Jump. Jump and play mas.

The aim of this study was to examine the carnival event in Trinidad and Tobago in its contemporary manifestations to determine how the festival achieved national status, given the society\u27s grim historical beginnings. While early scholarship on Trinidadian Carnival has emphasized its historical origins the purpose was to evaluate the processes of cultural persistence and change that take place in Carnival. Through its complex carnival celebration the still-developing nation experiences its cultural awakening and re-awakening, affirmation and re-affirmation. In Trinidad one is dealing with multiple cultural configurations which have merged becoming indigenous to Trinidad. As such, any understanding of Trinidadian Carnival and by extension Trinidadian culture has to be understood against this backdrop process of unfolding, defining, re-defining, changing, re-evaluating--meta-masking--as the culture matures and grows. Thus, on a more general note, the ethnography is also a search for both the representation and manifestation of Trinidadian culture in carnival mas art through the medium of this on-going process of meta-masking. Fieldwork was confined to the major carnival center, the capital city, Port-of-Spain. Several carnivals were investigated spanning periods in 1983-1984, 1986-1987, 1988, 1989-1990 and in 1992. Voluntary work was also carried out at both a medium-sized and a small mas camp in Port-of-Spain. This facilitated on-the-spot as well as behind-the-scenes participation in many of the related elements that constitute Carnival. However, this inside view was only possible because of the author\u27s Trinidadian origins. Meta-masking processes were evaluated through mas (costumes, and specific band styles emerging out of these costumes) used by mas men (creative artists) in their perennial quest to define what it means to be Trinidadian/West Indian. These were presented in characteristic movements that also depicted various phases of growth in Trinidadian society: post-emancipation, post World War II, independence and contemporary Carnival. The data indicate that meta-masking is an original concept that casts new light on the self-transforming notion of cultural traditions