Off The Beaten Track: Columbus' Anchor

Sangeeta Nancy Boondoo, an attorney with the government of Trinidad and Tobago, is a student of life. She's always on the lookout for something new and interesting to learn and do. She loves to travel, and though she hasn't yet been to India, the land of her ancestors, it's at the top of her list to visit someday. She loves to go to the beach, take nature hikes, and bake. She does not like to cook, but she collects cookbooks anyway, along with all kinds of other books. A girl after our own heart...

It can be difficult to explain to people why a person can like a museum. I know I tried on a few occasions. Why do I like them? Simple. One never knows the treasures and discoveries to be made when a museum is visited!! Last year I visited the National Museum and Art Gallery (Royal Victoria Institute) in Port-of-Spain for the first time as an adult, with all the time in the world to wander around. I “found” quite a few treasures, but one stood out in particular: Christopher Columbus’ anchor.

The National Museum and Art Gallery (Royal Victoria Institute) is housed in a beautiful old building, built at first as a Science and Art Museum to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and hence originally called the Victoria Institute. It was opened on 17th September, 1902 and over a century later Royal Victoria is still a very beautiful lady. 

The building is currently under renovation, with visitors having to walk across the southern courtyard to enter. I didn’t mind because it was right around the corner, and in the recent past the building was marked for demolition. The courtyard is rather inconspicuous, and I remember resigning myself to the fact that only in Trinidad would the entrance to our national museum be like this.

 Passing a white, wiry swan as I entered, I was not deterred, certain that at the very least there were a few cannons scattered around the courtyard, and they were sure to entertain me for a while. The courtyard had a surprise though, neatly tucked away in a corner, next to the swan stood a simple anchor with a metal plate inscribed with some writing. I took the pictures first, and then I went in closer to read the writing. This simple anchor, almost blending in with the shrubbery, was said to be the anchor lost by Christopher Columbus along the shores of Trinidad in 1498—and it had been exhibited as such in Normandy, Paris, Madrid, and Chicago. I was excited, and given that I was not prohibited from touching it either by a sign or the knowledge that I would damage it, I admit I did reach out and touch it, imaging to myself the stories this anchor could tell if it were able to. 

I left the museum quite happy, having photographed and noted the many treasures housed within but saddened at the difficulties that the museum staff faced in maintaining them. It is sad how little we appreciate our history.

Christopher discovered Trinidad during his third voyage to the new world. The legend is that having sighted land on 31st July, 1498 and seeing three hills, Columbus was reminded of an earlier promise to name the first land he discovered “La Trinity” after the Holy Trinity. La Trinity became Trinidad over the years and has stuck. The three hills Columbus saw are a bit of a myth because that triad of hills which inspired Columbus is yet to be found; fishermen report that in certain conditions they can see the Trinity.

Columbus’ records indicated that he and his crew stopped several times along the Trinidadian coast. On the second day of one such stop, at  “Punta del Arenal,” Columbus and his crew, on noticing a large canoe carrying twenty four Amerindians armed with bows, arrows, and wooden shields, ordered his men to play drums and dance. It was perhaps one of the earliest examples of the tourists not understanding local culture but having done some research, mistakenly thinking that they knew it all. The tourist guides did get it wrong long before the modern-day tourism industry. The Amerindians began showering arrows onto the ships and, according to the records, managed to communicate with a ship captain.  

Later that night Columbus stopped somewhere along the coast near modern day Icacos, at a spot in which the sea was apparently rough and lost the anchor of one of his ships. 

An anchor bearing the date 1497 imprinted on its stock was discovered in Icacos by one Mr. Agostini whilst conducting excavations on his plantation in 1877. The New York Times reported the find on April 12, 1880, stating that, “...it seems by no means improbable that it crossed the Atlantic on board the vessel which in the following year carried the Genoese adventurer outward upon his third voyage...”.

According to the inscription, the anchor’s 15th-century authenticity was confirmed by the French Societé Des Antiquiaries. Mr. Agostini later presented the anchor to the nation on March 9, 1912 and it has been since housed at the National Museum.

I have always heard that you never know what treasures lie waiting around the corner, and having literally discovered a treasure around the corner, I can’t wait to see what lies behind the next corner!

Made in Trinidad and Tobago

Please welcome our guest today, Sangeeta Nancy Boondoo, an attorney with the government of Trinidad and Tobago. She is filling in today for Supriya. Sangeeta first wrote for Novel Adventurers in February.

When you live in a country like Trinidad and Tobago, it’s difficult to talk about cross-cultural art forms or blends because the country itself is a cross-cultural blend. There is so much to say that you don’t know where to begin. In the end, I decided to spotlight three cross-cultural facets of life in Trinidad and Tobago. I hope you enjoy.

Our music is one of our finest cross-cultural art-forms. In an earlier post on this blog, I wrote about chutney and calypso/soca music. Chutney has its origins in the Indo-Trinidadian population while calypso/soca originated from the local Afro-Trinidadian population. 

In the past, you would not have seen or heard a mixing of the two, but that has changed. Anyone can sing either chutney or calypso/soca; even better, we now have chutney soca, wherein the rhythm of soca and the melody of chutney have blended to present a new and unique sound. One of my favourites is “Bring It” celebrating a Trinbagonian love for rum and partying:

In the early part of the nineteenth century, Venezuelans migrated to work on cocoa estates in Trinidad and brought with them their version of parang music, which over the years has absorbed aspects of local African and French creole culture. The instruments used indicate the cultural blend: a four string guitar, maracas, and marimbola (an Afro-Venezuelan instrument), the box bass (a wooden instrument native to Trinidad), and other more conventional instruments. The lyrics can be entirely in English, Spanish or a mix of both.

Parang is Christmas music, and similar to carolers, paranderos (parang musicians) move from house to house on Christmas Day serenading their neighbours with the lovely music for the small price of something to eat and drink. It is not Christmas now, but I believe that anytime is a good time for good music. You can listen to the late Daisy Voisin, the undisputed queen of parang, singing of her delight for the birth of Jesus:

Another cross-cultural aspect of Trinidad and Tobago society is the Spiritual Shouter Baptist faith, an indigenous religion which grew from the multi-cultural nature of the country. The origins of this religion are unclear; what we do know is that the religion developed within the African-Caribbean community and it reflects elements of Protestant Christianity and African religious doctrines.

The difference between the Baptist faith practices in Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean countries may result from the influx of the “Merrikens,” African-American soldiers who fought for the British in the American War of Independence and were given freedom and land grants in southern Trinidad, a British colony. The Merrikens brought their Baptist faith with them and they, along with the Anglicans who came to Trinidad, are thought to have influenced the local Shouter/Spiritual Baptist faith. Whatever its origin, this part of our culture is a beautiful combination of African rhythms and sedate Christianity.

 

The island of Tobago itself is a cross-cultural blend, and the Tobago Heritage Festival celebrates this diversity. The island bounced around as the colony of several European nations. This European influence, along with that of the native Amerindians and the Africans led to a unique culture which is different from Trinidad’s.

My favourite part of the festival is the Ole Time Wedding, which follows traditional European courtship codes. It features a procession of dashing gentlemen dressed in formal black and white suits, top hats, bow ties, and white gloves. They carry large umbrellas to shade their “brides.” The women dress in 18^th and 19^th century dresses, platform shoes, decorated wide-brimmed hats or fascinators, and gloves. The wedding procession winds its way along the street, dancing the “brush back,” a tap dance variation, to the enchantingly sweet sounds of the tambrin and fiddle, stopping along the way to enjoy cake and wine.

Trinidad and Tobago has a rich culture, born from the many that have made their homes on these islands over the centuries, and while it is not perfect, I think it is beautiful.

Hot Fusion, Tropical Beats

The spicy pepper mixture known as chutney in India has a second meaning in the Caribbean, where it’s also a type of Indo-Caribbean music with deep roots but a short history. It's also as diverse as the people who created it.

Chutney music goes back to the late 1950s, when a dance album called The King of Suriname released in the tiny South American nation of the same name. The music made a splash among East Indians across the region, and the singer, Ramew Chaitoe, became known as the father of chutney music.

Chaitoe sang primarily Indian religious songs known as bhajans in a Creolized Hindi. One song in particular, Raat Ke Sapne, became a dance hit that was popular for decades. The song is about separation, an apt subject for Chaitoe’s primary audience whose ancestors were brought by the British to the Caribbean sugar belt as indentured laborers to replace the freed slaves.

A decade after Chaitoe’s historic recordings, another Surinamese, Dropati, released an album (Let’s Sing and Dance) of traditional wedding songs that became another hit and earned her the title of the mother of chutney music. The King of Suriname and Let’s Sing and Dance remain two of the bestselling East Indian albums, though the genre itself has changed dramatically.

In 1970, a Trinidadian named Sundar Popo had a #1 hit song in Guyana and Trinidad with his song Nana Nani (which means “grandfather" and "grandmother”). Sung in Creolized Hindi and English, with lyrics like “Nana drinkin' white rum and Nani drinkin' wine,” the song was heard all over the islands in the ‘70s, and gave way to the term chutney for this form of music. Sundar Popo sang folk songs with influences of West Indian calypso sounds on topics that reflected life of the Indo-Caribbeans, touching on themes of emigration, repression, and discrimination in his songs. Other chutney music artists emerged, singing about everything from female oppression to life on a sugar plantation.

Today chutney music has gone mainstream, an amalgam of calypso and Trinidadian soca, using electric guitars and synthesizers, and Indian popular music and traditional instruments, such as the dholak (a double-headed hand drum played horizontally), the dhantal (a long steel rod played with a metal horseshoe-type piece), and the harmonium (something like a small keyboard similar to a reed organ). And it’s not just East Indians creating this music; Afro West Indians have gotten in on the act, and the genre has spread to a wider, mainstream Caribbean audience. A musician named Atiya all the way over in Holland shot to fame performing her own Indian soca music.

And as Afro-Caribbeans and Indo-Caribbeans migrated north, to the United States and Canada, so did the music. Record companies and nightclubs promoting this popular party music emerged, especially in Toronto and New York, spreading the Caribbean music scene further. Often, recordings done in the north make their way back to the islands. 

Earlier, some Caribbean governments banned or repressed chutney music because of ethnic discrimination. But by the early to mid-‘90s, both Trinidad and Guyana had East Indian political leaders, which helped lead to a renaissance of this type of music. In Guyana, Terry Gajraj had a top hit with an album called “Guyana Baboo” (Child of Guyana) that evokes nostalgia for Guyanese immigrants everywhere.

In fact, the music has splintered into a dozen other subgenres – dance, folk, hip hop, rap, even appearing in Bollywood films – but even as it moves from the islands onto the international stage, the music remains popular throughout the region and the Caribbean diaspora as the music of their roots, for East and West Indians alike.

Here are just a few popular chutney songs, old and new:

Chutney Pressure: 

Nani Nana:

 Marajin: 

Guyana Baboo: