Caribbean community gears up for Carnival

Yawu Miller

Sheyenne Hazell sang in front of tens of thousands of people in her native Trinidad and Tobago when she won the Junior Calypso Monarch competition in 2003 and 2004.

On Sunday at this year’s Kiddie Carnival, when the eleven-year-old sang in front of several hundred people in white stadium, the crowd was decidedly smaller, but the feeling of carnival was every bit as real.

“I like seeing the dancing and the costumes,” she said. “To see everyone having so much fun.”

Bands of young revelers dressed in brilliant sequinned outfits queued up on the track at White Stadium, before launching down the straightaway in front of a three-woman panel of judges imported from Trinidad. Forty-plus members of the Branches steel pan orchestra filled the football stadium with the sounds of carnival under the baking August sun.

When it was Hazell’s turn to shine, she sang calypsos and socas that featured the traditional satirical themes of carnival music, including “Reality T.V.:

“Look how fat Anna Nicole, that famous gold-digger come thin like a bean pole, slimming on Trim Spa.”

“Reality T.V. is not really reality,” Hazel, said, explaining the satirical bite of the Calypso.

Kiddie Carnival is the kick-off event for Boston’s Caribbean Carnival, one of the major carnivals in the North American circuit, which also include festivals in New York and Toronto. Tonight at the Reggie Lewis Track, the competition for king and queen of Carnival will be held. The event will include a performance by Trinidadian calypso singer The Mighty Shadow.

“King and Queen will be much bigger this year than last year,” said Carnival organizer Shirley Shillingford. “There are a lot more participants and there’s a lot of interest in the Shadow.”

Missing from this year’s schedule of celebrations will be the panorama, the traditional steel pan competition. But the only band to sign up for the event — Branches — will perform during the carnival Saturday.

Carnival officially starts at the crack of dawn, Saturday at 5:30 a.m. with the traditional J’ouvert celebration. A diehard group of revelers will meet at the corner of Blue Hill Avenue and Morton Street before marching up to Franklin Park.

Carnival proper begins at 1:00 p.m. (keeping in mind the Caribbean propensity for late starts). Devotees of the Boston Carnival will hear strains of carnival music, including the perennial favorite “Take a jump, take a jump, take a jump back now, it’s carnivaaaaal,” by the Antiguan band Square One.

The bands participating in carnival — including TnT, D’Midas International, the Engine Room Society and other perennial favorites — will make their way along the nearly mile-long parade route from Martin Luther King Boulevard to the judging stand at the corner of Seaver Street and Blue Hill Ave. where the trio of Trini judges will decide on the best band.

Although by then the judges will have already selected the king and queen and junior winners of carnival, the competition for best band is saved for last, when the dancers in the bands are in full array. They are judged on their dancing and their costumes, many of which take months and many thousands of sequins to prepare.

After the judging stand, the bands complete the parade route, marching up to the main entrance of Franklin Park where vendors await hawking everything from traditional West Indian food to arts and crafts and bootleg reggae CDs.