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The African Origins of Carnival
Natives of Trinidad and Tobago constantly claim, "Carnival is we t(h)ing." Who are the "we," however? More than just Trinbagonians, we are Caribbean, we are African, we are universal. We are, as the legendary Caribbean 20th-century poet from the island of Martinique declared in his Cahier d'un retour au pays natal [Return to My Native Land], "vé ritablement les fils aînés du monde [truly the elder sons of the world]." As Quincy Jones and his ilk would say, "we are the world." So, Trinbagonians are right, because carnival is a black thing, a festival that has its roots in the very mother of all festivals, the Wosirian (Osirian) mystery plays celebrated annually in Kemet (Ancient Egypt) from the very dawn of history.
by Ian I. Smart
In my essay entitled “Carnival, the Ultimate Pan-African
Festival,” in the book Ah Come Back Home: Perspectives on the Trinidad and Tobago
Carnival (scheduled to be launched October, 1999 at the World Conference III on
Carnival in Port-of-Spain), I introduce into the discourse of our carnival some ideas
penned approximately 50 years ago by the Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz. He wrote a
fascinating analysis of his people and their culture, El laberinto de la soledad
[The Labyrinth of Solitude], which contributes significantly to our understanding
of human festivals. Paz establishes the fundamental introverted, closed nature of the
Mexican personality and then opens his third chapter, “All Saints Day, All Souls
Day,” with the claim that the loner Mexican loves festivals and public gatherings.
Speaking specifically of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, he declares that in the days
that precede and follow December 12, time stands still. Time becomes a perfect present,
redolent of dancing and revelry, of communion and of feasting in the spirit of
Mexico’s most ancient and secret traditions. Time ceases to be a sequence and becomes
again what it was in the beginning and ultimately always is: a present in which the past
and future are finally reconciled with each other.
Festival time is sacred time. It is outside of time. The renowned African scholar Cheikh
Anta Diop reports in The African Origin of Civilization that his ancestors from
the Nile Valley--who created humankind’s earliest civilization--established in 4236
B.C. (or 4241 B.C.) “humanity’s most ancient historical date.” For we know
“with mathematical certainty” that by this year “a calendar was definitely
in use in Egypt.” It gave us a year of 360 regular days with a period of...
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