Carnival Essay

Every year, in Trinidad there is a festival of colors which is transformed into costumes, calypso, steel band music, dance and different foods and Carribean art which magnetizes many people from different countries also known as Carnival. Carnival takes places on the Monday and Tuesday prior to Ash Wednesday. Carnival is celebrated to mark an overturning of daily life. The Carnival of Trinidad is a very consequential festival in the island of Trinidad and Tobago. The roots of carnival both lay in Africa and France. Carnival has evolved over the past two centuries from an elegant, exclusive affair to a truly all – inclusive national festival, it is by far the most spectacular event on the nation’s calendar.

In the year of 1498, Christopher Columbus landed in Trinidad and, as was the practice in the supposed age of Discovery and Exploration, he then took possession of the island in the denomination of the King and Queen of Spain. The island did not have the promise of immense wealth like the other countries in Spain’s Western imperium. Trinidad was, therefore, largely ignored for over two hundred and fifty years. In 1776, out of concern for this state of affairs, the Spanish king issued a Cedula of Population, which opened the island to colonization by the French. A second Cedula followed in another seven years. This optically discerned an even more astronomically immense influx of planters from the French West Indian islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Saint Dominigue. Arriving withal were Free Coloreds and Africans. The French brought with them their cultural traditions, their language, how they dress, the foods they ate and also their customs. In 1797, Trinidad was captured by the British and was made a crown colony of Gre...

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...as incremented from $500 to $1,000 and, in 1963, a breakthrough was scored by steelbands when the Silver Stars Steelband of Newtown, Port-of-Spain, copped the Band-of-the-Year denomination with its presentation of Gulliver's Travels. It would be the first and only time in the 20th century that this feat would be accomplished by a steelband. By the mid-1960s, bands commenced to peregrinate from historical to fantasy themes and by 1969, the masquerading population was on the incrementation.

Today, Carnival is Trinidad and Tobago’s main tourist magnetization and has inspired several Carnivals in cities where citizens of Trinidad and Tobago have settled, including Incipient York, Toronto, Miami and London. Other Caribbean islands such as Jamaica, St.Vincent and Grenada have homogeneous festivities but Trinidad and Tobago Carnival remains the greatest show on earth.