Carnival as Visual Literacy in the African Diaspora

Malcolm Cumberbatch

Abstract
This paper examines the role, purpose and origins of Carnival in the
African diaspora. It argues that wherever the idea might have come from, those in
the African diaspora have made it their unique language. This is transmitted via a
number of themed bands and floats whose costumes, ornate apparel and puppetry
tell the story. This visual literacy documents every significant event in the lives of
the particular community from year to year. The planning is meticulous and lasts
all year. Carnival is resistance with an awesomeness and splendour that is
difficult to imagine anywhere else.

Key Words
Masquerade, carnival, costume, culture, slavery, Trinidad, Notting Hill, Rio,
colonialism

1. Introduction
Carnival of some sort would seem to exist in various societies across the
globe. In this paper my purpose is to examine its force, meaning and
development in the African diaspora. For the purposes of this short study, I will
briefly explore three examples - Trinidad and Tobago (Caribbean), Rio (Brazil),
and Notting Hill, London (England). However, it is the Notting Hill Carnival that
will be the centrepiece of the paper.
A. Origins of Carnival
Donnell1 has located the origins of carnival to the festival of Osiris in
Egypt. She notes that for 6,000 years or so since then, there have been public
festivals of masking, cultural display, feasting and comedy. These have often
included reversal and transgression. Such transgressions have been ‘authorised’
for the most part, which Donnell sees as the paradox of carnival. But this
authorisation has not always been given or has been withdrawn when the
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authorities have suddenly become nervous of the implications of the spectacles.
Carnivals and associated ritual festivals were seen as a ‘social catharsis’, which
allowed an emotional and social release from everyday patterns of behaviour,
which were often enforced.
2. The European nexus
Since this paper will ultimately focus on the African diaspora in Europe,
the Americas and the Caribbean, it is important to try to establish links, sameness
and difference between the African and European experience. Questions to be
answered are mainly whether the Africans, subject to forced transportation and
brutal enslavement, brought their own traditions, formed new ones from scratch,
or fused the European and African varieties, albeit with modifications. These
questions might not be fully answered here but we may be able to draw some
interesting and informed conclusions.
Donnell2 and Mauldin3 have traced the festivals in Europe to Roman
times. Carnival is seen to have inherited its name from the Latin carne vale which
means ‘farewell to flesh’ or meat-eating and to other more moral or immoral
pleasures. Hence, carnival was a pre-Lenten period of excesses where reversal -
the low becomes high - and regression are key characteristics. The subject
peoples could be kings or queens for a day or two. The lower classes could
ridicule those above them, and in some instances the higher classes participated
but mostly watched it as entertainment4.
Several authors augment the pre-Lenten notion of carnival and add other
pointers that give credence to the story. For example, Mardi Gras means ‘Fat
Tuesday’, a time for eating up all fat in the house before Lent. Similarly, in
Britain there is Shrovetide and Shrove Tuesday when all residues of the kitchen
cupboard are used up, the common exemplar being the making of pancakes.
Even so, the authorities, fearful that these secular and rowdy outpourings
of frivolity might get out of hand, sought to rein them in to ‘official’ winter
celebrations. Mauldin5 has commented that Catholicism had always been critical
of Carnival and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tamed or abolished
Carnival altogether. It is around this period - the seventeenth to nineteenth
centuries - that commentators6 argue that the European colonisers imposed
themselves on the people of the ‘new’ world, taking several millions of Africans,
naked and stripped of all cultural artefacts and kinship connections. The slaves
were forbidden on pain of death to engage in their culture. In addition, the
Europeans were eager to practise most of their own culture which was frowned
upon in Europe itself.
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Yet Ehrenreich7 informs us that as early as 1688 the African festivity
Jonkonnu was being celebrated by the slaves in the Caribbean, complete with
costumes and dancing with ‘Rattles ty’d to their Legs and Wrists’. Nunley8 traces
the steel drums used in today’s Caribbean variety of Carnival directly to Africa.
The beating of drums come more recently from the slave plantations and is
reminiscent of the slave crews beating iron in praise of the African orisha spirits -
Ogun, god of iron, and Shango, god of thunder. Therefore, some of the evidence
seems to point to a stubbornness to be divested of all innate cultural imperative.
Nevertheless, it would appear that prior to emancipation of the slaves in
the diaspora, Europeans did practise many of their rituals and festivities brought
from abroad which had some influence on the Africans. Donnell9, Nunley10,
Ehrenreich11 have all commented on plantation owners and colonists wearing
lavish costumes, ‘blacking up’ and taking drums and burning canes into the
fields. This mockery of the slaves was seen as an inverse reworking of Carnival.
In this ‘official’ notion of Carnival, the women dressed as mulattos or
mulatresses (slave women) which tried to recreate and assume the sexual allure
that their colonist husbands found in these women of colour.
3. The Trinidad Carnival
It is assumed by almost all of the above writers that Trinidad became the
home of Carnival in the Caribbean because of the arrival of the French colonists
there. Nunley12 explains that the Spanish who owned Trinidad had little interest
there and used it as a staging post to find the magical El Dorado. By 1783, the
Spanish King Charles III exhorted French planters from nearby islands to settle in
Trinidad and apportioned land according to the size of each planter’s family. The
French practised their rituals and were known particularly for the mockery events
outlined above. The Trinidad slaves set up their ‘unofficial’ Carnival parodying
the colonists.
Donnell13 has pointed out that rebellion was still ever-present. At
Christmas 1805, a slave conspiracy was thwarted. The participants had used
elaborate costumes, dressed as kings, queens, dauphins and the like to conceal the
plot. Therefore, although after emancipation, Carnival became a focus for
celebration, in the early post-emancipation period, the colonists were extremely
weary of Carnival and it was heavily restricted.
The British who took Trinidad from the French in 1797 in a bloodless
operation, by sheer force of heavy artillery, banned drums in 1884. The fear of
drums (and the coded messages they sent) caused the ban to be extended in other
areas of the diaspora - Cuba 1902 and parts of the USA. Nunley14 reports that
most of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, is taken over by Carnival or ‘mas’, the
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abbreviation of masquerade which means Carnival. Port-of-Spain is seething
with creativity, there is music and food everywhere and the costumes are
spectacular with colour, shape and adornments. Later Nunley15 articulates how
the mas bands could have up to several thousand members and costume design
reflected various themes of the country’s social identity. In 1957 a highly
politicised George Bailey’s band Back to Africa theme inspired the whole nation.
The display featured majestically attired African royals with such conspicuous
magnificence that the crowds, accustomed to seeing stereotypical witchdoctors
and hapless peasantry, felt extremely empowered. It is this Trinidad spectacle
that, Donnell tells us, has found its way to Britain and the Notting Hill Carnival.
4. The Rio Carnival
Riggio16 tells us that the Rio Carnival dominates the national
consciousness and absorbs the time and energies of many people for a
considerable part of the year. A new Carnival’s work begins immediately after
the present Carnival ends. Rocha17 sets the scene in which this activity takes
place. Brazil has many things to be proud of but just as many of which it should
be ashamed. It is a major world food producer and is free of ethnic divisions and
unrest. However, millions of its people go hungry and violence is the major cause
of death to young males.
Rocha locates the genesis of Brazil’s difficulties, noting that slavery
there was more widespread than in any other country and lasted for much longer.
During slavery and in the social apartheid that followed, the Rio Carnival has
been at at the centre of Brazilian cultural life. As Rocha18, Gilmore19 and others
point out, the rich and famous are always in attendance as spectators, like the
Roman circus. The Samba schools act out a variety of social or historical events
dressed in their flamboyant costumes. This spectacle can appear more exotic due
to the sheer numbers of masqueraders, bearing in mind that many Samba schools
have about 3,000 members. Rocha comments on the bizarre sight of Roman
emperors, popes, kings and queens catching the bus home to return to their jobs
as maids and bus drivers and so on. However, a number of observers, Segal20
among them, note that even more spectacular has been the damage done to
Carnival from the white entrepreneurs. Segal argues that spontaneity has given
way to calculation and creativity to commercialism, whereas the celebration of
sexuality is now all about titillation.
5. The Notting Hill Carnival
It is widely suggested that the Trinidad Carnival gave birth to the
Notting Hill one. One such commentator, Riggio21 has suggested that the
Carnival radiates outwards from Trinidad to the world at large, whereas
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Dabydeen22 speculates whether it was Claudia Jones or Lesley Palmer, both
Trinidadians, that started the Notting Hill Carnival. The late 1950s was a time of
great friction between Caribbean migrants and white British in the Notting Hill
area. The slogan of the fascist ringleaders of the disturbances was “Keep Britain
White”. Major riots took place in 1958 and in 1959 Kelso Cochrane, a young
black carpenter, was stabbed to death by a white mob. It is then that Claudia
Jones organised the first Notting Hill Carnival. This was done as a measure of
defiance but also as a showcase for culture and identity of the African Caribbean.
Carnival, especially in the African diaspora, is a street festival.
Therefore, it was a strange beginning to have the first Carnival in St Pancras town
hall, a few miles away from Notting Hill. However, as the Carnival gained
momentum, it found its way back to Notting Hill and the streets. Claudia Jones
died in 1964 and it is 1966 which most writers agree as the start of the Notting
Hill era. Edgar23 calls it the biggest working class cultural manifestation in
Britain now and for the last 200 years. He sees it as a bonding event which
attracts revellers from all ethnicities, where the spectator, just by stepping off the
pavement on to the street, is transformed into an actor.
Donnell24 sees the Notting Hill Carnival as making a clear statement
against the oppression of racial minorities. It can be very decorative, sometimes
tense or frenzied, with strong messages. Carter25 has alluded to events at the
Carnival in the mid-1970s as the ‘criminalising of resistance’. Here, he refers to
the over-policing which led to serious fighting between the police and young
black youth. This episode is given detailed treatment by Darcus Howe26 in The
Road Make to Walk on Carnival Day.
The Carnival has been getting bigger and better as the years go by and
the themes of the floats have become stronger with messages that cannot be
forgotten. The 2007 overall Carnival message was Set All Free. In the year of the
200th anniversary of the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, this and the
messages from individual floats aptly reflected the occasion. Although music -
calypso, steel band and soca - is a strong force and has traditionally chronicled
the political and social situation in Trinidad and the UK, it is in the costumes that
this message becomes indented on the mind.
6. Mahogany Carnival Arts
In order to get a better sense of this message-making aspect of visual
literacy, I went to have a discussion with Clary Salandy, the director of
Mahogany Carnival Arts. The organisation is the 2007 large band winner and
also scooped the Modern Contemporary prize at last year’s Notting Hill Carnival.
Clary explained that Carnival provides a unique language in which the politics of
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the day is reflected. It tells the story of the daily lives of African Caribbean
people in Britain. She noted that if you go back to Trinidad and want to find out
what happened in a particular year, you just had to examine the Carnival records.
Other ethnic groups who want to tell their own story, come to learn how to do so
using “our language”, she adds.
Clary sees an “awesomeness and splendour” in what she creates.
Mahogany produces 200 costumes each year to give a voice to the African who
needs to be heard. For the 2007 Abolition commemoration, Mahogany had an
eight-themed programme. These themes ranged from: Trapped (on the slave
ship), Still Trapped (Discrimination in education, jobs etc.), Togetherness
(sharing the sadness, pain and captivity), Release (from sugar cane, the whip),
Fire (used to escape, to burn the crops and the master’s house), Free Spirit (light
is coming, to be really free the spirit must be set free), Barriers (something is
always blocking our way, we have to move it) and Glory (we are 100% free, hope
and glory, life). As Clary outlined these themes from the rough drawings, I could
feel and see the message. Later, she showed me the visuals in still and on DVD
and video. At this point the puppet-master came in and introduced himself as “the
man who breathes life into the puppets”. On screen, one could see the costumes
doing exactly what was intended in the rough drawings. As the dancers carrying
the costumes move, so the full action of the costumed-message unfolded.
Mahogany also explained that they produced a comprehensive display
called Mosaic in 2006 which told the story of Islam, because this is another
community that is “under pressure at this time”. There were displays on the wall
of Strange Fruit the Billie Holliday song, costumed to commemorate the “dead
saints” killed by racism, followed by the spirit of emancipation.
7. Conclusion
Despite the worry about how commercialism is trying to ruin the Rio
Carnival, the festival is alive and well in the African diaspora and getting bigger.
In the UK, there have been several attempts to drive it off the streets. On every
occasion these moves have come up against stiff opposition. The Notting Hill
Carnival no longer depicts the African Caribbean “looking in two directions”,27
but most definitely being a lens for the world to understand their culture, history
and the obstacles they encounter in the pursuit of integration into British society.
The costumes and the floats with their puppets coming alive to the dance, tell the
story in “our unique language”.

Notes
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1
Alison Donnell (ed.), Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture
(London: Routledge, 2002).
2
Ibid, p. 65.
3
Barbara Mauldin (ed.), Carnival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004).
4
Ibid p.3. Jan Rocha, Brazil in Focus: A Guide to the People, Politics and
Culture (New York: Interlink Books, 1997). David D. Gilmore, Carnival and
Culture: Sex, Symbol and Status in Spain (New Haven, Conn: Yale University
Press, 1998).
5
Barbara Mauldin (ed.) Carnival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004): 5.
6
Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
(London: Granta Books, 2007). John Nunley, Playing Mas: Carnival in Port of
Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in Barbara Mauldin (ed.) Carnival (London: Thames
and Hudson, 2004).
7
Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
(London: Granta Books, 2007): 165.
8
John Nunley, Playing Mas: Carnival in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in
Barbara Mauldin (ed.) Carnival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004): 239.
9
Alison Donnell (ed.), Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture
(London: Routledge, 2002): 66.
10
John Nunley, Playing Mas: Carnival in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in
Barbara Mauldin (ed.) Carnival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004): 243.
11
Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
(London: Granta Books, 2007): 166.
12
John Nunley, Playing Mas: Carnival in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in
Barbara Mauldin (ed.) Carnival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004):243.
13
Alison Donnell (ed.), Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture
(London: Routledge, 2002): 66.
14
John Nunley, Playing Mas: Carnival in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in
Barbara Mauldin (ed.) Carnival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004): 239.
15
Ibid, p. 250.
16
Milla Cozart Riggio (ed.), Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad
experience (London: Routledge).
17
Jan Rocha, Brazil in Focus: a guide to the people, politics and culture (New
York: Interlink Books, 1997).
18
Ibid, p. 61.
19
David D. Gilmore, Carnival and Culture: Sex, Symbol and Status in Spain
(New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1998).
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20
Ronald Segal, The Black Diaspora (London: Faber and Faber, 1995).
21
Milla Cozart Riggio, (ed.), Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad
experience (London: Routledge, 2004).
22
David Dabydeen et al (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Black British History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
23
David Edgar, Festivals of the Oppressed, Race and Class, (Vol. xxix, No.4,
Spring 1988): 61-76.
24
Alison Donnell (ed.), Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture
(London: Routledge, 2002): 67.
25
T. Carter, Shattering Illusions (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986).
26
Darcus Howe, The Road Make to Walk on Carnival Day (London: Race Today
Collective, 1977).
27
Michael Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible rise of Multi-
Racial Britain (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999).

Bibliography
Carter, T., Shattering Illusions (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986).
Dabbydeen, David, et al (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Black British
History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Donnell, Alison, (ed.), Companion to Contemporary Black British
Culture (London: Routledge, 2002).
Edgar, David, Festivals of the Oppressed, Race and Class, (Vol. xxix,
No.4, Spring 1988).
Ehrenreich, Barbara, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
(London: Granta Books, 2007).
Gilmore, David D., Carnival and Culture: Sex, Symbol and Status in
Spain (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1998).
Howe, Darcus, The Road Make to Walk on Carnival Day (London: Race
Today Collective, 1977).
Mauldin, Barbara, (ed.), Carnival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004).
Nunley, John, Playing Mas: Carnival in Port of Spain, Trinidad and
Tobago in Mauldin, Barbara, (ed.) Carnival (London: Thames and Hudson,
2004).
Phillips, Michael, and Phillips, Trevor, Windrush: The Irresistible rise of
Multi-Racial Britain (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999).
 Malcolm Cumberbatch 9
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Riggio, Milla Cozart, (ed.), Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad

experience (London: Routledge, 2004).
Rocha, Jan, Brazil in Focus: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture
(New York: Interlink Books, 1997).
Segal, Ronald, The Black Diaspora (London: Faber and Faber, 1995).

Author Identification

Malcolm Cumberbatch is Associate Lecturer in Applied Social Sciences

at Sheffield Hallam University, m.cumberbatch@shu.ac.uk