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Billed as both North America’s largest street festival, as well as the continent’s largest gathering of Black people, formerly called the Toronto Caribbean Carnival but affectionately referred to as Caribana, is a dazzling celebration of Caribbean culture rooted in a radical history of resistance.
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Taking place annually in the city of Toronto since 1967, Caribana was introduced to Canada by immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago, St.Lucia, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana and Jamaica. Inspired primarily by Trinidad’s annual pre-Lenten Carnival, the three-week festival’s biggest highlight is the street parade, which sees the procession of 10,000 costumed participants and over 1 million spectators. It is often scheduled on the first Saturday of August to commemorate the emancipation of Afro-Trinidadians from slavery in 1834.
The many thousands of festival attendees. | Photo: Facebook / Caribana Toronto
Activities celebrated during the fest feature African-oriented cultural traditions of the Caribbean and also center on the theme of forced migration of Africans to the Americas.
If you’re planning on attending the event’s weekend features this year, from July 29 to July 31, or the OVO festival that occurs at the same time and features popular Canadian artist Drake, you’re in for a spectacle of music ranging from calypso to soca to reggae, and more recently U.S. rap and R&B.
Check out the playlists below to prepare for what is sure to be a phantasmagorical carnival featuring the vibrant sights and sounds of Caribbean culture and resistance.
While the celebrated annual event attracting over a million from across the continent was introduced by the Black community in Toronto, it’s come under fire as of late from Black activists and writers for its whitewashed and corporatized transformation. For a festival that brings in nearly $400 million annually, very little is actually accrued to the Black community.
Since its takeover in 2011 by Scotiabank, a Canadian multinational bank, the festival, as cultural critic Dr. Lisa Tomlinson writes, has changed to suit corporate sponsors and Canada’s "faux-gressive" facade of multiculturalism.
Young attendees at the Junior Carnival. | Photo: Facebook / Caribana Toronto / Photagonist.ca
Now confined to a limited space within the city of Toronto, there are also concerns about the over-policing of Black people in even the organizing of the carnival.
However, in the wake of the Ontario Government's Anti-Racism Directorate meeting in Toronto earlier this month, there have been calls to take back Caribana.
As one speaker at the event proclaimed, "Caribana has brought substantial money to this province ... we in the Black community intend to take back Caribana. Black money matters!"
With a surge of ongoing resistance and organizing in Toronto against anti-Black racism, especially with the advent of a Black Lives Matter chapter in the city, the festival and its events will hopefully continue to return to its original roots.
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