Caribbean Carnivals Followed by Period of Fasting
LaShonda Cottingham
Issue date: 2/24/09 Section: Features
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The commemoration consists of parades, feasting, pageantry, and folk drama. From Europe to Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barba
dos, Brazil and even Washington D.C. people wait all year to observe this event.
Freshmen biology major Leanna Sealey, of Trinidad and Tobago who anticipates the gatherings, parties, and excitement definitely is going to miss partaking in Carnival.
"You're gonna make me cry," she jokingly told me. Sealey who is missing carnival for the first time, described the festival as a series of parties leading up to the grand parade of costumes on Carnival Monday and Tuesday.
"The steel band culture is also very popular," she said. "At least twenty
music trucks stretch across the block, and Soca and Reggae artists perform on each truck."
This event is a significant part of black history in the Caribbean and Latin America.
According to John W. Nunley and Judith Bettleheim, authors of Caribbean Festival Arts, hundreds of years ago, Catholics in Italy began the costume aspect of the festivities.
In the Catholic religion, they fast by not eating meat during lent so they named their festivities "Carne Vale," a latin word meaning to put away the meat.
As the practice became more popular, it spread throughout Europe. As a result when the Europeans came to the Americas, they brought this tradition with them.
Behind nearly every aspect of the celebration, there is hidden history.
For example, back in the late 1700s masks were symbolic to the slaves, being that masking was used in rituals to the dead.
Unable to attend the costumed balls, that their slave masters would hold to celebrate carnival, the slaves would host their own rituals in their backyards dressed in masks imitating their slave masters.
After slavery was abolished in 1838, freed Africans held their celebrations in the streets and they have since continued to grow more and more elaborate.
Carnival is a great gathering that brings forth self expression and creativity, helping those who celebrate it learn more about their roots, and similarities with other cultures.
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