The origins
Carnival participants in disguise are said to play the masquerade, a name originating in Italy where superb costume balls were held, the "Mascheratas". If you visit Port of Spain during the carnival season, you'll often be asked if you take part in the masquerade, with the question "Do you play Mas? This term in itself says a lot about the origins of Carnival. Masquerades were the name given in the 18th century by sugarcane plantation owners to the masquerade balls they organized before starting the Lenten fast. Slaves, who were not allowed to take part in Carnival, formed their own parallel festival called "Canboulay". Canboulay (from the French cannes brûlées) is a precursor to Trinidad & Tobago Carnival, and played an important role in the development of the archipelago's music. It was during these Canboulays that slaves, who were often not even allowed to speak to each other, communicated by singing in Creole. Calypso, the famous music of Trinidad, was born and today accompanies carnival parades throughout the Caribbean. Creole calypso singers were known as "griots", a term originating from Black Africa, where members of the travelling poet-musician caste, the repositories of oral culture and reputed to be in touch with the spirits, are so called. Today, calypso singers are known as "Calypsonians".
Costumes, meanwhile, were often intended to mock the colonists and formed the characters still stigmatized today during carnival.
Stick fighting and African percussion music were banned in 1881, in response to the Canboulay riots. They were replaced by "Bamboo-Tamboo" bamboo sticks struck against each other, themselves banned in their turn. In 1937, they reappeared, transformed into an orchestra of frying pans, dustbin lids and oil cans. These steelpans have become an integral part of the Trinidadian music scene, and are a popular feature of Canboulay's music competitions. In 1941, the US Navy arrived in Trinidad and the panmen helped popularize steelpan music among the soldiers, leading to its international popularization.
It was after Trinidad's independence in 1962 that Carnival began to be seen as a national event celebrating the island's cultural diversity. African musical traditions and carnival costumes became an integral part of the celebration, and carnival became a popular event for all social classes.
The carnival nowadays
Today, Carnival has become a source of revenue valued at one billion Trinidadian dollars. As in most Roman Catholic countries that celebrate it, the celebrations take place on the Monday and Tuesday just before Ash Wednesday. Activities on both days take the form of street parades by bands of costumed characters, the "Mas bands".
In addition to parades and band competitions, the carnival period, which begins in November, is also marked by numerous "fiestas", concerts and cultural events based on the year's theme. They take place all over the country, with live music, food and drink, and many guided and unguided tours are organized so that visiting foreigners can discover this event so particular to the country. Most of the "parties" take place at weekends, and are listed in local newspapers and online.
Competitive events include the Panorama (international steelpan competition), the International Soca Monarch, the Chutney Soca Monarch, the Calypso Monarch and the election of the Carnival King and Queen. The best time to visit Trinidad & Tobago for Carnival is the week before Carnival Monday and Tuesday. This is when most of the finals of the competitions listed above are held, getting you in the mood before you let off steam on J'ouvert Monday and Mardi Gras.
I open
J'ouvert (pronounced "Jouvay"), a contraction of "opening day", symbolizes the start of the two official carnival days. Starting at 2 a.m. on Monday, revellers parade through the town in the tradition of the Canboulay festivities, lasting until early afternoon. J'ouvert participants cover their bodies in colorful paint, mud and pitch oil, dress as blue or red devils (Jad Jab) and dance in the streets to express liberation from the constraints of the past and in celebration of the ancestors who came before them. This is in stark contrast to the attractive, more formal costumes donned later in the day, and especially the following day for Mardi Gras. J'ouvert devils as a whole are called "Jab Jab Jab", an expression derived from the Creole pronunciation of "devil".
Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras actually starts on Monday afternoon in Port of Spain! Participants warm up by eating and drinking, and often start wearing their costumes as early as Monday evening. It's then that thousands of people flood the streets across both islands, sporting bold, colorful and flamboyant costumes while dancing through the parade routes to the exhilarating sounds of soca, steelpans and calypso.
The bands
Mas bands are a key element of Trinidad carnival. They feature the music and colorful costumes for which the event is famous. A "band" is a group of people who take part in the carnival together, dressed in costumes designed around a theme that changes every year. Each band is led by a band leader who plans costumes, music and parades for the group, and on Mardi Gras day, band members dance and march together through the streets of Port of Spain, creating a unique and lively spectacle! Bands begin preparing for their Carnival participation months in advance, designing and creating their costumes, rehearsing their choreography and choosing their music. They can number up to several thousand members, each wearing a different costume, all complementing each other to create a colorful tableau in the streets of Port of Spain. Music is an essential element of the "bands", with upbeat songs that encourage group members to dance and march through the streets to the rhythm of calypso, soca and chutney to create an unforgettable festive atmosphere. To control the sheer number of people in the streets, organizers divide each band into sections of 200 to 500 carnival-goers. Most carnival bands are led by a king or queen, some of whom compete on Dimanche gras to win the coveted title of carnival king or queen. The epicenter of the band parade in Trinidad and Tobago is Port of Spain, but similar street parties are held in the sister capital, San Fernando, as well as at community level in Mayaro, Chaguanas, Arima and Tobago. It's generally thought that the best place to have a good time is "in town", so that's where many revellers join in the festivities. In Port of Spain, here are some of the major bands that welcome foreign visitors: Mystique Jouvert, Paparazzi Carnival, Ronnie & Caro, Showtime Carnival.
The instruments
Two instruments are essential to carnival: the steelpan and the tamboo bamboo.
The steelpan is a unique instrument, the result of an empirical evolution endemic to Trinidad & Tobago, although today steelpan makers can be found all over the world, from Australia to Europe to the United States. It is traditionally based on an industrial drum that may have contained various chemicals, petroleum or even vegetable oils. The latter are now recommended to protect the health of the craftsmen who transform them into steelpans. More modern factories, of course, use new cans. There are a number of essential steps involved in making a steelpan, which you can discover by visiting one of the few local craftsmen who make them in the traditional way, such as Joseph Malomo of the Southern Marines Steel Orchestra in San Fernando, or by visiting a more modern factory like MITTCO in Port of Spain. In order to transform a common can into a precise musical instrument, the first essential step is to select it according to the thickness of its steel as well as its contents. Most cans are painted to protect them from oxidation, so you'll need to remove the paint before working on them. After selection, comes thesinking stage, which consists of transforming the can's upper flat disk into a cup shape designed to hold the musical notes. The sharper the pan, the deeper the stamping. The notes are then drawn before being separated by a small gutter traced with a small hammer and chisel. Each note isgrooved with a hammer andtuned by ear. The pan is then fired over wood, gas or even a blowtorch to stabilize the notes and improve the sound. Finally comes the final tuning(fine tuning), for which the craftsman nowadays uses an electronic tuner, before moving on to painting or chroming, depending on the customer's requirements.
The tamboo-bamboo is a set of percussion instruments made from bamboo sections of various sizes, which are struck on the ground or with a stick. In a way, it's the ancestor of the pans.
The characters
Carnival costumes in Trinidad & Tobago represent specific characters. They are often parodic caricatures of the wealthy slave owners of the sugarcane era, created by the slaves to mock their masters. Here's a non-exhaustive list of the main ones:
Burrokee. A half-donkey, half-man character built to give the illusion of a dancer riding a small donkey(burro in Spanish). This character was brought to Trinidad by Venezuelan settlers.
Dame Lorraine. One of the best-known characters, representing a voluptuous woman. This costume parodies the dress of 18th-century French aristocratic women and is padded at the hips and bust.
Jab Jab. Devil costume named after the Creole word for devil.
Midnight Robber. A staple of the Carnival Monday and Tuesday parades, the Midnight Robber carries on the tradition of the African storyteller, the griot in his own "robber talk" dialect. This solitary figure wears a wide-brimmed hat and carries an indispensable whistle.
Pierrot Grenade. Often dressed in a smart suit, he declaims rhymes on topical subjects.
Jab Molassie. An imitation of a devil with painted skin, horns, a tail and a three-pronged pitchfork; these characters often roam in gangs, appearing threatening but harmless.
Minstrel. Like the minstrels of yesteryear, these bards are dressed from head to toe in black.
