CARNIVAL IS “WE THING” - PART 6

No Carnivals without an African Presence

     If we look at the Carnivals in our contemporary world, we will find that the most developed ones occur in those nations in which Africans of many different ethnicities combined with French- or Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking Europeans to create a New World society. Thus there are Carnivals in Brazil, Colombia, Panama, even in Bolivia and Mexico. There is a Carnival in Louisiana, where French Creole is still spoken. There is a major Carnival in Haiti, where the population is 99.9% African, and the native language is French Creole.

     In those New World societies in which British or Dutch Europeans established firm control, there does not appear to be a Carnival tradition. We shall look into this matter at more length in the section “What and How.” At this point, we can conclude on the basis of the data that no Carnival had developed in the New World without the African input. On the other hand, even with significant African input, certain New World societies—Jamaica, Barbados, the South of the United States, for example—did not fully develop a Carnival tradition.

     On the basis of the evidence we have at this point, we can conclude that the African input is, then, a necessary condition for the development of a Carnival tradition. It is not, however, a sufficient condition.

TO BE CONTINUED