Caribbean influencer and TikTok celebrity Johannah Venti was set to attend her first Caribbean Carnival in Toronto in 2016, but a brain injury derailed plans. Venti was diagnosed with a concussion after collapsing at a university dance practice and was bedridden for months.
It took more than three years to recover.
“That took me out of the picture for 2016, 2017, 2018 and now comes the pandemic,” said Venti.
Two years have passed since the COVID-19 pandemic CANCELLATION e Caribbean Carnival in Toronto (TCC) in 2020 – an economic, creative and cultural loss for maskers and musicians who regularly participate in parades, parties (parties) and other celebrations.
This year, the TCC is back with a vengeance and first-time masqueraders and spectators are taking to the streets to display their island pride, including Venti.
The celebration typically attracts more than 1.2 million people, including 180,000 tourists, and contributes about $338 million to Ontario’s economy each year, according to the Government of Canada. The weekend’s events conclude on Emancipation Day in Canada instead of Lent, which is when Carnival is traditionally scheduled in the Caribbean.
The millennial and first-generation Caribbean-Canadian social media mogul has been waiting six years for this moment, overcoming chronic illnesses, mental health issues and impostor syndrome. They will play with Carnival Nationz in the Athena section.
“In my understanding, it is a matter of freedom,” said the TEMPO Network media personality.
Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, Venti moved to Canada in 1995 when she was one year and three months old. She said Canadian New Media relating her story to what many first- and second-generation Caribbean immigrants can relate to growing up in Canada—including intergenerational issues, overprotective parents, and a lack of identity, access, or self-esteem that keeps them from participation in cultural events.
“We’re all learning together,” said Venti, whose online dance lessons focus on releasing trauma through movement.
“There’s a group of us that weren’t taught, or felt left out of the culture,” she said, also emphasizing the need for safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ members to practice and participate.
Growing up outside the GTA in Vaughan, Ont., Venti hid from her heritage to avoid negative comments from her peers, but at university, she decided to explore her ethnic background noticing more positive interest in Trinidadian culture.
“I felt like I was being celebrated for the first time in my life. The narrative changed,” Venti said.
“I belong to society through carnivals”
Indo-, Afro-, and mixed-race Caribbeans are no strangers to a heritage of discrimination. Carnival is traditionally seen as a celebration of liberation and freedom from a history of slavery and coercion.
Jab rope whip master, Ronald Arnoldis familiar with this legacy of violence and has dedicated his life to reviving the art form in Trinidad & Tobago.
Rope Jab is an indigenous martial art from East India, where members of the group fight in costume with whips. It has found a place of respect near the courts of Orisha and Kalinda, the traditions of stick fighting and hand-to-hand combat that traveled to the Caribbean via the transatlantic slave trade.
“I was never allowed to talk to anyone as a teenager about the art form,” he said. But as Arnold saw the elders die out and the membership dwindle, he became increasingly worried about his future.
“We don’t just play Jab Jab,” Arnold said NCM over the phone from his home in Trinidad. “We live the life of Jab Jab. We prepare for war.”
The whip masters in Arnold’s troupe fast for 40 days before the carnival, saying prayers, learning battle cries and tending to the plants from which the whips are made.
Jab Jab (French Creole for devil) has taken many forms, including fire-breathing and terrorizing masquerades of obscene mischief. Other famous traditions include The Blue Devil from Trinidad and Tobago, Jab Molassie in Grenada, and even highlights Yorisha torches who march through the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras.
“Carnivals was the only way for us to go out and express ourselves,” Arnold said. “[It] it’s my safe space.”
In Trinidad, Arnold faced backlash from his family and community about opening up to the public about the Rope Jab, due to a lingering cross-generational fear of colonial violence undermining East Indian tradition.
The sacred and the profane
As Carnival moves and evolves – from the Caribbean to Canada and the US – saying “farewell to meat”, paying homage to Caribbean culture, celebrating freedom and letting loose has always remained the central element.
There is an inseparable understanding between the sanctity of Lent and the blasphemy of “Carnivals,” said Indo-Caribbean poet, author and Sessional Lecturer at the University of Toronto, Prof. Ramabai Espinet. But “distribution is about steps of liberation that have evolved over the years,” she said, touching on the theoretical elements in the history of carnivals.
Espinet makes an important point – “trauma does not live in you 24/7”.
“I almost wasn’t going this year,” Venti said, highlighting the cultural dissonance many Caribbean-Canadians face. “The fear that really kept me going was thinking that I’m not Caribbean enough. This speaks volumes about how trauma and words, and growing up not feeling ‘enough’ really hold you back.
