THE 10TH STEELPAN/CARNIVAL ARTS CONFERENCE MOVES TO WEST AFRICA IN DECEMBER 2023

BY PROFESSOR HAROUN SHAH

The 10th Steelpan/Carnival Arts Conference entitled “Rhythm of a People: Tradition, Connection, Innovation and Decolonisation” will take place in December 2023 (exact dates to be confirmed) in Sierra Leone and Ghana. The programme will comprise of 8 themes over 4 conference days, with two days each in Sierra Leone and Ghana. A third day in each country will be dedicated to live carnival arts performances.

The conference will encompass a diverse range of topics within carnival arts disciplines, including; its early history in Africa; the transatlantic slave trade to the Caribbean and the Americas; the emergence of carnival artforms; contemporary performance; diasporic contributions and its return to Africa. It will also showcase the profound development of steelpan in Africa particularly from Nigeria, where there are over 30 steelbands and burgeoning Panorama competitions, to South Africa where there are over 150 steelbands and annual festivals, with many bands fusing the Trinidadian instrument with their native Marimbas.

The format of the conference will remain unchanged from its initial model of 2006, with one morning and one afternoon session for each day’s theme and will consist of a mixture of invited main speakers interspersed with brief (10 minute) free presentations. The daily lunch periods will also host talks by invited Plenary Lecturers. We invite you to participate in this unique experience, in which anyone wishing to present will be accommodated through various media including oral, poster, digital and online presentations. As with previous meetings, each presenter will be required to submit a 300-500 word abstract, with a title and full correspondence address of the presenter.

Artistes (steelbands, calypsonians, mas’ makers etc.) who wish to perform on day three of the event, will need to submit a brief description (100 -200 words) of their act to help the organisers develop a coherent programme for each day. With the meeting being held in two countries on university campuses, participants may register for either one or both events, bearing in mind that the conference content of each conference meeting will be different.

Since its inception at the University of East London in 2006, we have endeavoured to create a forum in which practitioners of Carnival Arts and Academics can meet, exchange ideas, learn from each other, foster collaboration, and help to promote developments in the field. As we move toward our 10th meeting, and work with our partners in West Africa, our key objectives remain the same viz. to encourage anyone interested in the various artforms to attend - from grassroots artistes in Steelpan, Calypso/Soca/Caribbean Music, Mas, Sound Systems to enthusiasts and academics across the broad field of Humanities.

Many carnival arts skills are passed down orally, which help to build a holistic chronicle of carnival arts but many of our icons in various fields pass away without narrating their experiences. To remedy this, we have compiled all abstracts from the first conference in 2006 and published summaries of each meeting, together with videos and live streaming where possible.

The Website - https://www.steelpanconference. com was created by Laila Shah to archive all material and she can be contacted via this link for further information.

Mindful of the restricted information that can be conveyed in an Abstract, the authors went on to establish the biannual ‘International Journal of Carnival Arts’ (IJCA- ISSN-2752-342X) in June 2020 (Volume 1) using the above website as its portal. Papers may be submitted by anyone, but all are peer-reviewed through a global editorial board of over 80 editors which includes some 20 universities, steelbands, Mas bands and calypsonians.

A summary of the 9th conference held at Oxford Brookes University (1-2nd July 2022) is published in Volume 6 of IJCA (December 2022). We aim to devote an entire volume of IJCA to papers that emanate from the 10th conference in Sierra Leone and Ghana.