Pembroke's Salaka Feast pays tribute to ancestors

The spirits of Pembroke’s ancestors were awakened on Wednesday night during the village’s signature Tobago Heritage Festival presentation, Salaka Feast.

But there were some tense moments as intermittent drizzles threatened to derail the two-and-a-half-hour cultural show, which was held before a thoroughly appreciative audience at the Pembroke Heritage Park.

Luckily, many people had umbrellas and shared with others.

The village’s two-year absence from the heritage festival, owing to the covid19 pandemic, was not reflected in the presentation. If anything, its performers appeared energised, confident and intent on making up for lost time.

Pembroke’s Salaka Feast is one of the more highly-anticipated presentations of the annual heritage festival. It followed Charlotteville’s Natural Treasures Day on Monday.

The theme of this year’s heritage festival, which ends with an Emancipation celebration on August 1, is Reflect, Rebirth, Rejoice: Reigniting the Flames of Our Legacy.

Titled Welcome Inna De Yard: Ancestral Wisdom, Pembroke’s Salaka Feast paid tribute to the ancestors of its descendants, many of whom contributed to the area’s status as Tobago’s cultural capital.

“This production gives an in-depth look at the wisdom of our ancestors who had the wisdom and foresight to transfer through various means and actions, songs, dances, messages, clothing, food, agriculture, beauty expressions and blessings – the things we now have and must never lose,” the Pembroke Heritage Festival Committee wrote in the programme.

The presentation again showed Pembroke’s versatility in almost every aspect of Tobago’s culture – dance, drumming, song and overall knowledge of the island’s heritage.

It began with a chilling rendition of the Ella Andall's classic Bring Down the Power.

Pembroke native and cultural activist Jesse Taylor then rang a bell in a symbolic gesture, calling people to action.

A spiritual Baptist leader, dressed in white, also reminded the gathering of a passage in Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8, which says that “for everything there is a season."

“The time to be happy is now,” he declared.

During that time, a group of young performers, dressed mostly in white with coloured scarves, sang the Spiritual Baptist hymn, Children, Come Go to Zion with Me. The piece, which featured, singing, dancing and drumming, set the tone for an all-out tribute to Pembroke’s forbears.

After naming several people who had contributed to the cultural development of the community many years ago, an upbeat Taylor declared, “We celebrate you all. Let us join and celebrate them for who they are.”

He then gave a synopsis of the presentation.

“We are come tonight (Wednesday) to petition the ancestors. We have come to do invocations. Some of us will know it as libations. We have come to call spirit. We are come to call jumbie. We come out tonight to wuk obeah,” Taylor shouted.

The crowd, which included Tobago Festivals Commission CEO John Arnold and Tobago Performing Arts Company artistic director Rayshawn Pierre-Kerr, roared.

Taylor, a cultural officer at the THA Division of Tourism, Culture, Antiquities and Transportation, then declared, “Come Inna De Yard.”

A group of dancers and singers followed suit.

One female performer also invited people to "Come inna de yard," to which the singers and drummers enthusiastically responded, “Calling you, calling you, calling you to come. Brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, calling you to come. All the ancestors who lay over yonder, calling you to come.”

The Baptist leader, who alluded to the Ecclesiastes passage, told the audience Pembroke once had many “yards.”

He said, “The bounty of the lands is demonstrated here by our presence tonight (Wednesday) in our celebration. Many yards, one people. one drum, one nation. One drum, one sound, one song”

The Baptist leader described a yard as a sacred place.

“A yard is a place of freedom. A yard is a continuous space. A yard is a place where all the ancestors dwell. Find yuh yard. Every man to he own yard.”

A female elder said the village recognises the importance of the elders and the role they have played in preserving the culture.

“Pembroke can boast of all kinds of scholars. Everybody involved in something contributing to the nation and the economy.”

She urged people to be respectful in this time of feasting.

“We must be slow to wrath, quick to embrace and quicker to even love.”

A male elder interjected, “As an elder, I believe that even the smallest child has a role to play and a contribution.”

He said three elders were also invited to participate in the invocation and the salutations “to petition the Great One.”

Describing himself as an advocate for love and peace, he said, “Let us strive for unity. For with unity, there is strength.”

At the end of the show, Taylor urged people: “Reignite the flames of your ancestral legacy.

“Live good...the family that prays together stays together.”