J'ouvert, Carnival Monday, and Blue Devils

I had heard of "J'ouvert" /zhoo-vey/ from (again) all my calypso listening, but only had a vague idea of some kind of early morning parade.  This is the 50th anniversary of Kitchener's "Sixty Seven":

Tina, why you sleepin'

this is J'ouvert morning

girl I really think you making fun

can't you hear the band they passing on

everybody jumping in the fete

and you crawl up in you coverlet

Before leaving for Trinidad, my friend Newton kept describing how much he loved J'ouvert morning, that it was his favorite part of Carnival.  J'ouvert starts before dawn on Carnival Monday, and marks the start of the peak revelry that continues through Tuesday, until the start of Lent (a la Mardi Gras).  After Panorama Finals, countless parades of dazzling costumes, and bake 'n shark on Maracas Bay..  How could waking up at (or staying up until) 3 A.M. to join up with a J'ouvert band be the best part?

A J'ouvert band consists of a group of dancers following a DJ truck like this one.  As many speakers as will fit, with a massive generator (yellow here) behind the cab.  The advertising flyers I saw were for the many bands that dance through various areas of the city and the island.  The fee gets you a bag with a t-shirt, a mug for the drink truck that follows behind, some security guys helping with traffic control, and a blasting sound truck that compels you to dance until sunup.

That's Newton, and his wife Liza, who runs one of the schools the students attend, and who is almost certainly the source of any interesting historical or cultural information I may have written in this blog.  I can't thank them enough for bringing me along on this trip.  Newton's favorite thing about J'ouvert is getting 'dirty' with body paint, some bands specialize in it - ours didn't, but he brought buckets of silver and black paint and offered to smear it over anyone who wanted it..  Pretty soon everyone's skin and clothes looked different than it had earlier.  This pic is after hours of dancing through the pre-dawn streets thick with jubilation, downing an occasional can of Carib when energy threatened to flag, and watching the sky lighten until sunup.  I can't remember the way he described the freeing feeling of J'ouvert, and can't do it myself, we'll just have to go back and I'll show you.

After showering off the paint and snoozing for an hour or two, it was back to the Savannah.

This judged parade across the grandstand featured bands of traditional characters as well as more of the large costumes like we saw on the very first night's competition.

I spotted a familiar masquerader from a couple days earlier.

This is a Fireman character, he typically has a bushy beard, sometimes a corncob pipe, and carries a hammer.

A band of Blue Devils, with a roped 'beast'.

These are Moko Jumbies, we saw a couple during Kiddie Carnival, but this was an amazing collection of one of Trinidad Carnival's iconic images.

Dancing to their selected soca on the grandstand stage.

We happened to witness an abrupt transition between 'old' and 'new' Carnival, as the DJ trucks rolled in.  Each one accompanied a large band of dancers, and drove along a channel behind the stage, blaring as they danced across.  As a percussion player, I'm no stranger to loud rackets, but I have never experienced something as loud and disorienting as this was, with so many trucks blaring different songs in such proximity.

To cap off a dazzling Carnival Monday, we headed up into the hills to the town of Paramin, where the Blue Devils tradition originated.

Although our Blue Devils encounter at Kiddies Carnival was intense, this was something else.  Newton's grandmother lived in Paramin, and he tells stories about how frightened he was by them, and how some Blue Devils players become so consumed by the spirit of the character that they are able to climb greased poles, pull trees out of the ground, things that they normally wouldn't physically be able to do.  Another electrifying atmosphere, with a very specific cacophony, the whistles, shouts, chants, and that distinctive hypnotic rhythm beating on the biscuit tins.  The feel of it is so unusual, and hard to pin down - near the end you can see how everyone is playing it a little differently, and it all seems to combine.