The moments we spend the most time explaining.
J'Ouvert, and why we all get up at 3am.
Jour Ouvert — "day open." Carnival begins in the dark. Small bands led by a steel section start walking through Port of Spain at 4am, throwing mud, paint, oil, chocolate and cocoa on each other and on you.
It is the older, rawer Carnival — a survival of the 1830s Canboulay celebrations, when the emancipated marched with torches and drums. The mess is the point. So is the sunrise, which arrives around 6.30am with the bands crossing the Savannah covered head to toe.
Panorama, steel pan's Super Bowl.
Once a year, on the Saturday night before Carnival, the country's twelve best large steel bands roll their instruments — a hundred pans, on wheeled racks, pushed by two hundred people — onto the Savannah stage and play a ten-minute arrangement of a single calypso for a national title.
The prelims and semifinals happen in the yards themselves in the two weeks prior. Wandering into a yard on a Wednesday night in late January and watching a section rehearse the same eight bars for three hours is the version most locals actually go to. Everything is free before Finals.
Playing mas, the actual Monday and Tuesday.
"Playing mas" is the point of Carnival. You register with a band months in advance, you collect a costume the week before, and on Monday and Tuesday you walk with 3,000 other people through the streets for eight hours, crossing the Savannah stage twice.
Monday is the informal day — a t-shirt from the band, shorts, beads. Tuesday is "pretty mas" — the feathers, the wire-bent headpieces, the full costume on the news. All-inclusive bands feed you, water you, truck you a mobile bar, and hand you a security rope. Guests we've hosted have played with Tribe, Yuma, Fantasy, Harts and Bliss.
The fete calendar, and how to read it.
A fete is a Trinidadian party with soca, food, drink and a specific form. There are three main kinds — all-inclusive (you pay once, eat and drink all night), cooler (bring your own drinks, cheaper), and cruise (on a boat).
In the two weeks before Carnival there are 40 to 60 named fetes. Any four you get to is a good week. The most famous — the ones that will show up in your Instagram feed — are listed in the section below.
