Jouvay Ayiti is a Mas Camp-us
Jouvay - that period early Carnival Monday morning where all the energies of the Kambule and Emancipation are resuscitated through mas, music, dance, and spirit. Ayiti - the original Taino name for San Domingo, which Dessalines had the gall to invoke in re/naming Haiti, proclaiming it the first Black free state in the New World; the beacon of Freedom in our hemisphere. Essentially, Mas is the use of the Carnival occasion/space to re/present and amplify an individual or communal concern or obsession as masquerade in street procession. Camp-us - the place/space that in institution of learning occupies. As a Mas Camp-us, Jouvay Ayiti is concerned with the ways in which MAS can be used as a strategy in consciousness-raising, formal and popular education and development. Founded in 2010 as a response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti in January of that year, Jouvay Ayiti operates as a collective involving faculty at the Department of Creative and Festival Arts at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Studio 66, Curepe Scherzando, and the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies. The initiative advocates the need for a new relationship between Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean based on sharing knowledge and resources, mutual respect and sustainable collaboration, in recognition of the fact that Haiti has always been the critical centre of and challenge to our own creation of a Caribbean. In 2011, when we presented our first band ‘HAITI: MUDDER OF CIVILIZATION’, Jouvay Ayiti focussed specifically on the rich creative and cultural heritage of Haitian society (as evidenced in their music, religious constructs and art) to generate a carnival experience that was both educative and transformative. The project thus focussed on the active engagement of students in the development of imagery within the practice of mas that stimulated the critical consideration of the popular representations and misconceptions of Haiti. In recognition of Trinidad and Tobago’s 50th anniversary of Independence and the wider Caribbean Independence movement, which began in that same year (1962), Jouvay Ayiti, presented for Carnival 2012, a band titled, ‘50 YEARS... MUD, FETE AND TEARS’. With this mas, Jouvay Ayiti copped the Jouvert band of the year title for 2012 (small band category, uptown and downtown). Having had these experiences, we are convinced that Carnival is the lingua franca of the Caribbean. And upon realizing the successes of the initiative, we set ourselves the mandate of consciously situating mas making and performance, as well as other carnival arts, as central to pedagogy, and consciousness raising; and through creativity and innovation, as an economic contributor in non-carnival sectors. In this regard, we have given the designation ‘Mas Camp-us’ to the endeavour; an acknowledgement of the simultaneous workings of the mas camp (creativity, economics, community) with academia (teaching, learning, research) in the same process. Today, Jouvay Ayiti offers training in the arts of traditional mas making, and 'Master of the Mas', a semi-lime series in which limers get to meet 'up close and personal' the veterans of Trinidad and Tobago's mas traditions. Be that as it may, the major component in this programme remains the presentation of a Carnival band. For Jouvert 2013, Jouvay Ayiti presented 'Mamaguy and Pappyshow in a Family Bacchanal' and is for the 2nd consecutive year the champion Jouvert band in the small band category.
