Interestingly however; Carnival is hardly standardized nationwide. In isolated districts on the mainland and the neighbouring island of Gozo, carnival festivities like that of Nadur entreat some distasteful R18+ audiences who mismatch skimpy apparel with the insignia of political figures and clerics to, I imagine, discredit their respective posts in society. Now Carnival is especially designated one week prior to Ash Wednesday, as a joyful windup before the more solemn Lental season. Plus, the Carnival itself is closely linked to religious triumph (read on to find out). So although frivolity is the to-do, it’s inexcusable to shamelessly rubbish the orthodox ideologies and practices that are intrinsically part of the country’s identity in the process, and just for the shock-factor. (Phew, ok that’s done. I’ll get off my soapbox now).

Parata dance

The Parata is staged by all partygoers nowadays and is traditionally performed to herald the commencement of Carnival and commemorate Malta’s historical successes. In the early years of the Carnival, young dancing troupes would enthusiastically gather under the balcony of the Grandmaster’s Palace prior to their performance and keenly await the official announcement by the elected Knight Grand Cross to signal the launch of the celebrations. The dance was (and continues to be) a light-hearted re-enactment of the Great Siege of 1565 during which the Maltese Christians courageously defended their island against the invading Turks (to use the terminology of the day). You can guess who came out victorious.

Food during Carnival

During Carnival, revellers enjoy perlini, coloured, sugar-coated almonds and prinjolata, an assortment of treats including sponge cake, biscuits and citrus fruits on a multi-tiered display.

Kukkanja

This time-honoured Carnival game yanks my giggle chain every time I attempt to describe it. Kukkanja (cockaigne) was first introduced in 1721 by Grand Master Marc Antonio Zondadari. The object: for hordes of meat-lovers to rampage Palace Square in their feral hunt for ham, sausages and livestock, often concealed by trees outside the nearby guard house. Finders-keepers was the principal rule, granted participants could lug all their treasures (the foodstuff or soon-to-be) home. I’m sure my buddy from Odd Culture Critic would have a few thoughts on this wacky custom. Note: there were some variations to the game. Sidenote: strangely enough, Kukkanja was revived (but slightly altered) in 2010.

For some fascinating, well-researched and thought-provoking insight into more European festivals, check out the blog: http://oddculturecritic.wordpress.com. Well worth a read!

Chiacchiere di Carnevale

This Italian delicacy is traditional at Carnival time–just one scrumptious part of the revelry that happens before the lenten season begins.

Chiacchiere di Carnevale–”carnival chats”–are little more than fried dough, but that doesn’t begin to describe the myriad regional recipes that exist all over Italy.

Here’s a traditional recipe from the Veneto region (where they sometimes call these treats fritole or frittelle all a Veneziana). The magic ingredient–of course–is grappa.

2 Tbs butter, softened
1 egg
2 Tbs grappa
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs sugar
1 cup flour
Vegetable or peanut oil for frying
Confectioner’s sugar for dusting

Prepare the dough: In a bowl, combine the butter, egg, and grappa. Next, combine the salt, sugar and flour.  Stir until the dough is stiff. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Cover with a damp towel and let rest for a half hour. Divide the dough in half. Roll out each batch as thin as possible. Cut dough into 1″ strips with a pastry cutter.

Fry the dough: In a deep fryer or skillet, heat the oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Fry the strips until puffy and golden, about 1-2 minutes. Transfer the strips to paper bowl with a slotted spoon.

When cool, dust the strips with confectioner’s sugar and serve immediately.

1. Carnival masks are documented in Venice as far back as the 1200s, but the 1500s was the heyday of the art.

2. Traditional mask-makers craft a model from clay, which they can use again for future creations.

3. The masks themselves are made from papier-mache, which is molded over the clay form and left to dry, then sanded and hand-painted.

4. Formulaic characters like Harlequin and the plague doctor (a fearsome-looking face with a long beaked nose) trace their origins to the once-popular Commedia dell’Arte theater troupe.

5. Today, a handful of artisans make masks in the traditional way in hole-in-the-wall studios clustered in the Venetian neighborhoods of San Polo and Dorsoduro.

VENICE IN CARNIVAL.

Old inhabitants had told us that the spirit of Carnival was as dead in Venice as were the magnificence and glories of the sad, lonely, old palaces on the brink of the Grand Canal, so that we were prepared to be disappointed in a sight of which we had heard and read so much all our lives.

‘But,’ said one of our informants—that fine-headed old fellow who during the summer months sits to scores of painters as an Apostle or a Doge, but who in winter-time is reduced to haunting the gondola-landing stage opposite Saint Mark’s, pulling in the craft with his boat-hook, and holding forth his greasy old cap for coppers—’ it may be better this year; for all the proceeds of the booths and shows are to go to the.poor people who have been washed out of their homes by the inundations in the north.’

At any rate, we resolved to see what fun there was; and, as the evening gun boomed from the arsenal by the church of San Georgio Maggiore, we landed.

If the efforts of man were to be disappointing, nature at least did her best to favour the course of events ; for a cloudless, deep-blue, star-studded sky stretched overhead, and the ‘Bora,’ which had been blowing for some days, had given place to the gentlest of breezes, and a temperature very much milder than our own at home in early spring.

Although the actual Carnival proceedings were not to commence until half-past eight, a very considerable crowd had assembled under the piazzas in the great square and about the open spaces surrounding the ancient Palace of the Doges. Yet it was not the Carnival crowd which we had pictured to ourselves. Wearers of motley were very few and far between, and by far the greater proportion of promenaders were ordinary citizens, soldiers, country-folk, peasantwomen—painted and powdered hideously, as is the Venetian fashion from highest to lowest—and onlookers like ourselves.

For some days previous, the students, who seem to take the lead in all public festivities in Italian towns, had been busily engaged in rigging up booths with wood supplied to them gratis by the government upon the condition that they should do all the carpenter-work themselves; and from an early hour of morning these booths had been doing a roaring trade.

As foreign visitors, we were in duty bound to patronize each and every show at the modest outlay of one penny per head for each; not to mention the risking of similar sums in lotteries, of which the principal feature seemed to be the tempting display of prizes obtainable and the very few prizes obtained; and the purchasing of all sorts of worthless gewgaws from voluble gentlemen in motley, who pounced upon us with eagle eyes, and who simply compelled us to buy by the process of thrusting the articles into our hands, and reminding us in pathetic tones that it was all for charity.

As might have been expected, the pennyworths which we saw in the booths were very dear at the price; but even if it was only to reward the energetic gentlemen who raved and sung and danced and gesticulated on the platforms outside, it was worth the outlay. They were far more real curiosities in our eyes than the peepshows, the gymnastics, the collections of stuffed animals, the comic pictures, the broadfarce acting to be seen within. Only men with the restless, fervid warmth of the southern sun in their veins could have kept the game up as they did; and they were amply rewarded for their benevolent exertions by the crowds of chattering, laughing people who streamed in and out incessantly.

The Venetian portion of the public entered thoroughly into the fun of these exhibitions; but the stolid peasantry from the great poultry breeding-farms on the mainland did not at all seem to appreciate why they should pay a penny to look through a glass only to see the words ‘Please, don’t tell,’ written on a card within; or why they should take the trouble to arrange themselves carefully in a chair to be photographed, and after much ‘business,’ be shown their own reflections in a piece of mirror.

Most assuredly, if there was little to be seen for a penny, there was plenty to be heard; for every booth had its big drum and French-horn and cymbals, to which penny whistles, speaking-trumpets, . and Jew’s-harps might in most cases be added. In fact, to make as much uproar as possible seemed to be the general object; and the more discordant the sounds, the better the public seemed to be pleased.

But the real fun of the fair was centred in the Place of Saint Mark; and as the quaint old illuminated clock showed the minutes gradually creeping along to the half-hour after eight, the booths began to be deserted, and the human tide set for the square.

Here a large platform had been built for dancing, and all around it surged and swayed a dense crowd, a small proportion of which was fancifully dressed. As the great bell in the campanile tolled the half-hour, a hundred gas-jets were lighted as by magic; the crowd pressed to the entrances with their fifty centesimi in their hands; and a really fine orchestra, dressed in half-and-half red-and-white, struck up the famous and familiar Carnavale di Venezia. The dark masses of people seem to leap suddenly into party-coloured costume, and we begin to think that, after all, Carnival is not so dead as it is represented, especially when we notice that amongst the crowd of dancers there are very few who have not either a costume or a mask.

Evidently, aristocratic Venice does not patronise the dancing platform; for although the time kept is admirable, the performance of the steps is rudimentary in the extreme, and one can scarcely associate the apparent pace and vigour with the refined drawing-rooms of such Venetian palaces as are not inhabited by Hebrew curio-sellers. There seems, too, to be a lack of ladies, although gentlemen in outrageous female costume are plentiful enough, so that the spectacle of two big fellows whirling round and round with the most lugubrious faces imaginable is very common.

Meanwhile, the strains of the band have tended to swell the outside crowd immensely, and it may be fairly supposed that the whole of plebeian Venice is here present. We are not very much struck with the style of fun prevalent; and the chief impression we carry away is one of marvel that men of presumably reasoning age can bring themselves down so nearly to the level of monkeys.

The great joke seemed to be for a group of men or women—sometimes it was hard to tell which was which—to surround a harmless old woman or a stray boy, to gibber, jabber, and grimace, and to offer consolation in the shape of sweetmeats. Or they would invade the great cafes, the Quadri, or the Aurora, or Flarian’s, drinking up every one’s beer, making free with stray hats and sticks, and generally turning things upside down. However, there was universal good-humour and happiness; and we rather cry-off instituting a comparison between their behaviour and that of an English crowd under similar circumstances.

During the whole four evenings, and we were there until midnight upon each, we did not notice a single case of intoxication or misbehaviour, or hear a solitary angry expression used. Carnival levels all men, and actions which at other times would have produced fierce jabbering and possibly stiletto-work, were upon these evenings treated with good-humour. Stay—there were two exceptions to the general rule of good behaviour, and these were two firemen from an English ship in harbour, and they were just sober enough to be able to stand.

One very distinct evidence that Carnival is dying is that very few ‘good’ people don masks or play the fool. With the exception of a company of student Pierrots—of whom more anon—the disguised gentry seemed to be of very low degree; and this was palpable, not only from the trumpery nature of the garments worn, but from their style of fun. A Venetian rough is probably more refined than an English rough; but if he is given licence he will come out in his true colours just as clearly as a man of any other country.

Occasionally we came across a really good costume or saw a bit of genuinely comic acting; but upon the whole the Carnival fun of lively Venice was very inferior to what we subsequently saw at stolid, phlegmatic Basle. To talk in a squeaking falsetto, to take people by surprise by suddenly bawling into their ears, to jump and dance frantically about, to blow tin trumpets, and wind watchmen’s rattles, seemed to comprise the notion of Carnival fun entertained by most of the maskers. Allegorical designs, political and patriotic processions and effigies, were conspicuous by their absence, probably on account of the want of wheeled vehicles in Venice.

The traditional Englishman with his yellow whiskers, his projecting teeth, his tall white hat with the green veil, his umbrella and opera glasses, was of course represented, as was the English meeg, a hideous being, outrageously dressed. A quack doctor with his apothecary, a party of men dressed as fiends, and some old ladies with huge coal-scuttle bonnets, created some amusement; but it seemed to us that the majority of spectators seemed to look upon the whole affair with pity and contempt, although it did afford them an excuse for taking many more turns round the piazza than they would ordinarily have done.

An Italian crowd is rather ‘garlicky’ and very hot; and as the ceaseless din was getting wearisome, we bethought ourselves of a certain German restaurant famous for its beer, situated some little way from the centre of action. We were somewhat surprised to find all the lanes and alleys leading out of the square crowded with maskers and spectators, and still more so to find that the restaurant itself was crammed to overflowing, and that such luxuries as a vacant table or chair had to be waited for and pounced upon when found. The waiter confidentially whispers to us that there will be fun presently. We are glad of this, and wait for it.

At the expiration of ten minutes, there is a roar at the other end of the huge room, and a company of Pierrots, a dozen in number, make their way frantically up, chaffing right and left, tipping a hat off here, drinking up a glass of beer there, screeching through tin horns under the direction of an admirably got-up individual with a white silk standard. These men are of a better class; for their white suits are of fine flannel, they have white kid gloves, and their feet are encased in dainty pumps. One of them is evidently an acquaintance or relative of an old lady who is sitting with her family at a table next to us. She beckons to him and whispers something in his ear, nodding significantly towards us.

The young fellow starts a screech in his horn, and immediately the whole troupe, jumping over tables and chairs, surround us, jabbering away in horrible French and worse English, gesticulating and expressing burlesque delight at seeing us. The result is that we are laden with bonbons and souvenir cards, and shake hands affectionately with each one. We could not help wondering whether solitary foreigners in the midst of a festive excited assembly of English students would have been treated with similarly marked courtesy and politeness.

From us they proceeded about the room, playing all sorts of jokes and antics, and creating roars of laughter wherever they went; and when they left the room, other groups of maskers came in, and the same scenes were repeated, until the noise became so deafening, and the atmosphere so powerful, that we cleared out into the comparatively fresh air.

At midnight, when we gradually made our way towards the landing-place, the fun was at its height; and long after we were ensconced in our berths we could hear the sounds of shouting and music wafted across the water.

For four days this buffoonery was kept up. Upon the last day, Sunday, the first bicycle races that had ever been held in Venice took place round the square. Although the riding was ludicrous in the extreme—and the performers were members of the considered-to-be crack Milan Club — the excitement of the English mob upon Epsom Downs during the race for the Derby is but as the effervescence of a ginger beer bottle when compared with the excitement of the good people of Venice over these races. Men tore their hair, and cried and embraced, and shouted themselves hoarse over the various events, the winners of which seemed to be regarded as popular heroes for the time being; the nearest parallel to it which the writer can recall being the scene at Kennsington Oval after the victory of the Australian cricket team over England last year.

Thus ended the Venice Carnival of 1883. We saw very similar scenes enacted subsequently at Padua, Verona, and Milan; but not until we arrived at Basle did we get a fair idea of a continental Carnival. Basle, however, does not come within the scope of this paper, so the writer may conclude, merely stating that although disappointed, we were enabled to see the Italian people under conditions not very frequently witnessed by English travellers, who, as a rule, choose the summer and autumn months for their exploration of the fascinating ‘Queen of the Adriatic’

Chambers’s journal: Volume 60 – Page 193

As many people who live in the city already know, St. Augustine Marching 100 was supposed to march in Rex this year.  The band pulled out of Rex because, Rex wanted Warren Easton to lead the parade this year(at the request of Arthur Hardy.)

On the surface, this seems very trivial for a band to want to lead every parade.  It seems very cocky for them to expect to be lead band at every parade.

And while  Rex is the one who wanted another band to lead this year,

what amazes me more is the “selective memory” that takes place in this  fair city, among many blacks who have forgotten that, black marching bands weren’t allowed to participate in carnival.

Like the rest of the civil rights movement taking place in the 60′s,  someone had to stand on the front lines and be the first…

and being the first wasn’t going to be easy.

In 1967, St. Augustine Marching 100 became the first black band to integrate Mardi Gras.

These kids (and let us not forget they were children) ages 14-17 years old, marched in Rex  and while marching in that parade, in addition to being called niggers and other racial slurs , had to endure…

bottles being thrown at them, having people spit on them and other horrible things just for marching in what was known back then as “white carnival.”

One of  biggest insults they endured was when they marched through the French Quarters (the parades used to go in the Quarters back then) was that…

the folks on the balconies URINATED ON THEM.

Yeah, it was that deep and that real.

When St. Aug  marched on Canal Street, an elderly black women, dropped to her knees in front of the band and thanked God that she had lived to see that day.

The day when a black band marched on the streets of New Orleans.

The kids were talked to before the parade and told that, no matter what, do not react to the crowds.

Whatever they dish out…take it.

Turn the other cheek…

and they did.

Because of what they endured and because they did not react,

the krewes began to allow other black marching bands to participate in Mardi Gras.

Because they were the first to integrate  Mardi Gras,  and for what the band endured, out of respect ,they are given lead in every parade they march in.

Back in the day, most bands understood this and it was expected that Aug would be first.

However today, many bands are vying to lead  parades as if that part of  black history never took place…

like no one fought for that right.

The right for black bands to march in carnival parades.

People fought for that right.

Kids fought for that right.

Think about yourself when you were that age or your own kids that are 14-17 years old.

Now, think about crowds of people doing those things to you or,

to your kids while marching in a parade.

How would you feel about the situation then?

Probably the same way they feel.

Their place as lead band wasn’t  given to them…

it was earned.

They paid their dues for the place that they hold.

I know because…

my brother marched.

And my husband stood out there at 17 years old and watched his fellow classmates as they were subjected to the hatred being hurled their way.

Most of the kids who march in the band today are nephews, sons or cousins of those very same young men who marched in 1967.

I find it so ironic that, folks blame the bands ego for pulling out of Rex yet,

want that same position given to them….

with no dues paid.

That to me, is  the real ego trip.

And it’s typical of this generation…

wanting all of the rewards,

with none of the struggle.

Our history is what it is.

We can’t selectively choose what we want to embrace because, it fits our agenda.

Nor can we ignore what we want to because, it fits our agenda.

Pulling out of the parade was the right thing to do.

Because, at the end of the day…

it’s all about respect.

Another few meters down, an army of men dressed in green and red schoolgirl uniforms had blockaded the street with water pistols. Our windows were down and we were doused with what I hope was water. One of the schoolgirls tried to force his way into our car. The doors were locked so instead he turned towards our driver and told him how much he loved black men. Then he looked at Sam and I, giggled with delight and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Happy Carnival!”.

Apparently the origins of Carnival date back to the ancient Greek Spring festival in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine. The Romans adopted the celebration with Saturnalia, where slaves and their masters would exchange clothes in a day of drunken revelry. Saturnalia was later modified by the Roman Catholic Church into a festival leading up to Ash Wednesday. It quickly evolved into a celebration of indulgences – a last gasp of music, food, alcohol, and sex before Lent. 40 days of purging sins, preceded by a week filled with virtually every known sin. The word itself comes from Latin, “Carne Vale” or “Farewell to the Flesh”.

The origin of Brazil’s Carnival goes back to a Portuguese pre-lent festivity called “entrudo”, a chaotic event where participants threw mud, water, and food at each other in a street event often leading to riots. Prior to this trip I had only heard of Carnival in Rio, where the celebration is characterised by scores of spectacular floats surrounded by thousands of dancers, singers, and drummers dressed in elaborate costumes (or, quite often, with absolutely no costume), parading through the enormous Sambódromo Stadium.

But to Brazilians the capital of Carnival will always be Salvador. Salvador was Brazil’s first centre of government (from 1549 to 1763), and remains its musical capital. For centuries, it was home to the Portuguese sugar industry and slave trade. As a result, today Salvador is the largest centre of African culture in the Americas.

Where Rio’s Carnival is all about Samba, Salvador’s Carnival is all about Axê (pronounced ash-ay, it is a form of Brazilian pop music that usually comes with large percussion ensembles called blocos Afros). Rio’s parades are held in inaccessible Sambódromo Stadiums. Salvador’s Carnival is held in the streets. In Rio it’s all about winning the parade, in Salvador it’s only about the parade itself.

During one of the parades I asked a local what the difference was between Carnival in Rio and Salvador? He responded: “Our Carnival is a street carnival. It’s for everyone, not just for those with money. And the performers, they play, not for money, but to celebrate happiness.”