Above: Photograph of a Mas Mourning prototype by Jason Audain. Photo courtesy Vulgar Fraction.

Robert Young answered questions about his Carnival band, Vulgar Fraction and the band’s plans to put costume making in the hands of its players. The responses were received on February 23, 2022.

Why the name Vulgar Fraction?

A vulgar fraction is an ordinary fraction, with two whole numbers divided by a line. It’s the commons, the folk, the normal, the people. The problem lies in the changing meaning of vulgar. It comes from the Latin adjective vulgaris that derives from vulgus, the common people.

A vulgar fraction is one based on ordinary or everyday arithmetic as opposed to these highfalutin decimal things, which were at first called decimal fractions. The band Vulgar Fraction is the common people, of which I am a part. Other bands see themselves as moneymaking machines. Vulgar Fraction is not that. It’s not a moneymaking machine, and that’s considered “vulgar” because in the normal, contemporary sense of the term today, it’s vulgar to try to make something where money is not the centre.

Is the only mourning for the lost dead that the band is engaging? Is there an aspect of Carnival itself that is being mourned as well?

The grief is not only for the dead but the parts of ourselves that have died or been changed in the past two years, those parts of ourselves that held us numb, which we have given up because of the slowing down. This is especially true for me as a person. I started to walk and spend a lot more time alone, so my mourning is for the old frantic self. People may mourn relationships that they have given up or lost.

There’s grief and mourning we feel realising that Panorama is not the same. That ritual of people being supportive of a band, and having a call-and-response to the band is in danger of being lost because of the monetisation of it and what PanTrinbago tries to do in looking like they want the sponsorship handout and policing the Panorama, not realising it’s a deeply connected African community tradition for the band to be supported in these ways.

Can you describe how players will participate with the band? Will there be costumes? Designs? I note that there are materials available and people will play in their own yard. How will the band be reflected as a collective? Will there be a photographic gallery of the players?

We have prototypes showing some possibilities for the designs. There are parts of the costume we will make. We will provide dried fig leaves if they require leaves, and we provide a fabric mask. There are backpacks if you want to carry the costume high. Then you as your own maker have to engage with the material and see how you can use it.

Some costumes are just leaves, others are cut leaves stuck on fabric. It’s a deep design study in the material; we all know fig trees and how they look like someone standing outside in the dark. You can use any other plant material too. Masqueraders have to make contact with us to figure out how to commemorate their loss, the thing they’re mourning.

We have some photographers working with us who may visit people at their homes to record it. We have 42 students from UWI building costumes also, and that’s definitely a digital procession. We may have a display in front of the shop on Erthig Road on Carnival Tuesday, where people can come and visit the costumes and engage with the players.

What do you think the government’s interventions with Carnival should be? Do you think any aspect of State support for Carnival is working?

The government subvention this year is less than point five per cent of what is usually spent on the festival. A lot of the money is directed to infrastructural work—lights, tents, chairs, transport—and that is paying rent, basically. People who supply those services are buying their equipment over and over for leasing it out to the government. There’s a lot that the government could do; we just have to rethink it, look and see where the pockets of retentions exist and we may have to go very early, doing interventions in schools, giving people a chance to take on Carnival Arts very young and developing the skill of making.

It could be a design course that is steeped in Carnival but using design as a way to resolve a problem.
What is the problem Carnival is trying to solve? Is it a social problem, a problem of design or aesthetics, or a problem of community? We can use that process to come up with solutions, not only costumes. How do you make Carnival become a people’s thing again? How do you engage with young people to make them feel that Carnival is theirs, and give them an opportunity to engage with it as a tool for their own change, empowerment, statement making?

We have solutions right in our faces but we’re not asking the design question.
Government should be willing to guarantee that they provide support for that. How do you reengage a community, how does a steel band acquire services? Welders, painters, seamstresses, cookers of food, all can come from the community; or does the sponsor send his friends to get a kickback? Even The Cloth itself has been hired to dress people for Despers, Invaders, Skiffle, Fonclair, Tropical Angel Harps, Redemption Soundsetters, Bucaneers, Exodus and we could figure out how to get those design processes in the community. We could make a bank of welders, for example, that could be a resource for the steel pan community.

Your thoughts on Taste of Carnival?

Carnival is not just those things that happen in the Savannah. Carnival is the things that happen all through our country and communities and I don’t think government has put support there. More than 60 per cent of this Taste of Carnival budget has gone to the providers of services—transport, stage sets, lights—and little money has gone to the community, the dancers, the stickfighers, the musicians. We could have waited like we did in 1973 when the song “Rain-o-Rama” came about when a Carnival was announced in May because of the polio pandemic (or because of the State of Emergency as a response to NUFF).

We didn’t have to rush for a taste. We could have waited. It was a response to the idea that our Carnival could be lost. Yes, it could be lost if we keep pushing it away from the people. Some people say government should have planned this further ahead but it would have been difficult to do.
It’s a failed attempt. We could have been supporting activities in the community that people could engage with.