Carnival

Carnival ("farewell to flesh") is a pre-Lenten festival celebrated throughout much of Europe and Latin America. Origins of the festival are diverse, dating back to ancient Greek Bacchanal and Roman Saturnalia feasts, as well as other pre-Christian rites that coalesced in the cities of Europe during the medieval era. Taking place in the days just prior to Ash Wednesday, Carnival became a time of revelry and excess, marked by masquerades, processions, dances, and various public games and competitions.

In the eighteenth century, Spanish, Portuguese, and French versions of Carnival were exported to the Americas, where they absorbed local festival practices and soon created distinct regional and national traditions. Due to its placement in the calendar year, marking the seasonal change from winter to spring in the Northern Hemisphere and the height of the summer growing season in the South, many manifestations of Carnival, especially in rural areas, were tied to previously existing fertility rites and agricultural celebrations.

In the cities, a rigid distinction was maintained between the practices of social elites, whose masked balls were exclusive affairs, and the far more raucous world of the street, where the poor parodied the habits of the upper class in songs, dances, and skits in a quintessential "rite of reversal," and flagrantly broke other social taboos on cross dressing, public intoxication, and fighting. Street processions with music and dancing were and remain common, usually featuring competitions between rival Carnival comparsas, or troupes.

Race played an important and contentious role in the formation of Carnival in Latin America, with indigenous persons and African slaves (and free coloreds) often masquerading as whites or members of other ethnic groups. A number of extant Carnival practices of the early twenty-first century in Latin America, such as the French quadrilles danced by indigenous residents in Tlaxcala, Mexico, and the caporales ("slave drivers") dance of Oruro, Bolivia, can trace their roots to these activities.

In the twentieth century, the popularity of street processions largely eclipsed the practice of elite balls, and the former were promoted by civic authorities in various locales as expressions of local or national identity. Previously subversive practices were institutionalized as folkloric spectacles and promoted as tourist attractions to a growing international audience, particularly in Trinidad and Brazil. Social and political commentary remained a mainstay of many Carnival traditions, however, and old rituals of competition have been retained in the formal contests that are the centerpieces of present-day official celebrations.

SOUTH AMERICA

Though Carnival in Brazil is by far the most famous internationally, the festival is found with varying levels of participation throughout South America. One of the largest celebrations outside of Brazil takes place in Oruro, Bolivia, where diablada "devil dancers" and other masked and costumed groups depict figures drawn from local syncretic religious beliefs and other aspects of regional history. In more rural parts of the Andes, fertility rites honoring pre-Hispanic deities and ritual battles, known as tinkuy, exist alongside the processions and other practices introduced during the colonial era. In most other parts of South America, Spanish and African influences predominate, such as in the urban murgas (music and dance groups) of Uruguay and Argentina, or the Caribbean-style festivals held in the northern coastal cities of Colombia and Venezuela.

Carnival is Brazil's largest and most important popular festival, and is considered one of the major components of the country's national identity. The festival's origins lay in the urban atmosphere of the former capital, Rio de Janeiro, where two prototypical Carnival celebrations took place, one in the streets and the other in the salons. These old celebrations of Portuguese origin known as the entrudo were banned in 1853 when a visiting French architect, Grandjean de Montigny, died of pneumonia after being doused with water during Carnival. After the incident, the police and the state felt obligated to intervene and discipline perpetrators of public meetings that might "disturb the public peace."

With the abolition of slavery in 1888, settlements of former slaves formed in the hills around Rio. These Afro-Brazilians re-created their own cultural practices and went through an internal reorganization, one result of which was the resurrection of some of the Carnival celebrations banned since 1853. The bourgeois celebration of the festival, in contrast, attracted members of Rio's elite to carnivalesque encounters, first in hotels and later in exclusive clubs.

For many years the two forms of Carnival remained separate. They grew closer in the twentieth century, however, and reached a climax during the first administration of Getúlio Dornelles Vargas (1930–1945). In the 1930s Carnival in Rio became a street festival that attracted the well-to-do, and the example of the capital spread throughout Brazil. The festival was restructured around the samba schools, and from the beginning received significant attention from the press.

When Brazil's period of modernization began in the 1960s, and especially during the military dictatorship (1964–1985), the government adopted Carnival as a tool for political propaganda. Foreign capital was being courted, and the televised parades in Rio usefully depicted a happy, organized, and orderly Brazilian people, especially after 1984, when the event was moved off of the street to the Sambódromo, a 100,000-seat, open-ended stadium built for the purpose. The popularity of the Rio Carnival led to a resurgence of other regional traditions with distinct musical styles, including in Salvador in Bahia, Olinda and Recife in Pernambuco, Ouro Prêto in Minas Gerais, and Florianópolis in Santa Catarina. All remain vibrant in the early twenty-first century.

CARIBBEAN

Carnival is ubiquitous in the Caribbean region, with major festivals celebrated (sometimes on alternate dates) in Haiti, Cuba, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Antigua, and especially Trinidad and Tobago. Most feature resplendent floats, large groups of costumed dancers, and constantly evolving forms of popular music. Afro-Caribbean peoples have made the festival their own in all of these places, and as a result their cultural and musical influences predominate. In Haiti, for example, the carnivalesque celebration of rara that follows on Carnival, lasting throughout the Lenten season, is closely tied to the religious beliefs and ritual practices of voodoo. Rara is also typical of the Caribbean in its tradition of biting social and political commentary, which has made the festival a frequent target for government repression or attempts at cooptation, but also a popular site of resistance to those very regimes.

Trinidad hosts the largest Carnival festival in the Caribbean. Though the island was colonized by Spain in the late fifteenth century, the event did not take root until after 1783 with the arrival of French and Creole plantation owners, who hosted fancy-dress balls and made house calls on one another while costumed as black slaves. The emancipation of slaves in 1838 led to the first public processions, in which Afro-Trinidadians adopted the festival as a symbolic rite of their own liberation, engaging in a form of stick fighting called kalenda and a midnight torchlight parade known as canboulay (from the French cannes brulées, or "burning cane").

By the twentieth century, Afro-Trinidadians were joined during Carnival by other immigrants to the island, including Chinese and East Indian indentured laborers, in large mas (from masquerade) parades through the streets of Port of Spain. Calypso song competitions, held in large tents, also emerged at this time, providing a more focused listening environment for the elaborate wordplay that came to mark the genre. Efforts by the middle and upper classes to "clean up" Carnival eventually directed all activities toward formal competitions, and these dominate the event in the early twenty-first century. In addition to the official mas competitions for best group, best costumes, and best song, the contests for best children's group ("Kiddie Mas") and best steel band or "pan" ensemble (the "Panorama" championship) are tremendously popular.

DIASPORIC CELEBRATIONS

In recent decades, Carnival has spread to North American and European cities with a significant Latin American (especially Caribbean) diasporic population, where often it is held on a more seasonably appropriate date. The West Indian American Day Carnival held on Labor Day each year in Brooklyn, New York, Toronto's Caribana festival in July, and London's Notting Hill Carnival in August all feature street parades, music concerts, and masquerades that have become expressions of cultural pride for immigrant populations, as well as major tourist attractions that draw millions of spectators.

See alsoMusic: Popular Music and Dance; Race and Ethnicity; Slavery: Brazil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cowley, John. Carnival, Canboulay, and Calypso: Traditions in the Making. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Da Matta, Roberto. Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma. Translated by John Drury. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.

Dudley, Shannon. Carnival Music in Trinidad. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Harris, Max. Carnival and Other Christian Festivals, Folk Theology, and Folk Performance. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.

Mauldin, Barbara, ed. ¡Carnaval! Santa Fe, NM: Museum of International Folk Art, 2004.

Meihy, José Carlos Sebe Bom. Carnaval, Carnavais. São Paulo, Brazil: Editora Atica, 1986.

Nunley, John, and Judith Bettelheim, eds. Caribbean Festival Arts: Each and Every Bit of Difference. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.

Vásquez Rodriguez, Chalena, and Abilio Vergara Figueroa. Chayraq! Carnaval Ayacuchano. Ayacucho, Peru: Centro de Desarollo Agropecuario, 1988.

                         JosÉ Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy

                                   Jonathan Ritter