3canal, we salute you

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

3CANAL, come down. Come down! With the power of the word in the riddim of the word, they called, and 10,000 spirits waiting to fly out their skins or adorned in finery of home-made mas, answered. We coming. We coming! We go paint the town.

And for 30 years, early morning before the place brighten, giving dignity to all that was made dutty, we forged we own sacred self in the ablution of morning light. Out of darkness, our power and beauty renewed.

Doh worry what nobody say, that is what we did. Ase. Namaste. Alhamdulillah. Give Jah thanks and praise. And now, for the last time, we wake and ready ourselves. Clear de way!

Our beloved are bats, jamettes, jumbies and devils. Who wave flag, wine down low, pelt waist or play a mas, every woman is Queen. For one night, in a nightie or behind a mask, every man is King of the J’Ouvert. The road is serious business, oui.

Ancestors’ children, isn’t this how we tell dem dis body, dis desire, dis land is mines? When vibration raise, a living ritual commences to free the town. A revolution moulded from mud, salt, powder and madness. Yuh hear the truck? Dat is we, coming down.

As we plan for a literal las' lap, newspaper archives must record the existence of 3canal who, for three decades, offered a Jouvay (J'Ouvert) band without equivalence in TT.

Don’t talk about rope, premium drinks and VIP. The band was special because it reminded us that this ritual born in darkness each year is for renewal of political consciousness, an ethos of resistance, the endlessly anarchic power of art, affirmation of all that was colonially-defined as vulgar, devilish and outlaw, connection to ancestors and to community, and love for one’s own self. For, toiling bodies in a wholly unjust world deserve their right to respite, pleasure and joy.

For that, we must thank rapso warriors Roger Roberts, Stanton Kewley, Wendell Manwarren and John Isaac, for making us sing and shout while our bodies shook away judgement and despair. We must pay respect to the iconic Laventille Rhythm Section, and to the band’s producers, drummers and DJs.

Thirty years of original music to so many who felt they did not fit in anywhere – who had survived violence, who were denied and silenced by respectability, whose dreams were daily exhausted by Babylon and whose creative spirits were nearly broken by the head-decay-shun of schooling.

We were those grateful somebodies, propelled by percussion and iron, chanting alongside the truck, coming through a portal with our arms outstretched, seeing ourselves reflected in their verses like a mirror lit by the sun as it rose over the Hill. We could be weself. We could love in the open, permitting a freedom that knows no law or sin. We could share a dream of a world with no more might is right, and no more wrong and strong.

It was kaiso pointed at the politricks of serpent masters, vampires, deceivers and mocking pretenders. And, it was mas, mama. Actual mas with cloth and wire and zip and feather and leaf and broom and stick and flag, each and every one unlike the other. It was a J’Ouvert to serenade our unlovely and fuel our anger.

You have to understand how important these decades were to protecting and nurturing a tradition of popular theatre, individual creativity and protest by the downpressed. Show me any other J’Ouvertband where that was the heart of the matter. It have none.

In the band, I could play St Peter waiting at the gate for Black Stalin. I could play Grim Reaper gathering mooma’s sons already in their graves. I could play Kali as an Indian woman making embodied art from sacred mythologies and jahajin legacies. This year will find me, amidst sailors and powder, in a deep-blue robber hat traversed by indenture ships for all they stole as we crossed the kala pani. Where else could any of us do this and storm the stage before dem pretty bands, in all our power and beauty?

Full respect in order, one last time, we gather. We will shine like pearls. We will want to cry like we go dead. We will roar. We will dance across the stage like angels, blessing both the end and the hereafter. On your new dawning, 3canal, love outpouring, we salute you for every one of those 30 glorious, fore-day mornings.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 525

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