Kanaval 2012: Round 1 (Jacmel)

For our first round of carnival celebrations, we spent four days watching as the quiet and charming town of Jacmel, site of Haiti's best "cultural" carnival parade, transformed. Rara bands and street theater troupes rehearsed, costumes and paper mâche masks were completed, wooden stands erected, streets swept, advertisements and kitsch displayed, and tourists descended. Ben was busy working on a story (which he promises to show you eventually), so here is a glimpse of our days through my eyes:

And then, finally, came Sunday's parade. The whimsical, colorful, wonderfully satirical parade, depicting everything from cholera, safari animals, soda bottles, vodou spirits and seedy politicians to the darker side of Haiti's history -- slavery, dictatorship, the massacre of Creole pigs.

Dekole

This song quite literally provided Haiti's soundtrack for February. Each year, all of Haiti's top bands and artists write a carnival song. J. Perry's 'Dekole' (which means to take off or to become unstuck) was among this year's favorites. Weeks after carnival's end, this song is still blaring from just about every taptap and corner boutique. It's certainly still in the top five at our neighborhood Cyber Cafe/Barbershop/Beer Joint.
The video was filmed in Jacmel, a lot of it at the Hotel Florita, and Miss Haiti stages her entrance at minute 2:17. 

M’ta renmen pou peyi-m dekole // I would like my country to take off
Ole-o, ole-o, ole-o, dekole-ole-o
Ayiti cheri, m’sonje lontan ou te la pèl dèzanti // Haiti darling, I remember you used to the the Pearl of the Antilles
La Perles des Antilles // The Pearl of the Antilles
Yo maltrete-w bèl ti peyi mwen // They mistreat you, my beautiful little country
Men sa pa fini, wap reprann figi-w // But it's not over, you'll recover your image
Ooh-o, Ouh-o

Si-n vle peyi-n avanse// If we want our country to move forward
Fòk nou mache tèt kole // We need to work together
etc.

Kanaval Preview

Tourista!

Possibly the best new character to appear in this year's kanaval, a mockery of the role of the UN's MINUSTAH soldiers in Haiti:

The bus awaits...

to take me to kanaval!

Ok, so it's not really waiting. In fact, after I hop on a motorcycle taxi to get down to Portail Légoane, I'll have to find a bus going to Jacmel. I'll purchase a ticket and sit on the bus until it seems full, then sit some more until it's absolutely packed (and there's a goat, or at least a chicken, poking me in the thigh). Finally, after a four-or-so-hour trip that traverses the mountains, I'll arrive in Jacmel.

Ben is already there, working on a story. We'll be staying at a friend's house in Jacmel until Monday, though we hope to escape to the beach for a bit, too. Carnival celebrations are well underway there (as here), but Sunday is the big parade. Street theater, pumping music, elaborate and fantastical costumes, perhaps a wee bit of rum...  I'd better go pack my best dancing shoes!

By the way, do you think my mask will get crushed on the bus?

Ben's Carnival Picks

"Carnival is dead. Long live Kanaval."

For all of its pumping music, beautiful dancing women, advertising, free t-shirts and fantastic paper mache artistry, Jacmel's Kanaval is intrinsically political.

The characters and costume partially betray their roots in medieval European carnival, but the Jacmellian masquerades are also a fusion of clandestine Vodou, ancestral memory, political satire and personal relevation. The lives of the indigenous Taino Indians, the slaves' revolt and more recently state corruption are all played out using drama and costume on Jacmel's streets... [Haitian culture] is a vibrant, living avatar for not only Haitian history, but for all our histories. - Leah Gordon

Smeared from head to toe with a vile concoction of cane syrup and powdered charcoal, they dart at the crowd, snarling like wild, rabid animals... They swing long hemp whips through the air in whistling arcs. Adorned with Beelzebub's horns, these demonic metaphors for the experience of slavery... are the [lanse kòd], the "rope-throwers" - Richard Fleming

These are the chaloska, "thick-lipped snaggletoothed personifications of dictatorship and torture," named after brutal military commander Charles Oscar, whose significance during kanaval changes each year according to popular perception of Haiti's political situation and its central players.

The form these characters will take each year; the emergence of new actors, and the messages they will spread might seem sublteties lost in the apparent chaos of the streets, but the political history of Haiti is always inscribed in its Carnivals... The masked theatre of Jacmel's kanaval is an annual opportunity to discuss the country's latest political skullduggery, its economic woes and environmental catastrophes, and the many military incursions it has suffered. - Fleming

Endyen, or Indians, represent the island's indigenous inhabitants, the Taino, exterminated by Spanish colonists at the beginning of this island's recorded history.

The Zel Mathurin (Wings of Mathurin), are winged devils that act out the battle between good and evil (pictured here with 3 paste, or pastors). They terrify children as caricatures of the demons that fight with the archangel St. Micheal (in blue).

Other revolving characters that make up the cast of Jacmel's kanaval are the lwa (vodou spirits), the ancestors, zombis, Yahweh (a savage beast that lives in the woods and gets whipped as he makes his way through the kanaval parade), trannies (traditionally to mock effeminate French colonial lords), prophets and saints, birds, animals and fantastical creatures of the imagination, traditional dancers, the comedic Jwif Eran (Wandering Jew), the members of a courtroom (judge, jury, prosecutor and defense and accused), the heroes of the Haitian revolution, caricatures and parodies of poverty, illness (this year, cholera), imperialism and current social issues, and last but not least... making their debut in 2011, heads advertising the local driving school:

 Death by cholera

 "Down with Violence"

 According to the artist, these masks juxtapose misery with peace

Foreign imperialism

There have been many times [2010 notwithstanding] that the future of Jacmel's Carnival has appeared unstable, but it continues to struggle and survive.... Carnival is dead, long live Kanaval. 

Kanaval is not dead. -Gordon

All italicized quotes in this post are from Leah Gordon's book of photography and oral history, Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti