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Feb 28, 2004

Sometimes, even when you pay attention, you will not understand the first

word of what your interlocutor (or calypsonian) is saying. The accent is

one reason. But, many words are not of mainstream English.

Fete: party

Bacchanal: rowdy event

Lime/liming: hanging out with friends

Mas: Masquerade

Playing mas: wearing a costume in the parade

Wine: dance using hips and waist

Carnival season: Christmas to Ash Wednesday

Steel pan: the only acoustic, non electrical instrument invented in the

20th century

Panorama: official steel band competition. Displays a 100-player band.

Unique!

???.

Mas camps: groups you play mas with.

The most popular are

Poison: 17,000 members this year,

Legend: 11,000,

and Barbarossa, our group.

Legend won the mas competion for the last three years. Their greatest

challenge, Peter Minshall, did not have a group this year. He is sick

(with AIDS?)

??..

Rainbow nation: this is the way Desmund Tutu (Nobel Prize winner South

African Archbishop) describes the diversity of the people of Trinidad.

??..

Trinidad?s carnival is imitated all around the world: Brooklyn (Labor

Day), Toronto, London, etc. No less than 100 spin-off annual events are

replica of the revelry.

(The Traveller, Saturday, February 28, 2004)