In this essay, entertainment news editor Kaitlyn McNab recounts her transformative experience playing mas for the first time as a participant in Grenada’s Spicemas, the island’s annual Carnival celebrations, and breaks down the purposeful impact Spicemas and Jab Jab (J’ouvert) made on her connections to her West Indian heritage and her body.
When I touched down in Grenada last week, I did not expect self-actualization. I imagined this trip to simply be one that I’d look back on with fond memories and a smile — instead, this milestone trip now lives in the muscles of my legs. It is still speaking to me through my own heartbeat, a percussion rhythm that sounds more like soca than ever before. It has imprinted itself on my brain, rewired my DNA; after my first carnival, I have never felt more powerful, and I have never felt more like myself.
I had the honor and privilege of attending Grenada’s Spicemas 2023 as a guest of Industry 360 and the Grenada Tourism Authority, on an immersive, authentic, transnationalist journey spearheaded by Melissa Noel and Tenille Clarke. Alongside a group of dynamic culture makers from across the diaspora, together we explored the “Isle of Spice” and soldered connections through our shared histories and heritage, dialect and dance, and our own lived experiences.
What I was most looking forward to on this trip was earning my wings: Playing mas (mas from masquerade) and participating in carnival after years of yearning to. My hometown of Brooklyn, New York is host to the West Indian Day Parade (also known as the Labor Day Parade), one of the largest international cultural festivals in North America.
The Eastern Parkway celebration has drastically changed over the years, and with the dangers of gun violence, gentrification, and over-policing steadily encroaching on the festivities, as a young girl I was not allowed to attend the parade or J’ouvert, the traditional dawn-breaking street parade that marks the start to carnival. Still, I longed to be a part of carnival, one of the cornerstones of my West Indian heritage as a first-generation Belizean-American.
My welcome to Spicemas 2023 was warm like its island’s waters, an embrace that felt, befittingly, like home. As a first-time masquerader, I was vibrating with excitement to learn how to participate in this aspect of my own culture that I had never experienced before. I was told many times throughout the trip, from those Grenadian and not, that carnival in Grenada is like nowhere else in the world. Reading through an itinerary and living through it are totally different things; as J’ouvert morning approached, I grew nervous about my own stamina. Would I be able to make it through the seemingly never-ending celebrations of Monday morning Jab Jab, Monday Mas, Monday Night Mas, and Tuesday Mas?
At 4 a.m. on J’ouvert morning our group gathered for an introduction to Jab Jab, one of the most sacred traditions of carnival still alive today, which pays homage to the “ole mas” traditions of the early 18th and 19th centuries. Jab is a derivative of diable in French, which translates to “devil.”
Playing Jab is a satirical demonstration of the malevolence of slavery, of the sins of white colonizers. In Grenada, the carnival character of Jab is entirely black, achieved through the smearing of oil or charcoal across the entire body, and wears horned helmets and carries chains.
Jab is resistance, a true definition and display of Black power, Black joy, and Black freedom. As Tenille Clarke explained to us ahead of the processions, Jab Jab is “the great equalizer.” Painted all in black, the crowd was one body moving in unison to the percussion of the “Jab Riddim." The sound of chains being dragged along the pavement chilled me to my bones. They were once used as bondage. Now, they are a reminder of liberation. It was hard for me to pinpoint a feeling more euphoric.
Through carnival weekend, I slept a total of three hours. My worldview shifted on its axis, and my perception was clear: Rest, in this moment, was not as important as celebration. My group and our respective mas bands danced up and down Grenada’s Kirani James Boulevard and Port Highway over and over and over, from Jab Jab to Tuesday’s Pretty Mas, and each time the feeling was more explosively jubilant than the last. The humidity, the shuddering thunder of the bass from the sound system floats, and the glistening oil or the glittering rhinestones adorning our bodies created a multi-sensory experience that forced my feet forward.
I pushed past the internalized fears of body image that made me initially hesitant to put on my Tuesday costume (designed by Oro Luxury Carnival Grenada). I pushed past the voices in my head and reminded myself of the mantra, “every body is a carnival body.” As I looked to my left and my right, I saw body silhouettes of every kind, all dancing in opulence. At one point, an older man waving a sign caught my attention. It read: Ah have one life to live so ah playing mass. Nothing else mattered.
Grenada pushed me — with what I can only believe to be the strength of my ancestors — in ways I never thought possible. How much longer could I not just stand on my feet, but dance? How much joy could I excavate from deep within my body? How much pride could I feel to belong to a lineage of resilient people who broke free of physical and mental slavery? It was on di road that I discovered what freedom truly feels like, and how spiritual energy manifests through community. It was on di road that I felt most connected to my history, my ancestors, the former enslaved who masqueraded by burning sugar canes, painting their bodies with oil, soot, and molasses, and donning costumes to celebrate their emancipation.
While at the airport on the way home, one of my groupmates introduced me to the term tabanca, which is a feeling of melancholy and longing that sets in after carnival ends. The road marches are stuck in your head. You have to reconfigure how you walk, instead of moving with a riddim bounce. I am honored to say that I have been blessed to experience tabanca — and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to feel the blissful belonging of carnival once more.
.PNG)
