Thérèse Belisle-Nweke writes from Lagos, Nigeria

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

I lived for three years in Jamaica, where Trinidadian students on the UWI campus in Mona introduced ONLY ASPECTS of their annual Carnival celebrations held in Trinidad & Tobago. The carnival celebrations in their two-island nation have their origins in the 18th century and represent an entire series of several months of events, beginning from just after Christmas, all leading to the concluding celebratory floats and road march on Carnival Day, which must precede the advent of LENT. There is, therefore, a historical, quasi-religious and emotive connection between Carnival celebrations and the Lenten Season. I can remember seeing my Bajan friends soaking up the atmosphere of the preparations, and the knowledge that what they learnt on campus would be reflected later in Barbados.

I also recall my Bahamian colleagues boasting about Junkanoo (John Canoe) in their country, which is not only traditional but also celebratory. I shared with them my knowledge of the Garifuna “Jankunu” (John Canoe) commemoration which I used to enjoy seeing in Belize City long ago during the Christmas and New Year holidays, when the Creoles’ Garifuna cousins would feature their culturally symbolic dances and music, performed only by Garifuna men, on the streets of Belize City. Later, during a visit to Nassau, I did witness the Bahamian Junkanoo (John Canoe) with its fantastic costumes, parade and revelers dancing on the streets to the sounds of bells, horns, whistles and drums.

While living in Trinidad & Tobago, I witnessed Trinidad’s annual  carnival and made sure I attended every event—from the Calypso King Contest (now the Calypso Monarch Contest), steel pan and Soca competitions, to J’ouvert  and the all-night-to-sunrise dancing, and still more dancing of masqueraders the following day through the parade routes. They would be decked in colourful and incredibly unusual creations in the Road March, amidst the riveting sounds of Soca, calypso and the steel pan. I even made bets with friends as to which calypso would win and become the theme song for the Road March. Later, while in Guyana, I witnessed the Guyanese’ own carnival, called the Mashramani. I have also been fortunate to go to Brazil’s carnival in Rio, also held immediately before Lent. But this has distinctive differences from that of Trinidad’s, which is the crème de la crème of carnivals.

Yet, the carnival is essentially a European creation going back to Greek and Roman times, and was transported to the Americas and the Caribbean by Spanish conquistadors, as well as Portuguese and French colonists. For the staid British, the carnival was unknown in Britain, until its Caribbean immigrants introduced the annual Notting Hill Carnival in London, which is held in late August. Carnivals usually ended on Mardi Gras day or Ash Wednesday, which is the day before Lent actually begins. Carnivals, which were always whole-scale community celebrations, were supposed to represent a time in which to indulge in eating and drinking as much as you liked, and even having as much sex as you desired, because all this immediately would be followed by the season of Lent. Lent is usually characterised by abstinence and fasting. 

The descendants of African slaves in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as in Brazil, in their inimitable way, colonised and transformed carnival and now own it. It is they who introduced feathers and various natural objects to construct costumes and masks, which in Africa are thought to bestow spiritual strength to the wearers. The drum was outlawed during slavery by the white slave owners because, besides its many uses, it represented a form of communication between slaves on different plantations, and often preceded slave revolts. However, the colonial government’s hatred of Africans in Trinidad and Tobago using their drums extended long after Emancipation and was prohibited even up to 1883. The government also resented these descendants of ex-slaves participating in carnival. Hence, to discourage them, it placed a ban on the playing of all percussion, string and wood-wind instruments, except if one had a license. But the creative Africans in Trinidad & Tobago circumvented this by inventing their own instruments; and “pan” as a form of Carnival resistance was the result of several experimentations in creating instruments, ranging from bamboo to irons, and culminating with the steel pan from discarded oil drums. Undoubtedly, the steel pan is the most innovative invention in music of the 20th century; but because it is a Black invention, sufficient credit is not given to it. A steel pan band can play music ranging from Soca to Classical European music, and a typical large steel pan band has up to 120 musicians.

In my view, what passes for “Carnival” in Belize is a mis-reading and a caricature of the genuine seasonal CARNIVAL SPIRIT. Carnival in September? What’s this, Belize?! Imagine describing a jester as one “who used to be in monarchy times”! Belizean schools — quo vadis? Well, we have a number of monarchies still very much around, for instance Japan’s, Spain’s, The Netherlands’, and Britain’s. So, where are the jesters? Jesters were staples at a king’s court in medieval times, and occasionally they appear in sundry literature. I suppose they were the natural ancestors of today’s comedians and some members of the commentariat.

Sadly, we in Belize who have so, so much to offer of our own very vibrant and polyglot cultures, which neither the West Indians nor the Brazilians have, when compared to ours, now demonstrate in the so-called Belize Carnival held in September a heretical attempt to trivialize the celebration of the victorious 1798 Battle of St. George’s Caye. Irrespective of whether one likes it or not, or resents ancestral exclusion because they just were not there, this single epochal event laid the foundations of what we now know as Belize. We must understand and accept, that without the victory of that battle, there would be no Belize! Facts are stubborn things, because without that battle there would be no Belize for either the Maya or the Mestizo, Garifuna, Chinese, South East Asian, Mennonite, Arab, the Latinx, and the new wave of North American retirees to seek and secure as a sanctuary. But what is so patently tragic about our “falla-fut-jumpi” attempt at what passes for Carnival on the streets of Belize is that it’s just a crude bacchanalian display which distorts the essence of C-A-R-N-I-V-A-L.