Limbo December 3
For Roman Catholics, Limbo is a netherworld occupied by unbaptized babies, or by the good man who does not know Jesus. Purgatory may be the place for recovering souls, where pilgrimage and redemption are still possible, and where we are each works in progress, but Limbo is none of that. It is eternally bleak. In the 18th-century, “limbo“ was coined as the backward-stooping maneuver required to enter the hold of a slave ship, offering little space between floor and ceiling. The place was designed for stacking, like salted fish or cordwood or coal, squeezed between heaven and hell.
Once slaves in Trinidad and Tobago were freed from bondage in the 1830’s, religious practices started to emerge from hiding, including the Limbo dance, which was performed at mourning ceremonies. It is argued that the practice originated in West Africa, but no convincing evidence supports this link to the Old World. The Limbo is likely a New World product of a repossessed slave culture; and Trinidad and Tobago, in particular, provided the reservoir for its ferment and proliferation.
Then came the tourist industry after the War, and the Limbo was reinvented as a spectacular beach performance, in which daredevils crab-walked beneath flaming bamboo poles. A party game grew from symbolic funeral rites. “How low can you go?“ sang Chubby Checker, in one of his dance classics, Limbo Rock, in 1962.
“Jack be limbo, Jack be quick,
Jack go unda limbo stick,
All around the limbo clock,
Hey, let’s do the limbo rock.
La, la, la-la, la.“
How low can you go? Good question. Chubby’s answer was to record “Let’s Limbo Some More“ in 1963. La, la, la-la, la.
In Buccoo, cumbersome cameras are trained on made-up contestants attempting the Limbo on a coconut-white beach. The horizontal bamboo pole is not on fire, as this would violate updated TT code. How low can they go? One more wooden notch is all that remains before each one falls, and they all do fall in the end. Despite Purgatory’s promise of eventual salvation, Limbo is never so hopeful. The pole will descend—this is a thermodynamic inevitability—as the slave hold forever shrinks to nothingness.
Still, a happy few try to win The Amazing Race, an American network favorite, which results in money and some kind of celebrity—fame without glory, pageantry without significance. Each competitor brushes away the grains of coral and proceeds to pose in front of a floral-attired pan orchestra, enthusiastically banging away the prescribed harmonic thirds and fifths on alto steel. The kids are clearly having a great time, as the gentle air tolls with clanging metal. Cameras refocus to capture the thrill of victory, the constant variety of sport, and, as if we needed any reminding, the agony of defeat.