Carnival means calypso and soca, chipping and wining, costumes and mas. But above all it means women, for revelers are always overwhelmingly female. While Trinidadians place a lot of emphasis on carnival’s cultural aspects, from my untutored Jamaican perspective it seems in essence a celebration of the female body and spirit. And as someone who firmly believes that a beautiful woman is the strongest argument in favour of the existence of God, I am all for it.

For how can any normal red-blooded male not be enchanted by an endless parade of glittering half naked nubile young women? The way I see it, if God didn’t want men to look at women he wouldn’t have made them so lovely. And considering all the trouble women revelers go through of putting on makeup and glitter and skin tight outfits, well it would surely be insulting for us men not to make our visual appreciation obvious.

But it is not only its physical attractions that make carnival such a delight. Because to me the loveliest sound on earth is that of female laughter. And where will you hear more of it than at bacchanal time when women ecstatically cast their emotional inhibitions away?

Now its detractors are forever harping on carnival’s “sexual excess”. And yet the nudity and public sex they love to talk about exist only in their own fevered imaginations. The bacchanalian carousing, at least in the West Indies, is always held within limits and never descends into wild debauchery. The dancing may be sensuous and suggestive, but most of it seems almost ritualistic. At any rate it is women who decide who they will “wine” with and for how long. Any man who tries to take uninvited liberties is quickly met with an embarrassing repulse.

I fail to see why anyone should have a problem with a joyful crowd of thousands singing and dancing its way peacefully through the streets one afternoon a year. After all those participating are doing so of their own free will, and anyone who doesn’t wish to take part can simply shut their windows or go somewhere else for the day. Those who grumble about it not being an “intrinsic part of our culture” are simply being ignorant, for everything we now regard as “indigenously Jamaican” originally came from somewhere else. It is surely up to the Jamaican masses and not a few elitist chip-on-the-shoulder xenophobes to decide whether carnival should become a permanent part of our entertainment calendar.

There will always be killjoys who get upset by the idea of other people having fun. But as Shakespeare asks in “Twelfth Night”, “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” And strident carnival critics always bring to mind H.L. Mencken’s famous definition of puritanism - “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”.

Part of carnival’s delight is the bright bouncy sound of soca, which for the sheer sense of abandonment it creates is probably the best party music in the world. And yet there is something one dimensional about soca. There may be no better music on earth for having fun, but it is hard to take seriously and gets rather boring out of season. To be sure in its native land issues of the highest import have always been debated through “kaiso” and “picong”. But unlike reggae which is many things to many people all over the world, outside of Trinbago calypso and soca are seen mainly as a good time party musics.

Which is why our overwrought musical chauvinists who talk of soca as a threat to reggae are making much ado about nothing. Soca may deal wonderfully with how to have fun, but the great strength of reggae is that lyrically and musically it is able to address almost the entire spectrum of Jamaican existence. This is why even though soca is wildly popular with some during carnival season, it is dancehall that rules the year round. And apparently this is true in Trinidad too.

Soca fetes however attract a lot more women than men, while the opposite is true of dancehall sessions. Perhaps some West Indian musical sociologists should do research on just why this is so. But it probably accounts for the fact that while there has never been a serious incident at any carnival event in Jamaica, violence at dancehall shows sometimes seems more like the rule than the exception. For when there are a lot of unattached women around, men are generally too busy looking and trying to get a date to get into trouble. But when women are in short supply, the frustration of those men without one often erupts into senseless aggression.

One aspect of carnival in Jamaica which has disappointed many people, including its founder Byron Lee, is the class divisions that have seeped into it. As he says, one of his inspirations for introducing carnival here was to create an event in which all classes and colours could participate. And for the first few years it seemed his dream was being realized. This island has probably never had such a truly “out of many one people” experience as in that first carnival in 1990 when uptown, downtown and midtown all came together at Half Way Tree.

But since then the insidious class divisions that seem an indelible part of life in this island have reasserted themselves. Unlike the early years when all bands paraded on the same route, the “lighter” uptown ones now apparently refuse to mix with the masses and go their own way. And the “roots massives”, or those who claim to represent them, have also decided to show how different they are. Last year the carnival parade downtown apparently made a statement by playing only dancehall and hip hop, and no soca. Considering that in their birthplace soca and mas are very much creations of the masses, these are very ironic attitudes indeed.

For those who remember the initial coming together all this is rather disappointing. But every event must eventually reflect a country’s strengths and weaknesses. And it would be unrealistic to expect carnival by itself to erase those class divisions which so many Jamaicans seem to hold dear.

Yet carnival is still by far the biggest annual mass spectacle in the country, and no other event comes close to drawing even half the crowd it does. Furthermore, in its 12 years of existence there has never been a single unsavoury incident. It certainly gave the lie to those who claimed Jamaicans could never stage a trouble free mass event, and is proof that violence does not have to pervade every aspect of life here. Even for that example of peaceful co-operation alone, our powers that be should give it all the official encouragement they can. changkob@hotmail.com