Carnival in Trinidad Page 1 of 7

Article MT117 - from Musical Traditions No 4, Early 1985

Carnival in Trinidad
... evolution and symbolic meaning

A background to Calypso

Trinidad was discovered by Columbus in 1498 (he named the island for the Christian Holy Trinity) and was
ruled by Spain for virtually 300 years, remaining one of her most 'underdeveloped' American possessions. Only
in the 1770s, with the 'Bourbon reforms' of Charles III - designed to rejuvenate flagging colonial efficiency - did
the Spanish crown pay attention to this thinly-populated, almost uncultivated, Caribbean island. A Cedula
issued by the Spanish monarch in 1776 highlighted the island's neglected state: with no European Spaniards
available for emigration, it invited West
Indian French Catholics dissatisfied by
Britain's 1763 take-over of their Antillian
islands - Grenada, Dominica, St Vincent,
Tobago to settle in Trinidad. They were
encouraged by land grants to set up
agricultural units under their own management
and to transfer slaves in quantity to work these
plantations.

Influenced by France, but also set on

maintaining Spanish control and the Roman
Catholic faith in his American colonies, Charles III extended this provision in 1783 by issuing a further Cedula
de Poblacion. This allowed any Catholic to settle in Trinidad providing he agreed to stipulated immigration
conditions, including a loyalty oath to the Spanish crown. 1

At this point the island's population was very small indeed, comprising Spanish-speaking whites, coloureds,
slaves and Indians and, as has been pointed out by Andrew Pearse in his study of 'Carnival in Nineteenth
Century Trinidad', because there is no concrete evidence for the existence of an annual Shrovetide festival
before this date, 1783 is a convenient neutral starting point for discussing the development of the Trinidad
Carnival. 2

Over the next fourteen years, due to the unsettled times in the Caribbean - the British having taken control of
most of the French West Indian islands in the latter part of the eighteenth century - a great number of French
planters grasped the opportunity to settle in Trinidad, bringing their slaves with them. In consequence, when in
1797 the British took Trinidad itself, there was a significantly French-speaking and mainly Creole population.
The French whites had established themselves as a landed aristocracy and using the labour of their black slaves
had created flourishing plantations growing tobacco, sugar, cotton, and coffee.

It has been necessary to outline the sequence of French settlement in Trinidad because of its utmost importance
in establishing the Shrovetide celebration of Carnival on the island - at least as far as the written record is
concerned. Despite a large and speedy increase in population - in particular from the Spanish Main, North
America, Africa, and the British West Indian islands - and, indeed, some French emigration, the French
community remained in control of the island's economic core and, thus, were able to stamp their cultural
characteristics on its ensuing festive developments. Following emancipation, in 1833, peoples from the Near-
East, Indian subcontinent and the Orient were to increase further the population and cultural-mix.

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With respect to slave culture at this time, the findings of B W Higman are relevant. In the second of five points
concluding his discussion of 'African and Creole Slave Family Patterns in Trinidad', he notes that 'Distinct
African ethnic/tribal groups lost their identity almost immediately as a result of extensive intermarriage. Only
those groups which constituted a substantial proportion of the
total slave population, and had a relatively natural sex ratio,
were able to establish family patterns which reflected
however vaguely their particular [African] cultural history'.

Thus, the cultural influence of French Creole slaves would,

almost certainly, have been dominant over those arriving
direct from Africa and, as the former were in greatest
preponderance, this was of first importance in establishing
their own syncretic Afro-French culture in Trinidad. The free
coloureds too, would have come under this overwhelming
French and Afro-French influence. 3

Afro-French syncretism in the Caribbean requires a great deal

of further research but it is useful at this point to draw
attention to Dena J Epstein's documentation of the dance
called la calinda, together with its associated instrument the
banza (banjo), both African in origin, which she demonstrates
persist from the original seventeenth-century colonisation of
the British and French West Indies to the mid-nineteenth
century (the period of her research). There are several French
reports of West Indian blacks dancing the calinda; a dance
which may or may not have received its name from the Roman first day of the month or season - the calends (or
kalends) which, in the case of seasonal change, was usually celebrated by festivities. 4

The unusually French character of late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Trinidadian culture, among
both blacks and whites, was observed throughout this period, and later even in his important Colonial Office
memo on 'History of the Origin of the Carnival' (1881), one-time Head of Police, L M Fraser, states with
surprise that, 'in an island which never belonged to France for even a single day the French element ... largely
predominates'. In order, therefore, to understand the place of Carnival in Trinidad society, the origins and
traditions of Southern European Carnival require some exploration. 5

The general assumption on the origin of European Carnival, founded on the work of J G Frazer, has been that it
is based on the New Year Roman festival of the Kalends of January, which it is said, spread throughout the
Roman empire and, 'was celebrated by the relaxation of all ordinary rules of conduct and the inversion of
customary social status'. This season, in turn, close to the similar Roman ploughing and sowing festival of
Saturnalia, and other earlier pagan fertility rites (also identified by Frazer), was adopted by the Catholic church
- witness the days of Christian celebration between All Souls Day (2 November) and Candlemas (2 February).
The Christmas festival is sometimes said to extend across this period and, by some, even to the time of
Shrovetide Carnival. More often than not, certainly in early Modern Europe, the Carnival season lasted from
Christmas to Shrove Tuesday and this time-scale was also adopted by the eighteenth-century French settlers of
Trinidad. 6

Although he accepts that, 'no Carnival was like any other Carnival', historian Peter Burke's discussion of these
festivities in early Modern Europe, points up common elements in such celebrations. Burke identifies four 'less
formally structured- events which went on intermittently through the carnival season':

1. eating/feasting
2. drinking
3. singing and dancing in the streets

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4. masks and fancy dress - 'men dressed as women, women as men; other popular costumes were those of
clerics, devils, fools, wild men and wild animals'

Additionally, he distinguishes three more elements which usually occurred in the Carnivals themselves:

1. a procession with floats carrying individuals dressed as mythical figures

2. popular competitions (often of an aggressive nature)
3. the performance of some kind of play, normally in farce

And underlying these were three major themes - both real and symbolic in their enactment - 'food, sex, and
violence'.

In this Burke sees this period of European Carnival as, 'not only a festival of aggression, of destruction,
desecration. Indeed, one should perhaps think of sex as the middle term connecting food and violence. The
violence, like the sex, was more or less sublimated into ritual. Verbal aggression was licensed at this season,
maskers were allowed to insult individuals, to criticise the authorities'. 7

If these elements were usual throughout the Carnival period and, in particular, at the event of Carnival itself, the
reasons for their seasonal occurrence must be examined. Perhaps the most satisfactory explanation for the focal
point of festivals when 'the world is turned upside-down' is the rites of passage model conceived by French
folklorist Arnold Van Gennep to describe the key ceremonial stages in the life of an individual or individuals.
Each rite is delineated by three phases (sometimes not in this order):

1. preliminal (separation from what went before)

2. liminal (threshold) and
3. postliminal (aggregation into the new state)

... which, in the case of Carnival, are paralleled by three types of ritual behaviour: 'masquerade, role reversal
and formalities'. These rituals can be seen to operate as a series of binary opposites: Shrovetide is the opposite
of austere Lent in the Christian calendar, and its rituals can be said to be antithetical both to the spiritual values
of Christianity and its Lenten period of physical abstinence. Yet, the reasons as to why Carnival and, to a lesser
extent, other seasonal rites should have been and continue to
be such a focal point for communal 'misrule' are, perhaps, not
so easily defined for, as Peter Burke points out, 'What is clear
is that Carnival was polysemous, meaning different things to
different people'. 8

The functionalist view of Carnival is that it serves as a safety-

valve in a politically repressive society - in other words it is
part of a system of social control. In given circumstances,
this argument appears the most satisfactory explanation;
certainly, Carnival was probably viewed in this light by
hierarchies in early Modern Europe and, indeed, by white
plantation-owning societies in the West Indies. But, as
French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Laudrie has indicated,
others saw Carnival as a time when social change might be
effected or, at the very least, influenced. Folklorists Roger D
Abrahams and Richard Bauman express another view of the
role of such festivities in two twentieth-century communities - the West Indian island of St Vincent (Carnival)
and the Le Havre Islands, Nova Scotia (Christmas belsnickling - 'mumming'): 'Far from constituting events that
have hostility and conflict as their organising principle, carnival and belsnickling appear to us to draw together
opposing elements in the two societies in which they occur and to draw them together more closely and
harmoniously than at any time in the year'. 9

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Indirectly, this returns us to the celebration of Carnival in the West Indies. Simply because they ruled Trinidad
from 1797 (until Independence in 1962), the most important secondary cultural contribution to its Carnival
came from the British and Afro-British inhabitants. Like the French before them, British masters, together with
their Creole slaves, came to Trinidad from other islands in the West Indian archipelago to establish and operate
plantations - although, as indicated, they did this without disturbing the island's overall French cultural
hegemony.

The black folklore traditions of the British West Indies have been the subject of considerable research by Roger
D Abrahams. Explaining the traditional times for festive celebration in the English-speaking territories he
notes: 'In the eastern Caribbean where there was little influence from the Catholic (French and Spanish) islands,
Christmas was the traditional time of freedom and licence for the slaves - so much so that their other major
holiday, Easter, was often called 'Pickininny Christmas'. Thus on islands like Jamaica, Nevis, St. Kitts,
Antigua and Barbados, the formal and licentious types of ceremonies were commingled in the observation of
the Christmas season though revelry certainly was the more important activity. In the more southern islands,
most of which were at some time under French rule, Carnival is also played, thus creating the situation where
motives of formality and decorousness could be attached to one celebration [Christmas], 'nonsense' and revelry
the other [Carnival]'. Abrahams points out that the latter is the situation on St Vincent. 10

If there were seasonal times in the British and, for that matter, the French West Indies, when slaves could
engage in musical activities and there was at least one focal point in the year, Christmas Carnival or both, when
more elaborate rituals were allowed, the question arises as to what was the African contribution to both the
music and the ceremonies. Clearly, almost wholesale adoption as well as adaptation of European traditions
occurred hence the performance by blacks of British mummers' plays and other Christmas customs. But, as
there remains a strong tradition of masquerade in West Africa these might well have paralleled customs that
slaves recalled from the traditional societies whence they came, and have been adopted simply because they
served the same purpose. In light, however, of the careful analysis of Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, in their
discourse on 'An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American Past', this is probably too simplistic model
for the complicated development of cultural norms. Notwithstanding, what must be stated is that there is a
strong and obvious African component in Carnival, and carnivalesque, based on 'creativity and innovation'
rather than particularities of 'content' characteristics of Afro-American cultures identified by Sidney Mintz. 11

In its initial period (1784-l833), Andrew Pearse points out that the Trinidad 'Carnival was an important
institution for Whites and Free Coloured, particularly in the towns'. However, their communal involvement in
the festival was gradually changed by the British take-over of the island in 1797. Firstly, there was progressive
discrimination against the free coloureds by the white British
administration and, secondly, as Christmas had functioned as the
carnivalesque focal point in the British West Indies there was an
endeavour to emphasise this festival over and above the celebration of
Carnival itself: from which, in any case, the slaves remained virtually
excluded. At Christmas, Martial Law was declared (this included
manoeuvres by the militia), there were parties stressing social
prestige, Church attendance was expected, and slaves were given
universal licence 'for dancing, feasting at the master's expense, some
freedom of movement, and elaborate costuming'. 12

Whether Christmas or Carnival, when whites and coloureds

masqueraded, the celebrations fit closely the 'rites of passage' model
of Van Gennep and the various socially symbolic structures and
functions which Carnival and carnivalesque have been shown to
perform. And, although the circumstances alter, this can also be
shown to be true for Carnival after the freedom of the slaves in 1833.

From this point it was Carnival that became the principal annual

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celebration for freed slaves and others in the lower classes. That it
performed the role of satirical parody and other rituals associated with the masquerade, in both European and
African settings, is witnessed by contemporary newspaper reports. These show the usual elements of
communal 'misrule', with an emphasis on sex and violence, and their effect of disturbing the social norm was
well taken by the ruling white elite. As the latter withdrew from public participation in Carnival so too did the
newspaper reports of the event become more and more hostile, emphasising the class distinctions of the time -
the elite electing for a manifest separate 'superiority'. 13

Although the white elite made it clear that they were generally hostile to the 'challenge' of Carnival, the attitude
of the coloured middle-class poses more of a problem. On the basis of his research, Andrew Pearse finds that:

'The degree of [their] participation ... is difficult to ascertain. The evidence seems to point to the
following situations: (1) Carnival remained for them an important season of festivity and
sociality ... (2) Whilst avoiding association in the streets with the masses this class was deeply
resentful of any interference with Carnival by the Government and was ready to use it if necessary
as a means of indirect attack on the Governor and the upper (white) class whenever tension rose'.

This too fits the picture of a Carnival season the function and structure of which varied from year to year
depending on the social conditions appertaining. 14

Before proceeding, mention must be made of the 'canboulay' ritual which appears to have originated in the
white community prior to slavery's abolition and then to have been adopted by the blacks as a first of August
celebration of their 1833 emancipation. It was later transferred to the occasion of Carnival.

According to a letter published in an 1881 edition of the 'Port of Spain Gazette' (26 March), canboulay seems to
have started as a Carnival masquerade in which, prior to emancipation, whites dressed up as blacks, imitated
their dances (including the calinda) and their torch-lit, drum accompanied procedures which had originated in
practices designed to cope with the emergency of a sugar cane plantation fire - hence cannes brulees
(canboulay). Whether or not whites did perform this masquerade (this is the only report), what is certain is that
the rituals that blacks adopted midnight processions, with torches, drumming and singing - were full of
symbolic meaning and eminently in the Carnival tradition, It is important to note that one of the dances
mentioned was the calinda. This, as has been pointed out, was of African origin and, as far as black
Trinidadians were concerned, was associated both with stick fighting/dancing and (in its vocal version) satirical
song. Understandably, the calinda was of great significance to the black community in their adoption of
Carnival as an annual positive statement of social integrity. 15

In time the canboulay parade came to initiate Carnival celebrations: it began at midnight on the Monday of
festivities as, by 1841, Sunday revelry had been prohibited on account of desecration of the Sabbath. From the
mid-1850's, newspaper reports are directed increasingly against the festival as
creating an unwarranted disturbance, with canboulay becoming one of the
major points of friction. During the same period, certainly as far as the
controlling white elite were concerned, the character of Carnival celebrants
changed more and more to represent the jamette - a class word for diametre
or diamet, applied to those beneath the 'diameter' of reputable society i.e. the
underworld. Clearly this led to greater polarisation on both sides and a clash
of the two opposing values became inevitable. As with early Modern
European examples already referred to and, indeed, late-1840's-early 1850's
Carnival protestations at the time of the Second French Republic, the
meaning of Carnival took on special symbolic significance at a time of social
and, or, political tension. 16

In Trinidad, matters came to a head in the late 1870s when the

aforementioned moderate Chief of Police, L M Fraser, was dismissed and the

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tough Captain Baker was appointed in his place. His measures led,
ultimately, to confrontation. In 1878 and 1879 Baker's actions were circumspect enough to avoid a direct
challenge to the ceremony but in 1880 he attempted to suppress canboulay by calling on the paraders to
surrender their sticks, drums and lighted torches. They acquiesced but in the following year prepared
themselves to resist more vigorously, for they believed that Baker's moves were part of a concerted effort to
abolish both canboulay and Carnival. As a consequence in 1881, canboulay was put down with violence which,
almost certainly, would have become worse had not the astute Governor of the colony confined police to
barracks for Shrove Monday and Tuesday and appealed to the masqueraders direct. 17

Serious trouble continued for at least two more years: 'The official view was that the Carnival of 1883 was even
more disorderly than that of 1881. The reports tell of fighting, throwing of stones and bottles, much obscenity
and unmasked bands of disorderly persons through Port-of-Spain armed with long sticks'. But the Governor's
direct appeal to the maskers signalled a change of attitude among the colonial hierarchy who, from then on,
consciously moved towards greater participation in the festivities. In this, Carnival had succeeded in effecting
much needed social change and the Government, realising its social implications, came to accord it official
recognition. 18

Nevertheless canboulay was abolished in 1884 by an order fixing the commencement of Carnival to 6 a.m. on
Mondays; bands of more than ten carrying sticks were forbidden; Pierrot maskers were obliged to obtain a
police licence; and pisse-en-lit bands (men dressed as women) together with the obscene words and actions in
which they specialised, were prohibited. This stricter control, however, was accompanied by the greater
participation of the white elite and, as has been noted, a recognition of the 'people' and their annual festival. In
this, Carnival's function was changed structurally from one combining binary opposites, to one embodying
binary affinities: from emphasising society's stratifications, to drawing together gradually these disparate
elements. In this role it has continued. 19

It remains to note briefly the relationship of kaiso or, calypso, Trinidad Carnival's satiric song tradition, to the
event itself. Firstly, it must be emphasised that satire and satiric song are a feature of Carnival occasions
worldwide. Secondly, there is a marked tradition of satiric song in African and Afro-American societies.
These, coupled with Afro-American traditions of ceremony and eloquence, are the folk-loric foundations for
this famous and popular song form. Clearly, with such roots, calypso relates closely to the tradition of Carnival
itself and, more specifically to the rivalry still maintained between bands of masqueraders. Formerly, the most
overt reflection of this competitiveness was the stick band, which fought ritualistically to the musical
accompaniment of the calinda/kalinda - both danced, and sung (originally in French patois). And, although
calypso is more than just a style of challenge song, the latter forms the most tenuous link between it and
celebrations of Carnival past and present. 20

John Cowley

Notes:

1. Historical data summarised from Linda A Newson Aboriginal and Spanish Colonial Trinidad, London,
Academic Press, 1976; J H Parry and Philip Sherlock, A Short History of the West Indies, 3rd. ed.,
London, Macmillan, l971; Eric Williams, History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago, London, Andre
Deutsch, 1964.
2. Andrew Pearse, 'Carnival in Nineteenth Century Trinidad', Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 4, Nos. 3 and 4,
March-June 1956, p. 175.
3. B W Higman, 'African and Creole Slave Family Patterns in Trinidad', in Margaret E Crahan and Franklin
W Knight, eds., Africa and the Caribbean, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Universlty, 1979, p. 62.
4. Dena J Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, Urbana, University of Illinois, 1977, pp. 30-38; Reginald
Nettel, Sing a Song of England, London, Phoenix House, 1954, pp. 155-158; the entry for calinda in
Maria Leach, ed., Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legend, London,
New English Library, 1975.

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5. Colonial office Original Correspondence, Trinidad (Co. 293), Vol. 289 - Trinidad No. 6460, quoted in
Pearse. op. cit., p. 181.
6. J G Frazer, The Golden Bough, abridged ed., London, Macmillan, 1922; Enid Welsford, The Court
Masque, Cambridge, C.U.P., 1972, p. 9 and p. 12; Errol Hill, The Trinidad Carnival, Austin, University
of Texas, 1972, f.n. 8, p.8.
7. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, London, Temple Smith, 1978, pp. 179-187.
8. Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, London, Routledge, 1960; Victor Turner, The Ritual Process,
London, Routledge, 1969, pp. 94-95; Burke, op. cit., p. 190.
9. Emmanuel Le Roy Laudrie, trans, Mary Feeney, Carnival in Romans, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1981, p.
292; Roger D Abrahams and Richard Bauman, 'Ranges of Festival Behaviour', in Barbara A Babcock,
The Reversible World, Ithica, Cornell University, 1978, p. 206.
10. Roger D Abrahams, 'Christmas and Carnival on St. Vincent', Western Folklore, Vol. 31, No. 4, October,
1972, p. 277.
11. Roger D Abrahams, 'Speech Mas' on Tobago', in Wilson M Hudson, ed., Tire Shrinker to Dragster,
Austin, Encio Press, 1968, pp. 127-128; 'Pull Out Your Purse and Pay: A St George Mumming from the
British West Indies', Folklore, 79, 1968, p. 197; 'British West Indian Folk Drama and the 'Life Cycle'
Problem', Folklore, 81, 1970, p. 245. A recent parallel African example of masquerade was cited in Yemi
Olaniyan, 'The emergence of dundun sekere music as a popular music', talk at the International Council
for Traditional Music, U.K. Chapter, Annual Conference, session for Friday, 25 March, 1983. Sidney W
Mintz and Richard Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-Amerlcan Past, Philadelphia, Institute
for the Study of Human Issues, 1976. Sidney W Mintz, 'Foreword' to Norman E Whitten and John F
Szwed, eds., Afro-American Anthropology, Contemporary Perspectives, N.Y., Free Press, 1970, p. 9.
12. Pearse, op. cit., pp. 179-182.
13. Pearse, op. cit., and Hill, op. cit. base much of their account of early Trinidad Carnival on newspaper
reports.
14. Pearse, op. cit., pp. 184-185
15. Pearse, op. cit., p. 182; see also Hill, op. cit., pp. 23-31.
16. Robert J Bezucha, 'Mask of Revolution: A Study of popular Culture During the Second French Republic',
in Roger Price, ed., Revolution and Reaction, London, Croom Helm, 1975, pp. 236-253.
17. Pearse, op. cit., p. 189, Williams, op. cit., p. 186.
18. Williams, op. cit., p. 187.
19. Hill, op. cit., p. 25; Pearse, op. cit., p. 190; Abrahams and Bauman in Babcock, ed., op. cit., pp. 193-208,
see also Victor Turner's discussion of the 'inversion characteristics of industrial leisure' in his 'Comments
and Conclusion' to Babcock, ed., cit., pp. 281-286.
20. Epstein, op. cit., p. 174, p. 187; Roger D Abrahams, The Man-of-Words in the West Indies, Baltimore,
Johns Hopkins University, 1983; J D Elder, 'Kalinda - Song of the Battling Troubadours of Trinidad',
Journal of the Folklore Institute, (Indiana University), Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1966, pp. 192-203.

Article MT117

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