For the past cou­ple years, Car­ni­val prepa­ra­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go has be­come more and more in­tense. There are cer­tain tell-tale signs that the sea­son is ap­proach­ing and they seem to start ear­li­er every year. By De­cem­ber last year, the streets were pump­ing with 'So­ca' mu­sic and peo­ple had al­ready start­ed to skimp on spend­ing mon­ey on Christ­mas presents, in or­der to save mon­ey for Car­ni­val. This sea­son is just one of those things that 'Tri­nis' take very se­ri­ous­ly. About a month be­fore Car­ni­val the Sa­van­nah gets packed with po­ten­tial mas­quer­aders; most try­ing to do the im­pos­si­ble while the banks are re­joic­ing as count­less peo­ple take loans to pay for their con­stant par­ty­ing and front­line cos­tume. Al­so preva­lent is the count­less num­ber of peo­ple, who have not seen the in­side of a gym since last Car­ni­val, be­com­ing die hard di­eti­cians and self-pro­claimed train­ers for the three weeks lead­ing up to Car­ni­val; yes, we 'Tri­nis' play no games when it comes to Car­ni­val prepa­ra­tion. With all this in mind, we must ask our­selves: "Is this how it has al­ways been?" Was Car­ni­val al­ways about skimpy pret­ty mas, get­ting that beach body to play in the road and spend­ing hun­dreds of dol­lars on all in­clu­sive fetes?

Most of us know the sim­ple an­swer to that ques­tion is no; many things have changed since the 18th cen­tu­ry French Catholic planters staged a big mas­quer­ade as a 'farewell to the flesh' be­fore the Lenten sea­son and their en­slaved Africans, cel­e­brat­ing the har­vest­ing of the sug­ar­cane(cannes brule&ea­cute;s) – which lat­er be­came 'Cam­boulay'- mim­ic­ked this mas­quer­ade with their own tra­di­tions. Af­ter eman­ci­pa­tion there were some strug­gles with the then rul­ing British colo­nial gov­ern­ment which re­sult­ed in the Cam­boulay ri­ots of 1881, where the slaves stood up against the British who were try­ing to put a stop to cer­tain as­pects of the Cam­boulay fes­ti­val. Af­ter the ri­ots, there was an in­tro­duc­tion of stick fight­ing, the steel pan and drum­ming and the fes­ti­val fi­nal­ly found a place on the Mon­day and Tues­day be­fore the start of the Lenten sea­son. Pre­ced­ing these two days were the Di­manche Gras cel­e­bra­tions which took place on the Sun­day night and the open­ing of Car­ni­val with J'Ou­vert in the wee hours of Mon­day morn­ing. Nat­u­ral­ly, as the years pro­gressed, many new fea­tures were added to the fes­ti­val. Char­ac­ters like the Pierot Grenade, Mid­night Rob­ber, Ba­by Dolls, Moko Jumbies and the fa­mous Dev­ils came to be. The cos­tumes dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tions told a sto­ry or usu­al­ly gave a comedic spin to a preva­lent, con­tro­ver­sial is­sue. When 'pret­ty mass' emerged the cos­tumes were ex­quis­ite, de­tailed and usu­al­ly com­plete­ly cov­ered one's body.

Ca­lyp­so, which is now strug­gling to sur­vive, was revered back then. 'Kaiso' was in­te­gral to the cel­e­bra­tion and as David Rud­der said 'It is a liv­ing vi­bra­tion/Root­ed deep with­in my Caribbean bel­ly/Lyrics to make a politi­cian grin/Or turn a woman's body in­to jel­ly'. Ca­lyp­so usu­al­ly cov­ered pre­dom­i­nant is­sues and was the voice of the mass­es. Any­thing ma­jor that hap­pened in the coun­try dur­ing the year, one could be sure that a Ca­lyp­son­ian would sing about it at Di­manche Gras be­fore the J'Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions start­ed. While all these things still stand true for Ca­lyp­so, its son 'So­ca' which claims to be 'the rid­dim in yuh waist and the rude­ness in yuh face' ac­cord­ing to Ker­win DuBois and Patrice Robert's hit song, has tak­en over. Nev­er­the­less, we have man­aged to suc­cess­ful­ly re­tain some of the tra­di­tions while mov­ing for­ward and em­brac­ing change. While some things have been lost along the way, the pres­ence of the tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters, the re-en­act­ment of the Cam­boulay ri­ots, the Ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions which still pro­duce songs with lyri­cal ge­nius and wit­ty in­nu­en­dos, the dis­play­ing of con­tro­ver­sial is­sues through dress dur­ing J'Ou­vert, stick fight­ing and the use of the steel­pan still stand along­side the new so­ca com­pe­ti­tions, big trucks, skimpy cos­tumes, reg­is­tered j'ou­vert bands and ex­pen­sive all in­clu­sive par­ties. We, as the younger gen­er­a­tion, should strive to con­tin­ue this cul­tur­al re­ten­tion as the tra­di­tion­al as­pects of Car­ni­val are very im­por­tant and en­ter­tain­ing. It would be a shame for our chil­dren to grow up in Trinidad and nev­er get to hear a good ca­lyp­so, be scared of the dev­ils or be en­ter­tained by Dame Lor­raines. So, while you're jump­ing in the streets or cross­ing the stage to what­ev­er the road march is this year, don't for­get where it all start­ed and make a con­sci­en­tious ef­fort to per­haps watch Di­manche Gras this year and see what it is about, or go see the tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters as they pa­rade in the streets or maybe you could even try your hand with the steel­pan! We have such rich tra­di­tions and while Car­ni­val con­tin­ues to change, let us not for­get where it start­ed.

Paige An­drew

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent