For some of the people who are directly involved with carnival it is never-ending. When one carnival ends, the people designing and making costumes immediately start working on next year’s costumes.
For the partiers, the parties start about 6 weeks before carnival. Almost all the parties involve music from two bands – a steel band and a brass band. Music is almost non-stop: when one band stops the other one begins. The most impressive parties were the ones in airport hangars. Imagine a party with upwards of 6000 people, many of them dancing non-stop. The dancing of course is Jump-up – something anyone can do.
Some things stick in my mind. At one hangar party we hooked up with a neighbour – except she wasn’t with her husband. Then I started thinking about her husband. Her husband had a pet capybara, a 140 lb rodent. Having met the man and his rodent, I’m not surprised that he didn’t like carnival parties. Then you wonder from her point of view – what it’s like being married to a man that has a 140 lb rodent as a pet. Hmmm – not sure where this is going.
There were lots of things going on as you got closer to the actual Carnival Day (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday) – the Calypso Tents for example where the Calypsonians present their new songs. The big show though is the evening of Dimanche Gras – the Sunday before carnival. The top performers in every category are presented – brass and steel bands, King and Queen of the bands, calypsonians etc. Then the real partying begins.
The show goes on until between 10 and 11 pm Sunday night. From there you go to a party somewhere in the city – again brass band and steel band playing one after the other. At 5 am the party stops for an hour while the brass bands and steel bands all over the city get up on wheels. Then the party restarts as the bands work their way into the centre of Port of Spain and the partiers jump-up behind them. By the time you get into town, the crowds are crushing up against the sides of buildings and there are a million people partying in downtown Port of Spain and so it continues all through Monday and Tuesday until midnight on Tuesday. Crazy or what. Some people do the whole thing. We had had it my 9 am Monday morning and went to the botanical gardens and fell asleep under some trees – and then we went home.
WR Foster 