Given its record from 2002 to 2007, the PLP's 2012 general election slogan, "Believe in Bahamians", was highly effective, though disingenuous. The degree of disingenuousness is highlighted by the Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival, a parody and simulacrum that is of dubious economic or cultural value.
The insistence on the carnival represents a lost strategic opportunity. We should have utilized our resources to seed, create and develop a host of indigenous cultural experiences and the heritage tourism sector.
Instead we are distracted by the planning for and debate over an extravaganza, the value of which is highly questionable, though the debate may have the silver lining of focusing on the direction we might take.
To better understand the carnival festival fabrication is to grasp the mindset of Prime Minister Perry Christie. Some years ago after returning home, Christie enthused that he had learned from a visit to a Caribbean neighbor state what a wonderful talent and treasure we have in historian Dr. Gail Saunders.
Saunders was already the author of several books and a scholar celebrated at home, regionally and internationally. Her prodigious work at the Department of Archives over many decades helped to preserve and catalogue invaluable archival material.
Decades before the Clifton heritage site seized the popular imagination and became a political battleground, Saunders was working to study and protect its ruins and artifacts.
She is one of the foremost authorities on Bahamian history, who worked tirelessly over many decades to preserve artifacts and historic documents, reasons for which this writer previously recommended her for knighthood. Yet Christie, who had been in political life for decades was surprised at what a treasure is Saunders. It speaks to his mindset.
During the 2013 Christmas Junkanoo parade Christie rushed with the Valley Boys under the theme "From China to The Bahamas", donning the costume of a Chinese emperor. But The Bahamas' prime minister did not have his costume made locally. Instead he begged the Chinese ambassador for a costume, "Made in China".
Inexplicable
That he begged the envoy for a costume is unbecoming of a prime minister. That he outsourced getting his Junkanoo costume to a foreign country and government is near inexplicable. It speaks to his mindset.
Christie is the master of glitter-laced ideas which often turn out to be hairbrained, rash and giddy, rather than thoughtful and deliberate. He often seizes on a flashy idea, commits the government, and then something proverbial hits the fan, splattering, making a big mess, stinking to high heaven, an idiom which means "of very poor quality" and potentially ending up on a dunghill.
The Christie administration is paralysed by a pattern of ineptness from BAMSI to the carnival: Come up with an idea not well thought out, do plenty of public relations and talking to justify a poorly conceived idea, throw millions of dollars into the scheme, hire plenty of cronies and then cross your fingers and hope for the best.
From its inception, Christie's culturally counterfeit carnival caper was poorly conceived, with little serious thought given to matters of economics and culture, matters which are interwoven, including one's philosophy of economic and cultural development.
By his adoption of this carnival, Christie has again demonstrated that his mindset is regressive in areas of economics and culture and that he is not a forward-thinker.
Christie was vehement in branding the extravaganza as "carnival". There was to be no mention of the name Junkanoo. Instead we were to mimic a foreign concept and then sell and permanently brand ourselves under the rubric of a cultural form not authentically Bahamian. Only under great pressure did he relent to appending the name "Junkanoo".
The fact that the name was added as an afterthought speaks volumes and shows that the PLP's slogan about believing in Bahamians was election gimmickry. Once in office the government imported a foreign cultural concept instead of further nurturing and developing indigenous forms of cultural expression.
Messages
What Christie seemed not to get and still seems not to understand are the messages that he is sending to Bahamians, especially our children and youth, about our culture and history.
One message: "Since them foreigners don't know what Junkanoo is, let's tell them we're having carnival." We have seen this sort of song and dance before. It turns out that by one report more Americans seemed to have heard about Bahamian Junkanoo than carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. Perhaps for foreign marketing purposes our southern Caribbean neighbor might wish to brand their carnival with the name Junkanoo.
How far will Christie go to enable the exploitation of our natural and cultural heritage for money that may actually make us poorer in significant ways and pollute the heritage of both. Do we really want to pollute our pristine waters in a rush to drill for oil? And why are we risking polluting our history with a carnival concept potentially damaging to the integrity and development of Junkanoo?
Christie boasts that he may be "a defining prime minister". If he enables the pollution of our waters through oil drilling and helps to harm the cultural integrity of Junkanoo he may be defined in a manner not of his liking.
In falsely marketing our heritage to others we rob ourselves of something essential about our culture and history. The slave trade did that to us in previous generations. Are we now to be the authors of our own loss of identity and amnesia?
In comments on the carnival the Christian Council overreached on a number of points but in significant ways it did not go far enough. History and cultural context matter.
Carnival was born in Roman Catholic countries in the Americas as a prelude to the fasting and self-denial of Lent. Human beings are highly inventive and can be perversely practical: One imagines that if Lent was to be a season of repentance, penitents wanted something for which they might repent.
Before a season of fasting and denial, erupted an approximately week-long festival indulging a cornucopia of appetites and carnality in a highly sexualized bacchanal fuelled by libations and abandonment.
Junkanoo developed as a different sort of "freedom" festival with slaves and their ancestors enjoying time off from work at Christmastime and New Year's, occupying the space of commercial and political power in a celebration of a sense of and a longing for freedom.
Theology
A Roman Catholic nun who spent decades teaching in The Bahamas described what she saw as the theology of Junkanoo, paralleling the ringing of the church bells before mass and the ringing of cowbells during Junkanoo as invitations to celebration by communities of the faithful seeking freedom, redemption and communion. She remained a Junkanoo enthusiast and said that she had never heard a musical instrument as celebratory as the goat skin drum.
Junkanoo is an essential part of the history of struggle and transcendence for slaves and freed slaves in The Bahamas, a cultural expression which helped unite various tribal groups into one people. No other country in the world has preserved or developed Junkanoo as has The Bahamas. It is associated with no other country as much as ours, done with so much operatic brilliance.
The brilliant Trinidadian carnival artist Peter Minshall has visited The Bahamas on several occasions and enthused about the unique qualities of Bahamian Junkanoo, including the creation, design process and production of costumes, and the amount of work done by hand. He has spoken of the magic of Junkanoo. It is this magic, spirit and ethos that we should seek to preserve and share with a global audience, not in one big extravaganza, the main attraction of which will be a pop star or two from overseas.
The most baffling part of the entire carnival fiasco is the strategic opportunity being lost. There has never been a prime minister more closely identified with Junkanoo that Christie. Many hoped that this time around that he and his advisors would have utilized and fostered Junkanoo and other forms of cultural expression to launch an intensive focus on Bahamian culture in all forms.
Many wished that he would seek to make this a part of his legacy. Instead he has done the opposite, managing to alienate the very cultural community who dared hope for so much more. Instead of models of cultural and economic development which may significantly boost the domestic creative economy, including the heritage tourism sector, the government opted for models that fail to fully utilize the native genius and entrepreneurial talents of Bahamians, whom they boasted at the last election that they believed in so much.
Note: It has come to the attention of this writer that an individual or group appears to have created a Facebook account in the name of this column, and is making friend requests and sending out scurrilous and false allegations in an attempt to besmirch this column. Such vile behavior is indicative of the mindset of certain individuals who continue to use lowbrow means because they are unable to succeed on their own merit.
One can imagine the creator of such a fake account, especially given certain commentaries made in this column. This matter is being referred to the relevant authorities for appropriate action. This columnist is in no way associated with this fake page and readers are advised to deny any friend request and to report any spurious information sent out by this page to the police or other relevant authorities.
o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.
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