“Kambule,” Trinidad and Tobago Canboulay 2022

Kambule 2016. Always thrilling always significant. Photo by Michael Mooleedhar.

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Award winning author Earl Lovelace will speak on the idea of Reclaiming Rebellion this Thursday February 20th at Martin's Piano Bar at 6 p.m. Lovelace has written extensively in his novels and plays about Carnival traditions and rituals. This is the fourth in a series of Carnival conversations and actions titled Unconquered. Since January 30, the weekly conversations have focused on creating a space to interrogate what Carnival means and where it is going. Also speaking at Thursday's event will be Dr. Kevin Browne, Assistant Professor in Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University and author of Tropic Tendencies: Rhetoric, Popular Culture, and the Anglophone Caribbean. A native of Trinidad, Browne explores the "Caribbean Carnivalesque" as a representative framework for rhetorical activity that occurs in the Caribbean and wherever people of Caribbean descent reside. Thursday's event is free of charge and open to the public. For more information on Unconquered or to take part in their band Black I - a 21st Century exploration of the traditional Black Indian masquerade, please check the blog unconqueredislands.tumblr.com or call 794 4547. Image by Maria Nunes #trinidadcarnival #earllovelace #rebellion #stickfight #kambule #emancipation

Tell Baker he ass in trouble! #kambule #trinidadcarnival

The received wisdom was that the term Canboulay derived from the French 'cannes brulees' or the burning of the cane. The unseasonal burning of fields of immature sugarcane by the enslaved was done as an act of sabotage and groups of enslaved Africans were then forced to go and put out the fires. Along the way they sang songs of defiance and also danced kalenda as their ranks were made up of stickfighters. However revered Trinidad and Tobago linguist Maureen Warner-Lewis in her seminal work Guinea's Other Suns - one of the first comprehensive studies on the African presence in Trinidad and Tobago - lists the term kambule as a Kikongo word meaning procession. Africans held kambules throughout the year - as a form of celebration but they were also times when they could re-engage with spiritual and other cultural practices.Professor Warner-Lewis believes the two terms to have been conflated to create one meaning - the march of defiance by the working class that happened in the pre-dawn hours of Carnival Monday morning.