turvy world” is created in the Bakhitinian sense.[37] In plain calypso language, Kitchener has always insisted that there is no carnival without bacchanal. And Chalkdust has noted that, “Carnival celebrates the life force…and you can’t celebrate the life force without moving your hips.”[38]

And yet even Liverpool, who is generally a perceptive and appreciative observer of the underlying sensuality of Carnival culture, has stated that, “‘bumsie’ songs, where men are asked to touch, hold, and feel the woman’s bottom, are worse than smut for they can contribute to our social disorganization where values have broken down so irretrievably over the past two years” (Trinidad Express January 6:10). What Liverpool did not say is that the same songs can give women a sense of empowerment as they decide who touches them and how.

Carnival Is Woman: Shake The Bumsie

Within the tradition of Carnival, in which calypso plays an integral part, there has always been special concern about the behavior of women to the extent that jammettes were locked in prison (Franco 2000). However, the voice of the jammette was never totally muted, as each generation has continued to have its share of jammettes with varying degrees of aggressiveness. The increasing prominence of women at Carnival has been commented on by several scholars. However, their studies tend to focus on costumed female revelers, and not on female performers – who have proved to be a force to reckon with.[39]

It is time to address what kinds of issues these performers bring to the table, and to what extent they encourage women’s participation in Carnival. The simple act of playing mas[40] is itself a way of celebrating one’s erotic autonomy, by daring to appear in public in a scanty outfit, dancing sensually, and suspending ordinary rules of proper and acceptable behavior. In 1991, when a highly respected schoolteacher pulled off her panties and waved them to the music, it made instant news in Trinidad – but she probably didn’t lose her job.

In a television interview, feminist-activist and scholar Rhoda Reddock, who is head of Gender and Development Studies at University of West Indies, St. Augustine, commented that Carnival gives women, in particular, 72 hours of freedom which they can choose to use in any manner they please.[41] Some scholars, like Daniel Miller in his ethnographic research based on 1988 Carnival, note how women are now expressing more “absolute freedom” than men, at least on this particular occasion: “The women in Carnival, as they become involved in the dance, are not tremendously interested in who or what they are wining upon: They will wine on men, they will wine on each other, most often on no one at all, but the object of wining is in most cases really themselves. It is an expression of a free sexuality which has no object but itself, and most especially it is a sexuality not dependent on men” (Miller 1991: 333).

While I agree with Miller’s notion of “auto-sexuality,” I am not convinced that the hours spent at the gym, or the exercises, or jogging around the Savannah in preparation for Carnival, are entirely free of “traditional” heterosexual motivation. Women in most societies are socialized to want to look pretty for men, and at times women compete among themselves for male attention. It would be wrong to assume an easy equation between dancing among women as purely “auto-sexual.” Sometimes dancing together among women (or dancing by oneself) is intended to attract potential male partners who can see that a woman is not “taken.” This could be a skillful strategy that female dancers are quite aware of. What is important, in any case, is the freedom to select who they allow into this circle. It remains the woman’s prerogative to choose who she wants to wine with, or wine on, or be wined on by.

Most women want to be desired, and (theoretically, at least) the atmosphere at Carnival allows for relaxed sexual interactions across class lines.[42] For instance, it is only during Carnival that “low-class” people from Dry River or “Behind the Bridge”[43] (as they identify their neighborhoods) get a chance to rub shoulders (or bumsies) at a fete with wealthy people from barricaded West Moorings – or a male cabinet minister can publicly wine on his maid (or vice versa). Given class regimentation in Trinidad, these cross-class socio-sexual interactions are not possible most of the year.[44] Hence, the dynamics of dance-floor courtship range from playful to deadly serious – and lead to the expression, “He tief [thief] a wine on me,” meaning that a strange man might slip up behind a wining woman and “jam she behind” (snuggle up against her bumsie) without permission. Such unwelcome attention may not always be truly unwelcome – depending on the physical appeal of the intruder, his social class, and how much money he has to spend. Or how much rum the woman has had to drink.

Hand in de Air: Shake Up de Bum Bum

An enraged Pastor W. Cuffie believes that women shaking their bottoms are worse than Iwer George singing about it – which in his opinion is like putting the cart before the horse. “I am hearing a lot of protests about the degradations caused by the words being sung. I have never heard about the far more degrading bottom-in-de-road actions on the road on Carnival day – and before close-up television cameras too, cameras which transmit worldwide the literal bottoms-in-the road![45] I don’t hear any of those concerned voices talking about how degrading these actions are to women and what other moral dangers they pose.”[46] Clearly, the pastor is putting the burden of blame on the women, not the singer. My interest in women singing about their own bodies, and parodying them as both subject and spectacle, complicates Cuffie’s simplistic moralistic conclusions.

In any case, if those wining bumsies could talk, they would say in movement what many women dare not say in words: They reject songs like Duke’s “This Bumsie is Mine,” and similar calypsos by male calypsonians, and demand the right to claim, own, celebrate, and control their own bottoms. Many women who respond enthusiastically to the wining instructions from their sisters on stage are declaring ownership of their own bumsies in the very act of responding to refrains like “Shake up the bum bum.” The statements they make in movement require that we look beyond what meets the eye, the realm of “phallocentric gaze,” to see female bodies not as passive, but as bodies capable of agency derived from the pleasure of wining for themselves – and not necessarily for men. The performances, I believe, shift from “meaningless chants” urging women to shake certain parts of their body to women asserting their sexuality in performance.

In Trinidad, more than in many countries, women who show signs of autonomy are often “accused” of being lesbians. To some extent this is due to the fear of the independent woman, as noted in previous chapters. But we must also consider that much of Trinidad society subscribes to the idea of “compulsory heterosexuality”; it is seemingly impossible for a Trinidadian male to imagine women loving each other and not having any time for men. Some letters-to-the-editor in Trinidad newspapers warn that Trinidad is being invaded by posses of lesbians (zammies).[47] While women’s independence is perceived as a threat to men’s masculinity and economic advantage in many societies, I was surprised to discover how much homophobia remains alive in Trinidad – the most American of the Caribbean islands. For instance, in spite of a widespread perception that famous mas designer and bandleader Peter Minshall was gay, it was still a huge bombshell when he came out publicly in 2003. I find this particularly strange because I met quite a few Trinidadian women and men of different sexual orientations (gay, lesbian, transgender) – some open, some still in the closet. The Curepe junction, not far from where I lived, was the hub for transvestites.

Women’s intricate hip movements onstage and off, and the call and response between the female performers and their sisters in the crowd, adds a distinctive flavor to the character of Carnival. These new modes of expression should take on other variables such as sexuality, economics, class, and the expanding time-limit of carnival if they are to move beyond the masculine fantasy projected onto the woman’s body.

The Body Remains

The issue of movement in soca and calypso remains an important one, and gestures towards struggles of self-definition. Performances by women can contribute to our understanding of women’s experiences on their own terms – not simply by “dogging” men’s calypso, but in the way they placate male domination and aggression. Whether wining on each other, allowing a man of their choice to wine on them, or wining in between two men, women make their own choice to “free up,” “get on bad” or just seize the opportunity to misbehave with the knowledge that for at least the 45 hours of Carnival they can express their freedom and unleash pent-up emotions just as they wish.

By paying too much attention to what men say about women in their calypso lyrics, and failing to listen instead to what women say about themselves – or failing to watch how they execute the movements that accompany their lyrics – even feminist scholars have overlooked the agency evident in the lyrics and performances of female calypsonians. It is too easy to focus on vulgarity and miss the importance of the ways these women are challenging traditional forms of repression, be it racial, gender, or otherwise. If we tilt the lens to focus on what women are saying in their lyrics, and the dance movements they use to deliver those lyrics on stage, we gain a more accurate picture of the sex and power interactions at play in the act of wining. If women’s party lyrics are merely repetitive incitements to jump, wine, wave, and shake, then we must become movement-literate and watch them move their bodies to understand and witness what they are really telling us about the price they have to pay.

In the end, there is much to learn from “wine yuh bum bum” party calypsos as sung by women, especially if one considers dance as an embodied practice that privileges the body as the site of knowledge. If Stephen Tyler’s prediction in The Unspeakable (1987) materializes, we are entering a new era where the postmodern ethnographic text will be a text of the physical, the spoken, and the performed.[48] In the beginning there was the body, and in the end, hopefully, the body remains.

Discography

Many calypsos are never “officially” recorded on albums or compact discs. Some of the calypsos quoted in this essay were transcribed from tape recordings of live performances broadcast on Trinidad radio, or videotapes of live performances broadcast on Trinidad television. Some were transcribed directly from live performances, or quoted from books. Others were transcribed from old cassettes provided by acquaintances or their families with no discographic information whatsoever. Consequently, it is not always possible to provide complete discographic information for every song quoted.

Cathy- Ella- Imamahah (with Joe Le Taxi) 1995. “Frenchman.” Trini Party. Rituals C0395 (CD).

Denise Belfon. “Kaka Laylay,” “De Jammette,” “Wine Like a Dog.”

Destra Garcia. 2001. “Tremble It.” Carnival Party Rhythms 6. Rituals of Trinidad C05698 (CD)

Iwer George. “Bottom in de Road.”

Kitchener. “Sugar Bum Gum.”

Mighty Duke. “This Bumbsie is Mine.”

David Rudder. “Trail of the Bumsie,” “Long Time Band.”

George Victory. “Biggie Bam Bam.”

Bibliography

Asante-Welsh, Kariamu. “Images of Women in African Dance ~ Sexuality and Sensuality as Dual Unity: Dance Forms in Traditional African Societies.” SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women 8:2 (Fall 1994): 16-21.

Anthony, Michael. Parade of the Carnivals of Trinidad 1839-1989. Port of Spain: Circle Press, 1989.

Barnes, Natasha. “Body Talk: Notes on Women’s Spectacle in Contemporary Trinidad.” Small Axe 7 (March 2000): 93-105.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990.

Cooper, Carolyn. Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the “Vulgar” Body of Jamaican Popular Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.

Franco, Pamela. “The ‘Unruly Woman’ in Nineteenth-Century Trinidad Carnival” Small Axe 7 (March 2000): 60-76.

Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Liverpool, Hollis. Kaiso and Society. St Thomas, Virgin Islands: Virgin Islands Commission on Youth, 1986.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984.

Miller, Daniel. “Äbsolute Freedom in Trinidad.” Man 27 (1991): 323-41

Pearse, Andrew. “Mitto Simpson on Calypso Legends of the Nineteenth Century.” Caribbean Quarterly, Vol 4, Nos. 3 & 4 (March- June, 1956): 250-262.

Rohlehr, Gordon. “‘We Getting the Kaiso that We Deserve’: Calypso and the World Music Market.” Theatre Drama Review Vol. 42 No 3 (Fall 1988): 82-95.

Russo, Mary. “Female Grotesques: Carnival and Theory” in Teresa de Lauretis’s (Ed.,) Feminist Studies/Crirical Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986): 213-227.

Tyler, Stephen. The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue and Rhetoric in the Postmodern World. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

References

[1] “Bottom” refers to the buttocks.

[2] The song probably refers to Indo-Trinidadian Hulsie Bhaggan, whose bottom in the road was to become a staple in most calypsos after her protest/sit-down in the middle of the Butler Highway. I discuss this incident elsewhere as an example of sexual gender-based violence.

[3] In a survey conducted by Trinidad Guardian (November 29, 1997: 9) in which reporters asked the “young voices” whether Iwer George’s 1998 calypso, “Bottom in de Road,” should be banned from the airwaves, one of the youths interviewed, Christian Gobity, said, “No, it should not be banned, because it is a good song to dance to. I don’t find it embarrassing because there have been plenty of songs like that over the years and they were not banned” (9). Others felt it should be banned because it was degrading to women, but these mixed responses are interesting and tell us a lot about calypso and how they present women’s body parts. Gordon Rohlehr contends that “‘Bottom in de Road’ is an ordinary song with a typical calypso structure, and its contents don’t merit the discussion or criticism surrounding it” (Sunday Trinidad Express 1997 December 14: 3).

[4] Wine and grind up against a woman’s bumsie.

[5] This refers to the KFC on Independence Square in Port of Spain.

[6] See Molly Ahye and Gordon Rohlehr.

[7] Debbie Jacob, “The Songs They Tried To Silence,” Sunday Trinidad Express (December 14, 1997): 3.

[8] The phrase “kaka laylay” was coined by singer Denise Belfon in her song of the same name. It is intended to suggest both an ecstatic dance movement and the excitement it inspires in onlookers. There are many such words in Trinidadian slang, such as “dingolay,” whose precise meaning is less important than the feeling it carries – a sort of transactional onomatopoeia.

[9] Movement and transgression in calypso has mainly been interrogated from a Bakhitian point of view of Carnival. See Mikhail Bakhitin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968) whose description of carnival focused on early European festivities. I have attempted to insert the voices of the performers by listening carefully to the terms they use to describe their autonomy. I choose Audre Lorde’s notion of “erotic autonomy” in order to show how stereotypical aspects of female sensuality and sexuality can serve as political tools.

[10] I guess this is an equivalent of “shake what your mama gave you ” as expressed in U.S. Black circles and in most African cultures, although people might use different expressions.

[11] Feature Writer, Trinidad Express (February 25, 1985): 11.

[12] See Andrew Pearse, “Mitto Sampson on Calypso Legends of the Nineteenth Century.” Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 4. Nos 3 & 4 (March-June, 1956): 250-262.

[13] For a detailed discussion of jammette carnival, see Brereton (1975) Elder (1966) and Rohlehr (1990) among others.

[14] See Rohlehr (1990) on the Theater Dance Hall Ordinance or Seditious Publication Ordinance of 1920 which legislated the censoring of calypso. When Denise Belfon is threatened with arrest, one cannot help but recall that some of the laws meant to repress women are still operating in full swing.

[15] See Natasha Barnes’s “Body Talk: Notes on Women’s Spectacle in Contemporary Trinidad” (2000), which focuses on Carnival costuming as an empowering avenue.

[16] Both the lyrics and the flirtatious way they are executed bear resemblance to African dances of courting. The bele is said to be from French tradition, but appropriated by enslaved Africans who added their own flavor. Bele is a competitive, flirtatious dance. “Dancers who were women could refuse to dance if a drummer or drummers were not playing to their satisfaction.” See “Conference on Culture and Cultural Heritage of Tobago 1984” by Tobago House Assembly. Here again is an example of women calling the shots in dance.

[17] Sunday Trinidad Express VOX, (February 8, 1998): 5.

[18] The term “sophisticated” is used here to imply the ratings based on tours, achievements and visibility both in Trinidad and abroad, and the way these performers are treated in the media.

[19] Marcia Henville, “The Lowdown on Alison Hinds’s Real Bumper!” Trinidad Sunday Express (January 24, 1999): 19.

[20]Sunday Trinidad Express Jan 23, 2000: 29).

[21]Trinidad Express (January 3 1997): 17.

[22] Interview 2000.

[23] See Sunday Trinidad Express January 30, 2000:31 on “Saucy Wow” Denise Belfon who is always known for he sheer energy aand boldness as a performer.

[24] More recently, she has been awarded the honorific “diva” in some newspaper reviews.

[25] Trinidad Express, November 3, 1999:19.

[26] Cassav is an international Zouk Group.

[27] Sunday Trinidad Express January 21, 2001: 4

[28] Some of the gyms visited were La Joya, Center for Excellence; Prince’s gym in Tunapuna; Bally’s in Port of Spain.

[29] This phrase refers to bands whose skimpy costumes display lots of skin.

[30] The phrase means “so skinny one can see the bones.”

[31] Article by Peter Ray Blood, Trinidad Express, January 17, 1993:12.

[32] Cited in Barnes 2000

[33] The Roy Cape band was backing Destra.

[34] Kaiso Chronicles February 13, 1994: 4

[35] Ibid., 4

[36] Trinidad Guardian, 28 January 2003

[37] Bakhitin, Rabelais and His World (1968).

[38] Lecture in San Francisco, transcribed by Michael Goodwin

[39] The relationship between wining and the subversion of traditional gender roles has stimulated much interest among Caribbean scholars, especially feminist scholars and activists, as they explore the resistant qualities of movement. Some studies need to be singled out here because of their focus on feminist issues, especially the female body (Cooper 1993, Davies 1994, Franco 2000, Barnes 2000).

[40] The phrase refers to putting on a costume and joining a band in the street.

[41] Interview in a film by Trinidadian feminist filmmaker Judith Laird, Bacchanal Women(1986).

[42] At least theoretically. In recent years, Carnival bands have tended to be increasingly monolithic, with security guards to keep out lower-class “stormers.”

[43] The phrase refers to the neighborhoods east of the Dry River, especially Laventille, one of the poorest and funkiest parts of greater Port of Spain.

[44] For detailed discussion of class and ethnicity in Trinidad, see Kevin Yelvington’s Producing Power (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995).

[45] In recent years, some Trinidadian TV Carnival coverage has found its way onto international cable services.

[46] Trinidad Express December 26, 1997: 5.

[47] See Audre Lorde, Zami The New Spelling of My Name (Truman, CA: Crossing Press, 1982).

[48] See Tyler, The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue and Rhetoric in the Postmodern World.

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 3, 2004