Argues 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.
On Saturday, July 3, certain sections of downtown Montreal should have been teeming with the music and vibrations of the Caribbean on what was supposed to be the 35th or 36th staging (depending on who is counting) of the annual Carifiesta parade. Instead, not a drum will be heard and the soca, calypso, reggae and zouk rythmns that should have been fueling the fire in the tens of thousands of participants and spectators along Rene Levesques Blv'd. will be replaced by the usual humdrum of Saturday commerce on the thoroughfare. So when it's all said and done as the cliché goes... it's our fault that we'll not be palancing in downtown Montreal.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
240 p, Contents: Im/migration, Race, and Popular Memory in Caribbean Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis, 1945-1992 --; Im/Migration History --; Playing for Keeps: A Brief Colonial History of Carnival and Powwow --; Im/migration Policy, the National Romance, and the Poetics of World Domination, 1945-1965 --; Performing Memory, Inventing Tradition: Colonial Optics and Im/migrant Locations --; Performative Spaces, Urban Politics, and the Changing Meanings of Home in Brooklyn and Minneapolis --; Sounds of Brooklyn: Pan Yards as Im/migrant Social Spaces --; Gender and Generation Down the Red Road --; Afterword. Political Economies of Home: Citizenship and Denizenship
A brief overview of London's carnival and its beginnings in the late 1950s. Claudia Jones committed herself to both the culture and political underpinning of Caribbean carnival when she founded the event. London's West Indian community embraced carnival as an important source of celebration and cultural identity in the face of racist intimidation in Britain. The essay explores various difficulties that black British artists face gaining recognition, particularly those who work in carnival.
Friday night also doubled as a welcome party and was dubbed 'Inferno' for all the festival patrons to party to a few of Jamaica's finest entertainers. The night's DJs straight from the rock were DJ Marvin, Christuff from Renaissance, and Fame FM's DJ Nicco, who afforded patrons the opportunity to party the night away to the latest dance hits while mingling with a few of South Florida's socialites and movers and shakers. 'Dubbed the biggest Caribbean food festival in the United States, the Jamaican Jerk Festival has the reputation for delivering an experience of the highest quality to patrons'
