Lunar New Year Surprises – Confusing the Spirits

While Supriya remains on hiatus this week, our special guest blogger, Beth Green, fills us in on a festival you may only learn about here at Novel Adventurers. Beth is a writer and English teacher living in Southern China. She grew up on a sailboat in the Caribbean, and though now a landlubber, still enjoys a peripatetic life. She writes articles and suspense about travel and expatriate life. (And check out her amazing photography.)

When it comes to traveling, I’m a planner.

I clip magazine articles, bookmark the heck out of travel websites, and buy Lonely Planet books as if they’ll impart the secrets of the universe to me. But I always enjoy a good laugh at myself when I sit back and realize that, on the whole, the best travel adventures I’ve had have been unplanned.

I’ve been living in China since 2006, and as much as I try to plan my way around this giant, populous land mass, there’s always a surprise or two around the corner.

One of the hardest times to plan for travel in China is during the country’s most important holiday, Spring Festival. Also called the Lunar New Year, this celebration lasts for a two-week period, usually in February.

The first year I lived in China, I didn’t know it would be so difficult to travel at holiday time. But by 2009, I got wiser. “We’re not taking the stupid train THIS year,” I told my boyfriend. “We’re going to bus it.” We were living in Guizhou Province. Guizhou is in Southwest China and is most known for being poor and for having a lot of different minority ethnicities. China has more than 50 recognized minorities (the majority are Han Chinese), and Guizhou has settlements of 13 of them.

If we took only short, local, bus rides, I reasoned, we'd be able to travel during Spring Festival without all the hassle. Plus, we'd be able to explore Guizhou, which few travelers get to do. So, several guidebooks in hand, we set off before the Lunar New Year to explore the jungle-covered karst hills and the minority villages of Guizhou.

The village of Zhaoxing in southern China's Guizhou Province

For the first few days of the trip, we were fine. Buses were cheap, plentiful, and went to the places that I had planned out for us. We observed traditional wooden architecture, tasted spicy minority cuisine, and visited villages where people still work the fields in traditional homespun dress, bedecked in silver jewelry.

Then, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, my plans ground to a halt. We arrived in a larger town of a few thousand people. All the shops were shutting down. No hotel would take us. And worst of all, we were told there would be no buses for three days.

After some discussion in my broken Mandarin with a few taxi drivers, we did find one hotel that would be open. They sent us off running to a convenience store that was open for only another hour. We stocked up on instant noodles and bottles of drinking water. Restaurants would close for the festival too, we learned.

We made the best of it, going for walks to nearby hamlets to see the wooden drum towers and playing endless rounds of gin rummy in our hotel room at night.

But my plans were a mess. There was no way we were going to get to see all of the stuff I’d laid out for us. We’d just have time for one more village before we needed to arc our way back north to Zunyi, the city we were living in. We were teaching at a winter holiday camp in a few days.

The "crowd" in Zhaoxing

We studied my guidebooks and chose a village that some people had described as “too touristy.” If they were used to tourist money, we thought, maybe they’d have some stores and restaurants open. We were tired of instant noodles.

Buses still weren’t running at their normal schedule on the third day of the festival, but we managed to find some minibus drivers who did occasional passes through the villages, and they agreed to take us and some other stranded tourists to Zhaoxing village.

We got dropped off in a muddy parking lot on the outskirts of the village. All of the houses were wooden and slope-roofed, and we could see the layered turrets of the drum towers, one of the most striking things about a Dong minority village.

A cloud of smoke follows this Zhaoxing pedestrian,
a cigarette in one hand, a firecracker in the other.

We wandered through the town and saw with relief that it was indeed open for business. We ate beef noodle soup and found a guest house on the main drag, right near one of the five drum towers. Our room looked over the street, and we sat in the window taking pictures and chatting about what to do next. I hadn’t originally researched this village, and we’d been cut off from the Internet for a week or so, so all I had to go on was a few paragraphs from the Lonely Planet.

“Hey,” we said. “Look at that guy!”

We watched a man walking down the road, dragging a loop of fireworks. He wore old, torn clothes and a burlap sack over his head, with two holes cut out for the eyes.

Villagers stopped and talked to him, and he posed for pictures for the Chinese tourists. We leaned farther out of the window and craned our necks.

A trio of girls dressed up in traditional purple, handmade cloth, with their hair elaborately coiffed, scurried by, like they were late for something.

We heard music getting louder.

It was time to investigate.

We headed down the street and ended up in a five-hour parade we had heard nothing about.

Dozens of young people—dressed in traditional costumes of violet, hand-dyed cloth, embroidered jackets, and silver jewelry—marched together through the town. Two beautiful tween girls and two handsome boys decked out in near-wedding finery were carried in sedan chairs, protected by dainty parasols. I looked closer; one of the “girls” was actually a boy, and one of the boys was really a girl.

A child being carried through the crowd in a sedan chair

“That’s to confuse the evil spirits,” I overheard a guide telling a small group of Western tourists who’d pulled up in a chartered van.

The older generation came out too, in embroidered silk jackets and fancy hats. One man, perfectly bald, wore round sunglasses and a hat that made him look like a Mafia don.

Then we caught sight of more burlap-sacked men. One was a devil, sticking his tongue out at passers by and growling mischievously at tourists. Two carried either end of a pole, a dead dog tied to and dangling from the middle of it. At first, I thought it was just fur or a stuffed animal, then we noticed how limply it was hanging. It had charcoal lines striped on its dun-colored hide.

A "dog tiger"

I sidled close enough to the tour guide again to hear that killing the dog represented beating tigers and other fearsome beasts. After this parade, the spirit world would protect the village from those predators.

We followed the parade around the drum towers and along the river. Some of the participants went down to the river and splashed the onlookers on the banks. “It’s good luck,” a grinning local man told me in Chinese. He let them sprinkle him, so I did too, happy I’d brought a splash-proof camera.

At the end, after fireworks, and two memory cards’ worth of photos, we watched the parade participants drink baijiu, a Chinese liquor, and exchange red packets of “lucky” money, then disperse to their homes.

A week later, when we’d gone back to work, I tried researching the festival online, but couldn’t find any mention of it.

This is a great lesson I keep telling myself everyone must learn, especially me: Some things just can’t be planned for.

Behind The Mask – Paucartambo, Peru

By Alli Sinclair

When I lived in Cuzco, Peru, I got to experience a festival every other week. People are always celebrating something – festivals for the living, festivals for the dead, for Incan gods, summer solstice, winter solstice… the list goes on. Many of these events are held on a grand scale and streets are crowded with tourists and locals drinking and dancing until the wee hours of the morning, only to wake up the next day and do it over again. One of my favourite festivals, however, isn’t as well known as the others, but boy, it is impressive.

The rural town of Paucartambo is situated four hours north-east from Cuzco. The trip isn’t for the faint-hearted as the narrow, windy roads and steep canyons make even the most adventurous travellers a tad nervous. Most of the year, Paucartambo is a lunch stop for tourists on their way to Manu Jungle, but when July 15 rolls around, this sleepy town comes alive with colour, music, and fireworks.

For three days, locals and a handful of tourists gather to celebrate El Virgin del Carmen. Not only does this festival embrace Christian beliefs but the Virgin embodies Pachamama (Mother Earth), a sacred deity of the Incas. During celebrations, the town’s population swells from 1,500 to 12,000 and accommodations can be scarce. It’s definitely a matter of who you know, and the best way to find a place to stay to contact a local tour operator in Cuzco and book your stay ahead of time.

What sets this festival apart from many others is the masks the dancers wear during the festivities. Pointed chins, arched eyebrows, and large eyes are only some of their features, and among the most popular are the white masks that represent the conquistadors. Whenever these make an appearance, there’s a lot of hissing and booing from onlookers.

Around twenty dance groups take part in the fiesta, and the dances represent the stories of their people. The Capac Q’olla is a religious dance that honours the merchants who brought their wares to Paucartambo.

On the first day of the Virgen del Carmen Festival, people gather in front of the town's main church which lies on the largest plaza. The dancers surround the church, wearing their masks and colourful costumes, and two dancers march inside the back of the church to salute the Virgen del Carmen statue. These two dancers depict Capaq Qolla (the people of the region), and Capaq Negro, who wears a black mask and represents the African slaves who once worked in the silver mines nearby.

Throughout the celebrations Maqtas, impish tricksters, run among the crowds and ensure people behave as the Virgin is paraded by. They demand people take off their hats and stop drinking in the Virgin's presence.

The church holds a spiritual mass and the townsfolk follow the dancers and wend their way between shops and houses, bearing candles, flowers, and other offerings to the Virgin. In the evening, the town square explodes with fireworks and music, and dancers jump over bonfires. At midnight, everyone calms down and says a prayer for the Virgin in front of the church's closed doors.

And the next morning, the heads of each dance group pass out gifts of fruit and handicrafts to the people attending the mass. By that afternoon, the Virgin is adorned in exquisite fabric and is escorted through the streets by Capaq Cunchos (guardians of the Virgin). They form the head of the procession and the dancers follow behind, decked out in their colourful costumes and masks, musicians playing accompanying tunes.

By day three, each dance group performs a routine through the cemetery and onlookers sing about ancestry and their own mortality. The Virgin is taken through the streets again and is brought to a bridge. Once there, people bow their heads and Capaq Negro and Capaq Qolla sing a farewell prayer.

The Virgin is then retired to the church until the following year, and the main plaza fires up with a party to end all parties.

Of all the festivals I’ve attended around the world, Paucartambo is very dear to my heart. Even now, years later, remembering the wonderful people who welcomed and encouraged me to join the celebrations brings a smile to my face.

How about you? What festival has left you with fond memories?

Bonfires Of The Equinox

By Heidi Noroozy

Tomorrow morning, at precisely 8:44 a.m. Tehran time (or 10:14 p.m. tonight PST), Iranians, Tajiks, Afghans, and related cultures around the world will be ringing in the year 1391. The Persian New Year, or Eide-e Norooz (which I wrote about last year), coincides with the Spring Equinox and is celebrated at the same moment everywhere.

But the festivities really began last Tuesday with a fire festival called Chahar Shanbeh Souri, which translates as Red Wednesday, even though the celebrations begin at dusk on Tuesday night (and generally run into the wee hours of the morning). Like Norooz, Chahar Shanbeh Souri is celebrated throughout the world, wherever descendants of the ancient Persians can be found.

The Persians believed that the spirits of their ancestors, as well as guardian angels, returned to the world for a visit during the last ten days of the year. On the final Tuesday before the new year began, people built bonfires which were kept burning throughout the night, as a way to welcome these good spirit guests and to protect against evil forces. The idea was to keep a symbolic sun burning throughout the unluckiest night of the year.

Iranians today still build the bonfires much as their ancestors did, as I discovered on my first visit to Tehran a decade ago. That year, the fire festival coincided with the beginning of the holy Islamic month of Moharam, which commemorates the massacre of Imam Hossein and his Shia followers during the Battle of Karbala. Moharam is a time of sorrow and solemnity, not one of joy and celebration, so the authorities announced that Chahar Shanbeh Souri would be celebrated one week early.

This decision did not go over well with the citizens of Tehran, and many people simply celebrated the festival on the new (fake) date as well as the original (real) one, so I got to experience it twice in one year.

Shortly before dusk, I ventured out of the house with my sister-in-law and her husband. Our first stop was at a small shop, where we bought a matchbox-like packet of firecrackers – slender sticks that resembled cigarettes with an incendiary tip. You struck the firecracker against the box, just like a matchstick, and tossed the “cigarette” onto the street, where it exploded with a loud bang.

Not all the fireworks were so harmless, though. As we approached one street corner, my sister-in-law pointed to a man on the roof above our heads then shoved me into a doorway. Moments later, something dropped to the pavement with an earth-shaking boom, like a shot from a cannon at close range. The man had tossed a home-made explosive known colloquially as a “bomb” onto the street, fortunately not too close to us, since these fireworks are filled with pieces of broken glass. They are not only dangerous but also illegal.

Later, we made our way through the hillside neighborhood of Zafaranieh in North Tehran, where narrow streets climb steeply between tall, marble-fronted buildings. The fire festival was in full swing here, and apart from the women’s scarves and knee-length tunics (mateaus), there was little in the scene to remind me that we were still in the Islamic Republic. Western-style Persian music blared from open windows, where people stood shouting encouragement to the street below. A crowd had gathered there, with young men and women dancing to the wild rhythms, arms undulating in a grace that is uniquely Middle Eastern.

The searing odor of the fireworks gave way to the more familiar scent of wood smoke as revelers stoked bonfires built at intervals along the street, feeding crates, tree branches, and even bits of broken doors into the flames. At one end of the street, people lined up for their turn to leap over the fires, the women gathering up their long manteaus at the waist to save the fabric from wayward sparks. As they soared over the blaze, each person chanted the same phrase: zard-e man az to, sorkhi-e to az man (fire, take my sickly yellow color and give me your healthy red). It is an age-old ritual of cleansing by fire (without actually getting burned), a way to banish the illness and bad luck that has accumulated over the course of the year.

The festival has remained such a vivid memory over the years that I made it the opening scene of my as yet unpublished novel, Bad Hejab.

Very little of what I witnessed at the fire festival is strictly legal under Iran’s Islamic law. Not the Western-style music nor the bonfires and the pagan rituals associated with them. Most definitely not the mixed-gender dancing and singing in the street. But as my sister-in-law whispered in my ear, the authorities look the other way on this one night of the year. To ban the fire festival would be an exercise in futility – the prohibition would simply be ignored.

In the years since that first fire festival I visited in Tehran, I’ve celebrated Chahar Shanbeh Souri many times here in California. The fires are smaller and the women unveiled, the fireworks are absent and the prevailing scent in the air is kabab on the grill. But the music, dancing, and enthusiasm are exactly the same.

To give you a small taste of this entertaining festival, here is a short video clip I took last week in the parking lot of the Bazaar Norooz market in San Jose.

Off The Beaten Track: Travels with Esperanto

Anna Lowenstein was born in London, UK, but after spending some years in Edinburgh, Tel Aviv and Rotterdam has ended up in Palestrina, a small town in Italy near Rome. She is the author of two novels, and has been active for many years in the international Esperanto movement.
 

I speak Esperanto. You may ask What’s Esperanto? It’s an artificial language. You mean someone just sat down and made it up? That’s exactly what I mean. And I speak it.

A friend of mine, a language teacher, asked me some years ago whether I wouldn’t do better devoting my energies to learning a “real” language. Well, I suppose I could have done, but I know this: if I had devoted my time to learning Russian or Spanish instead of Esperanto, it would have taken me far longer, I would never have been able to speak them as well as a native speaker, and most importantly, I wouldn’t have done a fraction of the exciting things which I’ve been able to do thanks to Esperanto.

Through Esperanto I met my husband, through Esperanto I started writing, through Esperanto I’ve traveled to dozens of countries, through Esperanto I know people all over the world.

Esperanto was created in the 19^th century by a young Pole, Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof. His aims were idealistic; he had seen the tragic consequences of linguistic and cultural misunderstandings in his home town of Bialystok. He believed that if the people of the world could communicate with a single common language, it would be a first step towards peaceful coexistence. A naïve hope of course - but my own experience as an Esperanto speaker suggests that he was not entirely wrong. After all, I have found myself in rooms where Iranians were chatting with Israelis, Americans with Cubans, all brought together by their shared enthusiasm for Esperanto.

Even if you’re hopeless at languages, you’ll be able to learn Esperanto. In his search for a second language for the world , Zamenhof considered and rejected the idea of using one of the existing national languages, or Latin (far too difficult!), and concluded that the best approach would be to create a language from scratch. Esperanto has totally regular grammar and spelling, and its vocabulary is based on European languages. If you want to know more about it, try looking here: http://en.lernu.net/enkonduko/pri_esperanto/kio.php

I learnt the language when I was 13 years old from a book I borrowed from the library. The book consisted of twenty lessons, and after working my way through them (incredibly easy, compared to French and Latin, which I was learning at school), I bought myself a book of short stories and a pocket dictionary, and started reading.

So, what kinds of things have I done in Esperanto? They’re so many that I can’t even begin to list them, but I could mention my job at the headquarters of the World Esperanto Association in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where among other things I started writing articles for the youth magazine.

I also founded and edited a magazine called Sekso kaj egaleco (Sex and Equality) in the late 70s, the heyday of the feminist movement. The magazine doesn’t look like much – it was typed on an electric typewriter (remember those?) and printed by a friend in the UK. But I doubt whether any other feminist magazine existed at the time which regularly received letters and articles from Australia, Bulgaria, both East and West Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland, USSR, the United States, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Latvia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, the UK, Estonia, Hungary, Iran, Belgium, Israel, India, Japan, Denmark, Korea, Benin, ….

After the first issue of Sekso kaj egaleco came out, I received a letter from two women in Japan requesting permission to publish the magazine in Japanese. They explained that the Japanese media did not give much information about the international situation of women, apart from the women’s liberation movement in the United States. After that, SkE came out regularly in a Japanese edition (far more professional in appearance than the Esperanto one!), while the Esperanto edition acquired many new readers and contributions from Japan. You can see me with Japanese collaborators  Yamakawa Setsuko and Hukunaga Makiko, displaying the Esperanto and Japanese editions of Sekso kaj Egaleco in the picture above.

I met my Italian husband at the World Esperanto Congress in Bulgaria in 1978, and three years later I came to live in Rome. Since we met using Esperanto, it was naturally the language we spoke at home – and still do, thirty years later. Our two sons also speak Esperanto, and when they were small, we used to take them every year to a meeting for Esperanto-speaking families in Hungary.

I started writing my first novel The Stone City in English, not in Esperanto, but without the experience I had already acquired in Esperanto journalism, I would never have had the courage to start work on a novel. The Stone City was published in 1999 by a small publisher, Citron Press, and in the meantime I translated it into Esperanto. The Esperanto edition came out in 2000, and is now in its fourth edition. The book also came out in French in 2010 (translated from Esperanto), and at the moment I’m corresponding with a Rumanian woman who has just finished translating it from Esperanto into Hungarian – mainly for her own amusement, I’m afraid, as I don’t know what chance there will be of finding a Hungarian publisher for it.

Esperanto has taken me not only to many different countries, but also to a virtual world, Second Life. Esperanto speakers have their own region within this virtual community, Esperanto-lando. I would never have imagined that one day I would find myself doing something like this, but about four years ago I started teaching a course there at advanced level (there are also two different courses for beginners, if anyone’s interested).

Party in Esperanto-lando

From time to time we also invite speakers to give a talk in our virtual classroom. Here, you see me giving a talk on Lord of the Rings http://vimeo.com/2141989 – you won’t be able to understand it if you don’t know Esperanto, but if you’re curious, you may like to listen to the first few minutes. (Hint: the first few sentences are in Old English, not in Esperanto – I started with a quotation from Beowulf, as Tolkien used to do when he was teaching at Oxford. Tolkien, by the way, admired Esperanto. As someone who had an interest in creating languages, he was able to appreciate Zamenhof’s achievement.)

So, in conclusion, do I wish I had spent my time learning Russian instead of Esperanto? No way! Russian would never have taken me to Japan, Finland, Brazil, China, Portugal, Lithuania, and all the other places I’ve visited thanks to Esperanto – and I’m sure I’d never have become a writer and journalist in Russian.

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The Great Jewelry Massacre

By Edith McClintock

Like Sangeeta in yesterday’s blog, picking a cross-cultural art blend was difficult. Not for lack of choices, but for the diversity of art forms in multicultural societies. Yesterday evening, I finally sat down to write about the evolution of salsa and timba music and dance, and instead found myself indulging in a six-hour jewelry destruction, creation, rearrangement and repair extravaganza. I’ve been planning this for years with little momentum, other than a growing collection of stray beads, rings with missing gems, broken chains, and piles upon piles of beautiful clip-on earrings from my grandmother that either pinch my ears or fall off and lose their partners.

Many pieces I collected while traveling – turquoise earrings from a street market in Amsterdam, a beaded bracelet from a Mayan girl in Belize, a necklace from a lone woman at the entrance to an empty archeological site in Jordan. But most of it is costume/vintage jewelry collected from garage sales in Fort Myers, Florida, and passed along from my grandmother and aunt. Some of the jewelry I once loved, and some I’ve never worn. But regardless of origin or current sentiments, I’ve saved it all for a future day when I’d create something I could love again, see anew, or simply wear without pain.

So when the urge came yesterday, I didn’t fight it. And while I was working, ripping off clip-on earring backs, rearranging necklaces and threading turquoise and red beads, my mind kept wandering to the museums I’d visited this past year in Georgia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Jordan, and Turkey, many with ancient jewelry made with turquoise, cornelian, lapis lazuli and gold, colors and materials that were not so dissimilar from my piles of broken or unwearable jewelry.

Since none of the museums allowed photos, I found myself searching the internet for inspiration. What I found confirmed that in its use of colors, metals, gemstones, beads, shells, designs and motivational intent, the art of jewelry has changed little across the ages and cultures. Personal adornment with jewelry is so universal that it began with the dawn of civilization, and has crossed disparate and unconnected cultures and societies.

One of the oldest known art objects in the world is, in fact, jewelry in the form of beads made from perforated snail shells dated from the Middle Stone Age, or about 75,000 years ago. Discovered in a South African cave, the beads may demonstrate early evidence of self-recognition and the ability to use and appreciate symbolism, what many researchers consider modern behavior. Maybe even artistic creativity.

But jewelry, of course, has many uses, including and beyond an expression of beauty, creativity or self-adornment. It’s also a form of currency and wealth storage. It can be functional, whether for use as a buckle or as an object of protection.  And it can decorate nearly every body part, from a hairclip to a toe ring. But perhaps its most important role remains in its assumed origins, as a symbol to display cultural membership or status, whether it’s the wearing of a crucifix, an eyebrow ring, or pearls.

From very early on in the history of jewelry, humans also began creating substitute materials to imitate rare and scarce metals or gemstones, which brings me back to my piles of rarely worn costume jewelry. Our modern idea of costume jewelry was introduced in the 1920s and 1930s as cheaper, disposable accessories worn as a fashion statement. My grandmother was a world traveler and collector and had carefully labeled and valued most of her jewelry. And although none of mine are worth an excessive amount, many are considered vintage, collectors pieces from around the world.

So it’s been hard for me to consider messing with this jewelry from the 1920s through the 1960s. I feel the destruction and loss with each clip-on removal, each rearrangement of design. But they’ve been sitting in my jewelry box for years unused, and ultimately jewelry is mean to be worn. Right?

But in rearranging the pieces across cultures and periods, using what’s in front of me, am I being green and artistic, or am I destroying a slice of history? I’m not sure which is the truth. But either way, not so far removed from our Stone Age ancestors who picked up those shells and envisioned something new.

New jewelry on the right. 

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.

A Surfing Safari – Bombay Royale

By Alli Sinclair

By now you’ve read me banging on countless times about how Melbourne, Australia, is an awesome multi-cultural city. If you want to go out for dinner in my fair town, pick a country, and chances are you’ll find a restaurant that serves the food of the nation of your choice. Nearly every weekend there are festivals, be it Greek, Italian, French, Croatian, Spanish... you name it, we have it. And when it comes to music, Melbourne is the place to be if you want to throw a few musical styles into a blender and see what happens. The Melbourne band Bombay Royale, has done that, and the musical cocktail is one of a kind and very hard to resist.

Bombay Royale embrace the music of Indian cinema and take great pride in covering little-known Bollywood classics as well as creating original surfadelic Hindi numbers. East meets West in a most spectacular way, and the result is a mix of music, sung mostly in Hindi, that is guaranteed to get the feet tapping and executing the odd Bollywood dance move or three.

Indian cinema has a love of the dramatic, a cascade of colours and over the top acting. Almost half a century ago Indian cinema adopted music from around the world, including rock, surf, and disco, and put their own Indian spin on it that appealed to the masses. The musicians from that era, such as R.D. Burman, Asha Bhosle, and Mohammed Rafi, created music that Bombay Royale now cover and wow audiences in Australia and around the world. 

The band played its first gig in April 2010 at the St Kilda Festival, a multicultural arts festival popular in Melbourne and has a strong contingent of international artists performing. Since then, Bombay Royale have played nationally at the Port Fairy Folk Festival, Bellingen Global Carnival and also at the Australasian World Music Expo as well as a gig in the Reunion Islands (Africa) in 2011. Now seen regularly on television and radio, their fan base has increased dramatically and is still on the up.

With what looks like a cast of thousands, Bombay Royale have assembled an eclectic bunch of talented musicians who share a passion for Indian cinema music with a twist. Tablas, brass, guitars, sitars, organs, drums, bass, and fabulous vocals combine to create a very cool, multi-cultural sound.

One of the lead singers is Parvyn Singh. Born into a family of professional musicians, Parvyn’s performed on stage since the age of five. She blends the singing styles of East and West and has created her own unique style. Lead male vocalist is Bengali Shourov Bhattacharya, who grew up listening to his family collection of Bollywood records. When these two performers sing a duet, it is hot!

Other band members include Andy Williamson on sax; Bob Knob bassist, composer and producer; Tom Martin on guitar and song writer; Matt Vehl on synth; Julian Goyma on drums; Josh Bennett on sitar, table, mandolin, dlruba, and guitar; Ed Fairlie on trumpet; Declan Jones on horns, and Ros Jones on trombones.

Once again, Melbourne’s diversity has nurtured and encouraged a band that takes all the good of various cultures to make it even better. But rather than me tell you how fabulous they are, find out for yourself!