“The Recruiter” from Kinetika’s Din Shuru, designed by Ali Pretty in 2003, based on the Midnight Robber figure. (Photo: A. R. Tompsett)
Midnight Robber, one of the most beloved masquerades of traditional carnival, strides through the streets in his sweeping black cape, fringed and broad brimmed hat, and coffin-shaped collection box in the other. The Robber halts passersby with grand and exaggerated accounts of his dramatic birth and heroic transgressions. Today this character still appears, ingeniously reworked into contemporary carnival narratives, representing a current political leader or a larger-than-life character from empire history, always dramatic and sending messages that are both coded and spectacular. Today soca and hip-hop performances, which match carnival in their stress on satire, improvisation, and audience interaction, demonstrate a continuity of the Midnight Robber persona in contemporary musical genres.
Like the Midnight Robber himself, this exhibition seeks to provoke and engage audiences, and underscore the cultural strategies that colonized people used through their carnival masquerades in earlier times.