Caribbean Beat — January/February 2017 (#143)
A calendar of events; music, film, and book reviews; travel features; people profiles, and much more.
A calendar of events; music, film, and book reviews; travel features; people profiles, and much more.
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Cape Town, South Africa<br />
Unlike most other Carnivals profiled here, Cape Town’s Minstrel Carnival<br />
falls not in the days before Lent, but at the start of the New Year, on<br />
2 <strong>January</strong>. With its heart in the Bo-Kaap neighbourhood (or Malay Quarter)<br />
at the foot of Signal Hill, the Minstrel Carnival began during the era of slavery<br />
and evolved over two centuries into a commemoration of Cape Town’s<br />
creole culture, reinvigorated after the end of Apartheid. Like traditional<br />
minstrel characters in Trinidad Carnival, Cape Town’s minstrel troupes were<br />
influenced by nineteenth-century minstrel bands from the United States<br />
<strong>—</strong> subverting a racist tradition and transforming it into a celebration of the<br />
mixed-race “Cape Coloured” community and its perseverance.
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