TRINIDAD EXPRESS - By Paras Ramoutar - Chutney is a revolutionary concept in music and entertainment. It is a testament to creativity, originality and intellect. It is multidimensional as it gives ventilation to the social, cultural and political landscape. It must not be used as a vehicle to glamorise alcohol, as demonstrated in this year's Chutney Soca Monarch competition held at Skinner Park, San Fernando. Additionally, it is clearly wrong to encourage supporters to throw something on the stage when one is defeated.
Our singers, entertainers and composers must revisit their thinking and then write their songs. Many of the songs at the competition did not inspire the populace. The show's stakeholders must sit down and prepare and fully discuss the mechanics of their presentations.
Chutney is unique and gets everyone's attention. It is not only a national craze, but it has now hit the international cultural circuit.
With the coming celebration of the 166th anniversary of Indian Arrival Day on May 30, the Indian diaspora has made a strong and positive statement with chutney as a major breakthrough in the cultural evolution of Trinidad and Tobago.
Chutney is T&T's latest contribution to the world of music and entertainment.
T&T cannot produce any kind of weapon to wipe out humanity; we cannot send man into outer space and we are struggling to defend ourselves from the scourges of drugs and murders which have continued to haunt the nation, but we have been able through music — in this latest instance chutney — to demonstrate to the world society our capacity to inform, educate and entertain.
Chutney is not only a new genre for building a sense of national identity, but it is a contributing factor for the creation and adoption of an artistic landscape specifically identifiable to the people of Trinbago.
The debate as to what constitutes a national culture or identity in Trinidad and Tobago cannot ignore chutney as an indispensable contribution to its cultural strength and foundation.
Any society that disputes what a major sector of the national citizenry contributes will be on the road to social pain.
In 1990s then prime minister Basdeo Panday, had identified the musical creations of Sonny Mann (now deceased) as an example of, "cross culturalisation of music'' which takes "a step in the direction of national unity''.
Mr Panday continued: "The harmonisation that exists between soca and chutney is a symbol of the type of complete harmonisation that must characterise our society in years to come.''
This did not come to pass.
Whilst other cultural presentations seem to attack the Indian diaspora for more than political reasons, chutney presentations peep through their own internal environment, sometimes with great dismay and scorn.
There were inklings of chutney fervour in the Bhojpuri dialect which were brought from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar when the first Indian indentured workers landed here on the Fatel Razack on May 30, 1845.
This process continued with little success until the last couple of decades when its full power, glory and potency was realised with such personalities as the late Sundar Popo, Anand Yankaran, Drupatie Ramgoonai, Rikki Jai, Indar Sookraj, Devanand Gattoo, Ramrajie Prabhoo, Naresh Prabhoo, Heeralal Rampartap, and Sonny Mann, who won the first Chutney/Soca competition in 1995.
Sonny Mann's "Lo Tay La'' won him national, regional and international acclaim.
With chutney here to stay as an integral form of entertainment, our social, cultural and political thinkers and writers will have a new task on hand.
That task is to rewrite their contributions and statements about our peoples.
The existentialist philosopher, Carl Jaspers wrote:
" The apprehension of history as a whole leads beyond history. The unity of history is no longer history. To grasp this unity means to pass above and beyond history into the matrix of this unity, through that unity which enables history to become a whole... We do not live in the knowledge of history, in so far, as we live by unity, we live supra historically in history.''
• Paras Ramoutar is a former Local Government representative
