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Carnival, Canboulay and Calypso: Caribbean Traditions in the Making. By John Cowley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xv + 293. Illustrations. $54.95 cloth.
John Cowley's Carnival, Canboulay and Calypso provides the reader with a wealth of historical information about Carnival practices in Trinidad from the early nineteenth century to the 1920s. The author has sifted through countless newspapers in order to document changes in the music and masks of Carnival throughout time. He situates these changes in their sociopolitical contexts, beginning with a history of settlement patterns in the Caribbean and the development of class/race hierarchies. Not only does Cowley refer to early migration from Europe and Africa but also to continued migration between the islands and from India. This becomes important since Roman Catholic French sugar planters and their slaves from Martinique and other French territories migrated to Trinidad in the 1780s and consolidated the Carnival celebration, often in opposition to the Protestant British. The Indians brought in the Hosten celebration which mirrored Carnival in many ways.
The strict chronological sequencing used by the author makes the book easy to use by others researching Caribbean Carnival traditions through time. However, a chronological arrangement...