Caribbean Carnivals

June - December 2007 Carnaval Season June 2007 Berlin (Germany) N/A June 9-17, 2007 Calgary Carifest CarifestCalgary.ca June 9-10, 2007 Tampa Bay TampaCarnival.com June 10, 2007 Hartford N/A June 16, 2007 Philadelphia PhillyCarnival.com June 23-24, 2007 Washington D.C. N/A July, 2007 Turks & Caicos N/A July, 2007 Puerto Rico N/A July 2-3, 2007 St. Vincent CarnivalSVG.com July 7, 2007 Syracuse N/A July 14-15, 2007 Virginia CaribFest VirginiaCaribfest.com July 2007 St. Lucia StLuciaCarnival.com July , 2007 St. John (VI) VInow.com July 1, 2007 Houston (Caribfest) HoustonCaribfest.com July 7, 2007 Montreal (Carifiesta) Carifiesta.ca July, 2007 Vancouver N/A July 20-22, 2007 Baltimore BaltimoreCarnival.com July 22, 2007 Jersey City N/A Aug 4, 2007 Toronto N/A Aug, 2007 Nevis (Culturama) NevisCulturama.net Aug, 2007 Anguilla N/A Aug, 2007 Manitoba N/A Aug, 2007 Tortola (VI) N/A Aug, 2007 Winipeg (Caripeg) N/A Aug 5-6, 2007 Barbados N/A Aug 5-6, 2007 Antigua AntiguaCarnival.com Aug 10-12, 2007 Hamilton HamiltonCarnival.com Aug 10-12, 2007 Edmonton (Cariwest) N/A Aug 10-12, 2007 Detroit N/A Aug 13-14, 2007 Grenada SpiceMasGrenada.com Aug 17-19, 2007 Chicago (Carifete) ChicagoCarifete.com Aug 18, 2007 Ottawa (Caribe-Expo) Caribe-Expo.com Aug 25, 2007 Boston BostonCarnivalZone.com Aug 25-26, 2007 Notting Hill (U.K.) NottinghillCarnival.org.uk Sept 3, 2007 New York NewYorkcarnival.com Sept, 2007 Las Vegas N/A Sept, 2007 Belize N/A Sept, 2007 San Diego N/A Sept 7-9, 2007 Baltimore BaltimoreCarnival.com Sept, 2007 Long Island LIcarnival.com Oct, 2007 Costa Rica N/A Oct, 2007 Key West N/A Oct , 2007 Bahamas N/A Oct 5-13, 2007 Jacksonville JacksonvilleCarnival.com Oct 6-7, 2007 Miami MiamiCarnival.net Oct 12-14, 2007 Los Angelos (Caricabela) LosAngelesCarnival.com Oct 20, 2007 Sydney (Australia) SydneyBacchanal.com Nov 8-19, 2007 Cayman Pirates Week PiratesWeekFestival.com Dec, 2007 St. Kitts StKittsCarnival.com Dec, 2006 Monserratt MonsterratFestival.com Dec 24-Jan 2 St.Croix (VI) GotoStCroix.com/ Carnival.htm

African influences on carnival traditions Important to Caribbean festival arts are the ancient African traditions of parading and moving in circles through villages in costumes and masks. Circling villages was believed to bring good fortune, to heal problems, and chill out angry relatives who had died and passed into the next world. Carnival traditions also borrow from the African tradition of putting together natural objects (bones, grasses, beads, shells, fabric) to create a piece of sculpture, a mask, or costume — with each object or combination of objects representing a certain idea or spiritual “One race / From the same place / That make the same trip / On the same ship.”  Caribbean Man -Black Stalin All of our kid's drum sessions teach the following: Group cohesion & Harmony The power of Listening Team-building and Synergy Individual and Group Achievement  force. Feathers were frequently used by Africans in their motherland on masks and headdresses as a symbol of our ability as humans to rise above problems, pains, heartbreaks, illness — to travel to another world to be reborn and to grow spiritually. Today, we see feathers used in many, many forms in creating carnival costumes. African dance and music traditions transformed the early carnival celebrations in the Americas, as African drum rhythms, large puppets, stick fighters, and stilt dancers began to make their appearances in the carnival festivities. In many parts of the world, where Catholic Europeans set up colonies and entered into the slave trade, carnival took root. Brazil, once a Portuguese colony, is famous for its carnival, as is Mardi Gras in Louisiana (where African-Americans mixed with French settlers and Native Americans). Carnival celebrations are now found throughout the Caribbean in Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada, Dominica, Haiti, Cuba, St. Thomas, St. Marten; in Central and South America in Belize, Panama, Brazil; and in large cities in Canada and the U.S. where Caribbean people have settled, including Brooklyn, Miami, and Toronto. Even San Francisco has a carnival! [ more at allahwe.org ]

	David Rudder: Lyrics man
“Lyrics to make a politician cringe / Or turn a woman’s body into jelly” Now's the time/In this blessed life/When our bodies show/How we feel inside/You will know It will roar inside you/It comes to you/Like a raging tide  "Music is liberation/ Come make a joyful sound/ This life is a celebration... Comes the time, and the street is now a sacred place...Early morning calls for early wine. This communion makes you feel so fine.." "Will you remember me when you wake up Ash Wednesday morning? You know, Ash Wednesday is always a different story." Rudder sings in "J'ouvert"
High Mas I © David Michael Rudder Our Father who has given us this art So that we can all feel a part Of this earthly (lesser) heaven....amen Forgive us this day our daily weaknesses As we seek to cast our mortal burdens on this city...amen Oh merciful Father, in this bacchanal season Where some men will lose their reason But most of us just want to wine and have a good time

Brooklyn J'Ouvert:  
The most important part of this parade, for insiders, is now the J'Ouvert, which occurs on Labor Day in the hours before dawn, ending at daylight before the Parade officially starts. As Earl King, one of the first J'Ouvert organizers explains, the J'Ouvert began in the late 1980's in order to put pan in the spotlight as the "engine room" of Carnival:
You see, pan got lost on the parkway when the big sound systems and deejays took over. So we were determined to do something to preserve pan, to let our children know where Carnival really comes from. So in J'Ouvert its just pan and mas bands, no deejays invited. Now people are remembering the joy you can get by taking your time and playing mas with a steelband, just inching up the road, pushing pan.

http://www.carnaval.com/newyork/david_rudder.htm
 

Parties start to build up to the big day as mas bands launch their presentations and music written for the season is heard on the air

• beauty and excitement
• a reverence for improvisation, spontaneous creativity

You know, Ramajay!- get carried away in the spirit of free expression

When the iron fall
It humble the band
. . . Engine room
Is down whey does cause the bacchanal
The pan is de body
But the rhythm is heart ah the thing
. . . Engine room
That is the soul of Carnival . . .

--David Rudder, Engine Room

Joy A. I. Mahabir
SUNY at StonyBrook, New York

more on David Rudder & rhythm by Joy A.I.M.

Of course the month of June harbors Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, which is an annual holiday, celebrated on June 19 in the United States commemorating the end of slavery

The Caribbean as well as Africa have had an extraordinary impact on American arts and culture. The ethnic and cultural diversity of the black population has never been greater, and richer. The Caribbean immigrant population is the largest segment of perhaps the most diverse population in the United States.  resulting from the dy. And it is all part of the .

 Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Toure) the charismatic civil rights activist during the Black Power years who helped to change the course of

 American political history, was born in Trinidad, and the mother of the slain African-American revolutionary leader Malcolm X was from Grenada.  Colin Powell, first African-American Secretary of State; Harry Belafonte, internationally-acclaimed, singer, actor and activist; Marion Jones, Olympic gold medallist; Roberto Clemente, first Latino inducted into the baseball hall of fame; Sydney Poitier, first African-American to receive an Academy Award for Best Actor

In Ramabai Espinet, "From the Belly of the Bamboo: Interview with David Rudder, Part 1," Trinidad and Tobago Review, Christmas 1987, 12.

"The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor in experience."

Bob Marley immigrated to the USA, joining his mother but returned home to Jamaica when it became apparent he was likely to be drafted to serve in Vietnam.

[wiki/Bob_Marley]

INTERVIEWS

Joy A. I. Mahabir

---the Hispanic Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico);

---the French Caribbean (Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana);

---the Dutch Antilles present-day Netherlands Antilles and Aruba  (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaço, Saba, St Eustatius, St Maarten);

•  British Caribbean (British West Indies / Anglophone Caribbean - Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica (also French Creole speaking), Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia (also French Creole speaking),, At one time, there was a short-lived country called the Federation of the West Indies composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories. The federation continues as West Indian cricket team includes the South American nation of Guyana, the only former British colony on that continent.

There are also commonly referred to geographic groupings the Antilles, which together with the Bahamas form the West Indies. West Indies consist of the Antilles, divided into the larger Greater Antilles which bound the sea on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the east, and the Bahamas which are northeast of the sea. Bermuda lies much further to the north in the Atlantic Ocean and is sometimes included in the West Indies. Geopolitically, the West Indies are organized into 28 territories Lesser Antilles are made up of the -Leeward Islands[wiki], the southern islands of  Windward Islands, [wiki] Virgin Islands).

The analogous "West Indies" originates from Christopher Columbus' idea that he had landed in the Indies (then meaning all of south and east Asia) when he had actually reached the Americas.

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