Memory, Innovation, and Emergent Ethnicity: The Creolization of an Indo-Trinidadian Performance

Abstract

By now, ethnicity has been well studied from a number of different perspectives by anthropologists, sociologists, and folklorists, as well as by theorists in the fields of comparative literature and critical theory. However, although public events centered on religious displays and cultural performances contribute a great deal to the maintenance of a sense of ethnic identity, they have been less studied (but see Lockwood). I will illustrate and explore the dialectic between religiosity and ethnicity, as well as the interplay of innovation and notions of unchanging tradition, by looking at Hosay, a large-scale Islamic ritual performance observed annually in St. James, an urban suburb of Port of Spain, the capital city of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The event is associated primarily with East Indians, but because it is a public occasion, people belonging to other ethnic and religious backgrounds also attend and participate to some degree.

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