Carnival in Grenada is one of the biggest celebrations of the entire year, and a movable feast.
It takes place on the second weekend of August, with the first weekend reserved for the Carriacou Regatta festival. It is next to impossible to find a flight here at that time, unless you have booked at least 6 months in advance. This is because there are so many Grenadians, visitors and extended family members returning just for this big event.

However, don’t be mistaken and think that this celebration only starts in the beginning of August. No! In late May and early June, you can hear the steel bands practicing and trying out the latest tunes in preparation for the big event.
Go to any party before the main event and you can rest assured that you will be hearing the latest Soca and Calypso, priming everyone for the celebrations to come.

For those who would like to take part in the bands, jumping up to the music and parading through the streets, ‘Mas’ bands start sending out posters and flyers telling everyone where they can go to sign up to join a band and purchase a costume, as well as get the schedules for the parades.

Visiting for the Carnival for the first time? Be warned! You may lose all inhibitions and find yourself wanting to come back every year for the celebration!
Guaranteed, it is a celebration you will NEVER forget….just make sure to take lots of photos.

What to expect? Lots of loud music, Soca, Calypso, people having fun and making noise. Some wonderful, intricate, imaginative, costumes. Pan (that’s ‘steel band’ to outsiders.) Shortknees (eh?) Carib (that’s out local beer), closely followed by Clarke’s Court and Rivers (those are our killer rums.)
Calypso competitions. A spectacle for the eye and the ear. And an extraordinary beginning called ‘jab-jab.’ (From ‘diablesse’= devil.) (At ‘jour ouvert’, which is pronounced ‘Juvé’)

The Carnival Queen show is held on the Thursday preceding the main events. This is just a warm up for most Grenadians, as it sets the ‘mood’ for the Carnival.
Contestants for the pagent would have been in the newspapers and on billboards around the island, and there is a good turn out at this event as Grenadians support the girls they favour.
You can usually tell who is going to win – the one with the loudest supporters…..

For music lovers, ‘Panorama’ is a must. The biggest ‘n best steel bands of the Island battle it out, each playing a piece written especially for the occasion – not a tired rehash of ‘tunes for tourists.’ Panorama will start later than advertised and end well after midnight – but this and the tedious gaps between performances are worth enduring for the sheer quality of the music. The costumes, the discipline, the range are testimony to the weeks (or months) of practice and rehearsal. Somehow, it’s all ingrained – there is no music to read. It’s a shame that only one band can win, and a travesty that there is only one public performance, hidden away on this little island. If anything deserves a wider audience, it’s good pan music.

In the not-so-early hours of Carnival Monday, say at three or four in the morning, something rumbles. In every neighbourhood, people are congealing under paint. Some are yellow, some silver, some red, blue, green etc. (The many forms of the devil.) And some are black – a healthy mix of engine oil and charcoal. They don’t wear a lot else: the odd wig, maybe, or a nice set of horns…. because there’s a limit to the amount of clothes you want to paint.

The groups, each united by its colour, set off into town. Some are on trucks, wrapped around pandemic-strength loudspeakers the size of portaloos. (If they all faced the same direction, the decibels would be enough to propel the trucks). Most are on foot. The black ones will be surging more than a bit, and may be linked to one another by chains. They hit (slosh?) town a little after daybreak. The oil and paint are transferred to the road surface – the nearest we get to ice. Astonishingly, not much will be transferred to you, the onlooker. As the procession goes on, the colours blend, and revellers merge colours by body contact, a tide of individual and collective frescoes.

Interspersed with this, there is a sort of pageant of tableaux, persons representing some feature of life during the previous year, mainly the shortcomings of politicians. In case you miss the point, each participant brandishes a piece of handwritten cardboard with a caption, like as not wrapped up in an awful pun.

That afternoon sees a procession of an utterly different kind – the costumed ‘pretty mas’. The parade is to (and later, at) the National Stadium, where the ‘bands’ are presented: groups around a theme like ‘The Sea’, or Las Vegas’, each theme represented by groups of revellers in identical costumes (e.g. ‘The Ships in the Sea’; ‘The Fish in the Sea’; and – sign of the times - also ‘Pollution’.) This is repeated on the Tuesday afternoon, when the same bands march (well, shuffle) into town, stopping to wave their pennants and banners at the judging points. A real spectacle of colour and ingenuity.

Bands in both ‘jab-jab’ and the costumed parade will be interspersed with trucks playing the winning ‘road march’ songs of the year. It is just possible that innuendo will outweigh subtlety. (Try making ‘Biting Insects’ sound innocent when slurred at speed. Clue – you don’t pronounce the –t- near the end of words.) And I haven’t warned you about ‘wining’. (The ‘d’ is silent – I think.) Think ‘explicit’, and you’re almost there.

Not enough for one day? Then try Monday Night Mas. Bands sponsored by various businesses wear T-shirts proclaiming their loyalty, and carry something that glows or shines. Sandwiched between the loudspeaker trucks, they shuffle into town in the dark. If you go along, take earplugs. Starting time notionally (and noisily) around 7 p.m.

Come Tuesday evening (noone wakes up till late Tuesday morning, after the Monday Night Mas ), there is the final parade of the bands through the streets for everyone to enjoy. The celebrants parade in full costume, and it is the perfect time to catch them on camera in living vibrant colour. This is followed by the final ‘jump up’ in the center of town, which usually goes until midnight.

Carnival is a riot of colour, exuberance, and culture. If you just want to be an observer, that’s fine. Participation is not mandatory, and you can just watch from the sidelines if you want. Plenty do. But the enthusiasm is SO infectious. Last year, I was out with a German film team. The cameraman had filmed Carnival in three much larger countries with better known Carnivals. “For enthusiasm, colour, inventiveness and safety”, he said, “Grenada wins five–nil”

Take local advice about starting times and venues. Things change….

Oh yes, the shortknees. Imagine Morris dancers in brightly-coloured loose costumes with little mirrors, who wear fencing masks and bells, stomping and tinkling around singly or in herds, chanting about the misdoings of the naughty, and puffing powder at you or at each other. You get the general idea.
(Sort of investigative journalism on the hoof. Somebody has to do it ;-)

Thought that everyone might be interested in where they can sign up for the ‘Mas’ bands, so have included a few links below:
Summer Crew Commancheros For more details & events of Grenada Carnival check out Spicemasgrenada.com/

Carnival Queen Show: August 5th, 2010 - National Stadium
Soca Monarch: August 6th, 2010 - Queens Park National Stadium.
J'Ouvert: August 8th, 2010 - Streets of St. George's.
Pageant Mas: August 9th, 2010 - Streets of St. George's.
Monday Night Mas: August 9th, 2010 - Streets of St. George's.
Parade of the Bands: August 10th, 2010 - Streets of St. George's

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