Ep. 14: Caribbean Festival Culture: The History behind the Fete

Caribbean carnival is one of the region's most famous annual celebrations comprised with lively music, dancing, and of course lavish costumes. Shauna Rigaud joins us this week to discuss carnival's history and the history of Barbados' Crop Over festival.

Shauna holds a BA in African American Studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a master’s in both Gender/Cultural Studies and Communication Management from Simmons University, in Boston. She is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies program at George Mason University. As a burgeoning scholar focused on the Caribbean, she hopes to highlight experiences and stories that give a more nuanced understand of the Caribbean, its history and postcolonial condition. Her research interests include a focus on the Caribbean Diaspora, Performance and Performativity, Black feminism and Caribbean feminism. She is also the co-founder of Mayhem246 a concierge company that specializes in providing entertainment experiences during Barbados’ Crop Over Festival.

Follow Shauna and Mayhem246 at @ne1nappy and @mayhem246.

Strictly Facts Reads

• “After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti” by Edwidge Danticat

• Carnival of Trinidad Edition of the Caribbean Quarterly Journal, 1956

• “High Mas: Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Culture” by Kevin Adonis Browne

• “The Dragon Can’t Dance” by Earl Lovelace

Strictly Facts Sounds

• Sanctuary- “Pick Me Up”

• TC- “Paradise”