When our people were kidnapped from the motherland and enslaved around the world, we held on to many of the ways of our ancestral people, especially dance and music.
Black Carnivals use performance through the body as a site of resistance. The colors, procession, music, and movement all express who we are. Mardi Gras is the epitome of Black joy, with groups like Zulu Krewe and The Mardi Gras Indians doing it for the culture.
Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival, considered the first in the Caribbean, was born out of creating our own spaces for masquerade balls. So our people created their own, singing, dancing, and wearing costumes that mocked the oppressors.
Salvador de Bahia is the Blackest city outside of Africa, so there’s no wonder their carnival celebration is a big deal. At Bahian Carnival, samba and African drumming fill the city’s streets every February.
Every August in West London, Notting Hill Carnival takes over the streets to celebrate the culture of many Caribbean nations. It’s the physical culmination of the diaspora linking up to celebrate our shared and varying histories.
Carnival allows our people worldwide to engage in play and imagination. We “enter a realm of imaginative and experiential possibilities” often denied to us because of our everyday anti-Black realities–that’s a beautiful thing.