Since 1955, students from Trinidad and Tobago and other Eastern Caribbean countries at The University of the West Indies, Mona campus would organize annual carnival activities to deal with being away from home and their own carnival celebrations. Beyond the boundaries of the Mona campus, in 1976, the Orange Carnival was initiated by a small group of privileged Jamaicans who had attended the carnival in Trinidad (Brown, 2005). Jamaican musician Byron Lee was at the forefront of these activities, which eventually lead to the formation of Jamaica Carnival in 1990. At this point, carnival included fetes or soca-themed parties, calypso and steelband shows, large costume portrayals, and a road march. Unlike other Caribbean countries, carnival was not a part of the national cultural landscape in Jamaica.
By 2000, two main organizing forces of carnival co-existed- Byron Lee’s Jamaica Carnival, that attempted to include participants from all socio-economic brackets- and the groups that formed Bacchanal Jamaica who offered a more elite experience. Both entities were self-financing and depended on corporate sponsorship with little or no support from the government. Failing health eventually forced Byron Lee to opt out of the carnival towards the mid-2000s; he subsequently died in 2008. Since then, carnival has been characterized by fetes and the road march, attracting mainly a small group of participants from the middle and upper classes in Kingston. And until 2016, Bacchanal Jamaica dominated these activities.
By 2017, the entrance of Xaymaca, and Xodus expanded the carnival scene with their own costumed bands and events. Interestingly, these bands were aligned to conglomerates Tribe and Yuma from Trinidad and Tobago. In addition, new promoters added fetes to the carnival outside of Bacchanal and its sub groups. There was also the entrance of franchise fetes, which are fetes rooted in Trinidad and replicated in other carnivals. Carnival, therefore, has been depending more and more on the Trinidad-style model.
The management of the festival also changed at this time. No longer was it an event coordinated by a single private entity, but it now had new promoters and the support of the government, specifically the Entertainment branch of the Ministry of Culture, along with the Ministry of Tourism, the Tourism Enhancement Fund, the Jamaica Tourist Board, and the Tourism Linkages Network. Under the brand Carnival in Jamaica, the mandate for the festival became making it a part of the country’s cultural tourism offerings while creating business opportunities for various sectors.
Today, carnival in Jamaica remains an elite activity enjoyed by a small group of Jamaicans, but has been reconfigured to attract tourists. It still, however, is an imported cultural product. This economic shift is what Dylan Kerrigan attributed to “Euro-American capitalism- profit, mass production, luxury, sex appeal and service oriented “(2016, p. 10).
Yet, race and class issues, that tend to define the cultural context of Caribbean carnivals, are present. In this regard, Belinda Edmondson (1999) posited the carnival did not represent a dominant Black Jamaica, but a more ethnically diverse population. This cultural complexity is framed by Jamaica’s history of slavery and colonization resulting in socio-ethnic discords that influence everyday practices. These discords along with the high cost of participation and its non-indigenous nature ensure carnival is an uptown event.
Consequently, the norms developed about carnival tend to suit the values of Jamaica’s uptown classes. Notions like being well behaved, educated, attractive, slim, monogamous and other ideas of respectability ultimately produce opposing cultural narratives such as the artificial rivalry created with dancehall. These ideas exist in the recent carnival, but are being played down as carnival extends its boundaries to include new participants.
According to the Jamaica Tourism Board, in 2018, visitor arrival for carnival increased by 20% with the majority of visitors coming from New York and Florida, the main source of Jamaicans and other Caribbean nationals in the diaspora. These visitors typically include carnival chasers. Carnival chasers fall mostly within the 25-35 age group, and they travel from carnival to carnival throughout the year at various destinations. The chasers’ economic privilege also makes them an ideal consumer for Jamaica’s carnival-The Jamaica Tourism Board reported visitors spent about US$236 per day for an average of 5 days in 2018.
Carnival has always been a space for the marginalized and in this case, the Diaspora native, who is an outsider in their foreign residence, finds fun and escape in carnival at home. Yet, even with the atmosphere of revelry and inclusion, carnival serves to marginalize some groups of Jamaicans.
Carnival chasers can also be from other Caribbean countries as there is always a need to extend the feeling of liberation and revelry beyond their own festivals. The carnival in Jamaica resembles some aspects of the Trinidad Carnival’s experience, particularly the party and pretty mas. It is also considered more “affordable”, which makes it attractive to the Caribbean citizen. Similar to the carnival on the UWI campus, it provides a sense of home to regional participants and shows that carnival can be enjoyed beyond in the geographic space of Trinidad.
Even with the complexities and paradoxes attached to carnival in the land of reggae and dancehall, it works to bring Caribbean citizens together as demonstrated by the celebrations on the UWI Mona campus or on the streets of New Kingston, or to summarize Benitez-Rojo: it is an attempt to unify that which cannot be unified.
To use Kerrigan’s metaphor, the carnival in Jamaica has elements of the gated community. It is a cultural import that targets the brown and well off Jamaican, whether actual or aspirational, because of the need to keep the festival exclusive or uptown. More recently, with the support of the government and other business entities, it is also a cultural product being used to boost Jamaica’s tourism offerings and party culture. In this regard, it unifies a carnival loving community, and at the same time, it serves to exclude other social groups who struggle to be recognized on the national cultural landscape.
Featured Image: Lehwego, 2019
Paper presented as part of a roundtable titled “The Art of the Festival: Carnival Poetics, Policy, Political economy,a Pedagogy Inter/play” in October, 2019
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