FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK, NY (January 19, 2017) – Excitement is building for Carnival Season in Martinique, the annual month-long celebration that culminates with a wild series of colorful street parades, parties, concerts and more February 26–March 1, 2017.
“The February 26 to Match 1st period marks the apex of our Carnival, but the fun actually starts weeks before,” said Muriel Wiltord, Director Americas for the Martinique Promotion Bureau. “Beginning now, in early-January, Carnival queens parades and competitions are held each weekend in towns throughout the island. The fête is infused week after week with a merry madness in the bigger towns and cities, especially Fort-de-France.”
Carnival celebrations reach a fever-pitch beginning on Dimanche Gras or Fat Sunday as Martinique becomes awhirl with daytime parades of costumed marchers strumming strings and strutting to a Carnival beat. Puppets, called bwa bwa, festooned in fantastic dress, are carried about, while nègres-gros-sirop – revelers whose bodies are covered with coal tar and sugarcane syrup – break through the crowds playfully frightening children.
The spectacle grows on Carnival Monday. This is the day for Martinican burlesque; Mock Weddings with men garbed as pregnant brides or floozies, and women done up as reluctant bridegrooms.
Shrove Tuesday is Red Devils Day, highlighted by glorious parades, with all eyes on armies of tots in brilliant red-devil costumes carrying homemade tridents. A mask of animal skin and horns is worn with a red cloth jumpsuit adorned with hundreds of glittering mirrors and small bells that jingle when in motion. The Red Devils dance until sundown when their elders take over in a celebration that may seem like Carnival’s climax. This is just a preview of more to come, though.
For the rest of the Christian world, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is a time to pray. But in Martinique, it’s a time to play. And play they do. Local rums, reputedly among the world’s best, flow like water. Emotions run high and hot. It is the Day of the She-Devils (La Fête des Diablesses), when some 30,000 revelers gather to mourn the end of Carnival and the symbolic death of Vaval, King Carnival. Only two colors are worn: black and white. For revelers not in mourning attire, any kind of crazy get-up is okay, so long as it’s black-and-white.
Visitors to Martinique during Carnival Season can safely join parades, or watch from bleachers set up on sidewalks lining the parade routes, or from hotel balconies overlooking the streets and squares.
For more information on travel to Martinique, please visit www.us.martinique.org.