The carnival at the Little Antilles is in good health, and is turning out to be a growing international feast

No matter the age, profession, money or color of skin. All these doesn’t matter each February, when two million people go out to the streets of Port of Spain, in Trinidad, mixing in a sea of colors, feathers, rhythm and rum. From Jump Up, a wild street party starting with the Monday sunrise, before Ash Wednesday, till the death of king Momo, burnt in the last Tuesday hours, Port of Spain becomes a great and anarchic carnival feast.

New Carnivals
Trinidad stages each year the biggest carnival of the Caribbean. The carnival origins go back to the Christian traditions of celebrating banquets before Lent, as well as the Celtic feasts to dismiss the winter bad spirits. In Guadeloupe and Martinique, people dresses in black and white on Ash Wednesday, and king Vaval is buried. In St. Barths, king Moui Moui is burnt. At St. Kitts, Christmas and New Year are celebrated with parades and street parties. Even in the summer, are carnivals celebrating the end of the sugar cane harvest, like the Crop Over in Barbados. In some islands, carnival celebrations have begun recently, mostly to attract more tourists. After all, any excuse is good enough to take people out of their houses, and join a street party.

AN OLD TRADITION
As soon as the carnival is over, designer’ s imagination starts to fly, to make dresses and customs that will be use next year. The Great Carnival dressmakers of Trinidad, like Peter Minshall organize sewing workshops (Mas Camps), where costumes are made according to the theme each comparsa (group of persons with costumes and masks) has chosen. Each one elect their King and Queen of the carnival, who will have the honor of using the best costumes, some authentic masterpieces, that will be judged in Dimanche Gras, the night before the official start of the carnival.

The Mas tradition goes back to the end of the XVIII century, when the French owners of the plantations began to organize masquerades and balls in the days previous to the Lent. The slaves copied and made a mockery of their owners parties. After the abolition, slaves showed their frustrations with clever songs of calypso, and their native music steel-pan.