It is worth pointing out that in Africa and the Caribbean diviners (seers) often use mirrors to discern the identities of their clients' friends, enemies and tormentors.

The Shortknee wears a wire screen mask over a powder-whitened face; these masks were once upon a time imported from Austria and Germany. Before the coming of the Austrian and German imports, the Shortknees made their “false faces” (masks) from vegetal matter such as dry banana leaves and calabash gourds (Cresentia cujete).
The Shortknee character is very well covered from head to toe. On his head he wears a white bath towel, which is held in place to give the masquerade a hooded look. Women’s stockings cover the Shortknee’s lower legs; they are often gartered at the knees; the Shortknee’s feet are encased in tennis shoes. Back in its heyday the Shortknee wore a starch stiffened headdress called a “crown”. These crowns disappeared in the 1960s, perhaps because a younger generation of players lacked interest in the artisanal side of mas making.

Significantly Shortknee bands do not have a musical corps, so they make music by means of a rhythmic stomping of their ankle-belled feet. The little bells are called "wooloes" and they are fastened to the Shortknees’ stockings.

Shortknee players sing in the familiar call -and- response style and their songs tend to heap scorn on their enemies or proclaim the fighting prowess of the singers. Typically, a “Shortknee song" consists of two lines, a call line and a choric line. For example: 

Call line: Mama doh bawl, doh bawl mama doh bawl
Choric line: Tell Chantimelle (a rival village) is one for the jail
                      and one for the cemetery.  

Many Shortknee songs point to the character’s self-appointed role as moral police. Viewing Carnival as a place to ritualize social relations and, indeed, strengthen social bonds, the Shortknee uses many of his songs to “out” individuals who have offended the community’s moral codes: the songs tend to treat matters such as incest, rape, adultery, bestiality and other taboo subjects.  The Shortknees deliver rebuke and reprimand in song while they express approval in showers of talcum powder: each Shortknee carries packs of talcum power” to throw” on friends, or on spectators who coughed up generous monetary donations.

Spectators who refuse to give monetary donations might be roughed up and this is because the Shortknee sees himself as a stand in for a visiting ancestor: the presence of a mask always signify a visit of an ancestor and, therefore, the refusal to give the Shortknee “a little something” is tantamount to a serious breach of social and spiritual protocols in Grenada as in Africa.

Shortknees appear in bands consisting of thirty to forty masked and identically dressed men who are led by a captain. The Shortknee captain recruits members to his band, identifies fabric for the band's costume, schedules pre-carnival practice sessions, composes the refrains to be sung on Carnival day, calls the carnival day singing and leads his men into battle if this became necessary. The Shortknee is the grandmaster of the choreographed procession and it is not uncommon for bands to cover 15 to 20 miles in a single day.

Talking about which, it bears pointing out that Shortknee processioneering betrays aspects of the social geometry that Professor Robert Farris Thompson, a leading scholar of African art, has observed among the Ba-Kongo and Yoruba peoples of Africa.

A key feature of this social geometry is what Professor Thompson calls “circularity” – the practice whereby masqueraders engage in “circular perambulations” as they approach a village, town, or population centre. Circularity is said to cool a place, bringing healing and peace.

A matter that will be of much interest in Grenada is the fact that the Yoruba verb to parade, yide, “is derived from yi, to roll”. In Grenada, it is common practice to speak of masqueraders “rolling” into this or that town or village.

“Traditional Kongo processioneering technique’’ dovetails nicely with ‘’Yoruba beliefs”, says Professor Thompson, who hypothesizes that “Kongo and Yoruba belief systems” reinforced themselves in “Creole collision in the Black Caribbean.”

Shortknee processioneering is conducted at a jog, and it consists in a number of “moves” (dance steps) that demand both athleticism and balletic grace: These moves  include jumps, kicks, hops, tumbles, slides pirouettes and a shuffle with arms hanging limply and feet in the second position. When in friendly territory, the Shortknees will execute a slow dance, leaning their torsos forward while taking mincing steps on their tiptoes.

The Shortknee is indeed a pulsating portrait of our Caribbean hybridity. Speaking of this Caribbean hybridity in the course of his 1992 Nobel lecture Derek Walcott said this: “Antillian art is the restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago becoming a synonym for pieces broken off the original continent.”

Back to top

Article By Caldwell Taylor

Photos Provided by Joshua Yetman