Ramleela In Trinidad 100 Years Of The Felicity Open Air Folk Theatre Tradition

Ramleela is the story or Leela ('play') of the legend of Prince Rām of Ayodhya, India, battling demi gods, demons and king Rawan to rescue beautiful Princess Sita from Lanka. This ancient, epic story of the Ramayana; later narrated in Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas, and introduced to the Caribbean by Indian, indentured workers, it has been flourishing as Ramleela, folk theatre, in Trinidad for over 130 years. It is performed continuously in the village, now town, of Felicity for over 100 years. The residents of Felicity-a village carved out of former sugarcane lands, at the edge of the Caribbean Sea-have been performing their Ramleela annually for eleven consecutive days with the grandeur and panache of village pageantry. This particular production has been mentioned by two Nobel laureates; Sir Vidya Naipaul and Derek Walcott. Part I of the book deals with the issues that the immigrant East Indian community grapples with, in establishing their space and identity within the new landscape. Part II is centered in Felicity with its unique history, geography and demography. Part III documents the story, as dramatised; the circumstances of Rām's birth, his education and training, marriage, exile, trials and tribulations, battles, overcoming magic and illusion, his victory over king Rāwan and his triumphant return to rule the Kingdom of Ayodhya The story is presented through a combination of acting, vocal and instrumental music, supporting props, décor, lighting and costuming. Its multi-layered meanings have been explained through the use of masks and forms of masking, guise and disguise, at the physical and metaphysical levels. The pageant incorporates burlesque, humour, satire, village commerce and entertainment on the fringe, a complete mela, attracting young and old, the religious and the secular. These multiple features have expanded the annual audiences of the Leela while enhancing the rich, diverse heritage of Trinidad and Tobago's cultural landscape in the 21st century.

Many Indians journeyed out of India to supplant the loss of slave labour in the former European plantation colonies of Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji, and the Caribbean from the early nineteenth century onwards. This book aims to highlight the careers of these migrants who served as vital agents in building the global society of the twenty-first century. It explores the transformative experiences of those who migrated, and the memories of those who did not return after expiration of their contracts but chose instead to stay in their respective host countries. It describes the many challenges they faced - ageing in a society far from home, the loss of their formal Indian identity after Indian independence, their efforts to preserve a sense of community in the post-independence societies of South Africa and the Caribbean, and their adapting to the new political and social realities they faced as minorities in the countries in which their ancestors had adventurously determined to settle and live.

This book examines Hinduism from both a historical and contemporary perspective. It provides some interesting insights into factors that shaped and defined Hinduism in the diaspora. It also examines the challenges facing Hinduism in the twenty-first century. In recent years the growing conversions of Hindus to other religions, the complexities of caste, the impact of AIDS, and the need to reinvigorate the youth in Hindu teachings are just some of the issues that it faces. What shape and form will Hinduism take in the twenty-first century? What will Hinduism look like in the future? These relevant questions are the subject of debate and deliberations amongst religious scholars, academics and politicians. This edited collection addresses some of these questions as well as the relationship between religion and diaspora within historical and contemporary perspectives.

Fourteen authors, including many of the best-known scholars in the field, explore how people actually experience their culture and how those experiences are expressed in forms as varied as narrative, literary work, theater, carnival, ritual, reminiscence, and life review. Their studies will be of special interest for anyone working in anthropological theory, symbolic anthropology, and contemporary social and cultural anthropology, and useful as well for other social scientists, folklorists, literary theorists, and philosophers.

"In Trindad is the first photographic book to document the complex issues of post-colonial Trinidad identity primarily through visual means. Puerto Rican photographer Pablo Delano has over the period of a decade photographed ordinary Trinidadians at work, at play, at worship - in their homes, on the streets, and in their vocational niches. His reproduced black and white photographs capture the essence of a uniquely intercultural Caribbean people, paradoxically poised between oil and natural gas-driven postindustrial capital development and earlier rhythms keyed to seasons of Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Orisha, and secular festivity."--BOOK JACKET.

The multivocalic rite known as Hosay in the Caribbean developed out of earlier practices originating in Iraq and Iran which diffused to Trinidad by way of South Asian indentured laborers brought to the Caribbean by the British from the mid-1800s to the early decades of the twentieth century. The rituals are important as a Shi'i religious observance, but they also are emblems of ethnic and national identity for Indo-Trinidadians. Frank Korom investigates the essential role of Hosay in the performance of multiple identities by historically and ethnographically situating the event in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Caribbean contexts. Hosay Trinidad: Muharram Performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora is the first detailed historical and ethnographic study of Islamic muharram rituals performed on the island of Trinidad. Korom's central argument is that the annual rite is a polyphonic discourse that is best understood by employing multiple levels of interpretation. On the symbolic level the observance provides esoteric meaning to a small community of Indo-Trinidadian Muslims. On another level, it is perceived to be representative of "transplanted" Indian culture as a whole. Finally, the rituals are becoming emblematic of Trinidad's polyethnic population. Addressing strategies used to resist integration and assimilation, Hosay Trinidad is engaged with theories concerning the notion of cultural creolization in the Caribbean as well as in the general study of global diasporas.

Trinidad and Tobago reflects the dynamic rhythm of a cosmopolitan mix of cultures where the Indo-Trinidadian contribution is significant. This has its genesis in the 19th and early 20th centuries when more than 500,000 contract workers, from various regions of India, were shipped to the Caribbean to arrest the labour crisis in these plantation economies. These indentured immigrants brought their religions, languages, rituals, festivals, cultural practices and other performative traditions and planted them in its fertile soil.

Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott is one of the Caribbean's most famous writers. His unique voice in poetry, drama and criticism is shaped by his position at the crossroads between Caribbean, British and American culture and by his interest in hybrid identities and diaspora. Edward Baugh's Derek Walcott analyses and evaluates Walcott's entire career over the last fifty years. Baugh guides the reader through the continuities and differences of theme and style in Walcott's poems and plays. Walcott is an avowedly Caribbean writer, acutely conscious of his culture and colonial heritage, but he has also made a lasting contribution to the way we read and value the western literary tradition. This comprehensive survey considers each of Walcott's published books, offering a guide for students, scholars and readers of Walcott. Students of Caribbean and postcolonial studies will find this a perfect introduction to this important writer.