C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S 13(4) 1999, 661 6 9 0

Keith Nurse
GLOBALIZATION ANDTRINIDAD
CARNIVAL: DIASPORA, HYBRIDITY
AND IDENTITY IN GLOBAL
CULTURE

Abstract
This article is premised on the view that culturally, the periphery is greatly
influenced by the society of the centre, but the reverse is also the case. This
is a case study of the impact and implications for global culture of periphery-to-centre cultural flows. It is argued that the Trinidad carnival and the
overseas Caribbean carnivals (e.g. Notting Hill, London; Caribana,
Toronto; Labour Day, New York) are products of and responses to the processes of globalization as well as transcultural and transnational formations.
Carnival is theorized as a hybrid site for the ritual negotiation of cultural
identity and practice by the Caribbean diaspora.

Keyw^ords
globalization; carnival; Trinidad; diaspora

Introduction

RINIDAD'S CARNIVAL, which has long been a source of inspiration for

other carnivals in the region, is now truly global. Almost every major city
in North America and Britain has a Caribbean-style carnival that is in large part
modelled after the one found in Trinidad.' In each respective site it is the largest
festival or event in terms of attendance and the generation of economic activity.^
For example, Notting Hill carnival attracts over two million people over two days

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of activities and is considered to be the largest festival of popular culture in

Europe. Labour Day in New York and Caribana in Toronto are similarly the
largest events in the USA and Canada, respectively. As such, the overseas
Caribbean carnivals are arguably 'the world's most popular transnational celebration' (Manning, 1990: 36).
The globalization of Trinidad carnival is directly related to the spread and
expansion of the Caribbean diaspora in the North Atlantic after the Second
World War in response to the demand for cheap immigrant labour. The transplantation of the Trinidad carnival to create the overseas Caribbean carnivals has
contributed to the growth of a cultural industry with strong export capability.
The overseas carnivals have also evolved to play an important sociopolitical and
cultural role for the Caribbean diaspora. Carnival as a cultural activity is not just
about merriment, colourful pageantry, revelry and street theatre. Carnival is
born out of the struggle of marginalized peoples to shape a cultural identity
through resistance, liberation and catharsis. It is these values that have facilitated
its replication wherever the Caribbean diaspora is found. It has acted as a bond
between the diasporic community and those at home, promoting much travel and
contributing to a pan-Caribbean identity. At Caribana in Toronto, for instance,
as much as one-third of the festival's one million participants are visitors from
the Caribbean communities in the USA (Decima, 1991). The sheer size and economic impact of the overseas Caribbean carnivals have made them an important
basis for transnational diasporic politics.
Caribbean popular culture, the carnivals in particular, has remained largely
under-researched (Lent, 1990). Most of the research takes a historical, ethnographic, anthropological and/or sociological perspective but virtually none has
looked at carnival within the framework of the global cultural economy. This is
symptomatic of a lacuna in the field:
While Third World countries are well known as importers of metropolitan
popular culture, the reverse process the export of cultural products and
performances from the Third World has evoked less discussion.
(Manning, 1990: 20)
This article attempts to redress this shortcoming in the literature. The approach
used here argues that globalization is cotemporal with modernization and the
development of capitalism over the past five hundred years (Wallerstein, 1983).
This approach accepts that there has been a recent acceleration of the pace of
globalization but argues that this can be explained by the cyclical rhythms and
transformations in the capitalist world economy. It differs from episodic analyses which view globalization as 'a recent phenomenon associated with other social
processes called post-induStrialization, post-modernization or the disorganization of capitalism' (Waters, 1995: 4).
The confidence for this approach comes from a reading of the history of the

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Caribbean's experience of incorporation into the modern world system. Arguably, the Caribbean region, as the oldest area of European overseas expansion and
colonial enterprise, can be viewed as the first modernized or globalized peoples
in world history (James, 1980; Mintz, 1974). For example, according to Mintz
(1993: 10), Caribbean peoples
were modernized by enslavement and forced transportation; by 'seasoning'
and coercion on time-conscious, export-oriented enterprises; by the
' reshuffling, redefinition and reduction of gender-based roles; by racial and
status-based oppression; and by the need to reconstitute and maintain cultural forms of their ownn under implacable pressure. These were people
wrenched from societies of a different sort, then thrust into remarkably
industrial settings for their time and for their appearance, and kept under
circumstances of extreme repression. Caribbean cultures had to develop
under these unusual and, indeed, terrible conditions.
In the current debate about globalization (Kofman and Youngs, 1996; Waters,
1995) and the growth of a global culture (Featherstonc, 1994; King, 1991) the
main tendency is to focus on the recent acceleration in the flow of technology,
people and resources in a North to South or centre to periphery direction. In
this sense much of the literature on globalization is really a depoliticized interpretation of the long-standing process of Westernization and imperialism, terms that
have become very unfashionable in these so-called postmodern times. Alternatively, the article is premised on the view that 'culturally, the periphery is greatly
influenced by the society of the center, but the reverse is also the case' (Patterson, 1994: 109). Therefore, the aim of the study is to examine the counter-flow,
the periphery-to-centre cultural flows, or what Patterson calls the 'extraordinary
process of periphery-induced creolization in the cosmopolis' (1994: 109). In this
respect it is a case study of'globalization in reverse', a take on what Jamaican
poet Louise Bennett calls 'colonization in reverse'.
The argument here is that the Trinidad carnival and its overseas or diasporic
offspring are both products of and responses to the processes of globalization as
well as 'intercultural and transnational formations' that relate to the concept of
a Black Atlantic (Gilroy, 1993). Carnival is theorized as a hybrid site (Bhabha,
1994) for the ritual negotiation of cultural identity and practice between and
among various social groups. Carnival employs an 'esthetic of resistance'
(Bakhtin, 1984) that confronts and subverts hegemonic modes of representation
and thus acts as a counter-hegemonic tradition for the contestations and conflicts
embodied in constructions of class, nation, 'race', gender, sexuality and ethnicity.
The study treats globalization on .two levels. First, it examines the sociocultural and pohtical impact of globalization on the society of Trinidad as illustrated by the historical evolution of the carnival festival. Second, it looks at the

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transnational dimensions of the festival via the expansion abroad of the Caribbean
diaspora. Before doing so, however, it explores the theoretical and historical significance of carnivals. It concludes with an analysis of the relationship between
carnival, popular culture and globalization theory.

Theorizing / historicizing carnival

Carnival comes from the Latin word carnivale, meaning Tarewell to the flesh',
essentially referring to a period of celebration of the body, of physical abandon,
where licentiousness, hedonism and sexual excess are expressed in music,
dancing, masquerading and feasting. Almost all cultures have something like a
carnival event in their ritual calendar. For instance, you can find the carnivalesque
spirit in most African and Asian festivals, market fairs, harvest celebrations and
spring fertility rights which predate contact with Europe (Scott, 1990).
In European culture, carnival is a synthesis of pagan rituals that share the
philosophy of opposites, like the Greek Dionysian festivals, Roman Saturnalia and
the grotesque realism of medieval carnivalesque and baroque theatre (Shohat and
Stam, 1994: 302). The Dionysian festivals are essentially spring or harvest feasts
celebrated at the end of the winter, dedicated to Dionysus, also known in Latin
as Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, excess and sensual pleasure (Martinez and
Aldana, 1994: 26). The Roman Saturnalia is associated with 'the Roman new year
festival of the Kalends of January which spread throughout the Roman empire
and was celebrated by the relaxation of all ordinary rules of conduct and the
inversion of customary social status' (Cowley, 1991: 1). Accordingly, it is argued
that 'early Christianity found pagan Rome full of Saturnalia and other Carnivallike activity and accommodated it by defining the season for its exercise, and by
relating it to the need, in a proselytizing religion, for abstinence and penitence'
(Bishop, 1991: 7). Carnival therefore evolved to become the 'last fling' before
the Lenten period in the Christian calendar. Hence the culmination of seasonal
carnival activities on Shrove Tuesday, when sins are shriven or confessed.
Mikhail Bakhtin (1984), the Russian theorist, argues that the 'grotesque
realism' of carnival is the outcome of social conflict and thus is revolutionary. Its
logic is one of ambivalence to the strictures of life. It circumvents dominant
modes of representation and objectification, and confronts the limitations of
binary oppositions. Thus the people involved in it are both actors and spectators.
They are both subjects and objects of laughter. It is essentially a process of
masking so as to unmask. Mimicry, parody, satire, role reversals and symbolic
social inversion are the methods used to confront class, race and gender oppression. In effect, carnival is a time when the world is turned upside-down:
Carnival embraces an anticlassical esthetic that rejects formal harmony and
unity in favor of the asymmetrical, the heterogeneous, the oxymoronic, the

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miseegenated. Carnival's 'grotesque realism' turns conventional esthetics

on its head in order to locate a new kind of popular, convulsive, rebellious
beauty, one that dares to reveal the grotesquerie of the powerful and the
latent beauty of the 'vulgar.' In the carnival esthetic, everything is pregnant
with its opposite, within an alternative logic of permanent contradiction
and non-exclusive opposites that transgresses the monologic true-or-false
thinking typical of a certain kind of positivist rationalism.
(Shohat and Stam, 1994: 302)
There is much debate as to how revolutionary or rebellious carnivals are. For
example, some argue that carnivals have been used by elites as a safety-valve for
political tensions by institutionalizing these festivals and making them a mechanism for social release and control. Indeed, there have always been attempts by
dominant groups to tame and sanitize the carnival, or to eliminate it altogether,
as was the case in England in the eighteenth century:
Once upon a time in this country the natives held carnivals. Every year, at
Southwark, Bartholomew and elsewhere great fairs took place, and judging
from the popular prints that survive (such as Hogarth's) the atmosphere
was one of drunken merriment, vulgarity and violence. It was mostly the
labouring classes who were involved. The fairs were occasions for release
from grinding toil. They offered fantasies of art, wealth and privilege.
Hence women of low repute donned the costumes of gentle ladies and performed working-class versions of plays with classical themes.
There was every conceivable form of popular entertainment acrobats,
rope-dancers, dwarfs, jugglers and clowns performed 'comick arts, dances
and songs, with scenes and machines never seen before'. Whores, pickpockets, peddlers of dubious wares and quacks selling all manner of drugs,
mingled with the crowd. And frequently the constables were pelted with
stones or assaulted with sticks when they intervened to make arrests. The
authorities sought to restrict, and eventually ban, the great fairs, arguing
that they were a threat to Christian decencies and to the law and order of
the kingdom. They succeeded,
(Dabydeen, 1988:40)
The above quote highlights two important points that inform this article. The
first is that it illustrates how, for the dispossessed and disenchanted, carnivalesque rituals and arts have operated as mechanisms for inverting, subverting
and deconstructing the moral and philosophical bases of societal strictures, conventions and power relations, if only temporarily and symbolically. What it
shows as well is that while * oppressed people might have difficulty in imagining
the precise contours of an alternative society they have no trouble in imagining
a reversal of the existing distribution of status and rewards' (Shohat and Stam

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1994: 304). The vahdity of the safety-valve thesis can thus be questioned. Scott
argues that:
It is surely not accurate to proceed as if carnival were set up exclusively by
dominant groups to allow subordinate groups to play at rebellion lest they
resort to the real thing. The existence and the evolving form of carnival
have been the outcome of social conflict, not the unilateral creation of
elites.
(1990:178)
Scott argues that we should instead see carnival as an 'ambiguous political victory
MT-ested from elites by subordinate groups' (ibid.). He adds that:
A complex social event like carnival cannot be said to be simply this or that
as if it had a given, genetically programmed, function. It makes greater
sense to see carnival as the ritual site of various forms of social conflict and
symbolic manipulation, none of which can be said, prima facie, to prevail,
(ibid,)
Scott's argument resonates with that of Shohat and Stam who conclude that:
Carnivals, and carnivalesque artistic practices, are not essentially progressive or regressive; it depends on who is carnivalizing whom, in what historical situation, for what purposes, and in what manner. Actual carnivals
form shifting configurations of symbolic practices, complex crisscrossings
of ideological manipulation and Utopian desire, their pohtical valence
changing with each context. Official power has at times used carnival to
channel energies that might otherwise have fueled popular revolt, but just
as often carnival has provoked elite anxiety and been the object of official
repression.
(1994: 304)
The second consideration that emerges from Dabydeen's observation (as quoted
above) is that the European carnival form has become less rebellious and politically vibrant with the rise of the modern industrial culture. For example, in
Britain, by the mid-1850s the carnivalesque fairs were considered 'out of date
and too rowdy for the respectable mid-Victorians' (Borland, 1992: 41). In fact
Shohat and Stam argue that 'European real-life carnivals have generally degenerated into the ossified repetition of perennial rituals' (1994: 302). In contrast, the
carnivals of Latin America and the Caribbean have evolved to be dynamic and
politically engaging. Throughout the Americas from Rio's carnival in Brazil
(Taylor, 1982), the carnivals of Santiago de Cuba (Brea and Millet, 1995), to the
Barranquilla carnival in Colombia (Martinez and Aldana, 1994) and all the

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carnivals in between carnivals are a reflection of the configuration of social

forces and the conflict that arises from them as well as the submerged aspirations
and tensions of the respective societies. One analyst argues, for instance, that carnival is about the aestheticization of politics and 'is thus politics masquerading
behind cultural forms' (Cohen, 1993: 132). In Brazil'the carnival is informed by
cultural memories of the African ancestral past, a pagan influence that subverts
the official Catholic institution' (Lawlor, 1993: 2). Throughout the Caribbean,
the carnivals in the post-independence period have been expressions of island
identity, regional harmony and black identity (Manning, 1978).
The carnivals of the Americas, to different degrees, have acted as a ritual site
for sociocultural contestations and esthetic resistance, between a hegemonic''"
European group and subordinate indigenous, Creole, mestizo and African
peoples. They generally embody rituals of social protest that critique and parody
the process of enforced hybridization and trans cul turati on embedded in colonial
and neocolonial society. Many of the carnival celebrations involve transgressive
activities that are aimed at redefining or accommodating the resultant heteroo

geneous cultural and racial identities and contested cultural spaces that are an
outcome of globalization processes.

The Trinidad carnival

The social and cultural origins of the Trinidad carnival are varied and are essentially a reflection of the multi-ethnic composition and history of the society.
Colonized by the Spanish after the conquest of Columbus in 1498, Trinidad, with
a small population of Spanish and indigenous Indians, was one of Spain's most
underpopulated and uncultivated territories in the Americas. After almost three
centuries of neglect, the Spanish, in the period of the 'Bourbon reforms', promulgated the Cedula de Poblacion in 1783. Its principal objective was to encourage migration to the island of Catholic settlers (Pearse, 1988: 4). In return they
were granted land (whites were granted twice as much as others) and received
import, trade and tax benefits. The influx came essentially from French creole
planters, coloureds and slaves from the French West Indies: Saint Domingue,
Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Lucia and Grenada. This group of
migrants were prompted by the instability generated by the French Revolution
and the fear of slave revolt (which was realized in the successful Haitian Revolution of 1804) and the threat of a Franco-English war (Koningsbruggen, 1997:
11).
A rapid increase in migrants followed the Cedula: coloureds from Venezuela;
Corsicans, Scots, Swiss, Germans, Italians from Europe; freed Africans from
North America; slaves imported from West Africa (e.g. Yoruba); and African
Creole slaves from the British West Indian islands, especially Barbados, St Vincent
and Tobago. The slave population rose the fastest, doubling between 1797 and

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1810, and accounting for two-thirds of the population. An Afro-creole culture

became the working-class culture (Brereton, 1993).
In 1797 Trinidad passed into the hands of the British and stayed so until independence in 1961. The French plantocracy remained the core of the agro-based
economy (sugar, then the cocoa industry after the crisis in the sugar trade in the
1840s) and outnumbered the British throughout the nineteenth century. The
British were the colonial administrators and merchants. EHte white and coloured
society became split between a subordinate Enghsh, Anglican culture and a dominant French, Catholic, creole culture, which was critical in shaping the carnival.
English culture emphasized Christmas rather than carnival. The elite culture
became more unified and anglicized by the late nineteenth century, when it collapsed into a more unified anglicized culture.
The ethnic make-up of Trinidad became more complex after the emancipation
of African slaves in 1834. The resultant labour shortage on the plantations led to
the importation of indentured labour from Asia, a small number from China who
became shopkeepers and a much larger quantity from India who replaced African
labour which had fled from the agricultural estates. Indian indentureship lasted
from 1845 to 1917. The late nineteenth century also saw the arrival of a small
number of Syrians and Lebanese who became traders and small entrepreneurs.
Trinidad by the turn of the twentieth century was a multicultural and diverse
ethnic community. Trinidad occupies a peculiar position in the Caribbean history
of colonialism and plantation society. According to Brereton (1993), Trinidad
deviates from the traditional conception of Caribbean society from three perspectives: the late entry of the colony into export-oriented plantation agriculture; the brevity of slavery and the varied cultural experience of the African
population; and the size of the middle class and diversity of the ethnic groups in
the immediate post-emancipation period. The carnival reflects this complexity
as well as exhibiting the social differentiation and contestation that came with the
global processes of European colonialism and modernism. The result was a distinctly 'American phenomenon' (Nettleford, 1988: 193), a process of enforced
hybridity and intermixture between African and European cultures, what Gilroy
refers to as the 'double consciousness' of the black Atlantic culture (1993).
Nettleford reinforces the point by arguing that:
By the time the latecomer East Indians, Chinese and Lebanese from the
Levantine Coast entered the region, the rules of the game had been made;
not even the overwhelming majority East Indian population of Guyana and
the sizable minority of the same group in Trinidad has jerked these countries out of their historical Euro-African or Afro-Creole reahties. Carnival
and Jonkonnu are unashamedly Afro-Creole or Euro-African expressions,
claiming a particular authenticity over Divali (Festival of Lights) and Hosay
as genuine ancestral Caribbean expressions.
:
(1988: 193)

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The origins of the modern-day Trinidad carnival are related to the entry of the
French planters and African slaves after the Cedula. The French, being Catholic,
brought with them the ritual of the Christian Shrovetide, which extended from
the Christmas-New Year period to the carnival. In contrast, the Protestant
colonies restricted the revelry to the Christmas-New Year festivities. This difference in European culture was the source of conflict between the French plantocracy and British colonial administration, exemplified by the unsuccessful
attempt by the British to demote the carnival during the nineteenth century
(Cowley, 1996: 11-12).
African carnivalesque traditions, which were reported in several Caribbean
territories since the late eighteenth century, were also brought to the island.
Known by different names, for example, gumbe, jonkonu or kambula, the carnivalesque activities of dances, drumming, singing and masking were derived
from West African religious culture and secret societies (Warner-Lewis, 1991:
180). The carnivalesque activities were concentrated in the Christmas-New Year
season, the traditional time of freedom and licence for the slaves during the preemancipation period. These activities are viewed as an example of the ritual
expression of conflict in British West Indian slave plantations, what Robert Dirks
(1987) refers to as the 'Black Saturnalia'. Contemporary Trinidad carnival continues to draw from these African traditions in terms of costuming, particularly
in the j'ouvert^ masquerades (Warner-Lewis, 1991) which have continued to be
the most rebellious and riotous aspect of the modern-day carnival:
Jour Ouvert mas and its masqueraders provide the society with a series of
shocks. They confront society with itself. Jour Ouvert is a complete stripping-off of the life mask by its players to those looking on, sharing a collective experience with them . . . there is an unmasking in Jour Ouvert in
counter-balance to masking in the carnival parade. Jour Ouvert is thus a
mirror of the player who looks into himself and into society to shape and
reshape a pantheon of contested political events.
(AUeyne-Dettmers, 1995: 334)
The ideology of the carnival of the white French elite was exclusive and aristocratic: very much like the Mardi Gras of New Orleans (Edmonson, 1988).
They held 'elaborate masquerade balls, house-to-house visiting and street promenading in carriages or on foot' (Lee, 1991: 419). The coloured middle class and
the African slaves were not allowed to participate, except as slave performers.
The European upper class, in their masquerading, acted out themes relating to
the carnivalesque dialectic. For example, Johnson indicates that the white men
pretended to be black 'negue jardin' (garden niggers or field slaves) based on 'the
beliefs that the slaves were childish, sensuous, hedonistic, and the planters were
responsible, serious and civilized' (1988: xiii). White women, on the other hand,
'dressed themselves as coloured women, pretending that their husbands desired

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them as they did their mulatoo mistresses' (ibid.). This example illustrates how
race, sexuality and colonialism intersect to reproduce and perpetuate the spectacle of the 'other' (Hall, 1997; Young, 1995).
The emancipation of African slaves in 1834 led to a reordering of the
carnival. The former slaves selected to celebrate their newly won freedom in carnivalesque style by reproducing and re-enacting the cannes brulees or Canboulay^
procession on the night of 1 August, the date of their emancipation. In the eyes
of the European elite 'the carnival had degenerated into a noisy and disorderly
amusement for the lower classes' (Pearse, 1988: 20). The response from official
culture was clear and unambiguous. The editor of the Port-of-Spain Gazette argued
in 1838 that 'the custom of keeping the Carnival by allowing the lower order of
society to run about the streets in wretched masquerade belongs to other days,
and ought to be abolished in our own' (quoted in Pearse, 1988: 22). The Africanization of the carnival provoked the construction of a racist stereotypical discourse. As Pearse indicates, 'the white elite of the society withdrew from public
participation and the comments of their journalistic representatives became
increasingly hostile and condescending' (1988: 21). The carnival festivities were
stigmatized as savage, vulgar, indecent, demonic, dangerous, rebellious, and consequently earned the title o f Jamette', from the French 'diametre', meaning the
underworld or the 'other half (Crowley, 1988: 47). This mode of representation
facilitated surveillance and governmentability (Bhabha, 1994) which the
modern-day carnival still grapples with in the negotiation of cultural identities.
The carnival of the post-emancipation period developed into an annual ritual
of social protest and resistance by the African population against the hegemony
of the European elite. Several attempts were made to abolish the carnival, but to
no avail. Between 1878 and 1881 the police applied strong controls on the carnival. Things finally came to a head in 1881 resulting in what is known as the Canboulay riots. In the wake of the riots an accommodation was brokered between
the authorities and the revellers. Subsequent years saw the carnival become more
orderly and sanitized. Masquerading at night, the carrying of lighted torches,
stickfighting, drumming, dancing and congregations of people numbering ten or
more became prohibited under the 1884 Peace Preservation Ordinance
(Rohlehr, 1990: 30). By the 1890s, the carnival was brought under more effective control by the police, the coloured middle class began to participate in the
festival, carnival competitions emerged and the merchants became aware of the
commercial benefits (Pearse, 1988; PowTie, 1988). The festival took on a form
which in many respects is still evident today.
From the early twentieth century the carnival became consolidated. Three
main art-forms emerged to represent the distinctiveness of Trinidad carnival. The
calypso,^ like its predecessor, the African songs, was didactic and satirical, and provided for political and social commentary (Rohlehr, 1990); the steelpan, or pan,^
which emerged after the Second World War, was the successor to the tamboobamboo^ and the African drum that was banned by the colonial authorities in the

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1880s; and the masquerade or mas^*^ acted as a subversive form of street theatre
that challenged the Eui-ocentric sociocultural and political order (Hill, 1972). The
African ethos became central to the carnival and in many ways gave it a new and
innovative spirit:
For if the mimetic tradition came to Trinidad in the form of the Carnivals
of the French plantocracy, the African slaves brought their own traditions
of masquerade and ritual as well but, and this may be more crucial, they
brought the music, the dance and the energy which it has today and which
the Africans, (moreso perhaps than any other segment of the population)
have, since slavery, been sustaining.
(Bishop, 1991: 8)
Early in the twentieth century the carnival became more commercialized,
internationalized and ethnically pluralistic. The late nineteenth-century reformulations of the carnival facilitated the entry of all classes into the festival. For
the working classes the new context required adjustment and innovation. The
African drums were replaced by the tamboo bamboo, the African protest songs
became anglicized, the performances became more commercialized with the
advent of calypso tents, and some of the best exponents of the art-form travelled
and recorded their music abroad. The middle classes' entry into the carnival represented a periodic 'safety-valve' from their isolated position in society, having
rejected the black masses and been rejected by the whites. It also allowed them
a temporary escape from the strictures of middle-class respectability (Burton,
1997); thus the primary value of carnival for them was the 'excitement factor'
(Powrie, 1988). The participation of the white elite remained very much an
'uptown affair' reminiscent of the pre-emancipation carnival. Their repression
of the working-class art-forms continued, as is evident in the Theatre and Dance
Hall Ordinance of 1934, which allowed for police censorship and regulation of
calypsonians. The race, colour and class stratification of the plantation society still
remained evident, as the following quote from Errol Hill illustrates so vividly:
The social classes still kept apart. In the main, one group of revelers playing
traditional masquerades would tramp through the streets chanting choruses to the tambour-bamboo and bottle and spoon orchestras. Another
group of revelers led by their chantwell, and dancing to calypso refrains
': accompanied by string-band music, were drawn from the coloured middleclass. Yet a third group parading in carriages or on a flat-bed decorated
trucks and dressed as pirates, gypsies or harem damsels were from the high
coloured and white merchant and property classes.
: . .

(1972:27)

The carnival began to emerge as a national festival after the Second World

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''

War. The middle classes abandoned their floats for masquerading in the streets
and became the main producers of what became known as 'pretty mas': depoliticized, fantasy-oriented costuming. The working classes transformed the tamboobamboos into the steelpan, the world's most recent percussive instrument. The
rise of the independence and nationalist movements required populist symbols
to mobilize the population. On achieving independence, the Prime Minister, Dr
Eric Williams, seized the initiative and established the Carnival Development
Committee (which became the National Carnival Commission in the late 1980s)
in his first year of government. The Carnival proved to be an ideal political
vehicle for constructing an 'imagined community' (Anderson, 1983) in a diverse
ethnic society:
It was indigenous, it cut across race, class, colour and creed. Importantly,
it was still a festival with which the urban masses strongly identified. More
than any other festival it could express the distinctive Trinidadian style.
(Lee, 1991:429)
The carnival also proved to be something of a safety valve for the political and
econoniic elite, as Lee explains:
The mounting tensions and conflicts created by capitalism, the looming
shadow of racist politics, the bogey-man of economic collapse and a sudden
return to poverty are annually forgotten in the carnival season as the population, anaesthetized by alcohol, drugs, music and wining, fetes its troubles
away.
(ibid.: 430)
Since the 1970s the carnival has been promoted, at home and abroad, either
as the 'Greatest Show on Earth' or a 'Trini Party' and, as such, much emphasis
was placed on multiracial harmony ('national unity'), colourful pageantry ('carnival is colour'), fun-loving lyrics ('soca party') and body-revealing costumes
('bum bum time'). In the wake of the oil boom^^ of the 1970s the carnival festival, like the society, went through a process of rapid commercialization and
modernization through competition and the professionalization of a number of
services (e.g. mas designer, pan arranger, fete promoter). The masquerade bands
became larger, more lavish (pretty mas), expensive and attractive to the middle
class. Traditional costuming such as devils, bats, minstrels, wild indians, sailors,
jab-jabs, jab molasi and burroquites became displaced. Steelbands virtually disappeared from the roadway during the days of carnival because of traffic congestion and the pan's inability to compete with the electronic sound systems of
the DJs and the mobile music bands. As a result, steelbands were essentially
restricted to competition events except zS.f ouvert. Calypso music began moving
away from social commentary related to the tent format towards soca^^ music

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which has simpler lyrics and a heavier baseline and so a greater appeal at the
dance-halls and fetes. The vocalists from the music bands emerged to be the new
star performers.
These transformations are reflected in shifts in gender, ethnicity and class
roles in the festival. For instance, women have become the dominant masqueraders, outnumbering men by a ratio of four or five to one and donning costumes
that emphasize sexuality and facilitate wining.^^ The female masqueraders are
'primarily working women whose lives are bedeviled by the triple roles of
consort, mother and employee' (Bishop, 1991: 11). For them, playing mas has
become 'an enabling process in that it affords them a freedom which real life
denies and consequently makes real life bearable' (Bishop, 1991: 11). This is not a
new phenomenon. From the earhest days of the festival women have been challenging dominant representations of female sexuality, respectability and access
to public spaces (Ahye, 1991). What appears to be new is the increased participation of middle- and upper-class women as well as Indian women. The increased
participation of women in carnival is not only restricted to activities that use the
body as a site of resistance (Allen, 1998). Female participation in pan, traditionally a male domain, has also expanded, particularly among young women who
learn to play the pan at secondary school. This trend relates to the broadening
role of women in the society as well as the transitions that are taking place in
Caribbean masculinities. It also speaks to the dynamic nature of the festival. As
Daniel Miller notes, the festival 'seems to change its implications almost every
decade, facing about to address different aspects of Trinidadian society, now
emancipation, now class, now gender' (1994: 130).
Since the 1990s carnival has become big business, especially in terms of cultural tourism and cultural industry in each of the three key art-forms: mas, pan
and calypso. The Trinidad carnival has grown to be the premier festival in the
region, attracting between thirty and forty thousand visitors for the festival
which generates foreign exchange earnings of over US$30 million. The carnival
o

arts have emerged to be the linchpin of the cultural industry sector which is in
the top ten foreign exchange earners in the economy. The carnivalists benefit
from the transnational economic flows that have been generated by the growth
of the overseas Caribbean carnivals in North America and Europe. The consolidation of the diasporic community has led to the creation of year-round work for
musical artists, masquerade designers and other professionals from Trinidad. The
top calypsonians and music bands now enjoy regular work overseas from April
to October, outside of the traditional carnival season which runs from January
to March each year. In addition, carnivalists have been able to tap into markets
outside of the diasporic communities; for example, Peter Minshall, one of the
top mas designers, contributed to the costuming and choreography for the
opening and closing ceremonies at the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics; and
several calypsonians and steelband ensembles travel throughout the world performing in concerts and festivals (Nurse, 1996, 1997).

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The overseas Caribbean carnivals

It is estimated that there are over sixty overseas Caribbean carnivals in North
America and Europe.*"^ No other carnival can claim to have spawned so many
offspring. These are festivals that are patterned on the Trinidad carnival or
borrow heavily from it in that they incorporate the artistic forms (pan, mas and
calypso) and the Afro-creole celebratory traditions (street parade/theatre) of the
Trinidad carnival. Organized by the diasporic Caribbean communities, the overseas carnivals have come to symbolize the quest for 'psychic, if not physical
return' to an imagined ancestral past (Nettleford, 1988: 197) and the search for
a 'pan-Caribbean unity, a demonstration of the fragile but persistent belief that
"All o' we is one'" (Manning, 1990: 22). In the UK alone, there are as many as
thirty carnivals that fall into this category. They are held during the summer
months rather than in the pre-Lenten or Shrovetide period associated with the
Christian calendar. The main parade routes are generally through the city centre
or within the confines of the immigrant community the former is predominant, especially with the larger carnivals.
Like its parent, the overseas carnival is hybrid in form and influence. The
Jonkonnu masks of Jamaica and the Bahamas, not reflected in the Trinidad carnival, are clearly evident in many of these carnivals, thereby making them panCaribbean in scope. The carnivals have over time incorporated carnivalesque
traditions from other immigrant communities: South Americans (e.g. Brazilians),
Africans and Asians. For instance, it is not uncharacteristic to see Brazilian samba
drummers and dancers parading through the streets of London, Toronto or New
York during Notting Hill, Caribana or Labour Day. The white population in the
respective locations have also become participants, largely as spectators, but
increasingly as festival managers, masqueraders and pan players. Another
development is that the art-forms emd the celebratory traditions of the overseas
Caribbean carnivals have been borrowed, appropriated or integrated into European carnivals to enhance them. Indeed, in some instances, the European carnivals have been totally transformed. Examples of this are the Barrow-in-Furness
and Luton carnivals where there is a long tradition of British carnival. One also
finds a similar trend taking place in carnivals in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden, as they draw inspiration from the success of the
Notting Hill carnival.
o

The first overseas Caribbean carnival began in the 1920s in Harlem, New
York. This festival was later to become the Labour Day celebrations in 1947,
the name that it goes by today (Nunley and Bettleheim, 1988: 166). The major
overseas Caribbean carnivals, for example, Notting Hill and Caribana, became
institutionalized during the mid- to late 1960s at the peak in Caribbean
migration. Nunley and Bettleheim (1988) relate the timing to the rise in
nationalism in the Caribbean with the independence movement of the 1950s
and 1960s. The emergence of the carnivals can also be related to the rise of black

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power consciousness. The growth in the number and size of the overseas
Caribbean carnivals came in two waves. The first involved the consolidation of
the early carnivals during the 1960s until the mid-1970s. From the mid-1970s,
two parallel developments took place: the early carnivals expanded in size by
broadening the appeal of the festival, for example, playing reggae music; and,
through demonstration effect, a number of smaller carnivals emerged as satellites to the larger, older ones.
The carnivals have developed to be a means to promote cultural identity and
sociopolitical integration within the Caribbean diasporic community as well as
with the host society. The diversity in participation suggests that the overseas
Caribbean carnivals have become multicultural or poly-ethnic festivals (Cohen,
1993). For instance, Manning argues that the overseas Caribbean carnivals
provide:
a kind of social therapy that overcomes the separation and isolation imposed
by the diaspora and restores to West Indian immigrants both a sense of
community with each other and sense of connection to the culture that they
claim as a birthright. Politically, however, there is more to these carnivals
than cultural nostalgia. They are also a means through which West Indians
seek and symbolize integration into the metropolitan society, by coming to
terms with the opportunities, as well as the constraints, that surround
them.
(1990: 35)
Manning's explanation of the significance of carnivals to the Caribbean diaspora is supported by the observations of Dabydeen:
For those of us resident in Britain, the Notting^ Hill carnival is our living
link with this ancestral history, our chief means of keeping in touch with
the ghosts o f back home'. In a society which constantly threatens or diminishes black efforts, carnival has become an occasion for self-assertion, for
striking back not with bricks and bottles but by beating pan, by conjuring music from steel, itself a symbol of the way we can convert steely
oppression into celebration. We take over the drab streets and infuse them
with our colours. The memory of the hardship of the cold winter gone,
and that to come, is eclipsed in the heat of music. We regroup our scattered black communities from Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and all
over the kingdom to one spot in London: a coming together of proud celebration.
(1988:40)
Dabydeen goes on to to illustrate that the carnivals are an integrative force in an
otherwise segregated social milieu:

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We also pufl in crowds of native whites, Europeans, Japanese, Arabs, to

witness and participate in our entertainment, bringing alien peoples
together in a swamp or community of festivity. Carnival breaks down barriers of colour, race, nationality, age, gender. And the police who would
normally arrest us for doing those things (making noise, exhibitionism,
drinking, or simply being black) are made to smile and be ever so courteous, giving direction, telling you the time, crossing old people over to the
other side, undertaking all manner of unusual tasks. They fear that bricks
and bottles would fly if they behaved as normal. Thus the sight of smiling
policemen is absorbed into the general masquerade.
(ibid.)
From another perspective it is argued that the overseas carnivals reflect
rather than contest institutionalized social hierarchies. In each of the major overseas carnivals the festival has been represented in ways which fit into the colonialist discourse of race, gender, nation and empire (Bhabha, 1994). The festival has
suffered from racial and sexual stigmas and stereotypes in the media which are
based on constructions of'otherness' and 'blackness'. This situation became
heightened as the carnivals became larger and therefore more threatening to the
prevailing order. In the early phase, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the
carnivals were viewed as exotic, received little if any press and were essentially
tolerated by the state authorities. From the mid-1970s, as attendance at the festivals enlarged, the carnivals became more menacing and policing escalated,
resulting in a backlash from the immigrant Caribbean community. Violent clashes
between the British police and the Notting Hill carnival came to the fore in the
mid- to late 1970s (Gutzmore, 1993). Similar confrontations occurred at the
other major overseas carnivals in New York and Toronto (Buff, 1997; Manning,
1983, 1990). Through a gendered lens 'black' male participants in the festivals
have been portrayed as 'dangerous' and 'criminal'. Female participants, on the
other hand, are viewed as 'erotic' and 'promiscuous' (Hernandez-Ramdwar,
1996).
These modes of representation have come in tandem with heightened surveillance mechanisms from the state and the police. In the case of London, the
expenditure by the state on the policing of the festival is several times larger than
its contribution to the staging of the festival. The politics of cultural representation has negatively affected the viability of the overseas carnivals. The adverse
publicity and racialized stigmas of violence, crime and disorder has allowed for
the blockage of investments from the public and private sectors in spite of the
fact that the carnivals have proved to be violence-free relative to other large
public events or festivals. In the case of the UK, for instance, official figures show
that Notting Hill, which attracts two miUion people, has fewer reported incidents of crime than the Glastonbury rock festival which attracts 60,000 people. ^^
Yet the general perception is that Notting Hill is more violence-prone.

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Under increased surveillance the carnivals became more contained and controlled during the 1980s. The perspective of governments, business leaders and
the media began changing when it was recognized that the carnivals were major
tourist attractions and generated significant sums in visitor expenditures. For
example, the publication of a 1990 visitor survey of Caribana, which showed that
the festival generated Cnd$96 million from 500,000 attendees (Decima, 1991),
resulted in the Provincial Minister of Tourism and Recreation visiting Trinidad
in 1995 to see how the parent festival operated. Provincial funding for the festival increased accordingly. In 1995, for the first time, London's Notting Hill carnival was sponsored by a large multinational corporation. The Coca-Cola
company, under its product Lilt, a 'tropical' beverage, paid the organizers
150,000 for the festival to be called the 'Lilt Notting Hill Carnival' and for
exclusive rights to advertise along the masquerade route and to sell its soft
drinks. That same year the BBC produced and televised a programme on the
thirty-year history of the Notting Hill carnival. By the mid1990s, as one Canadian analyst puts it, the carnivals were reduced to a few journalistic essentials:
'the policing and control of the crowd, the potential for violence, the weather,
island images, the size of the crowd, the city economy and, most recently, the
great potential benefit for the provincial tourist industry' (Gallaugher, 1995).
These developments created concern among some analysts. For example, Amkpa
argues that:
strategies for incorporating and neutralizing the political efficacies of carnivals by black communities are already at work. Transnational corporations are beginning to sponsor some of the festivals and are contributing to
creating a mass commercialized audience under the guise of bogus multiculturalisms.
(1993:6)
Another analyst saw the increasing role of the state in these terms:
The funding bodies appear to treat it as a social policy as part of the race
relations syndrome: a neutralised form of exotica to entertain the tourists,
providing images of Black women dancing with policemen, or failing this,
footage for the media to construct distortions and mis(sed)representations.
Moreover, this view also sees that, if not for the problems it causes the
police, courts, local authorities, and auditors. Carnival could be another
enterprising venture.
(McMillan, 1990: 13-14)
In this respect one can argue that the sociopolitical and cultural conflicts, based
on race, class, gender, ethnicity, nation and empire that are embedded in the
Trinidad carnival were transplanted to the metropolitan context. In many ways

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the overseas carnivals, like the Trinidad parent, have become trapped between
the negative imagery of stigmas and stereotypes, the co-optive strategies of capitalist and state organizations and the desires of the carnivalists for official funding
and validation.
For the host societies in North America and Europe, the overseas Caribbean
carnivals also allowed for an open and public display of the socioeconomic and
politico-cultural tensions that exist between the organs of oppression (i.e. the
state, poHce, media, church, school) and the Caribbean population. The carnivalesque esthetic and politics confronted the hegemonic discourse and modes of
representation as they relate to stereotypes dealing with race, sexual behaviour
and criminal activity. At one level it has forced a multiculturalism on to the
agenda. In other ways, it illustrates how little things have changed in terms of the
hegemonic coloniahst discourse and imperialist structures.
There is some debate as to whether the overseas carnivals have lost their
revolutionary potential, whether they have been co-opted and incorporated into
the capitalist production system. The issue, however, is that the host societies
have not remained lantouched by the carnivals. They have forced a Caribbean
consciousness on their host societies. The Caribbean carnivals have not only
grown in size but they have also 'colonized* other carnivals, especially in Europe.
This has occurred largely because the Trinidad-inspired carnivals have a competitive advantage in the kinetic movement of the costumes and the vibrancy of
the music and dancing. Thus, 'once the liberating forces of mas are felt by citizens of these cities, they may learn to play mas as well' (Nunley and Bcttleheim,
1988: 181). They have reintroduced magic, fantasy and wonderment into the
long ossified carnivals of Europe and its diaspora (North America). Erom this
perspective one can argue that the overseas Caribbean carnivals are a powerful
cultural force which has expanded the geoeconomic and geopolitical space for
Caribbean people, both at home and abroad. Awam Amkpa, in commenting on
the Caribbean carnivals in the UK, for instance, notes that:
As victims of enforced hybridity due to displacements and marginalizations
experienced in the histories of the islands, the carnival performances recall
the African and the Asian origins of communities, and these do not only
hybridize the identities of people they share spaces with, but also the dominant culture to whose centre they have migrated.
(1993:6)
It is also the case that the Caribbean carnivals, because they are forged from
the struggles against slavery, abhor closure and are inherently democratic and
participatory. All are welcome once they accept that 'carnival suspends hierarchical distinctions, barriers, norms, and prohibitions, installing instead a qualitatively different kind of communication based on "free and familiar contact"'
(Shohat and Stam, 1994: 306). As Lawlor puts it, 'carnival has no bouncers at

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the door, no guards at the gate: it lets everyone and everything in' (Lawlor,
1993: 3).
One of the negative consequences of this is that the carnivals have the characteristics of free or collective goods and thus allow for free riding. At most of the
carnivals the people who make money contribute Httle if any financial resource
in terms of grants or business sponsorship (e.g. hotels, restaurants, bars, airlines,
ground transportation, state authorities) while the organizers of the festival
generally run on meagre financial resources. As a result, the Caribbean carnivals
exhibit something of a contradiction: the carnivals generate large sums of money
but the organizing units retain very little of the profits. This also occurs because
the carnival organizers have not adopted enough of an entrepreneurial approach
to the festival. For this reason most of the carnivals find themselves in a position
of resource dependency upon state and city authorities or corporate entities. The
contributions are then generally viewed as subsidies rather than investments in
the public art process or festival tourism. When the carnivals are funded the
amounts granted are generally small relative to the mainstream arts and to the
economic impact that the festival makes.
From a political economy perspective the overseas carnivals are at a historical turning point. In the last decade they have grown in size and popularity
beyond anyone's wildest dreams. They have outgrown the managerial and entrepreneurial capabilities of the festival organizers. And they have become an indispensable part of the respective cities' tourism and festival calendar. This scenario
establishes an interesting context for the future of the overseas carnivals. In the
current recession-plagued period where most developed country state agencies
find themselves under severe financial constraints, there is a strong temptation
to cut funds to the arts, especially 'so-called' multicultural or ethnic art. The shift
in the political spectrum to the right of centre has also made for a less supportive environment. These trends signal that the actors involved in putting on the
carnivals must begin to develop a strategy to enhance their income-earning
prospects independent of public support that is philanthropic in nature or corporate investment that are based on crass commercialism. Failure in this regard
is likely to result in the carnivals eventually being disbanded or taken over by
state agencies or corporate entities.
These concerns raises the issue of political consciousness and praxis within
the Caribbean community. In terms of the transnational cultural politics of carnival, the Caribbean diaspora is not an entirely homogeneous group. There are
a number of schisms that impact on the politics of the overseas carnivals.
Jamaicans outnumber other islanders (e.g. Trinidadians) by a significant ratio,
notably in the UK, and consequently there has been a strong contest between
both groups over what should be in the carnival: reggae versus calypso; static
sound systems versus mobile sound trucks. In part, the position of Jamaicans
can be explained by the strength of their popular culture in the metropolitan
context. Another major conflict has been between Afro Caribbean and

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Indo-Caribbean groups, especially in Toronto, where there is a sizeable Indian

population from Guyana and Trinidad. Much heated debate has emerged as to
whether the festival should be portrayed as a 'Caribbean' festival rather than a
'black' or Afro-Caribbean event. The former being viewed as more inclusive
was favoured by the Indo Caribbean community. This contrasts with the situation in the UK, where the carnival has shifted from a 'Caribbean thing' to being
a 'black British' and even a national festival. The success of the carnivals has
encouraged the jockeying for positions of power and ownership within the festival. In many respects these contestations mirror the inherent fragmentation of
a multi-ethnic community and the process of continuous negotiation of identity that follows accordingly.
In sum, it is evident that, for the Caribbean diaspora, carnival has emerged
as a basis for asserting a pan-Caribbean cultural identity and as a mode of resistance in an otherwise alienating environnient. The carnivals have also allowed for
integration as well as contestation with the dominant white population in
addition to the other imm^igrant communities within the host societies. In
tandem, the carnivals have had to confront colonialist and imperialist discourses
and practices reminiscent of the threats faced by the parent carnival in the nineteenth century. Financial challenges along with schisms based on race, ethnicity,
gender and nationality have factored in the Caribbean community's ability to
maximize on the geopolitical, economic and cultural space that the festival has
created. These conclusions reinforce the view that carnivals, like other popular
culture forms, involve the aestheticization of politics and are keenly contested by
different interest groups and social forces (Cohen, 1993), and thus defy simplistic generalizations which view transgression and co-optation in oppositional
terms.

Trinidad carnival, globalization and popular culture

Caribbean culture and society occupies a distinctive position in modern world
history. It is the first area of the non-European world to be fully incorporated
into the service of global capitalist development through export-oriented production systems and import-dependent consumption structures and styles. In
this vein, it is argued that the region has the most penetrated and extroverted
society and economy, and has been grappling with the cultural challenges of
globahzation and modernity for some five hundred years.
.;
The region's historical development has been shaped by the virtual extermination of the indigenous population, the domination of a transplanted European
elite, the enslavement of Africans, the indentureship of Asians and the integration
of other groups from the Middle East, The attendant processes of colonization
and imperialism created in its wake a new society, a modern culture, one
grounded in the logic of capitalist accumulation, social stratification and cultural

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hybridization all informed by racial, gender, ethnic and status-based oppression (Mintz, 1993).
In the context of these structural rigidities the region has developed a
capacity to engage globalization and modernity creatively and politically by
drawing upon its popular cultures as a source of cultural identity while participating in the dominant Europeanized culture. Caribbean popular culture forms
have been an important mechanism for political resistance and social protest
against European cultural hegemony by marginalized groups, especially the
African diasporic populations throughout the region. Carnival has been an arena
for the public display, negotiation and contestation of the varied social tensions
and struggles of the society. Carnival is one of the most accurate representations
of a society, as it allows for the unmasking of hidden transcripts and agendas
(Scott, 1990). For instance, Stuart Hall argues that popular culture:
is an arena that is profoundly mythic. It is a theater of popular desires, a
theater of popular fantasies. It is where we discover and play with the
identifications of ourselves, where we are imagined, where we are represented, not only to the audiences out there who do not get the message,
but to ourselves for the first time.
(1992:32)
Hall also reminds us that popular culture operates in a contradictory space
because 'it is rooted in popular experience and available for expropriation at one
and the same time' (ibid,: 26). As a result there tends to be a fine line between
popular cultural practice and hegemonic culture in terms of resistance and
incorporation:
popular culture has historically become the dominant form of global
culture, so it is at the same time the scene, par excellence, of commodification, of the industries where culture enters directly into the circuits of a
dominant technology the circuits of power and capital.
But it can never be simplified or explained in terms of the simple binary
oppositions that are still habitually used to map it out: high and low; resistance versus incorporation; authentic versus inauthentic; experiential
versus formal; opposition versus homogenization.

(ibid.)
Hall therefore encourages us to move away from the essentializing of difference through the construction of simple binary oppositions to focus on cultural
positionality where the emphasis is on appreciating the 'dialogic strategies and
hybrid forms essential to the diaspora aesthetic' (1992: 29). This approach to
understanding the politics and poetics of popular culture is premised on the
view that 'identity is not singular or monolithic and is instead "multiple,

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shifting, and often self-contradictory identity . . . made up of heterogeneous

and heteronomous representations of gender, race, and class"* (Tucker, 1990:
7). Therefore, in Carihbean culture one can say clearly that there are no pure
forms and that everything is hybridized or the result of the confluence of several
cultural traditions. The dynamics of this experience on the African diaspora has
been described as one of'double consciousness' by Paul Gilroy (1993). The
negotiation of cultural identity by Caribbean people takes on an additional twist
with the emergence of a diaspora in North America and Europe after the
Second World War, what Stuart Hall (1991) refers to as the 'twice diasporized'
peoples.
The above approach appears to have some relevance for interpreting the
sociocultural and political significance of Caribbean carnivals and other modes of
popular culture. For instance, the debate between resistance and incorporation is
clearly evident in discussions about Caribbean popular culture given the long
history of participation in the global circuits of capitalist industry. Caribbean
music has been commercialized and internationalized since the turn of the
century when recording companies like Columbia and Victor recorded calypsos
in Trinidad (Hill, 1993; Rohlehr, 1990). In recent decades reggae has grown to
become the dominant Third World art-form in the global circuit. It is therefore
argued that reggae has moved from being a local art-form to become a global
commoditv. It is also argued that this transition did not occur without some
amount of corporate manipulation and textual reconfiguration to meet perceived
Western market considerations. For example, Carolyn Cooper, in commenting
on the internationalization of reggae music, notes that 'raw talent would not have
been enough without the operations of international capital* (1993: 5). Cushman
also argues that 'in its diffusion, reggae music was transformed from a form of
cultural criticism into a cultural commodity' (1991: 1819).
The carnival industry seems poised to experience some of these contestations as it becomes further commodified. It is also evident that the globalization
of carnival has empowered Caribbean people at home and in the diaspora through
an expansion of geopolitical, economic and cultural space. The rapid growth of
attendance and economic activity at Caribbean carnivals in North America and
Britain illustrates the underexplored political and economic potential of
Caribbean popular culture (Nurse, 1996, 1997). The question that emerges,
therefore, is what is the transformational potential of the various modes of
Caribbean popular culture in terms of deepening the process of cultural confidence, building a sustainable and cohesive Caribbean identity, and facilitating a
reorientation of the dominant development paradigm such that greater attention
would be given to indigenous resources and capabiHties? These concerns are
echoed by Nettleford:
But to the ordinary people, festival arts are more than minstrelsy; they
affirm the use of the mask, literally and metaphorically, in coming to terms

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or coping with an environment that has yet to work in their interest, a

society that is yet to be mastered and controlled by them, despite the
coming of Independence.
. ,
. , , , . , . .. , ,
(1988: 194)

Trinidad carnival and globalization theory

The foregoing analysis of the historical and global significance of Trinidad carnival presents some challenges to globalization theory. It suggests that the
globalization of Trinidad carnival needs to be viewed as a dual process: the first
relates to the localization ofglobal influences and the second involves the globalization ojlocal impulses. Drawing from the case of Trinidad carnival one can therefore argue that the formation of carnival in Trinidad is based upon the
localization of global influences. Tbe Trinidad carnival is the historical outcome
of the hybridization of multiple ethnicities and cultures brought together under
the rubric of colonial and capitalist expansion. New identities are forged and
negotiated in the process. On the other hand, the exportation of carnival to
overseas diasporic communities refers to the globalization of the local. The
overseas Caribbean carnivals have grown in scale and scope beyond the
confines of the immigrant population to embrace, if not 'colonize', the wider
community in the respective host societies. This is what is referred to as
'globalization in reverse'. In sum, the overseas carnivals have become a basis
for pan-Caribbean identity, a mechanism for social integration into metropolitan society and a ritual act of transnational, transcultural, transgressive politics.
Another observation is that historically, core societies are the ones most
involved in the globalization of their local culture. For example, in most developed economies cultural industry exports are seen as part of foreign economic
policy. They recognize that perpetuating or transplanting one's culture is a critical factor in influencing international public opinion, attitude and value judgement. Peripheral societies are those that are more subject to importing cultural
influences as opposed to exporting them. It is also the case that when peripheral societies export their culture they often lack the organizational capability
and the political and economic leverage to control or maximize the commercial returns. This is in marked contrast to the capabilities of core societies where
there is not only an ability to maximize on exports but also to co-opt imported
cultures. What it comes down to is who is globalizing whom. In this business
o

there are *globalizers' and 'globalizees', those who are the producers and those
who arc just consumers of global culture. In this regard, it is far too premature
to argue, as Appadurai (1994) has suggested, that centre-periphery theories
lack explanatory capability when it corhes to transformations in the global cultural economy.

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From this perspective one can argue that Trinidad, like other peripheral countries, has been on the receiving end of globalization except in the case of its carnival. This is to say that in an evaluation of globalization an appreciation for the
resultant political hierarchies and asymmetries must be evident and caution should
be employed so as not to construct new mythologies of change that depoliticize
the systemic properties of the capitalist world system (Wallerstein, 1983). In this
regard, it is critical that the relevant historical period is conceptualized. The case
of the Trinidad carnival suggests that the growth of historical capitalism in the past
five hundred years is pivotal to understanding the causal relations and social forces
tbat shaped and have evolved from the festival, both locally and globally, both in
the recent past and the longue duree.
Another critical methodological issue is the conceptuaHzation of space.
Because of the heavy reliance on statecentric and nationalist analyses in the social
sciences a wide array of activities and structures have escaped mainstream
thought. The argument here is that the world has not changed as much as some
make out, rather, it is that our awareness of change has been sharpened by the
inadequacy of conventional thought. For example, one of the major contributions
of postcolonial theory has been to introduce diaspora as a unit of analysis. This
approach is particularly applicable to the case of Trinidad carnival, given the dual
processes of globalization identified. The Trinidad carnival and its overseas offspring fits into Gilroy's concept of a Black Atlantic (1993) where 'double consciousness' and transnationalism are focal processes in the Caribbean's
experience with globalization.
The study of the Trinidad carnival and its overseas offspring illustrates
that globalization presents opportunities for some reversal in hegemonic
trends. However, the case study shows that globalization is not a benign process
and that there are limited possibilities for transformation, given the strictures
and rigidities in the global political economy. The limitations are systemic in
nature in that they relate to large-scale, long-term processes such as colonialist discourse (Bhabha, 1994) and imperialism (Addo, 1986). In peripheral
societies the political and economic elite are generally insecure and view the
social protest in popular culture with much trepidation. They are therefore
loath to acknowledge, far more invest in, the globalizing potential of the local
popular culture. They are more likely to denigrate and marginalize it, and
failing that, to co-opt it. Consequently, the tendency is for local capabilities not
to be fully maximized at home. This suggests that the future contribution of
Trinidad carnival to global culture may begin to move outside the control of
the parent carnival and the home territory if a localized global strategy is not
developed.
Historically, the carnivalesque spirit of festivity, laughter and irreverence
feeds off the enduring celebration of birth, death and renewal and the eternal
search for freedom from the strictures of official culture (Bakhtin, 1984). From
this perspective the Trinidad carnival confronts and unmasks sociohierarchical

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inequalities and hegemonic discourses at home and in the diaspora. Aesthetic and
symbolic rituals operate as the basis for critiquing the unequal distribution of
power and resources and a mode of resistance to colonialist and neocolonialist
cultural representations and signifying practices. The Trinidad carnival and its
overseas offspring is a popular globalized celebration of hybridity and cultural
identity, a contested space and practice, a ritual of resistance which facilitates the
centring of the periphery.

Notes
1

Trinidad is the birthplace of the carnival. It is the larger and most populous
island of the twin island state of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The
island of Tobago was joined to Trinidad in 1888 by the British to form one
political and administrative unit. The total population of the twin island state
is approximately 1.3 million, with an ethnic configuration of African (39.59
per cent), Indian (40.27 per cent). Mixed (18.45 per cent), and Europeans,
Chinese, Syrian, Lebanese, and assorted others accounting for less than (2.00
per cent).
Estimates of attendance and visitor expenditures in the three largest overseas
Caribbean carnivals are as follows: Caribana in Toronto is estimated to attract
1 million visitors and generates Cnd$240 million; Labour Day in New York
attracts 2 million and generates US$75 million; and Notting Hill in London
attracts 2 nulUon over two days and generates between 20 and 30 million
(Nurse, 1997).
Louise Bennett's poem entitled 'Colonisation in Reverse' chronicles the wave
of Jamaican and Caribbean migration to England in the 1960s. See Markham,
1989: 62-3.
Hall argues that 'cultural hegemony is never about pure victory or pure domination (that's not what the term means) it is never a zero-sum cultural game:
it is always about shifting the balance of power in the relations of culture: it is
always about changing dispositions and the configurations of cultural power,
not getting out of it* (1992: 24).
J'ourvert or Jour Ouvert is the French patois term for 'the day opens'. It is the
opening activity which starts the Trinidad carnival at 2 a.m. on Carnival
Monday morning.
Canboulaj or Cannes hrulee refers to the re-enactment of what took place when
there was a cane fire in the sugar estates. The slaves were rounded up including those from adjoining estates and set to work containing the fire, harvesting and processing the cane immediately.
There is some debate as to the origins of the term, but it emerged to be an
identifiable musical genre towards the end of the nineteenth century. Calypso
represents a mixture of several folk-songs in the African tradition. Its function
is to praise or deride, to comment and relate.

686

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11
12
13
14

STUDIES

The steelpan or pan is a percussive instrument manufactured from steel drums

originally used to contain oil, which is the mainstay of the Trinidad economy.
The drums are cut to different lengths, tempered and tuned to produce instruments of different tonal ranges. A musical ensemble of steelpans is referred to
as a 'steelband'.
These are bamboo tubes of different lengths held in the hands and thumped
on the ground to create a percussive rhythm. The tamboo-bamboo was a major
source of music at the carnival in the latter part of the nineteenth century after
drumming was outlawed by the colonial state.
The term 'mas' is a contraction of masquerade. Associated terms are 'play
mas - to join a mas band; 'mas camp' headquarters of mas bands where costumes are made; 'pretty mas' a pretty costume worn during the daytime;
'old mas' j'ourvert style of mas that emphasizes the dark side of carnival, as
distinct from pretty mas.
Trinidad is a petroleum-based economy. This sector is the principal contributor to GDP, export earnings and government revenues.
Soca is a relatively new form of calypso that appeared in the 1970s. It is a
combination of American soul music and calypso.
The term wining refers to dancing where revellers gyrate their waists back and
forth and round and round.
The following is a list of the cities where Caribbean carnivals are to be found.
o

15

Audience figures are given where known. In the UK (31): Barrow-in-Furness,

Bedford (20,000), Birmingham (600,000), Bradford, Bristol (40,000),
Coventry, Derby, Dover, Hereford, High Wycombe (30,000), Huddersfield,
Leeds (300,000), Leicester (100,000), Liverpool, Luton (100,000), Manchester (30,000), Norwich, Nottingham, Notting Hill, London (2 million),
Oxford (20,000), Plymouth, Preston, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton,
Stafford, Swindon, Wolverhampton, Waltham Forest, London, Woking.
In Europe (3): Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Nice, France; Stockholm,
Sweden.
In Canada (7): Calgary, Edmonton; Montreal, Ottawa; Toronto (1 million),
Winnipeg, Vancouver.
In the USA (21): Atlanta, Baltimore; Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts;
Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Hartford, Houston, Jacksonville, Miami, New York
(2 million), Oakland, Orlando, Philadelphia, Rochester, San Francisco, Tallahassee, Washington DC, Wcstchesten
In 1992 the Glastonbury rock festival had 636 reported crimes compared to the
80 reported for Notting Hill (So Yuh Going to Carnival January 1995, 9: 88-9).

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