(c) Nandi Keyi - sissymoriah.blogspot.com
Has the West Indian American Day Carnival (WIADCA) been high-jacked by naked, possibly half-drunk, black females exhibiting sexual deviance and inciting crude sexual desire. Sissymoriah thinks so!
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| Viral photographs from West Indian American Day Carnival 2012. Retrieved from Facebook |
Sissymoriah is talking about the Sesame Flyers, a longtime Caribbean youth and cultural
organization with a history of good works and community uplifting. Except in
this case some Sesame Flyers masqueraders were up-lifting their legs to let the
world in. People might say, “Dat is we culture.” But it is not Sissymoriah’s
culture. Neither is it the culture of most of the bloggers on the hundreds of
threads created around these photographs. In supposed defense of Sesame Flyers,
comedian Alize Hennessy said that she heard that there were several independently affiliated sections in the band and the masquerader was not wearing a “house”
design. But as far as Sissymoriah is concerned, bandleaders should vet what costumes parade
under their umbrella. How can I not know what is happening in my own home? Anyway,
any naked masquerader would feel at home in Sesame Flyers because the band has
been part of the bare-breast-bare-bottom masquerade crew for years. The big
difference is that Sesame Flyers “house” costumes utilizes a G-String thong,
and the infamous masquerader was wearing a C-string thong (see illustration). I
cannot see the masquerader’s bosom area in the photograph but she could very
well have more coverage that Sesame Flyers “house” masqueraders because even one thread upwards from a piece
of wire circling the breast and a little flower for the nipple is an
improvement.
What an example for the youth!
No wonder when
Sissymoriah ventured out for jouvert to see traditional mas', she encountered
various pockets of young girls looking like 13 in slivers of underwear,
gyrating on each other and grabbing each other’s body parts. Sissymoriah saw - with
these two eyes - little girls lying on the ground with their legs open enticing
random boys passing by to stoop and lay between their open legs for a little
dry sex to start the jouvert. It was free for all! This post is crude but why
hide the facts … they certainly were not
hiding theirs.
Sissymoriah shame. Really shame. Shame for the “culture;” shame
for the photographers who choose to focus their lens on the intimate parts of
women; shame for the little schoolgirls – those who behaving and those with no
behavior. Most of all, I feel a profound shame every time this woman’s cock-back,
naked bottom appears in my newsfeed on Facebook. Sometimes in life we all implode in one way or
the other. It is unfortunate that this will become an eternal part of this woman's electronic footprint: shared over-and-over to perpetuity for the world to see. I shame about the women but I do not blame them. I blame the soca entertainers who for
decades have been exploiting the vulnerable: whipping women into gyrations and contortions with instructions in songs that
the sacred women in their lives dare not try in public.
Sissymoriah decided to have a chat with Ma Virginia Edwards,
an engaging elder from Trinidad & Tobago who grew up in Port-of-Spain, the center of cultural development. Ma Virginia would attend dances in the
50s, 60s and 70s so Sissymoriah, who is not an elder yet, asked this long-time party lover if she saw any sign of what was to come in the dances and carnivals of long ago.
"Ma Virginia back then was wining we culture?" Sissymoriah asked.
"In my days people didn't use to wine! We used to chip,” she replied.
Then she got up from her chair and displayed the chipping motion, moving forward with three half-steps, and backward with smaller ones, her foot barely leaving the ground – like shuffling. To accompany those steps she displayed a little shake, not wining mind you, but a fun little upper body tremble. Ma Virginia's heyday was in the era of foxtrot and rhumba but it was also the period that Trinidad & Tobago's culture, from which the West Indian American Day Carnival sprung, firmed into the incredible tri-factor: steelband, masquerade, calypso. Through it all, Ma Virginia said: “I never, ever saw nobody put their hands on the ground and wine.” Today, in the kids’ mas’ bands there are adults prodding children to put their hands on the ground and gyrate what has not even developed yet. This is what some people think is our “culture,” when it is actually the beginning of a downward spiral where pubescent females have dry sex on the sidewalk, and adult women bend over in their C-strings – all in the name of culture.
"Ma Virginia back then was wining we culture?" Sissymoriah asked.
"In my days people didn't use to wine! We used to chip,” she replied.
Then she got up from her chair and displayed the chipping motion, moving forward with three half-steps, and backward with smaller ones, her foot barely leaving the ground – like shuffling. To accompany those steps she displayed a little shake, not wining mind you, but a fun little upper body tremble. Ma Virginia's heyday was in the era of foxtrot and rhumba but it was also the period that Trinidad & Tobago's culture, from which the West Indian American Day Carnival sprung, firmed into the incredible tri-factor: steelband, masquerade, calypso. Through it all, Ma Virginia said: “I never, ever saw nobody put their hands on the ground and wine.” Today, in the kids’ mas’ bands there are adults prodding children to put their hands on the ground and gyrate what has not even developed yet. This is what some people think is our “culture,” when it is actually the beginning of a downward spiral where pubescent females have dry sex on the sidewalk, and adult women bend over in their C-strings – all in the name of culture.
Next year, keep your children away from the West Indian
American Day Carnival: it is a failing experiment at culture where immorality
triumphs.
Sissymoriah say so.
