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Saturday, March 15, 2025

J’Ouvert to last lap: The women who never needed an invitation

by

Ira Mathur
14 days ago
20250302

“Jan­u­ary 15, 1995. Late­ly, words have been as­sail­ing me. Words like ash­es, co­coyea brooms, sem, chataigne, roti, chunkay­ing, le­p­ay­ing, wash­ing wares. Every­day do­mes­tic words from long ago, a far-off time and place. Oth­er words fly past me like spec­tres, and they want some­thing—words like gloam­ing, lovevine, lianas, pois-doux, zabo­ca, man­go vere, pomme-cythere, Man­zanil­la, ca­lyp­so, J’Ou­vert morn­ing, gin­ga, car­ilee, goo­goonie, chuntah, calchul. Pa­tois words and Hin­di words. Words are ghosts, an­ces­tors on this side. They are not sym­bols. They are alive and sen­sate—full of flesh and stone and jagged edges. Word jumbies.”—Ram­abai Es­pinet, The Swing­ing Bridge

Car­ni­val in Trinidad is not a fes­ti­val. It is a force. A re­lease, a reck­on­ing, a world turned in­side out. Though the rev­el­ry be­gins long be­fore, there is no hi­er­ar­chy for two days. There is a bru­tal colo­nial past that can­not be rewrit­ten that re­turns with a blast of brass and a rush of bod­ies mov­ing in time. It is an in­her­i­tance of fire, a sur­vival, a re­mem­ber­ing.

There is nowhere else on earth where his­to­ry is danced like this, where the ghosts of the en­slaved and the in­den­tured rise, not in mourn­ing but in cel­e­bra­tion, where the present bursts through the seams of the past, too bright, too loud, too alive to be con­tained.

Women have al­ways been at the cen­tre of it. From the days when they played their mas in se­cret yards, away from the judge­ment of those who would rather see them silent, to now, when they lead the biggest bands down the streets of Port-of-Spain, se­quined and sweat­ing, dar­ing the world to look away.

The phrase Car­ni­val is Woman came from the way women took the mas­quer­ade and made it their own, from the de­fi­ance of Dame Lor­raine, the par­o­dy and pow­er of the jamette women, the way they car­ried steel­pan when it was for­bid­den, the way they danced when they were told to stay still. Car­ni­val is Woman is not a de­c­la­ra­tion. It is a fact.

Writ­ers like Mer­le Hodge and Ram­abai Es­pinet have shaped their sto­ries around it—not on­ly as a spec­ta­cle but as a space where the strug­gle for iden­ti­ty, voice, and be­long­ing plays out in the most vis­cer­al way. Their work un­der­stands that Car­ni­val is not just feath­ers and mu­sic; it is re­sis­tance made joy­ful, re­bel­lion set to rhythm.

Mer­le Hodge, born in 1944 in Trinidad, wrote Crick Crack, Mon­key in the heat of post-colo­nial reck­on­ing. She was young, she was sharp, she was sus­pi­cious of easy an­swers. The book re­mains one of the most in­ci­sive por­traits of what it means to be caught in the web of con­flict­ing cul­tur­al de­mands, the push and pull of the colo­nial ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, and the un­easy in­her­i­tance of African an­ces­try in a so­ci­ety that had in­ter­nalised Eu­ro­pean su­pe­ri­or­i­ty.

If there was a way out, it wasn’t go­ing to be found in the gen­teel draw­ing rooms of Port-of-Spain, nor in the hard-scrab­ble back­yards of those who re­fused to be tamed. It was go­ing to be fought for. Car­ni­val, in its law­less­ness, in its brief sus­pen­sion of hi­er­ar­chies, was al­ways part of that fight.

Hodge has nev­er writ­ten a nov­el that so com­plete­ly takes Car­ni­val as its sub­ject, yet its pres­ence is al­ways lurk­ing be­neath the sur­face of her work. She has spo­ken of how its roots lie in de­fi­ance. “Car­ni­val was born out of the re­fusal to be erased,” she has said. “It was nev­er meant to be a show­piece. It was a claim.”

Hodge has not been sen­ti­men­tal about its trans­for­ma­tions, the way its rougher edges have been sand­ed down, the way it has been pack­aged and sold. But she has ac­knowl­edged, too, that with­in its ex­cess, with­in the bod­ies that still move to rhythms old­er than they can name, some­thing per­sists. “Even when we don’t know it,” she has said, “we are re­mem­ber­ing.”

Ram­abai Es­pinet, born four years lat­er, grew up in San Fer­nan­do, in a house­hold where Car­ni­val was not for “peo­ple like them.” In­do-Trinida­di­an women were not meant to wine in the streets. They were not meant to move that freely. “We watched,” she has said. “We did not play.”

She left for Cana­da in her twen­ties, found a world in books, and found her­self frus­trat­ed by the gaps. Few sto­ries told what she knew to be true: that the daugh­ters of in­den­ture had their own ghosts, their own re­bel­lions, that their si­lences were not com­pli­ance but a kind of strat­e­gy, a kind of wait­ing.

Es­pinet wrote The Swing­ing Bridge as a cor­rec­tive. In it, her pro­tag­o­nist Mona, far from Trinidad, re­con­structs a world she nev­er quite be­longed to, a fam­i­ly splin­tered by mi­gra­tion, by his­to­ry. And Car­ni­val is both al­lur­ing and dis­tant. “For In­do-Caribbean women, Car­ni­val has be­come a space of trans­for­ma­tion,” Es­pinet has said. “Where the sari meets the se­quined cos­tume, and tra­di­tion­al rhythms blend with so­ca beats.”

If Hodge’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion has been with Car­ni­val’s pol­i­tics, Es­pinet’s has been with its pos­si­bil­i­ties—what it means to fi­nal­ly step in­to it, to claim it.

They come from dif­fer­ent van­tage points, Hodge and Es­pinet. One whose peo­ple al­ways had a stake in Car­ni­val, one whose peo­ple had to carve out space with­in it. One whose crit­i­cism is sharpest when it is about what has been lost, one who sees what has yet to be gained. But they agree on its sig­nif­i­cance, on the way it acts as both a mir­ror and mask. It is nev­er just a fes­ti­val. It is his­to­ry on dis­play. It is a reck­on­ing. It is, for many, the on­ly place they can be ful­ly them­selves.

Women have been here since the be­gin­ning. Since the jamettes, de­fi­ant and un­bowed, ruled the back­yards and bar­rack yards of Port-of-Spain, their voic­es slic­ing through pro­pri­ety. Since women picked up the steel­pan and car­ried it through the streets, though men said it was not theirs to car­ry. Since the ca­lyp­so tents, where men reigned, were cracked open by a woman who re­fused to sit out­side.

Ca­lyp­so Rose, born Mc­Cartha Lin­da Sandy-Lewis, kicked the door down in 1978, win­ning Ca­lyp­so Monarch when it was still called Ca­lyp­so King, forc­ing the com­pe­ti­tion to change its name. No Madam, she sang, and she made it the law. The song helped push for min­i­mum wage leg­is­la­tion, mak­ing clear that ca­lyp­so was nev­er just melody, but a weapon.

Now there are oth­ers. De­stra Gar­cia, wild, loud, the Queen of Bac­cha­nal. Fay-Ann Lyons, daugh­ter of Su­perblue and La­dy Gyp­sy, who took every crown while preg­nant, bel­ly round, voice steady, feet sure. The women who wear their feath­ers like ar­mour, who wine with­out apol­o­gy, who take up space, and take the road.

And now, once again, it re­turns. The streets will be­long to the Car­ni­val woman. Have al­ways be­longed to her. The women who move through the mas, who pick up their skirts and throw their heads back in laugh­ter, who stomp down the stage with a rhythm that could shake the bones of the dead.

The city is hum­ming with it. Cos­tumes are be­ing fit­ted. Steel­bands are tight­en­ing their notes, and roads are be­ing cleared for the on­ly thing that tru­ly mat­ters. J’Ou­vert will break be­fore dawn, with mud, with paint, with bod­ies fling­ing them­selves in­to the street, un­recog­nis­able, un­done.

The sun will rise, and the bands will take the road, thou­sands pour­ing in­to the city, puls­ing to the mu­sic, mov­ing to­wards some­thing that can­not be named, on­ly felt. The mas­quer­aders will cross the stage in gold, in sil­ver, in bare­ly-there scraps of fab­ric that shim­mer like scales, like skin, like sweat. And now, once again, at least for two days, the women will lead them.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Au­thor in­quiries: iras­room@gmail.com


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