Carnival of Martinique: a true love affair has developed between the martinican MARIE-LYNE PSYCHE-SALPETRIER and the carnival of Martinique, that’s been handed down from generation to generation.
President of the Association Recherches & Traditions (A.R.T.), which conducts historical research on Carnival, its origins and that of its emblematic characters.
MARIE-LYNE PSYCHE-SALPETRIER is a school teacher, academic advisor in the visual arts and teacher trainer shares her passion and knowledge of Carnival with us.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION RECHERCHES & TRADITIONS
The association was founded by George Louis-régis Psyché, mother of MARIE-LYNE PSYCHE-SALPETRIER.
Their mission
Research and promote Martinican folk tradition.
Promoting Martinique’s culture and traditions through Carnival.
Their goal
Safeguarding Martinique’s heritage.
Carnival in Martinique, OUR HISTORY
“Our Carnival tells us our story,” said Aimé Césaire, champion of Négritude.
The Carnival of Martinique and the Caribbean is rooted in our history. It’s a reflection of our people, the result of a complex and varied mix of cultures.
A polysyncratic carnival, just like we are.
Although its origins date back to the occupation of Martinique by Governor Duparquet in the early 17th century, with the masked balls Marie Duparquet brought back from the French court.
After their deportation, enslaved Africans were able to experience these disguised balls at close quarters (as servants) and from afar.
Carnival of Martinique could then become a place of masked expression for forbidden beliefs and rituals.
They themselves were hidden away in order to reappropriate these divinities, spiritualities, skills, languages, music, dances and ritual masks. Through Carnival, they bequeathed us a part of our ancestral African heritage.
It’s the way of the detour, because in the eyes of the colonists, it was a mere masquerade, people who only seemed to be having fun singing and dancing.
Rites of passage, the power of colors (red and black, white, yellow), the codification of the “jours Gras”, the power and symbolism of the Mas gave rise in the late 18th century to the Djab Wouj and others Maryà n Lapofig who are directly rooted in these ancestral rituals and carry all this sacred charge through the masks and what they represent.
Carnival, a heritage
While the Carnival of Martinique is also the first in the Caribbean and the Americas, it carries African and European heritage – with the original medieval carnival, and also that part of Kalinago heritage which is ours through the cult of the body, the expression of beauty, the explosion of color, the festive spirit and the celebration of all events.
Notions of the rhythms specific to each Carnival character and each carnival-goer, of movements and displacements in what we know, which are our empties that unfold and are the expression of an immense popular jubilation.
An expression of jubilation
Our empties come from the convoys and slave trading companies that lasted from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and were banned several times when their numbers and value became too dangerous in the eyes of the rulers of the time.
Be that as it may, our Carnival of the Americas, the Carnival of Martinique and the Caribbean Islands, is totally this expression of jubilation, with some invariants that characterize it. It’s all about role reversal, mockery and derision, just like Lundi Gras.
It’s about challenging and transgressing the established social, political, family and religious order. It’s the rituals of life and death, as with Mas Lanmò.
Rituals of passage inherent and common to carnivals everywhere on the planet, in all eras. It’s this very special space-time relationship, which takes place in a given place – the street, the countryside – over a given time – five fat days.
In an unprecedented move, Martinique extends its Carnival by one day, with Ash Wednesday …as the last day of Carnival, celebrated by the Guiablès, dressed in black and white, covered in a long, pointed headdress, announcing their passage with a loud crash and soursop leaves.
Another invariant is this space for popular creation, between aesthetics, creativity, residual memory and the message of the collective and individual expression.
A moment of jubilation and liberation of human impulses, a chance to recover from the daily burdens we want to get rid of – hence the word ” emptied “, by the way…
Particularly channeled impulses in a period of explosion and expression of human and popular creative genius.
This emptiness, this outpouring of jubilation, stems from this vital necessity, which, according to Goethe in his 1788 Voyage en Italie,
5 days of fervor
For days on end, carnival-goers run fervently for hours and kilometers with a collective regenerative energy.
It is said to carry within it the divinities we wish to reveal through some of our traditional characters: Papa Djab, Guiablès, Maryà n Lapofig, Nèg Gwo Siwo, Mas Lanmò… found in several Caribbean islands.
Popular movement
And in music, often in song, to the rhythm of the instruments, in a single human surge, spilling out into the arteries of cities or the traces of the countryside, bwabwa swirling above the river of carnival-goers.
Carnival of Martinique brings everyone into the streets, open to all without distinction.
In the street, bodies speak, expressing themselves freely in cadence and to the rhythm of the empties. The sound of drums, lambi conches and the bass of sonos invade bodies with a joyous, transgressive frenzy.
