Carnaval: The Cynical, The Crusty, The Curious

After a few naps and a nice, brutal sugar detox, I am proud to report that I have survived my first ever Caribbean Carnival season, unscathed enough to tell the tale.

If you have experienced Carnival where you live, or maybe have just watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame, you probably know that the Mardi Gras season is traditionally a time to not only cut loose, but to reverse social hierarchies, mock those in power, and defy cultural taboos. I looked forward to witnessing the myriad of ways Martinicans would protest their conditions, which, in case you are a new reader, I complain about a lot.

This year's biggest theme, both in songs at private soirées and on bradjacks, junker cars with special permits to be painted for parades, was the TCSP, the long-promised but still not existent bus line. (Seriously, the roads and bus stops are built, they just can't settle on financial questions long enough to actually get the thing going.)

Point of Obama reference unclear

Paper-maché minister who won't
fund bus line completion

The political is always my favorite.

A Purge-themed bradjack, featured a castrated Trump.

However, plenty of appearances were simply dedicated to doing what is normally taboo, be it dressing sluttily, in the case of almost everyone of any age there, or doing drag, was were the majority of the men there each day (not just Monday, Mariage burlesque).

While I absolutely encourage defying social standards and questioning oppressive social constraints, by all means festively, I will say that some of the demonstrations were a little lost on me. I get it, dressing up skinny women like the fake "traditional" creole woman on the label of the rum brand who sponsored your float is a part of the deal, and maybe even dancing in skirts made of McDonald's cups, if that's who sponsored you. But some of it was just ... gross. If this were a society where men had to walk about in suits all day, I'd get why men would want to come to Carnival half-naked with nasty, sexual jokes written on their bodies. But they don't. They walk around half naked here all the time, sexual harassing women every day of the year, then show up at Carnival to make us look at junk we don't want to see. If this was a Puritanical society that repressed all sex, I'd get wanting to be gaudy with representations of it. Instead, the media is drenched in hyper-sexualized images of women, and people just painted more of them on their bradjacks. And made a Peppa Pig-themed bradjack with a pig eating out a blond sex doll. I don't know, I just don't get it.

A final intriguing thought: this experience really made me appreciate how U.S.-centric the idea of cultural appropriation is. When some of my students came to the school carnival party dressed as Indian and Egyptian princesses, I cringed. And plenty of paraders wore what I would call Native-American-esque headresses. But this is a creole society, where almost everyone lays claim, both biologically and culturally, to both Indian and indigenous roots, inside of a larger anti-black global culture in which in the past black people have hailed back to African Egyptian history as a way of reclaiming their identity. For them, all of those symbols are a part of who they are, regardless of how indigenous peoples, Indians in diaspora, and present-day Egyptians and other Arabs may face discrimination, inside and outside of Martinique.

Tricky, hairy, uncomfortable, but true. Just like most of the Carnival get-ups I saw.

Chanté dat Nwel

 Last night I was extremely lucky to be able to take part in a Chanté nwel, the Martinique equivalent of Christmas caroling, in the city of St. Pierre. Let me tell you, I learned a thing or two.
It started with the unveiling of a new sculpture, which is appropriate since St. Pierre, known as "Little Paris" before the volcanic eruption of 1902 wrecked it, prides itself on being a center of art. A few apparently important members of the national government were present to cut some ribbon, shake hands, and, yes, take selfies.

Then my supervisor, who had brought me along, and I checked out the Christmas market, just waiting for the festivities to get started. Local food trucks, rum vendors, and the rotary club (dudes are everywhere) were out trying to sell goodies and last-minute Christmas gifts and crowd slowly formed.
Finally, around 8 pm, the choir was warmed up and the master of ceremonies got the mic to kick things off and remind everyone that, when it comes to goodies and rum, at Christmas there is no such thing as moderation (which I feel is a dangerous proclamation at an event to which most everybody drove). Then he announced that, before the singing began, the event would start with a ... pole dance.
Yup, a pole dance. Two young Martinicans climbed up on a portable pole and did a Christmas-themed number. The best I can reckon, pole-dancing was well-known as a sexual performance in strip clubs more or less only in the U.S. Then, about the time I was in high school, it started to be appreciated by the public - to a degree - as a sport, and mother-daughter pole dancing classes started popping up to try to budge the long-held perceptions of it. I mean, it does appear to be a really athletically rigorous and amazing sport. Through the power of social media, this sporty, family-friendly version of pole-dancing seems to have spread to other locales, such as Martinique, where it is currently all the rage for talented young gymnasts. All the chanté nwel-goers, including the babies and grandmas, seemed dazzled, and I know I certainly was.
Then the traditional festivities began. Everyone whipped out their chanté nwel books - everyone already owns one, some bent and rust-stained, other brand new since apparently the classics aren't budging. The Choir started but paused occasionally stopped to nag at the crowd to sing louder - this was a heavily participative event. Most of the songs were call-and-response style, at least for the choruses, and they got lively. Some were in creole, and many were clearly specific to Martinique, referencing Mont Pelé and local dishes. Usually at the end the choir and most of the crowd, minus myself and the other gringos, would break into an unwritten but otherwise universally known refrain, sometimes as secular (about a mosquito, for example, or about Santa Claus) as the original text was religious.
What I really appreciated sociologically about the experience is the contrast between the popular celebration of Christmas in Martinique and the relatively Victorian Christmas traditions I experienced growing up. Here dancers and guests were gettin' down, raising their skirts to kick up some dust while chanting about the fearful Virgin Mother giving birth and eternal salvation through Jesus. When I was growing up, things like dancing and rum (and the weed that several singers were not-so-subtly smoking off to the side of the famer's market where the event was held) could never be mixed with good ol' gospel singing. But why not? And why not pole dancing as well?