Repeating Islands

Well, the weekend is here and with it the travel section of the newspaper. Here’s an interesting one, as it adds a bit of history.

The Crop Over festival in Barbados, which started as a celebration of the sugar cane harvest, is now an annual party for anyone and everyone, says Catherine Nixey in this article for London’s Telegraph.

The initial omens do not seem promising. I have come to experience a famous Caribbean festival in Barbados, but this feels rather more like an English county show.

Along the roadside, people sit on deckchairs, take out packed lunches and open umbrellas in the early morning drizzle.

Then, suddenly, the first dancers begin to appear in a procession. Feathered, jewelled, bikinied and beautiful, they dance, smiling, down the street in their colourful thousands. The music is so loud it is more felt than heard.

I change my mind. The Shropshire County Show was never, alas, like this.

I have come to the island to experience its annual Crop Over festival. Initially held to celebrate the end of the August sugar cane harvest, the festival has, paradoxically, grown in status as the importance of that crop has waned.

What began in the 18th century as a day-long celebration now lasts for more than a month and culminates in this thousands-strong procession, the Grand Kadooment, to the waterfront.

The importance of Crop Over is evident as soon as I get off the plane. In the functionality of the airport’s baggage hall, I am surprised to see two mannequins wearing the processional costume on the carousel.

In sequined bikinis and feathered headdresses, they stand solemnly above the bags passing beneath, feathers wafting slightly in the breeze. I collect my suitcase from beneath their stockinged thighs. The festival has begun.

Though the official Crop Over events largely fall in the first week of August, unofficial partying begins up to five weeks beforehand.

Visitors can and do take part in everything – including the incredible final procession.

Being far too pale and inhibited to wear a bikini in front of anyone but close friends and family, I watch from the sidelines, settling myself among the island’s inhibited and old; where, I find, there is as much fun – and considerably more food – to be had.

Stalls along the waterfront offer the Bajan specialities of rum, barbecued meat (including pigs’ tails) and precarious-looking vats of broiling oil containing anonymous parcels that I suspect are very bad for you – but that taste very good.

More impressive (and more unsaturated) is the food found at Oistins, Barbados’s main fish market (also see opposite). I go one evening before the Grand Kadooment – but with little enthusiasm; the term “fish market” leading me to expect the industrial hulk of Billingsgate.

Instead, I find a collection of small stalls and huts where the day’s catch (flying fish is a speciality of the island) can be bought grilled, baked or fried. I take mine to eat on a wobbling picnic table beneath the palms.

Beyond the market, painted fishing boats lie beached upon the sand. The food here can be evaluated less in terms of food miles than food yards.

The origins of Crop Over were rather different to all the feasting and plenty that accompanies it today. The precise date of the festival’s beginnings is disputed, but most agree it dates back to 1780s, when Barbados was a colony of Britain.

Then, the island’s main crop was sugar cane (much of which would be turned into the island’s Mount Gay rum, to be enjoyed by sailors for years to come). The slaves who harvested the cane were allowed a single day off to rest and celebrate when the crop was over.

Echoes of these origins can be seen everywhere. In the festival’s very existence, and in the fact that it is considered part of Barbados’s “season of emancipation”, held from April to August each year.

And, more subtly, in the very moves used by many of the dancers, such as the shuffling steps said to have their origins in the restrained movements of a chain gang.

It is approaching sunset. The dancers, exhausted from their four-mile bacchanal, arrive, some dancing, some limping, at the waterfront.

Beneath tents and trees, and beneath the silhouettes of the sugar cane factories, they sit and pluck their feathered headdresses from their heads. Some dip their feet in the cooling sea.

As the music from the procession quietens, and the sun falls lower, more music starts up in the stalls along the waterfront. The dancers head back. Crop Over is not over yet.

Celtic festival proves a different kind of island fling

With its history as a colony right up until full independence in 1966, it’s no surprise that Barbados comes across as quintessentially British in certain respects. Yet a lesser-known aspect of the island’s culture is its strong Celtic roots.

When Oliver Cromwell went on a rampage round the British Isles in the 17th century, a large number of Scots, Irish and Welsh – both the banished and volunteers – went to Barbados to work as servants on plantations.

The descendants of the Scots are still sometimes called “redlegs’” because the legs of the white slaves soon became sunburned beneath their kilts.

The story is celebrated in the annual Celtic Barbados Festival, which last year gained sponsorship from the Barbados Tourism Authority and Almond Resorts. Brit Award-winning Scottish singer Eddi Reader, Riverdance troupe members and Celtic rockers Killin Thyme joined Welsh choirs and Scottish pipers for the festival in June.

As well as music, the traditions continued at a family-fun version of the Highland Games at the Garrison. Food reflected the occasion, including a Bajan haggis (made with the local blackbelly sheep) created by top Edinburgh chef Paul Wedgwood, who will be returning this year.

www.celticfestivalbarbados.com

For the original report go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/travel/barbados-holidays/9043772/Crop-Over-festival-Barbados.html