survivingthefourth

The Fourth of July is merely Independence Day on the Mainland. You get the day off from
work, you likely go to a picnic and, if you’re lucky, you watch a fireworks display. Some towns
have parades with patriotic themes. But nowhere under a U.S. flag is the Fourth celebrated with
as much gusto or in such a peculiar way as on St. John. The day is, of course, the culmination
of a month-long event called CARNIVAL. Whether it’s awaited with breathless anticipation or a
feeling of impending relief depends on your point of view.

There are people for whom the celebration starts at 12:01 AM and doesn’t end until the 5th.
The Village is open, naturally. It’s called Henleyville this year, in honor of Floesia Henley. The
booths are decorated and lighted and staffed and stocked with food and drink. The crowds are
listening to music played at a volume that is unhealthy for the human ear, which is what we’re
equipped with. If you like the Ah We Band, you’re in luck. They are there, forcing you to move
your backside. As the night goes on, the throng dwindles but doesn’t disburse. Some booths
close but the brave survive. Dawn is coming.

As the sky begins to lighten, as the first gray fingers of a coming day creep over the hills, the
streets begin to fill with revelers making their way downtown. Illuminated in headlights or
appearing out of nowhere, they come, carrying lawn chairs and umbrellas. But this is not to be
another rendition of a Silent Drum. It is anything but silent. It is, in fact, so not-silent that it
rearranges internal organs. It shakes the glass in the windows. It shudders the leaves on the
trees. It encourages birds to visit the BVI. And it lays down a beat that is impossible to ignore.
The drum in question is mounted on the back of a forty-foot trailer pulled by a Mack truck. The
Jam Band and their friends are piling on that trailer with instruments and flags and whistles and
beers. “Jouvert” is about to begin.

This year it gets a late start. Scheduled for 4AM it doesn’t get going until 6. Not that anybody
notices. Whether you have been drinking all night or you’re making up for having gone home to
bed, chances are you have a drink in your hand. All the way from Nature’s, past Cap’s, to the
Village, through the Park, to Quiet Mon’s and up by the Texaco station people are getting
ready to tramp. Thousands of people are in the streets.

And then it begins; JOUVERT. As the massive truck creeps up from the tennis courts and down
past the ballpark, people fall in behind it tramping, sort of softly stomping with knees slightly
bent, hips gyrating, hands in the air, bottles or cups over head, moving to the throbbing beat of
the band, oblivious to all else. The music sounds like it’s being played on the largest car radio
in the world, which, in effect, it is. There is sampler, keyboard, guitar, horns and the driving
force of the bass and drums. The vocals are shouted as much as sung. The only recognizable
syllables are CAR-NI-VAL. And that’s all you need to know. It’s CARNIVAL, mon! If you haven’t
tramped in a Jouvert jump-up, you’ve missed something classically Caribbean. You’re still a
tourist.

It used to be that a steel pan band would pack into the bed of a dump truck that followed a
route down past St. Ursula’s, hanging a left at Mooie’s, around the corner at the Catholic
Church, past Fred’s and Joe’s and Cap’s, making another circuit if so compelled. But now, with
the introduction of humongous flatbeds, the tramp is confined to a circumnavigation of the park
continuing up the hill by the Lumberyard. And repeat. Whatever the course, it’s a spectacle not
to be missed. It’s something you ought to do, if only once in your life.

-Jeff Smith