Mashramani (Part 1)

Mashramani (shortened to Mash and also called Republic Day) is Guyana's independence day celebration. Its held on the 23^rd of February every year. As the day hasn't actually come yet, I don't fully know what all will be going on that day. However, there are a variety of school-related Mash events, that culminate with a national competition in Georgetown just before the actual holiday. So a few weeks ago, there were 3 days of events in Anna Regina, similar to inter-school sports. Events were held at the community cricket ground, and students could attend if they wanted. Naturally teachers were needed to escort those students who wanted to attend, and I was asked to go for all 3 days. With half the school gone, there wasn't much teaching to be done, so I was happy to check everything out. A summary of the events follows.

Dramatic Poetry

Before I start talking about dramatic poetry, a word about the number of schools present. All the schools in the central Essequibo Coast were eligible to participate. I think this was about 5 secondary schools total, and about 8000 nursery (kindergarten) and primary (grades 1-6) primary schools. So each event was primarily made up of children ranging in ages from very young to young. Most of these children performed their dramatic poetry readings by screaming into the microphone as loud as humanly possible. The theme of Mash this year is “celebrating our culture, preserving our pride,” which seems kind of weird, but whatever. The upshot was that most of the poems (yelled at ear splitting volume) were very patriotic and full of Creolese slang. So the readings were very hard to understand as well as very loud. I had a headache after dramatic poetry. The best entrant was a little kid in a suit who proposed to a person-sized map of Guyana dressed in a wedding gown and veil.

Calypso

The calypso competitions consisted of both groups and individuals singing a variety of Caribbean and Guyanese songs. I think there's a real niche market here for some vocal trainers. Some of the children have beautiful voices, but I don't think anyone has really been working on the concept of harmonizing. As a terrible singer, I know the best way to hide is to just sing simple stuff off on your own, staying out of the way. All the group singers sang exactly the same parts, which is tough enough if you're an excellent singer. The dramatic poetry headache only got worse after calpyso. That was the end of day 1.

Masquerade

So around Christmastime in Guyana (at least on the Coast), roving bands of street performers wander around with a few drums, maybe a recorder and triangle, and play music for tips. They also will do some rhyming to impress their patrons. Its sort of like Caribbean caroling. For some reason, this tradition is also part of inter-schools Mash competitions, with both individual and group performers. The individuals do all sorts of dance moves to the beat and have to be adept at picking up money that's thrown to them. The groups have some certain archetypes of costumed dancers: a boy dressed up as granny with lots of junk in her trunk, a doctor, the bad cow (someone with a big cow costume who just jumps around), etc. They all just sort of bounce around on stage for a while to the drum/recorder/triangle noise. I'm not sure how anyone could judge it, but they did. One school had the granny give birth on stage, which was entertaining.

Dance

Choreographed dance routines. The individual performers from ARMS both did Indian dances and were excellent. The girl in the older age group was unfortunately disqualified when her song ran on too long and she was impolite to the judges. I had heard that she'd had quite a streak of national Mash performances going, so everyone was pretty upset. I'm not sure if any appeals were heard on the matter. The group dances were pretty entertaining, though we heard a few popular songs over and over. Both groups from ARMS also did very very well. They had some excellent costumes and choreography. The older girls also had some flags, it was a little bit like a color-guard routine. Both groups of girls took first place in their age categories. Day 2 was a lot more fun than day 1.

Costume

The final day commenced with a costume competition. In reality it was more like a float or display type thing. A student would get up on stage in costume, usually pulling some sort of decorated cart or something. Lots of little kids barely dragging around various decorated carts. ARMS didn't compete in the costume competition. Another school's girl had on this massive dress type thing with an enormous flared collar. She too could barely walk.

Physical Display
The week's events concluded with the physical display. The younger kids did all sorts of exercises and balancing stunts, while the secondary schools basically did competitive cheerleading things, without any yelling or awkward forced smiles. Some of the younger kids at the school got put up really high. Another school made a human pyramid 4 persons high, all standing, which was pretty impressive. They won.

On the whole it was a pretty fun day. I think the national competition is coming up next week and I don't think I'll get to attend. I am planning on going to Georgetown for Mashramani proper. Its supposed to be one of the biggest parties/spectacles of the year, so I'll report back afterward.