Hosay Trinidad: Muharram Performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora

The multivocalic rite known as Hosay in the Caribbean developed out of earlier practices originating in Iraq and Iran which diffused to Trinidad by way of South Asian indentured laborers brought to the Caribbean by the British from the mid—1800s to the early decades of the twentieth century. The rituals are important as a Shi'i religious observance, but they also are emblems of ethnic and national identity for Indo—Trinidadians. Frank Korom investigates the essential role of Hosay in the pe...