When I was in high school in the late nineties, I remember my friends and I all trying to do the Harlem Shake dance after classes, attempting to emulate the kids we saw in G-Dep‘s “Let’s Get It” video. Fast forward to earlier this year, and the “Harlem Shake” craze went viral and everyone was performing this wacky dance from fraternity kids to professional athletes to even passengers mid-flight on a Frontier Airlines plane. But here’s the problem: It was NOT the dance that we collectively enjoyed back in the days. In fact, there was actually NO dancing involved in this “2013 Harlem Shake,” and it was just a group of young (and not-so-young) folks violently throwing their bodies around.
After about a month of random and ridiculous videos, Melissa Harris-Perry finally said what many of us grown Black folk were already saying: That’s NOT the Harlem shake. She then made a pointed monologue aimed at white people about misappropriating Black urban culture:
I was proud to see Harris-Perry and other African Americans disallowing popular culture to steamroll their creation with ignorance. Many Black Americans rightfully bristled at seeing people outside of their culture misjudge and misrepresent what their dance stood for. So, with that in mind, imagine how I and other West Indians felt to wake up to American outlets dissing Rihanna for participating in our cultural tradition.
This past weekend, two major annual events in the Caribbean cultural calendar took place: Caribana in Toronto, where I live, and Crop Over (the official name of carnival) in Barbados, where I’m from. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to Crop Over this year, and I was reminded of all the fun I was missing when I saw pictures of Rihanna in her GORGEOUS costume.
But that regret was quickly replaced by rage once I saw the headlines that major American outlets used to report her activities during our homeland celebration. “Rihanna gets drunk and twerks in the street,” “Rihanna twerks island style,” and “RiRi parades half naked in overly skimpy outfit!” were just a few of the ignorant-ass headlines I had to take in. And the WORST part about these mindless and cretinous statements is the fact that none of them came from anyone knowledgeable of Caribbean culture. African Americans get up in arms when their culture is judged by people OUTSIDE of it, but are now doing the SAME BULLSHIT to West Indians. Simply put, if you know nothing about historical and cultural traditions of the Caribbean yet feel the need to add your unenlightened opinions regarding our behavior, please shut the HELL up.
But I’m gon’ learn ‘em now … In my small island of Barbados, here’s what our celebration means:
Crop Over is a five-week long summer festival and it’s our most popular and colorful festival. It’s origins can be traced back to the 1780s, a time when Barbados was the world’s largest producer of sugar. At the end of the sugar season, there was always a huge celebration to mark the culmination of another successful sugar cane harvest; hence the festival name - Crop Over.
Cohobblopot is a huge, colorful and spectacular show with the Kings and Queens of the Kadooment bands displaying their elaborate and stunning costumes. In recent years, there has also been a huge entertainment package with the most popular calypsonians (our island’s music) and bands performing to packed audiences.
Dressing in a costume and dancing the day away is what we call PLAYING MAS, and it occurs everywhere from Toronto to Trinidad to New York to many other cities throughout North America and the Caribbean. This weekend alone, over 60,000 men and women donned costumes to parade down the road in Toronto, a tradition that’s been performed by my sister, aunts, cousins, and damn near every girlfriend I’ve ever had. If you don’t think it’s appropriate, you’re entitled to believe that, but don’t you dare judge our celebrations by your standards.
Americans have a funny way of over-sexualizing everything with their puritanical European influence and then getting upset because the rest of the world doesn’t live up to their moral code. They over-sexualize all aspects of the body, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us do. Well, we don’t care about honoring our traditions in a way that makes them comfortable, especially when they show no interest in learning about our history at all.
Hell, if they did, then they would have taken the effort to at least Google our traditions and the significance of Rihanna playing mas and dancing in the streets. So I ask Americans to please do us all a favor and spare us your contempt, outrage, shock, and whatever other bullshit feelings they have because how West Indians celebrate doesn’t have a DAMN thing to do with them – until they open up their minds to learning our culture.
At that point, we will have a costume with their names on it, and we will dance until their legs are sorer than a retired football player’s knees.
P.S. West Indians don’t TWERK at carnival – we WHINE and WUKK UP.
LAB
Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, he’s an author of the book “You’re Not A Victim, You’re A Volunteer” and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.
