Hosay Trinidad

Hosay Trinidad. 1998. 45 minutes, 50 seconds, color. A film by John Bishop and Frank J. Korom, with support of the Smithsonian Institution Center of Folklife and Cultural Heritage. For more information, contact Documentary Educational Resources, 101 Morse Street, Watertown, MA 02472; [phone]; [email protected].

Hosay Trinidad explores the way Hosay, a 1300-year-old Islamic holiday, is currently observed and "ritualized" in the most southerly Caribbean island of Trinidad. The Hosay processions are carried out annually to honor the martyrdom of Husein, son of Fatima, daughter of Mohammed the Prophet. Husein, or Hosayn, tried to reclaim the caliphate, or headship of the Muslim Empire, after the death of his brother, Hasan, who had been forced to abdicate as caliph. In A.D. 680, on his march to Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate, Husein was killed by his rivals. The day of his defeat, the 10th of Muharram, became the great holy day of the Shiites, who uphold the legitimacy of Fatima's descendants as divinely ordained caliphs (i.e., successors of the Prophet) or imams (leaders).

Celebrated every year during Muharram, the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar, the Shiite festival commemorates the death of Husein as a sacred martyr at Kerbela. Hosay includes a prescribed ten-day fast and prayer period ending with three nights of festivities. This film covers the preparations and ceremonies undertaken by Shiite Muslims in Trinidad. Through detailed coverage of the music, craft, design, food, and other rituals observed in Trinidad's Hosay, the film demonstrates the way East Indian immigrants have held on to specific traditions that they now identify with their ancestral Indian culture. While only about 15% of Indo-Trinidadians are Muslim (the majority of whom are Sunnites, the other great sect in Islam), the Shiite celebration of Hosay has been re-interpreted as an event meaningful to the broader Indo-Trinidadian and Caribbean Muslim population.

The film makes brief references to the contemporary religious practice of Hosay in Iran, where observance involves a parade of self-flagellating believers partaking in a spiritually significant and demonstrative form of fasting and street theater. The film also briefly considers the contrast between the "original" practices in Iran,...