What Happens When You Take the Jouvay out of J’ouvert?

So there I was, at the end of a feverish week that included buying my very first domain, building a blog and related social media handles and then dropping my first post and newsletter, wondering what I was going to write about next. What if I did all this and ended up having nothing to say?

Then I woke up this morning to news of something called J’ouvert Rum, created by Michael B. Jordan, of all people. Turns out the Trini corners of Twitter and Facebook have been alight since last night with discussion about the audacity required to trademark a term that means so much to the history of this island nation (and others that observe the sacred tradition).

So… thanks Michael, I guess?

Now, as a person born in T&T but raised in NY, I am not qualified to hold forth on the exact reasons why this move is rightly considered sacrilegious. Luckily, I don’t have to. Others, such as brilliant cultural warriors Abeo Jackson and Attillah Springer have already done it better than I ever could.

Unlike Michael B, I like to bat in meh crease.

It just so happens, as a person who grew up in a faraway land with a tenous connection to my cultural roots, what is located squarely in my crease is an understanding of how the man who played an iconic character that famously despised colonial powers could find himself co-opting the culture of his diasporic relatives for profit.

You see, alongside the news of this rum’s arrival, came word that the erstwhile Killmonger is only co-owner of this unfortunately-titled venture. His partner is reportedly a Trinbagonian man based in the US. Now I don’t know this man, nor do I know his story. What I know is what it’s like to be geographically removed from one’s roots with only the pieces you can glean from comments dropped by elders about “home” to cobble together into some semblance of a cultural identity.

I also know what it’s like to return home and find that your understanding hit the mark in a few instances, flattened some more complex aspects and completely lacked others altogether. I know what it’s like to re-learn your culture and try to find your place in it as a relative outsider. And I know what it is to then turn around and watch Trinis abroad make broad pronouncements about your country (which you now know in a much deeper and nuanced way) from afar.

Again, I don’t know that this is the case with this man, but the sheer belly required to chip off a piece of culture so deeply grounded in T&T’s foundation and attempt to patent it as a rum brand is so incredibly suggestive of his lack of understanding (or concern) as to be almost laughable. For, if he is Trini at all, he must have known what real Trinis, people actually living in this often bittersweet island nation, would think about it. Especially in light of the fact that this is not the first time foreign entities boldly tried to make off with pieces of the Trinbagonian identity.

So either he is really a Trinibagonian and he knows exactly what he’s doing (and is banking on profiting off the controversy) or he’s not but knew enough to know that he could sell the watered-down version of it to an American market. And that market would be unlikely to see or care how the owners of the culture feel about it.

The worst part of it is that he’s not wrong.

When I first saw the pics (a couple of which feature some suspiciously T&T-ish blobs), the one that drew me back over and over again was the screenshot of the patent. Particularly, the line about translations:

Aside from the fact that that statement in itself is galling, it’s also clearly erroneous given that (as noted by Abeo, it is clearly French-derived). So, immediate ire aside, I knew I had to be missing something. After all, teenage aspirations notwithstanding, I know zilch about patent law. So, I zipped on over to Dr. Google, which pointed me towards the website of NY patent lawyer and lo and behold, what that statement essentially means is that it holds no meaning in the market in which the patent will apply. That is to say, Americans don’t know what J’ouvert means (let alone Jouvay). So it’s unlikely to create any confusion in the American mind, so dey safe.

(via Abeo Jackson)

And that, my friends, is why, despite the fact that I am incensed by the blatant disrespect involved in naming a brand after a nation’s cultural concept without the slightest attempt at consultation, I’m not particularly upset with Michael B. Jordan or the freshwater who encouraged him to do his diasporic cousins like this. I mean, Trini Twitter and FB are going to continue DRAGGING him (as they should), but in this moment, I’m more focused on us. Specifically, on the way we remain so mired in the lessons our colonial masters taught us about the inherent wutlessness of anything that didn’t originate with them.

Jouvay (or “J’ouvert”) is indeed a word without meaning to those who know nothing of our culture. If we have a problem with that, guess who has to teach them the meaning? Guess who is responsible for stewarding our culture? As long as we don’t recognise the value of who we are and what we do until someone else cosigns it (usually right before they try to profit off of it), we are going to be reacting to various cultural Columbuses snatching things from right under our noses.

Should Michael and Co. have known better? Sure. But what do you expect from people living in a country that just deigned to recognise the significance of a day celebrating Emancipation (and did it in lieu of a slew of meaningful changes their black community has been demanding for ages)? Meanwhile, Trinidad & Tobago was the first independent country to recognise Emancipation as worthy of a national holiday more than three decades ago. But here we are, still mired in the same colonial mindset that lost us the patent on our national instrument.

Just yesterday, I mentioned how great it would’ve been if our education sector had recognised the pandemic as an opportunity to finally update their pedagogy, and now I’m wondering exactly what the Ministry of Community Development, Culture and the Arts has been up to in regards to those last two items over the past 15 months.

It seems to me, with no Carnival to oversee and with countless artists, cultural stewards and communications, marketing and public relations experts willing and able to advise them, they should have been working on ways to market our culture in ways that didn’t require mass gatherings. What with all the times foreign individuals have beaten us to patents on our intellectual property, surely the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs has been working with the aforementioned culture ministry on securing all the necessary legal protections since before the pandemic?

As so many are pointing out in various threads today, our government remains as mired in red tape and lack of vision as ever. However, as I often say, a ministry is made up of people. As is a government. A democratically-elected government in particular is one that is elected by the people and meant to be run in the best interests of the people. In reality, they’re quite content to do as they please until the people remind them of this.

Similarly, T&T’s wealthy private commercial sector, comprised of a relatively small group of people who have made a lot of money off of T&T’s culture, seems interestingly disinterested in putting that money where their mouths are when it comes to defending said culture. I have questions, for instance, about the appearance of a certain bottle of bitters in that box. Apparently there’s “no comment to make at this time” about it, though.

The point therefore, is that everyone in this instance (and in every similar instance) is acting in their own best interest: Michael and his pet Trini, our unmotivated government and our profit-driven private sector. The question then becomes: When will we, the people of this nation, begin acting in our own best interests? When will we start showing appreciation for our culture (and the artists who create and steward it) and defending it before someone else decides to run off with something they find cute?

Are we actually ready to speak up for ourselves or are we content to wait for the next Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria to dock so we can spew more meaningless words?