Vecco Basquiat

Background: I have translated artists’ works on war, migration, desolation and isolation, in particular with reference to works featuring pierrot, harlequin, clown or acrobat figures, precursor to our present day ShortKnee. ShortKnee can be traced back to the spoken word traditions of the West African Chantuelle, oral libraries whose recollections made bearable the suffering of slaves on the plantations of Grenada, fused with French Pierrot elements, and wrapped in six and a half yards of vulgar fabric that is breathtaking in sunlight masquerade. Once a disguise and way to compromise, the ShortKnee is today, in this artist’s opinion, the most compelling icon of Grenada. These are part of my Chantuelle Translations series, articulating my response to the socially sanctioned slow and painful death of the ShortKnee, our indigenous artform.

Vecco and the Slave Ship

Part of my translating the ShortKnee pretty mas, includes doing the same for the Vecco.  Whether that is a separate animal or part of the same, depends on whom you ask. The word Vecco is a reduction of the French words vieux croix (translated as old cross). Running into a stampede of them – for there is no other word to describe that asphalt pounding bass they make en troupe with their heavy heavy shoes – is a beautiful terror of another sort, a grim mas in riotous colour, where you are not sure if you need to run, but you do know you want to stare, and take it all in. As far as I know, with apologies in advance, the Vecco come hatted, hooded, headed with or without mask. The undertakers are long drinks of water in black, white or black and white and sport top hats. Then there are several variants on the hooded habits – brown and white, black and white, red and black, red and white, purple and orange, blue and orange, purple and yellow – which are fringed in one or two layers. Finally there is a combination of a jab-jab head over a long fringed red or red and black habit, no hat nor hood. The masks are either flash paint, painted mesh or stretched stocking, bank robber style.

This week, I had already decided that I was going to translate Basquiat, and was searching his images for references, when I realised that there were figures in hats floating around. Curious. I did a quick check and there it was. Vecco. Basquiat used images of Vecco undertakers – what he referred to as Baron Samedi – in some of his work. Interesting and opportune, as I was also watching the Bond marathon – in between sketching my translations – and I remembered the voudou villain played by Trini Geoffrey Holder with his marvellously wicked laughter. Holder played Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die. Ah ha. In Voudou tradition, Baron Samedi is a guédé, one of a family of spirits that embody the powers of death, and who is represented as a mortician (undertaker) with an opera hat (really tall hat) on the top of his bony skull. As keeper of the cemetery, he knows what the dead’s plans are, what’s going on in their families, and so on, and is the final last resort of a person for healing or….Is it coincidence that in roughly translating Basquiat, who has Vecco-type images in his works, I may have made a connection between the Grenada Vecco, as our representation of Baron Samedi, also known as Baron La Croix (lord of the ‘old?’ cross), or some divine intervention?