September; slowly slipping away ❧✿❧ You've heard about the Monday Blues ❧✿❧ well this is Monday WRites (musing on the definition here of rite, as any customary observance or practice eg the rite of afternoon tea).
Welcome to Monday WRites #124, ❧✿❧ What's your mood like today ❧✿❧ I invite you to link in with one of your WRites
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Undressing our more sophisticated T&T selves, will reveal bits of natural comfortable selves such as the particulars to death, grieving, and community participation in times of sadness. Two such aspects of this undress reveal: The Wake and The Bongo, icons of a cultural past
BONGO NIGHTS
Qua-qua line outside the circle
Sobs encircle
quiet mourning
in night's passing
Tack ah tack tack the bamboo clack
soul gone night black
loud the drums beat
creating heat
[photo Woodbrook Cemetery - Mucurapo Road, St. James, Trinidad; October 2016]
Glossary Bongo/Wake...Steeped in a syncretism of African and Methodist religion, the Wake and Bongo has been around for a long time in Tobago. Dry biscuit was the normal fare at this ritual, perhaps because it was usually the people of the poorer class who held the wakes, and dry biscuits were sufficiently affordable to cater for the large crowds that would gather every night...
The Bongo
is performed at the house of the deceased on the night of the wake (the night before the funeral). The dance depicts the passing of a person from one world to the next.
The qua-qua - is the musical accompaniment for the dance and is simply two pieces of bamboo struck or clapped together rhythmically by the players. The flat sound is struck in the tempo tack-tata-tack-tack, tack-tata-tack-tack.
Glossary Divali also spelt Diwali, Deepavali - celebrated every year in autumn in the northern hemisphere... It is an official holiday in Fiji, Guyana, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. One of the major festivals of Hinduism, it spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair.
Note
October 29th 2016 Divali - Public Holiday in Trinidad and Tobago
