What is the Carnival?

The carnival is a festive time which occurs immediately before Lent[1]; the main events are usually during February. Carnival typically involves a public celebration or parade[2] combining some elements such as music, dance, masque and public street party. People often dress up in costume or masquerade during the celebrations, which mark an overturning of daily life.

Many cities and regions worldwide celebrate the carnival with large, popular, and days-long events. The most popular carnival in the world is the "Carnaval of Rio de Janeiro", but many other cities and countries celebrate this party. Other well-known carnivals are the Carnevale of Venice, Italy; the German Rhineland carnivals, centering on the Cologne carnival; the carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands; the Carnival of Cádiz in Andalusia, Spain. In the United States, the famous Mardi Grass celebrations in New Orleans, date back to French and Spanish colonial times.

Carnival celebration started in Egypt as a rite to celebrate fertility. Long time later, the Catholic Church incorporated it as a “farewell to the flesh” party that occurs each year before the Lenten [1]. It is a final opportunity to explore sensual, worldly delights before a season of religious restraint and penitence.

The tradition of a pre-Lenten carnival originated in second century Rome; indeed, the very word "carnival" is derived from the Latin words for "flesh" (carne) and "farewell" (vale). In Roman tradition, the revellers delivered themselves up to voluntary madness; they would don masks, adorn themselves in the manner of spectres and spirits, and give themselves to Bacchus and Venus--gods of wine and love--who were symbols of all things diurnal and sensual.

As in almost every other part of the world, the carnival in Colombia depends on the liturgical calendar, usually taking place on the four days before Ash Wednesday sometime between February and March.

On the Caribbean Region of Colombia, the capital of Atlántico department, Barranquilla (such as Rio, Venice and New Orleans) has a colourful carnival; which is, together with the Holy Week and Easter, one of its main popular festivities. This party is not celebrated nationwide but all Colombians know about it and can enjoy it through the images transmitted by the local TV channel, TeleCaribe.

The Barranquilla carnaval has street parades, costumes, beauty pageants and bank holidays. The beautifully designed floats are spectacular, the music and costumes lavish, the performers and pretty dancers charm and entertain the crowds. The city hosts year after year, thousands of people from different cities and towns of the country and from around the world to embrace four days of non-stop partying, music, drinks, dance and laugh listening to the "letanías" chanted by locals who make fun of the most important prior year social, economical or political happenings in the country and worldwide.

This carnival is also a festivity of musicians playing cumbias, porros, mapalés, gaitas, chandés, puyas, fandangos and fantastic merecumbés in a sort of six piece brass band named "papayera" and also in a wood and leather drums group that costeños call "tambora". Carnaval is a party of "sones" and "danzones", a celebration which gathers the traditions based on our people’s creativity expressed by the dance, music, handicrafts, costumes and different manners of enjoying the feast. Barranquilla carnaval is not just a tri-ethnic party, but also a unique multi-cultural event celebrating traditions of many places and cultures from around the country. The Guaranas feast, the dance of el Garabato or the rithm Pajarito, the dance of el Torito, the Congo Grande from Barranquilla, the Marimondas from Barrio Abajo, the Danza de los Micos, the Diablos Arlequines from Sabanalarga, the Farotas from Talaigua Nuevo, the Negras Bollongas, the Fanfarrias of the carnaval, the Festín of el Gallinazo, and the Cumbia Soledeña, are, among others, expressions of the cultural diversity that the carnaval joins in a great flow of life that arises from Barranquilla to all the nation, envolving it of friendship, happiness, and tolerance.

Hundreds of villages and towns all around the nation celebrate carnival in a less flamboyant and internationalized way, according to ancient traditions in which the presence of nature and animal elements is significant, specially in the Northern region of the coast. Santa Marta is one of them. Next posts are going to be about our city and school carnival.

1. The period of Lent is the forty-day-long liturgical season of fasting and prayer preceding Easter.
2. A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind.
3. A float is a decorated vehicle in a parade

Resource:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_band_(British_style)