The slave radical tradition survived Trinidadian repression preserved in language, festival, and Calypso

Evidence

Thus the ideologic and phatic ingredients of the radical tradition of the slaves was preserved by the African Creoles (who were augmented by the liberated Africans) in their culture: their language, the patois “not understood by most policeman, magistrates, and officials”; their profane festivals such as Canboulay and the jamet Carnival where thinly veiled disregard for Anglican and Catholic moralities abound; in their syncretistic religious sects and noisy wakes; in their music and dance. These evoked hostility and disgust among the Anglicized colored classes, shocked the upper-class whites, and inspired discomfort in official Trinidad. In 1868, obeah was outlawed; in 1883, drum dances (Calenda, Belaire, Bongo) were prohibited as “immoral”; in 1884 and 1895, the festivals or aspects of them (band stick-fighting, the wearing of masks) were suppressed. In time, too, it was believed and expected, public primary education would eradicate “Creole.” But the verse of Calypso suggested the spirit of liberation, the sense of dignity was unextinguishable. There one found a quiet but steeled expression of outrage. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1152

Categorization

• DEFINE: Directly names the constituents of ‘the radical tradition of the slaves’ — culture as carrier — central to the reader’s question of what the Black radical tradition is.
• XREF: This is core to the book’s whole argument: the radical tradition carried in culture rather than political texts, connecting to earlier chapters on the African origins of the tradition.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘the cultural substrate of resistance’ — how Calypso, Carnival, and creole patois encode a tradition state suppression could never legislate away.