What happened to J'Ouvert?
19/02/07 07:56 Filed in: Carnival
I'm just in from
photographing J'Ouvert, and there's something very strange
happening with the celebration that's supposed to herald the
arrival of Carnival.
Mayor Murchinson Brown was waiting stageside, which is actually at the side of the street at the Downtown Venue, looking up the street at a particularly unpromising group making their way toward the stage at 4am.
There would eventually be a fair number of old mas masqueraders, perhaps 14 or so, but the quality of presentations was disappointing except for a few bright spots, and this is measuring the efforts by even the drastically reduced yardstick (inchstick?) to which J'Ouvert insists on being held.
By 5:15, all the bands were gone. I'm sure that many more were making their way downtown, but to see Downtown Carnival, the nexus of J'Ouvert reduced to empty streets that early in the morning was not how I remembered Carnival Monday mornings there just a few years ago.
So I hightailed it up to Long Circular Road with a buddy who had a car (and a security detail, entirely another story) to meet up with Red Ants, a mud/paint/glitter paint band of upscale, creamy coloured people who were living the legend of J'Ouvert right outside Long Circular Mall, with a massive music truck, a big tub of gray mud and a rolling bar that poured fierce looking drinks into black Red Ants branded cups, no questions asked.
These people were having a grand time, but they won't be coming anywhere near South Quay anytime soon.
Mayor Murchinson Brown was waiting stageside, which is actually at the side of the street at the Downtown Venue, looking up the street at a particularly unpromising group making their way toward the stage at 4am.
There would eventually be a fair number of old mas masqueraders, perhaps 14 or so, but the quality of presentations was disappointing except for a few bright spots, and this is measuring the efforts by even the drastically reduced yardstick (inchstick?) to which J'Ouvert insists on being held.
By 5:15, all the bands were gone. I'm sure that many more were making their way downtown, but to see Downtown Carnival, the nexus of J'Ouvert reduced to empty streets that early in the morning was not how I remembered Carnival Monday mornings there just a few years ago.
So I hightailed it up to Long Circular Road with a buddy who had a car (and a security detail, entirely another story) to meet up with Red Ants, a mud/paint/glitter paint band of upscale, creamy coloured people who were living the legend of J'Ouvert right outside Long Circular Mall, with a massive music truck, a big tub of gray mud and a rolling bar that poured fierce looking drinks into black Red Ants branded cups, no questions asked.
These people were having a grand time, but they won't be coming anywhere near South Quay anytime soon.
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