After the frenzied crescendo of Carnival Tuesday all merriment and debauchery ends (or is supposed to end) with the ushering in of Ash Wednesday and the start of the Roman Catholic observance of Lent. My father tells me that ‘back in the day’ all sound stopped at midnight and no calypso would play on the radio with the end of Carnival Tuesday. Things have definitely changed since then! Although you still see many individuals with ashes on their forehead heading to work, you are also equally as likely to …

Sitting here on a Carnival Tuesday night, watching Brian MacFarlane’s opening presentation for his band this year “Resurrection the Mas”
By this time tomorrow we should all know if he has been able to achieve an unbelievable 4 consecutive “Band of the Year” titles. MacFarlane is currently my favourite band designer. I am not a fan of the generic beads and feathers style of mas, it doesn’t capture my spirit or imagination, and the half-hearted attempts by bandleaders to give their thongs and headpieces some kind of …

No Trinidad Carnival post for 2010 would be complete without mention of JW & Blaze and the phenomenon that is “Palance”. This song has taken a word that I doubt I even heard more than once in a year, and turned it into something that everyone is working into the most random and non-sequitur of sentences. There are KFC Palance ‘feasts’ and yuh dun know I want a Palance T-Shirt (though I really really REALLY would like the one worn in the ‘official’ music video, anyone know where I can …

This post was originally published on February 14, 2007. It has been updated once since then.

J’ouvert (joo-VAY) is the start to the Carnival celebrations. It begins in the pre-dawn hours of Carnival Monday and lasts until daybreak. J’ouvert (which is a Creole corruption of the French Jour Ouvert – day opening) is also known as ‘dirty mas’. It seems to symbolise us going down to our rawest most animal and basest selves in the cover of the night, before the sun emerges to reveal us in our finite forms and …

This post was originally published on February 6, 2007.

Dimanche Gras takes place on the Sunday night before Ash Wednesday. Here the Calypso Monarch is chosen (after competition) and prize money and a vehicle bestowed. Also the King and Queen of the bands are crowned, where each band to parade costumes for the next two days submits a king and queen, from which an overall winner is chosen. These usually involve huge, complex, beautiful costumes.
For a historical look at this annual event visit Terry Joseph’s article “Dimanche Gras”
SIGHTS:

Singing Sandra dressed in …

Image from the Trinidad Guardian
If you are getting the sense that Carnival is one big long party you are right! So it only makes sense that one big long party would be made of many many big long parties as well. These parties in Trinidad are called fetes and are attended by hundreds sometimes thousands. Fetes feature the biggest soca artists of the season and can go on until daybreak. As the Carnival season draws near the number of fetes grows exponentially, and are not restricted to weekends either. It …

Exodus Steelband performing in Trafalgar Square, England – photo by bram_souffreau

It seems that every time a North American program wants to denote the ‘tropics’ you will hear the sound of a steelpan. It doesn’t even to seem to matter if the ‘tropics’ are in the Caribbean on a cruise ship or in Hawaii! If you ask someone from those parts of the world what instrument they are hearing you may even hear them say ’steel drums’ … oh my my my.. It is time for some Steel pan 101. A …

This post was originally published on February 14, 2007. It has been updated once since then.

Welcome to the second part of my Ten Part series on the sights, sounds, and tastes of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival.
It is hard to imagine Carnival without music. And the definitive music of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival is soca. So what is Soca Music?
Well, why not let Soca Superstar Machel Montano say it in his own words?

From Caribbean Music 101 (the original link no longer works unfortunately):
What is Soca?
Soca is a …

This post was originally published on January 24, 2007. It has been updated once since then.

With a little over a week to go it is high time that I shine a spotlight on Trinidad’s largest cultural festival, Carnival.
Where did the word “carnival” come from?
Hundred and hundreds of years ago, the followers of the Catholic religion in Italy started the tradition of holding a wild costume festival right before the first day of Lent. Because Catholics are not supposed to eat meat during Lent, they called their festival, carnevale – …

Happy New Year! It feels like FOREVER
Technical difficulties, health challenges and work whirlwinds have all kept me from being an active presence here over the past two months. The worst of the worst seems to have passed and so I am now ready and excited to return to you! I have some large plans for the site in 2010 so do stay tuned
Last month CCN TV6 ran a feature on a North Miami Roti Shop called Christine’s which, thanks to YouTube I can now share …