Folklore characters don’t just come out of the woodwork, and the same goes for Carnival characters – moko jumbies and other elaborate costumes that require a combination of designers, woodworkers and tailors.
They share a great deal of responsibility for the grand spectacles that are no longer seen only during the Carnival season, and sometimes they are handsomely rewarded.
Traditional characters, especially moko jumbies, are becoming commonplace at opening ceremonies or for any given Carnival-type event in major cities around the world – evidence of a growing demand for an experience once unique to TT Carnival.
Junior Bisnath, founder of the San Fernando School of Arts (now the Junior Bisnath School of Arts) is regarded as a cultural icon and is a major player in the business of traditional mas.
He is a woodworking extraordinaire, spending almost three decades training schoolchildren and young adults in woodcraft, performance art and other skills.
But undoubtedly motivated by his love for culture, woodwork and teaching, Bisnath has sacrificed personal opportunities to earn big sums in order to continue teaching. He is foremost a creator, not a businessman.
That’s not to say that others cannot or should not make a comfortable living exploring opportunities to spread TT’s culture, he says. In fact, many who have learnt from him have done just that.
He is now training a second and third generation of students.
“As a matter of fact the children of those students are in training now,” said the 67-year-old multiple award-winner.
About 30 years ago, Bisnath explored a niche market. Today, the opportunities come to him, and he takes them with open arms, while including the schoolchildren of San Fernando.
Bisnath created Kaisokah, a group of moko jumbies that became so popular, it branched out to the US, where it frequently performs for grand openings and cultural events.
He is also responsible for the emergence of moko jumbies in US circuses.
He merged the genres kaiso and soca to create kaisokah, and spelt it that way out of respect to late soca legend Ras Shorty I, who frequently spelt soca as “sokah.” Bisnath also spells it kaisokah to distinguish it from another touring culture group that goes by a similar name.
[caption id="attachment_1040845" align="alignnone" width="683"] Junior Bisnath -[/caption]
Around the time he established the school, the National Carnival Commission (NCC) approached Bisnath to train schoolchildren to use stilts during Carnival season, which became an annual project.
Since then, he remembers a trip to Zimbabwe over a decade ago, when moko jumbies were included in the country’s second international Carnival. He and his team were also part of a large contingent at the 2006 football World Cup in Germany.
Bisnath’s moko jumbies are regularly called out for smaller events, both private and government-sponsored events. This allows the performers to get paid and the group to buy textiles and materials to build more stilts and costumes.
“It’s only natural. They’ll
