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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and this weekend sees the return of the West Indian American Day Carnival, the street festival celebrating Caribbean heritage, and J'ouvert, the pre-dawn festival that kicks it all off. In New York City this will be the second year running that the festivities are back in person after the disruption of the pandemic. You can expect the celebration to bring traditional mask or masquerade, costumes, steel drums, and bright colors back to Brooklyn this year. The music, the rhythm, the vibrant signs of life, it all has roots in the emancipation of enslaved people in the Caribbean.

We'll spend the last part of our show today talking about J'ouvert's origins in Trinidad and Tobago and its historical significance in the Caribbean diaspora. We'll also look at some of the ways that New York will celebrate J'ouvert this year, including an immersive experience called the J'ouvert Genesis Immersive Experience at the Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park.

Joining me now, Sandra AM BELL, producer and production stage manager for JouveyFest Collective, CEO of JourneyAgents, and the curator of the exhibit J’ouvert Genesis Immersive Experience at Lefferts Historic House. Also with us, Gail Yvette Davis, retired economist and veteran carnival participant. Listeners, we also invite you in for this. What does J'ouvert mean for you and your own particular Caribbean cultural heritage? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. If you can't get through on the phone, you can tweet us @BrianLehrer or text us at the same number as the call-in, 212-433-9692. Gail Yvette and Sandra, welcome to WNYC.

Gail Yvette: Hi. Good morning.

Sandra: Yes. Thank you. Good morning.

Gail Yvette: Thank you.

Brian: Gail Yvette, you want to do a--

Sandra: I listen to you all the time, Brian.

Brian: Oh, I'm honored. Gail Yvette, can we start with a bit of J'ouvert 101 or Carnival 101 for the uninitiated? A little abridged history maybe of the origins of festival and what it is meant to celebrate?

Gail Yvette: Okay. We can do that. Originally, the Caribbean carnival celebrations would be held right before the start of the Christian Lenten season. Actually, it's something that happens along, let's call it the length and breadth of the Caribbean, not only Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Curacao, Barbados, Grenada, Guadalupe, Haiti, all over. The origins of the festival, they're kind of complex I would say because they're rooted, yes, in the African Caribbean slave history and the celebration of emancipation from slavery, but also they reflect a mix of African and European masquerade traditions and also religious and cultural practices.

Here in Brooklyn where immigrants are from Trinidad and elsewhere, let's say, brought the festival along with them in their suitcases. We've been celebrating the day parade and the J'ouvert, the pre-dawn parade for decades of time, and we're happy to be back out on the road early in the morning here. Now, it will start at 6:00 AM the J'ouvert, and we come out in costumes that are simpler generally than what you see in the day. You can make costumes from anything old or found materials, paper, cardboard, even last year's fancy mask, we call it, the daytime costumes. Many masqueraders would use oil or you would see them with paint, and that's a way of disguising or transforming themselves.

They may carry around placards or signs with political or social commentary. I listened to the beginning of the show, and there's a lot of material there that we can draw on to talk about during the J'ouvert, the public news at the time. It's about socializing, eating, drinking, having a good time with friends, abandoning let's say worldly cares for a moment. The word J'ouvert itself which is-- I call it a Caribbean Creole word, J-O-U-V-E-R-T. It's a contraction of two French words, jour meaning day, and ouvert meaning open. It talks to dawn and the opening of the day.

There's also kind of a spiritual aspect to it because it talks to light coming out of darkness, leaving behind the old and engaging the new. Part of that comes from the African tradition too where we had the J'ouvert light masquerade, when in fact, it was a time that the authorities in a village or society would be enforcing law and enforcing order, trying to bring order out of disorder or calm and organization out of chaos. There's all of that in the J'ouvert, so here we are.

Brian: So wonderful introduction. Sandra, the J’ouvert Genesis Immersive Experience at Lefferts Historic House I see explores some of this rich history. It comes from the Prospect Park Alliance, City Lore, and the JouveyFest collective, and it's on view. I'll tell our listeners now all the way through October 29th. You want to tell listeners about the exhibit, Sandra?

Sandra: Yes, I'd be happy to. Many people don't really understand what is happening with J'ouvert, what it is, and how it gets there. Many people don't care. They just want to have a good time. We and our JouveyFest Collective want people to understand that this has a history, it has a story, and there's elements in it like the music, the food, the characters. That's all aligned with this pre-dawn carnival, I would say procession. This exhibit, we just want to bring it like 2023 style with a combination of traditional characters, traditional J'ouvert characters in 3D mannequins with their different costumes, et cetera.

Plus we have two documentaries on how J'ouvert got started in Brooklyn and how it got started in Trinidad and Tobago. One could actually sit down and watch this for 20 minutes if you have the time. Then we have the virtual reality where you could put on your goggles and feel like you're in a J'ouvert band and maybe some mud or paint might get on you, but it only feels like it. We tried to have that combination because we are in 2023. However, the history remains the same, but we want to present it differently.

Brian: Wow, J'ouvert meets virtual reality. I see there'll be some various workshops. What will those entail? What can listeners actually do at the workshops?

Sandra: Well, we've had a couple already, but we have one coming up on September the 10th and it is what we call a table talk with food and with music. Inside of that, a post-carnival here in Brooklyn. The public is invited and it is for free. We have a sort of lecture demo on some J'ouvert food like fried bait with saltfish or fried shark. I know people who might be like, "Oh, shark. Oh no," but this is what we eat in Trinidad. We want to have some of those elements that you would have on a J'ouvert morning when you're going out and you're in the street.

We'll have that and then we have a little table talk about what J'ouvert is about again and, of course, question and answer and people's experiences of how they found out about J'ouvert, experienced it in the past or the present. Then, of course, we're going to have a little bit of a lecture demo with the rhythm section. The rhythm section are made up of instruments that back in the 1800s when they banned the drums, out came the graters from your kitchen, out came the bottle and spoon, out came the shak-shaks, also known as maracas. Of course, chanting to go along with that, and our little, which I call the second instrument of Trinidad and Tobago, the tire iron, which came out of the vehicles when the Americans were in Trinidad for the oil.

We have those instruments that make up that really deep pulsating sound so that you could process down the street with people you know, people who you don't know. We want people to know and understand these instruments. We'd like to have that at that particular workshop. Of course, we'll talk about the steelpan, which was just given World Steelpan Day by the United Nations and Trinidad and Tobago. That's it in a nutshell.

Brian: Yes. That was August 11th, World Steelpan Day. Did you say they banned the drums?

Sandra: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, they did.

Brian: Who?

Sandra: The drums carry messages. Trinidad got to start with Columbus getting there, that's the Spanish. Then you have the French and then you have the English. Gail, you were going to say something. Go ahead.

Gail Yvette: No. When he asked the question, I was going to say yes, indeed, Trinidad and Tobago, and in the British colonies, they banned the drum because they saw it as an instrument of revolt and rebellion. Basically, refused to have people use the drums and so the people resorted to other instruments that Sandra just talked about.

Brian: Like kitchen supplies, yes.

Gail Yvette: Yes, exactly, in order to meet [crosstalk]

Brian: Gail Yvette, I'll give you the last word in our last 30 seconds. Do you like the shark or do you have any other favorite J'ouvert foods?

Gail Yvette: I like the fish, I like the saltfish, I like it all. I'll tell people too that they can go up on New York City site and the event site and they can look at J'ouvert. Put in the word J'ouvert and they can get some more information about the J'ouvert and the West Indian American Day Carnival.

Brian: Great. Sandra AM Bell, producer and production stage manager for JouveyFest Collective, CEO of JourneyAgents, and a curator of the exhibit J’ouvert Genesis Immersive Experience at Lefferts Historic House, into October. Also, Gail Yvette Davis, retired economist and veteran carnival participant who as we heard knows all about it. Thank you both so much for joining us. Happy carnival, happy J'ouvert.

Gail Yvette: Thank you, and thanks for having us.

Sandra: Thank you. You've got to come out, Brian.

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