Hosay Trinidad

Hosay Trinidad. Produced by John Bishop and Frank Korom. Video. 45 minutes. 1999. Distributor: Documentary Educational Resources. 101 Morse Street, Watertown, MA 02472; [phone].

In the last decade a substantial number of studies of Indo-Trinidadian culture have been produced, including several books published in Trinidad, ethnomusicological monographs by Helen Myers (1998) and myself (2000a), and other works. Hosay Trinidad, a video documentary by John Bishop and Frank Korom, supplements these materials with a study of the Muharrum commemoration of the Shiite Muslims of St. James, a neighborhood in Port of Spain. The film involves music only tangentially, in the form of the tassa drumming accompanying the public processions; nevertheless, it should be of interest to many students and scholars of Caribbean and South Asian studies in general.

The East Indian population of Trinidad, comprising descendants of indentured workers who immigrated during the colonial period, includes around 70,000 Muslims, of whom a substantial minority are Shiites. One of the traditions maintained by this community is the observance of Muharram, renamed "Hosay," which commemorates the seventh-century martydom of the Shi'a saints Hussein and Hasan. As in Iran and India, Trinidadian Shi'as observe Muharrum by constructing elaborate wood and cardboard replicas of the saints' tombs, called tazias or tajas, which are paraded through the streets during the course of the final three days and nights of the event. In Trinidad, as in nineteenth-century India (especially Lucknow),...