Carnival in the A-T-L, pt 3

Judging from what I saw at the carnival village, I am pretty sure that my father would not have enjoyed himself at Atlanta Carnival. The atmosphere was for the most part very laid back, not high energy or bacchanalian. When we arrived in the performance area, a band that I didn’t recognize was playing Kassav’s “Zouk La Sé Sel Medikaman,” an old, popular zouk song, and one of my favorite songs. A noticeable number of people were dancing and waving their flags to the music, but the majority of the people were standing around watching the performance. There was no jumping, stomping, backing up, or whining down. It seemed more like an outdoor concert than a Caribbean carnival. Everything you need for a good carnival experience was there—people, music, space, and food---, but things didn’t feel right. The carnival spirit seemed to be missing. The tone of an event can have dramatic effects on people’s behavior. If the event is high energy, people will be high energy. For instance, when I would see people jumping up and enjoying themselves at New York Carnival, it would made me want to jump up too. The laid-back vibe at the carnival village made want to just sit back and watch. From a research standpoint, this made it much easier to closely observe the event because there weren’t too many things going on at the same time or anything to distract me from my research duties.

As I looked around, I noticed that the crowd was very diverse, ethnically. I saw flags from St. Kitts & Nevis, Jamaica, Barbados, St. Vincent, Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, Trinidad & Tobago, US Virgin Islands, Grenada, Belize, St. Lucia, and Haiti. It was very nice to see so many islands, especially the smaller islands, like Dominica, represented at the carnival. Based on the relatively small size of the carnival, and my lack of prior knowledge of it, I assumed that mostly residents of metro Atlanta attended Atlanta Carnival. I didn’t expect anybody, except for the invited artists, to travel to Atlanta for its carnival, like they do to Boston, Washington, D.C., Toronto, and, of course, New York for their carnivals. But, to my surprise, I found that some people do travel to Atlanta to experience its carnival. Nevis and I both ran into people that we knew that traveled from cities in the Northeast to Atlanta for its carnival. Notably, the two people that we ran into, while walking around the carnival village, were attending the carnival for the first time. The person I ran into was a fellow Dominican-American (the second Dominican I had encountered during the 4 days I had been in Atlanta). Similar to me, she heard about the carnival and decided to come down to Atlanta and check it out. In fact, it was the first Atlanta Carnival experience for our entire group---Nevis, Nisha, Janelle, and me. As I mentioned before, I decided to move to Atlanta in late May so that I could be there for the Atlanta Carnival festivities. I thought it would be a perfect way to start my research on Caribbean life in Atlanta, since Atlanta Carnival would allow me to view the pinnacle of Caribbean culture in the southern city.

After about 20 minutes of watching the performers on the stage, we decided to go over to the food stands to get something to eat. Since I paid for Nevis’ entrance into the carnival village, he was paying for my food. We walked back towards the underpass and looked at each food stands’ signs, which advertised the foods they offered. I was attracted to a food stand that offered conch fritters. A month prior, I took a family trip to Nassau, Bahamas, where I first tasted the popular Bahamian dish, conch fritters, and added it to my favorite Caribbean dishes. I pointed out the stand to Nevis and we walked over to it. There wasn’t a line so we immediately ordered. To my dismay, they had run out of conch fritters. This was the only stand that I saw advertising conch fritters, so instead of looking at another stand, I settled for a Jamaican chicken patty.

Nevis and I took our food and ate as we walked back to the performance area of the carnival village. With Nisha and Janelle, we stood at the back of the performance area, directly facing the stage. The mood of the event had changed noticeably: it was livelier. The music was good and people seemed to be having a good time. At points, people were jumping up and waving their flags, creating a rainbow of bright colors bouncing in the hot Atlanta air. Unfortunately, we had missed the performance of my cousin’s band, WCK. We did see Trini Jacobs and The Red Hot Flames, but besides them, we had not seen any of the big artists, such as Destra Garcia and Denise Belfon, that we were advertised to perform. The MC kept saying that these artists were going to perform soon, but the hours passed and they had yet to perform.

By 8pm, it had started to drizzle and Nevis, Janelle, and I were ready to go. Nisha decided to stay because she wanted to see if the other artists were going to perform, but Nevis, Janelle, and I had seen enough. I later found out from Nisha, who stayed until 10pm, that the rest of the artists did perform, but during the last 30 minutes of the carnival, for 2-5 minutes each and that the MCs encouraged the crowd to attend specific clubs, which were charging up to $40, to see full-length performances of the artists. Though the carnival had its moments of energy and excitement, I thought it was quite tame. I was hoping for a day of excitement, good music, happy, shiny people, and great food and I only got it in bits and pieces. The pre-Carnival parties were fun and exciting, but the carnival itself didn’t match their energy and excitement. Atlanta Carnival was over, but the Carnival festivities were far from over. Janelle, Nevis, and I left the carnival village and headed back to our respective homes to get ready for the post-Carnival parties that were taking place later that night.

One Love