usic doesn’t come any
more joyous. Music doesn’t come any more determined to make you
dance and shout and sing. Music doesn’t come any more conceived to
make you lose yourself entirely in its shameless excess.
This
is the music of Carnival, and although you rarely hear it at 35,000
feet, it’s not for want of the musicians trying. All this month the
splendid celebration of Carnival is taking place all over the world,
and its music is crashing in the ears of its
revelers.
Americans know the ritual best through Mardi Gras
and its boisterous parades. But Mardi Gras is only one slice of
Carnival, and its music only one distinctive segment of the whole
street-style symphony of sound.
Its genre is “world music,”
which has been bursting with popularity in recent years. There’s a
simple definition of that term, according to Dan Storper, founder
and president of music label Putumayo World Music: international
music with tribal origins. It sounds exotic, but much of it is
surprisingly accessible. And irresistible.
And why shouldn’t
it be, with Carnival’s lusty history? Most accounts point to the
ancient Greek spring festival honoring Dionysus, the god of wine, as
a prototype of Carnival. The Romans continued the idea with
Bacchanalia and Saturnalia, festival days when slaves and their
masters would exchange roles. These pre-Christian celebrations are
thought to have been adapted by the Roman Catholic Church for the
period preceding Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Before the 40
somber days of Lent, when Roman Catholics abstained from eating
meat, a party was definitely in order.
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In the New World, in areas colonized by
Catholics, Carnival became more a story of the local people
reflected in music than a religious holiday.
“Carnival,
especially in the Americas where it was adopted by African
Americans, is an expression of freedom and release,” says Jacob
Edgar, ethnomusicologist and vice president of artists and
repertoire for Putumayo.
“It was traditionally the one time
in the year when slaves and the impoverished were free to express
themselves and celebrate,” he explains. “So at its core, Carnival is
a communal expression of the hope and desire for social freedom.
After all, how many times a year can you wear only body paint and
giant feathers, drunk out of your mind, acting like a total idiot,
and have it be a perfectly acceptable thing to
do?”
Right!
Flamboyant celebrations, overflowing with
music and parades, became popular throughout towns and villages of
the Americas, with large ensembles in which “nonprofessional
musicians and dancers can get together and strut their stuff,” Edgar
says. People created music out of whatever they could find,
including tire rims and frying pans in Cuba, steel drums in
Trinidad, and conch shells (which American Indians and then African
slaves used before they had trumpets and other brass instruments)
throughout the Caribbean. “If you can bang on it or blow into it and
make noise, it is fair game,” Edgar says, with each country and even
region laying claim to unique musical contributions.
To me,
as a lover and ardent follower of world music, there are three key
styles of this music: the Brazilian, heavily influenced by samba;
the Caribbean, particularly the Trinidadian, which is unsurpassed
for its sheer energy; and the New Orleanian, the last to develop and
the most modern in its use of brass.
Brazil
arnival is one of the driving forces of music in Brazil, with the
requirement that only new songs can be entered in Rio de Janeiro and
São Paulo’s samba competitions each year. Rio’s processions are the
best-known, centered in the city’s huge stadium, where each samba
school, or neighborhood group, parades and has its own song. Music
still plays as prevalent a role as it did more than 100 years ago
when samba was born, the result of traditional European music mixing
with that of the local population. Martinho da Vila and Clara Nunes,
the first female Brazilian to have a gold record in Brazil, are two
great sambistas. So was Antonio Carlos Jobim, the brilliant
songwriter whose music first came to prominence as part of the
soundtrack of Black Orpheus, a film set during the riot of
Carnival.
In Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, “it’s total madness,”
says Dan Rosenberg, who produces world music compilation CDs for
U.S. and international audiences. There the celebration is very
different from Rio’s, with the music and parading in
the
streets, and the unmistakable beat of Bahian drumming. They are led
by “blocos Afros,” large percussion ensembles, and “trio
electricos,” performing on top of huge trucks wired with
loudspeakers. Olodum, Ilê Aiyê and Timbalada, led by Carlinhos
Brown, are some of the biggest and most important
names.
The Islands
n most Caribbean countries, Carnival is a
diversion from life,” says Patricia Meschino, a contributor to
Global Rhythm magazine. “In Trinidad, life is a diversion
from Carnival.” She repeats a popularly held view.
Trinidad’s
notable contributions to world music have included the steel drum
(or pan, as it is known locally), made from oil drums—“one of only a
handful of acoustic instruments created in the 20th century,” says
Rosenberg—as well as the creation of calypso. This powerfully
rhythmic style functioned as “sung newspapers” that brought news of
the day through socially conscious and often political
lyrics.
A recent derivative of calypso is called soca (the
soul of calypso) and emphasizes dance. “There’s
something about soca music which gives you the feeling that you want
to get up and dance. Forget whatever troubles you have,” said
Montserrat native Arrow in an interview for The Rough Guide to
World Music 2: Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and
Pacific. Arrow’s credentials are impressive: He wrote the
international soca hit and Carnival classic “Hot, Hot, Hot.” The
title well describes soca. Other notable soca musicians include
Andre Tanker, David Rudder and Xtatik, all of Trinidad, and Krosfya
of Barbados.
The Big
Easy
n the United States,
there’s Mardi Gras, which even children know to associate with
revelry. Exuberance of this order needs a music, and the marching
band style of New Orleans suits perfectly. Like so much in this
great port with its colorful history, its Carnival music is a true
blend, a gumbo of styles. When you listen to someone like Kermit
Ruffins, you hear the great martial marches of European courts
adapted to a libertine purpose. But there’s also
zydeco—accordion-driven dance music developed mostly by Louisiana’s
“Creoles of color” and typified by Clifton Chenier, Buckwheat
Zydeco, Queen Ida and Her Zydeco Band, and Boozoo Chavis. There’s
also Cajun, brought originally by the Acadians, with its furious
fiddles and dulcet harmonies, played peerlessly today by Bruce
Daigrepont, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, the Jambalaya Cajun
Band, and Beausoleil. And the only reason I won’t mention the blues
is because one thing the music of Carnival is usually not about is
anyone’s pain.
Is it possible to play favorites with
Carnival? Nigel Hewitt certainly does. The 37-year-old Brooklyn
native, whose parents were born in St. Vincent, goes to at least
four Carnivals each year, and has been to almost 100, including
lesser-known ones in New York, Miami and Toronto, where many people
emigrated from the Caribbean.
His favorite is in
Trinidad, where he often parties “until the sun comes up,” sometimes
going for three days with a total of 10 hours of sleep. He knows
people, he says, who begin working out months before Carnival season
to get in shape for the extensive partying—a diet and fitness
program we’d like to know much more about.
But the draw goes
beyond partying. Carnival is an important part of his heritage,
Hewitt says, a way to stay connected to his roots. He has even
founded Carnivalpower.com, hoping to encourage other people’s
interest.
Asked about his favorite music, he immediately
names Machel Montano performing his fusion soca in Trinidad. “The
speed of the music is breathtaking,” Hewitt says. “It’s more than a
concert. It takes you to a whole other level. It’s truly
incredible.”
So here’s to Carnival, wherever it’s being
celebrated! 
World music enthusiast Tanya Mohn lives in a
suburb of New York City, but her heart resides in Rio.
