They call it the greatest show in earth thousands of revellers shuffling and dancing in time in a mesmerising sea of shifting colour. The music, played by bands sitting on 20ft stacks of speakers loaded on lorries, is incredibly loud, and compulsive. People dance for days. Carnival is explosive joy, a massive Caribbean blow-out and it is well worth attending if you happen to be on island at the time, or even worth making a special trip for. It is one of great Caribbean experiences.

The ‘carne vale’, literally a ‘farewell to meat’, was traditionally a blow-out before the Lenten fast. It is Catholic by origin, but the religious roots have gone now and instead, in true West Indian form, carnival is a huge fete, or party. Many carnivals are still staged at the start of Lent, culminating on Mardi Gras or on Mercedi des Cendres (Ash Wednesday), but some are held to celebrate the end of the cane-cutting season, Crop Over in Barbados, or the zafra in Cuba. Others are staged at convenient moments in the calendar, for example Easter in Jamaica.

Trinidad Carnival is the largest in the islands and it sees thousands and thousands of revellers in the streets of Port of Spain, as many as 5000 in a single ‘band’. It builds up for a month or more, with calypso tents and steel band competitions, before culminating in Jouvert on the Monday morning and then the street parades on Monday and Tuesday. See a typical Carnival Calendar of Events.

A key part of the whole affair is the music. Soca is the driving rhythm behind the street parades in the British Caribbean carnivals (in the Latin islands it is salsa and in the French Caribbean zouk). Behind the scenes in the south-eastern Caribbean you will also hear calypso, songs of love, life and everything West Indian.

But the best thing about Caribbean carnivals, those in the British islands at least, is that you can join in. The ‘bands’ the groups of revellers in the street parades offer costumes for sale. You turn up ahead of time and buy one, and you can join their parade. The dancing is not difficult - mainly the ‘chip’, a sort of flex-kneed left and right shuffle - but it is certainly saucy. You will see ‘bumping’ and ‘wining’, bum on bum, bum on groin, and ‘grin’ing’.... It has to be seen, or better experienced, to be believed.

See articles about Carnival in Trinidad and about J’ouvert.

Please click below for information about Carnivals by each island.