Caribbean Carnivals--a Magical Blend of Diverse Cultures

Behind the Caribbean’s sandy beaches, palm trees and fruity rum drinks is a festival waiting to happen. A festival, Caribbean style, is part street party, part masquerade and part jam session.

Travelers to Trinidad know that a Caribbean festival is not a spectator sport. Unlike an American parade, where people line the sidewalks watching the bands march and majorettes twirl, audience participation is part and parcel of Caribbean festivals. When a Carnival band goes by, playing its infectious calypso or steel-band music, the audience jumps in and dances in the street with the music makers.

“The music almost forces you to participate,” said singer and poet Hollis (Flash) Lashley, a native of Trinidad who lives in Silver Spring, Md. “It’s what our Caribbean culture is all about. The movement and music and color of a festival are an integral part of who we are and how we live.”

Take Festivals Along

These festivals have become such an important part of peoples’ lives in the Caribbean that they don’t leave home without them. Wherever West Indians settle in large numbers, their festivals are likely to follow. Brooklyn, Toronto, Baltimore, Boston and London have all been host to Caribbean festivals.

In Washington, the Smithsonian Institution is recognizing these annual events as an art and as the cultural expressions of the people of the Caribbean in a new exhibition, “Caribbean Festival Arts,” continuing until Feb. 15, 1990. The exhibition, originally organized by the St. Louis Art Museum, is complemented by dozens of special events, including live performances of calypso and steel-band music, crafts and costume-making demonstrations, films and educational programs.

“In presenting three festivals--Junkanoo, Carnival and Hosay from Trinidad and Tobago--we hope to give North American audiences a sense of the Caribbean culture,” Vera Hyatt, the Smithsonian’s project director for the exhibition, said. “The essence of this culture is a synthesis of many influences: African, English, French, Indian and Spanish. A kind of cross-fertilization took place in the islands of the West Indies and the result is a culture that is unique to the Caribbean.”

In the exhibit, as in a real-life festival, the dominant themes are music and masquerade. Music is at the heart of any festival, whether it is reggae in Jamaica or French songs in Haiti or steel bands in Trinidad.

European Influences

Original Carnival music can be traced to European influences--to minstrel bands and court music. The African sounds of drums were introduced in the 17th Century when millions of African slaves worked on the sugar-cane plantations dotting the islands.

Calypso was introduced in the mid-1800s in Trinidad where slaves sang the call-and-response songs and humorous ditties of their African homelands. Today’s soca , popular music combining calypso and American soul, began in 1975 with the release of two recordings, “Sweet Music” and “Endless Vibration” by singer Lord Shorty.

Reggae originated in the mid-1960s as a music of the Jamaican poor. The distinctive sound of reggae’s loud electric bass with organ, piano and drums, was popularized in the United States in the early 1970s in the film “The Harder They Come,” starring singer Jimmy Cliff, and through tours of Bob Marley and the Wailers.

But the drum provides the pulse of all Caribbean music, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the steel band. The pan or steel drum tradition goes back to the drums of Africa. When the Trinidad government banned drums in 1883 on the grounds that they were loud and disruptive, the “tambour bamboo” bands played on, using bamboo cylinders similar to the African Shango drum ensembles.

‘Found’ Instruments

Fifty years later, bands were experimenting with an array of “found instruments”--including kettles, salt boxes and paint cans--to give louder, stronger sounds.

On V-E Day, May 8, 1945, everything from trash cans to biscuit tins was fair game for the drummers rejoicing in the streets. One year later, a new device arrived on the Carnival scene--the 55-gallon oil drum, used to ship Venezuelan oil to refineries in Trinidad, Aruba, Curacao and other Caribbean islands. The unique sound qualities of the oil drums and their availability made them immediately--and lastingly--popular.

Today, some say that Carnival without pan would be like nature without color. Journalist Knolly Moses, a Trinidadian living in New York City, occasionally plays pan and describes the experience this way: “A veil is lifted and it takes everyone over. It’s almost as if I’m possessed. The music is that powerful. Our goal is to bring everyone together with our music.”

The costume of masquerade of festivals is also steeped in traditions that can be traced to the days of slavery and rule by European colonists. Jamaica’s Junkanoo traditionally celebrated in late December, today is often presented on important state occasions.

Masks Came in Handy

Junkanoo is the perfect illustration of African and European influences, according to Judith Bettelheim, co-curator of “Caribbean Festival Arts” and professor of art at San Francisco State University. The masks worn during festivals came in handy during the years before emancipation, she said, since slaves could make fun of their owners during festivals while remaining anonymous behind their disguises.

Costumes are also essential to Carnival, and today many people begin planning next year’s creation the minute this year’s festival is over.

Masquerade bands number from 100 to 5,000 members; a band leader sets the theme for his group, which can be literally anything under the sun--from sailors to extraterrestrials. A 1981 band, “Jungle Fever,” organized by Trinidad’s Peter Minshall, required 2,500 costumes, 15 seamstresses and more than two dozen painters and decorators. The band’s most spectacular costume measured 15-by-2O feet and sparkled with 220,000 hand-stitched sequins. Regardless of theme, the bands’ most elaborate masquerades are made of wire structures covered with brilliantly colored and decorated fabric.

The costumes and bands are different every year but, according to poet Lashley, a veteran of more than 20 Carnivals, a traditional Carnival will include at least one American Indian, a sailor and a casual, randomly costumed Ole Mas (Masquerade) band.

Costumes a Treasure

Roslyn Ledley, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., said she began wearing costumes at Carnival as a child when she would “dress in a little nonsense.” She now treasures her costumes. “I feel so good because other people can see what we can do with a few pieces of material,” Ledley said. “We make these costumes come alive in the streets.”

Exhibition curator John Nunley of the St. Louis Art Museum sees the costumes themselves as art. “These modern urban costume designers,” he said, “are artists who use non-traditional objects--tinsel, aluminum, mirrors and bottle caps--to fashion their masquerades, which remind me of dancing mobiles.

“It’s the almost magical combination of music and masquerade that makes these festivals unique,” Nunley added. “The costumes are a visual art but the rhythm and beat of the music is what draws people into the celebration.”

Trinidad hosts what one guidebook calls the “granddaddy of all festivals.” Carnival-goers begin preparation in January when costumes are designed and steel-band rehearsals begin.

King and Queen Named

On the Friday before Carnival, celebrated during the week before Ash Wednesday, contests are held to select the king and queen. On Saturday, thousands of schoolchildren play mas on the streets of Port-of-Spain and that evening the steel-band competition, or Pan-O-Rama, is held. Bands play through the night and on Sunday in preparation for Jouvay (from the French for opening day) Monday, when bands parade through the streets of the city to Independence Square.

On Tuesday, the Carnival’s grand finale, the air is filled with the sounds of soca , calypso and steel bands as the revelers parade over an outdoor stage to show off their costumes.

Carnival is as unique to Trinidad as Junkanoo is to Jamaica. But, in their own ways, they are unifying events. “The festivals of these islands are what bring the various elements of the diverse cultures together,” the Smithsonian’s Hyatt said. “It is the one art form that cuts across the social and economic stratification that is so prevalent in the Caribbean.”