Articles > J'ouvert Morning, Trinidad Carnival

J'ouvert is the raw heart of Trinidad carnival. It is a massive, night-time street party and procession which crystallizes in central Port of Spain in the early hours of Lundi Gras, before the daytime carnival parades. Really it is a continuation of the 'fetes', the parties, of the night before, as tens of thousands of revellers spill out onto the streets from about two o'clock looking for more fun. They dance till dawn and beyond - j'ouvert (pronounced jouvay) is a creole corruption of the French jour ouvert.

The music is deafeningly loud and the dancing, or wining, extraordinarily energetic - not to mention steamy. You simply have to see the antics to believe wining; people attach themselves to one another by their 'middle section' (midriff to mid-thigh), and they pulse and thrust to the rhythm in every conceivable permutation - front on front, front to bum - in multiples of two up to a heaving mass of 20. J'ouvert revellers also cover themselves in mud, axle grease, even chocolate sauce (which smells a bit rich at 5am), anything dirty that comes to hand - walk by looking too smart and a brown ghost will good-naturedly sidle up and hug you.

There is a special carnival step, the chip - a flat-footed, flex-kneed shuffle. (The closest you get to it in the UK is stumbling through a crowded tube station in rush hour.) The chip is the most economical version of the standard Trinidadian dance step - and economical is important when you're out dancing solidly for the next 36 hours. At J'ouvert there is all the exuberance of the carnival parade, but in a less formal setting.

One of the special features of j'ouvert is that it is driven by steel pan, that quintessentially Caribbean instrument (West Indians will tune up almost anything to create a rhythm and 'pan' is literally a 50-gallon oil-drum bashed out and tuned up). Steel bands have truly amazing vitality and energy. There is a visual as well as an aural quality (helped by the fact that an orchestra is entirely percussive). Clearly the players have a great time as they jump with the beat or lunge from one drum to the next (a bass pan-player may have to cover nine drums). When a song changes key a hundred players shift at once. Depending on which band you are listening to, pan music can be raucous and noisy, a riotous volley of plinks, clangs and bongs, or it can be like notes on velvet. I've seen pan make hardened correspondents gag with emotion.

And the bands will play literally any tune that comes to mind. It might be Mozart or American love-rock. Then, in the way of Carnival, they play each song for forty minutes or an hour at a time. On J'ouvert morning the steel bands load up on articulated lorries and inch their way around the streets of Port of Spain, playing their hearts out.

We reached the streets at about three am and around the Savannah the street parties were in full and riotous swing. That limp conga that you occasionally see in the UK suddenly takes on a more vital incarnation in Trinidad - as bodies are pressed tight together, the snake pulses and writhes with a more powerful, purposeful rhythm. After an hour we headed off, looking for the steel band processions.

On Frederick Street (Port of Spain's Oxford Street) we fell in with the Renegades, one of the island's leading steel bands. They were in fine form. Two nights before they had won the steel-band competition for the year. They were surrounded by their supporters, who stretched for 50 yards ahead of them and behind, a sea of heads rising and falling in unison.

We moved among the crowd for half an hour, shuffle-stepping in time, left and right, left and right. Suddenly there was an opening on the side of the truck, just in front of the rear wheels; two of us slid in, beneath the double second pans, elbows resting on the flatbed next to the players' feet, locked in to the irresistible rhythm. They were playing a gentle pan-version of Toni Braxton's hit, Breathe Again.

From just behind us came the off-beat notes of the bass and cello pans, the relentless and rock-solid foundation of the rhythm - b-boom boom, b-boom boom, b-boom boom. From right above us came the rhythm, the guitar pans and double seconds, on-beat; dah-di-dah-dah, dah-di-dah-dah. The words of the song came back to me in snatches. Ahead, the tenor pans and ping-pongs were playing the melody, a racing clangour that chased through the verses, and then rose through the stepped chorus: 'If I never hold you in my arms again.. If I never taste your tender kiss again', on up and up, before subsiding with relief: 'Breathe again.. breathe again', and moving on to repeat it all again.

For 40 minutes they kept it up, the same melody and chorus, until it imprinted itself on my brain; building up and retreating, and then surging again, a rush of thousands of brass notes that merged into a sweet metallic ringing. I was exhausted after an evening's dancing and just an hour's sleep, but to be tired is all the better at moments like this, because the rhythm really gets to work on you. I found myself shuffling, swept forward by the rhythm, with an ecstatic smile and and a glazed, skyward stare, loving every second of it. It was ephemeral - I should doubt that anyone recorded them playing - but it was undoubtedly one of the most compelling moments in nearly ten years travelling in the Caribbean.

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