Haitian Carnival

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten season, a somber period of fasting and penance that precedes Easter for Catholics.

Mardi Gras enabled people to enjoy the pleasures of life before the beginning of the Catholic Lent season, a period of 40 days and nights of fasting and penance leading up to Easter.

In Haiti, carnival is also heavily influenced by local customs, such as Vodou religious rituals, and Haitian music.

The carnival is the largest annual event where bands can gain more public exposure and it provides the opportunity to perform at large concerts.

Carnival celebrations were traditionally considered "sinful" to Protestant Haitians, who were advised by their ministers not to participate.

[3] Celebrations were greatly curtailed by the 2010 Haiti earthquake, although they still took place on a much-reduced scale, with only one quarter of the usual budget.

The 2011 carnival featured many costumed performers satirizing darker themes than usual, such as the post-earthquake cholera epidemic and the need for humanitarian relief.

In 2015, celebrations were cancelled nationwide after the second day due to an accident during the defile that claimed the lives of 18 people and injured 78 more.

Haitian Creole, largely based on the French vocabulary, with influences from African, Spanish, Portuguese and Carib languages, has a variety of expressions associated with its carnival celebrations.

Its celebrations give revelers an opportunity to throw away their inhibitions, and the expressions encourage this:[2] Musicians from the Haitian diaspora in New York City and elsewhere often return to Haiti to perform at the carnival.

The incorporation of military costumes and dance steps in rara processions is also an acknowledgement of the community hierarchy, and the folk belief that Vodou rituals, including rara, supported the success of the Haitian Revolution, and the continued well-being of Haiti.

This event supposedly originated in earlier times, but no such Carnival celebration had been held since (at least) the transition to democracy in 1986.

During Haiti's years under the dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier, the government sponsored koudyaye festivities as a means to distract the people of Haiti from economic and political problems, and to give a limited, sanctioned way for people to release frustrations and avert rioting.

Musicians have an opportunity to expand their audience by performing for crowds during the 3 days prior to Ash Wednesday.