12/6/2023 0 Comments Forge empire carnival 2018This article examines music’s role in decolonising processes in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on postcolonial national identity politics with reference to the country’s two largest ethnic groups: those descended from enslaved Africans and those from indentured labourers from India. It also shows how the marketing law of supply and demand allows the Bikini and Beads all-inclusive bands to increase the price of their costumes, basing them on the purchasing power of foreign tourists’ currencies, rather than that of the local residents. The article goes on to consider the economic capital imposed by the Bikini and Beads management and its different implications for local players. It also presents the different social and symbolic meanings perceived by local players and visitors or “travelling players” while playing in the same Bikini and Beads Mas’ bands. The corpus shows that tourism became an impactful target for the organisation of this category of Pretty Mas’ while explaining the discrepancies between the national and global debate regarding the Bikini and Beads form of masquerade through an ethnographic analysis. It explains its links with the West Indian diaspora, since almost half the players in the carnival large bands are islanders who reside permanently in the country, and the other half are visitors mainly coming from the diaspora. This article discusses the globalised commodification of Pretty Mas’ carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on the Bikini and Beads Mas’ form.
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