Ancient Influences In T & T Carnival

By Deborah John
June 27, 1999

The word 'jamet', is it as generally accepted simply derived from the French diametre, meaning the other half or underworld character, or is there another derivation and an even deeper meaning?

Even before formally beginning research for her thesis on "Parade and Dance in Trinidad Carnival-Epiphany of Dionysus/Bacchus" Molly Ahye was not satisfied with the generally accepted explanation.

She knew the stories of early women in calypso like Boadicea and Piti Belle Lily and she'd looked at the treatment of women in the songs like Sophie Bella with Congo Bara. These were women of the 19th century who had endured the hardships of slavery. They didn't, she points out, have the wherewithal to find their niche after abolition.

"They were not equipped for so many things, they had to find a life, they had to make a way and of course some of them had to get into prostitution, like the Jean and Dinah that we denigrate. That was what was left for them to put body and soul together and they were abused from slavery so it was part of their lives; they had no escape but they had guts and they were the salt of the earth people."

In her research she encountered the name Gen Metera which means mother of the clan, the people. Metera is mother and Gen meaning mother of the clan. After a time the name evolved to Gemeter-mother earth, mother of the earth, Gen meaning the earth. Eventually it evolved to Demeter but over time the meaning became lost or changed.

Ahye received her PhD from New York University on May 15. Her dissertation supports the thesis that Dionysus/Bacchus (god of grape, god of wine, god of generation) is the primary motivating force in Trinidad Carnival. She says we find his influence even in our use of the expression of "to wine" describing movements of the waist to the music at Carnival time.

The actual use of the word she says goes back to women who were carders of wool in the early days of civilization when people had their fertility and harvest festivals, celebrating good crops of wheat, barley and so on. Every civilization had their processions and with them certain rituals, many linked with propagation.

Ahye contends that unlike modern civilization, ancient civilizations did not see sexuality as something that was outside the realm of decency. So that when we would see Carnival as something that is "dangerous" because of its wantonness, sexual behaviour was encouraged at those festivals.

"These wool carders were the women who were holed up in basements processing the wool. They had to strip the wool and get it into a form where they can knit and weave. For so many months they would be doing this and they would be observing the spindle and they would be carding the wool and winding and so on, so this became a hypnotic thing which again has to do with the movement of the body. When they came out of there this was like part of their expression."

And this is why Ahye contends that it is no accident that at Carnival time our women are so free with their body movements and sexual awareness is heightened and goes along with excessive alcohol use.

"In antiquity he (Bacchus) freed the women wherever he went. He freed the women to at least assert themselves at that time of the year and he acquired around him a group of females that came out of the mysteries and through the wine and the cycles they experienced multiple joy and they are able to forget their woes and their problems during that period of time and they come out there and they celebrate their femaleness.

"In certain areas where he travelled they came out and they followed in bands through the mountains and they run wild they strip off their clothes they have sex on the road and that was in celebration of his fecundity and their festivals surrounding these activities, and all these festivals that came through in time, they celebrate this freedom to express yourself, to copulate, to reproduce, because remember women were like slaves virtually in those days.

Another fascinating link she found in her research is with the baby doll character and the infant Dionysus. She was able to put it back into Thrace and Friggia and see the same appearance in the masquerades with the child, the infant and the mother with the bastard child looking for the father.

Over the years through her involvement in dance, she led the New Dance Group in 1968, later Oya Kairi. Her observations strengthened her convictions about the influence of Bacchus/Dionysus as a motivating force in this country. He is there, she says, in our use of the word 'bacchanal', 'bacchanalian', 'bacchanalist'. He is there in the cycle that governs Carnival, the end of one season, the beginning of another. He is also linked with the palm, she says as a symbol of regeneration.

From an initial six and a half months fellowship in Brazil in the 70s she has since been to Brazil about 11 times, and an initial five months in Nigeria in 1974 and she's been back there at least four times and to Stonehenge at least three or four times, Ahye says she's used every opportunity she got to travel, to do her research and she has been fortunate in having people who've invited her, paying the passage as the cost of this kind of work and research is phenomenal. The work consists of 15 chapters which she began writing in 1994. Still she had to find time for the demands of family life and her spiritual role as "Mother Molly", Iyalorisha of Opa Orisha Shango.

There are good works on Carnival, she acknowledges but they have not looked at the metaphysical, the spiritual and the religious aspects in the way she has in her thesis. She also analyzed the present-day Carnival using a system of biochemistry based on Kessler's system of holons. She sees Carnival as a great organism, a living entity. She sees the band as the cells in the body.

She sees the component parts in Carnival as organizers energizing the cell and she sees the female masqueraders in the Carnival as the mitochondrion.

It is a massive work encompassing the festivals of the ancient world, festivals of the corn, festivals of Egypt, the phallic processions, the masquerade of the river, Dionysus and Shiva, the bull, the snake, linking these to festivals in the New World and their corresponding deities. She has found that the 'the Gelde masquerades of Africa, the roles of Shiva, Eshu-Legbara and Shango, festivals of the indigenes of Trinidad, the old griots and the Jamets who shaped the Carnival after Emancipation are alive." She would like to see it published so that a wider public could derive some benefit from it. She herself cannot afford to publish it.

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