The Long Wave: Trinidad and Tobago carnival celebrates African roots

The Guardian

05-03-2025

Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. In our launch edition, I wrote about how one of the things I missed in the media landscape was the ability to simply meet others across the Black diaspora. In the months since, this newsletter has been that place for me, but never more so than this week, when I spoke to Natricia Duncan, our Caribbean correspondent, about this year's carnival in Trinidad and Tobago.
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I was, of course, familiar with Trinidad and Tobago's carnival – heavily marketed by its tourist board as the greatest show on Earth – but the more I learned about its origins and importance, the more I realised how little I knew about such a large part of the nation's fabric and history. The carnival tradition dates to the late 1700s and its origins are a swirl of intersections resulting in an annual celebration before the fast for the month of Lent. But within that is something far richer and layered about enslaved populations using song, dance and costume to assert their own culture and folklore while mocking the pomposity and wealth of plantation owners.
As an outsider, it struck me how much of carnival's hallmarks are linked to defiance in the face of oppression – either on the part of enslavers or colonisers – or innovation to circumvent that oppression. Calypso became the way isolated enslaved populations from west Africa communicated and secretly jeered at the authorities. The steel pan evolved out of an attempt to get around a British ban on drumming, and so people began to use biscuit tins to make music, and the idea for using metal was born. Pick a thread of almost any aspect of carnival and it leads to a history of continuous reassertion of identity and the right to mischief and pleasure amid repression and erasure.
If there were ever an event that exemplifies the enduring connections in the diaspora, it is carnival. Whether it is in the music, dance, or rituals, west Africa and its culture is embedded in the Caribbean despite attempts to efface it. 'African presence has been the victim of systematic erasure, elision and misrepresentation,' wrote the late Dr Louis Regis, an expert on calypso.
'You can see Africa in everything'
Calypso music has roots in kaiso, which originated in west Africa in general and Nigeria in particular. These links are being rediscovered. Natricia, reporting from Port of Spain, has been struck by how much the African connection is clear this year. The presence of African artists is remarkable, she tells me. Machel Montano, long regarded as the the king of soca and a cultural ambassador for Trinidad and Tobago, performed with the Nigerian-American singer-songwriter Davido, while the soca star Nailah Blackman hosted the Nigerian artist DJ Obi.
Natricia says: 'There was talk about how there's so much connection with west Africa, even in how we move and we dance.' Randall Mitchell, the minister of tourism, culture and arts said he, too, was struck by the similarities during a recent trip to Ghana. 'The way we dance, it's very west African. They dance from their waist down. In east Africa, they dance with their chest,' Mitchell told Natricia. 'Our ancestral heritage, we trace it to west Africa, and that's where that music is from and there's always been that natural connection.' In the Caribbean, we call it wining, Natricia tells me, referring to the signature lower-body winding movement. 'There is that direct connection,' she says. 'All these soca artists are now looking to Afrobeats. You can see Africa in everything.'
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What is particularly interesting, she says, is that while this is happening in music, there is also a social geopolitical movement growing between Africa and the Caribbean. It was evident in the African Union summit last month, where the prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, called for solidarity. Natricia also notes how African and Caribbean countries are joining forces on issues such as reparations and decolonising the education system in Jamaica, which was working with African organisations to update the curriculum. From politics to education to music, Natricia says she is seeing an alignment between the Caribbean and Africa.
Enduring connection and resistance
This feels like the start of something exciting, a new centre of cultural and political influence drawing on synergies between the two regions. Natricia agrees and attributes this to the fact that we simply all now know more about each other. She shares a story of how, when she was growing up in St Vincent, she was exposed to mostly American shows. Her experience echoed my own – and inspired the name of this newsletter – listening to the long-wave radio and not hearing anything about Africa or the diaspora.
Natricia says: 'Back then, there was little exposure or understanding of what Africa is.' But things have changed. The rise of social media, music and videos going viral through instant messaging and sharing, coupled with the expansion and diversification of sources of entertainment, have made previously remote cultures recognisable and familiar. She describes it as the second stage of a regional coming together that began with Bob Marley and Rastafarianism – key aspects of Jamaican culture that were 'important in building the link between the Caribbean and Africa'.
She adds: 'More and more, the average person on the street can see: 'Hang on a minute, they move like us!'' There is something profoundly moving about this long arc of history bending towards people who were fractured and removed from one another, and then, centuries later, finding one another again. It made me quite emotional that carnival has kept a flambeau alive, in its ritual and music and dance, of the places that so many people had been wrenched from. Yet, hundreds of years later, those people still recognised each other.
That sense of carnival as a space where people persevere despite adversity endures to this day, Natricia says. Trinidad and Tobago is in a state of emergency after a spike in crime, but on the ground Natricia has found that this year's carnival to be 'a show of resilience and not being held hostage' to escalating violence. Ultimately, it's been a place where people can simply breathe.
At the end of our conversation, not only did I feel that I had become immersed in an epic cultural and political event, but that I also had met a people in the diaspora with whom I shared an understanding that despite distance and the often heaviness of life and politics, sometimes you just need to exhale. It was a need that I could recognise, even though I am from east Africa and there we move only the top of our bodies.
Ramadan is upon us, and if you observe the month, we would love to hear about your favourite foods, rituals and special moments – wherever you are in the world. Get in touch, or share any other thoughts on this week's newsletters by replying to this, or emailing us at [e-mail] and we may include your response in a future issue.