Indian Mas at Carnegie Free Library, San Fernando

Trinidadian Peter Chin Poon, born in Coffee Street, San Fernando, and now resident in Canada, playing Indian mas in a design by Lionel Jagessar sometime in the 1980s. Photo courtesy Jagessar.

FROM THE ORGANISERS:

A museum exhibit featuring the traditions of local Indian Mas, including the Fancy, Warrahoon, Red and Black Indian mas will be launched on Wednesday at the Carnegie Free Library, San Fernando and will then be open to the general public until April 10.

The exhibit is the project of Jaime Bagoo, Carnival Studies student at the Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA), University of the West Indies. She has chosen to archive an aspect of our carnival history in the form of a community museum dedicated to one of our traditional mas stalwarts-Indian Mas.


“This project is about the transference of community cultural heritage," she notes. There will be a focus on Indian Mas in San Fernando, more specifically Lionel and Rosemarie Jagessar’s band.

Amidst concerns over the lack of a space for the Carnival arts, this exhibition aims to be a prototype that can be used for other heritage themed exhibits such as the Blue Devils in Paramin and Sailor Mas in Belmont. It will serve to demonstrate what a fully established museum of this nature could look like in terms of its structure, the other benefits that can be derived from such an institution, and will gather the initial artefacts to be used. It is hoped that the end product will be a museum dedicated to all the forms of Indian mas found in Trinidad that will also serve as a cultural space to help foster greater community and national pride.

This exhibition will continue until April 10, 2010 to facilitate the viewing of some treasured aspects of our culture, by school children and the general public. To view the exhibition school children and other members of the general public can visit the Carnegie Free Library, Harris Promenade, San Fernando Monday to Friday 8:30-6:00 pm and Saturdays 8:30-4:00 pm. For further information call 678-5579.