Grenada Spicemas Carnival

Spicemas Carnival in Grenada is an annual event to celebrate emancipation from slavery. The carnival-style event features a variety of show-stopping music and dance performances by local artists and dancers clad in traditional carnival masquerade costumes. The carnival consists of many exhilarating festivities including the J’ouvert Jab Jab celebration, steel pan drumming ensembles, carnival queen beauty pageant. And of course, soca and calypso concerts that attract thousands of locals and visitors every year. Soca music is an offshoot of calypso with influences from funk and soul music tossed in.

‘Spicemas’ (Spice Masquerade) is a Grenadian expression for the weeks long celebration, with the finale during the second Monday and Tuesday in August. Pageantry linked to African, French, British and Caribbean heritage, Carnival is colorful, humorous and full of surprises. Calypsonians, steel pan orchestras, beauty contestants, ‘fancy mas’ bands and others perform and parade to compete for Carnival honors. Everyone on the island gather to watch, participate and have fun.

J'ouvert (meaning “I opened” in French) means dawn or daybreak, and it signals the start of the carnival.

Jab Jab is for the people. It is a celebration of freedom from the chains of slavery. It is an event where people from all walks on the island come to dance, eat, drink, enjoy, let loose and participate in painting themselves and others as their ancestors did many years ago. It is the best Dirty Mas in the Caribbean!

Grenada's Carnival has been celebrated on the island since the Europeans occupied the island. Although smaller and lesser known than its Caribbean counterparts, the Grenada carnival has the same importance and party spirit. The festival is held in August - one of the hottest months in the Caribbean. This in no way inhibits the party-goers as programs are planned to escape the harshest heat of the day. The feeling of emancipation brings everyone together for a great party. They all celebrate to the sound of loud music, dancing, and great food while wearing colourful costumes, and attending parades that takes the breath away.

Started from the Romans and French the tradition traveled to the Caribbean in the 17th century. During the slave trade elaborate balls were hosted on the plantations. The slaves were banned from the masquerade balls of the French. While their masters were away enjoying their carnival celebrations, the slaves would stage their own mini-carnivals in their backyards, imitating and sometimes mocking their masters while praying for liberation. They would smear themselves and others with oil, mud, paint or white powder to avoid being recognized and therefore punished.

After emancipation, the now free slaves began to represent this scene as a commemoration of the change in their lives and futures. The procession used to take place on the night of the 1st of August, the date when the world acknowledges emancipation, but is now celebrated in Grenada on the 2nd Monday and Tuesday of August.

"Jab Jab" generally refers to someone who participated in covering their body with the mud, oil or paint. It is Jab Jab custom that no one is clean, and it is a common site to see a newcomer being hugged by dirty / oily revelers. Yep – this happened to us... Many parties begin in the early hours of Monday morning, ...the traditional Jab-Jab or Devil Mas bands emerge from the darkness of the night to parade freely through the town.

Wearing little more than their horned helmets, these masqueraders in previous times set out to terrify onlookers with their grotesque appearance and repulsive dances. In modern times, the traditional fully blackened Jab-Molassi have mutated into other creatures of colour, with Blue, Yellow and Green Devils joining in the early morning parade. These colourful devils are much more playful in character, wanting only to dab a bit of their body paint onto unsuspecting bystanders, as they dance through the streets to the rhythms of the accompanying drums, steel bands and calypsos from huge DJ trucks. Incorporating the use of cows horns, tails, chains, shackles and restraints to hold back one of the devils in the group, it is a reference to slavery and is often accompanied by whistles, horns and drums.