I arrived at the Carenage — Grenada’s historic waterfront in the capital city — around 4:30 a.m. on J’ouvert morning, ready to “play Jab.” The streets were still cloaked in darkness, but the energy was already building. People appeared one by one or in groups, their bodies blackened from head to toe, merging into a tide of beautiful Blackness. Some carried chains, others horns, and others buckets of oil. The air smelled like charcoal mixed with old oil. Then came the sound that signaled it was time to move: the deep blow of a conch shell. I followed the crowd, feeling the weight of history around me, as the city of St. George’s erupted.
What I was stepping into wasn’t just a carnival. Jab Jab is more than a performance or masquerade — it’s an ancestral war cry, a reminder of survival, a statement of freedom. And that’s what makes Spicemas unlike any other carnival in the Caribbean. Before it became a spectacle of lights, music, and elaborate costumes, it was a protest. For Grenadians, it still is.
The origins of Spicemas trace back to the 1800s, when enslaved Africans subverted the French colonial masquerade balls and created something of their own — louder, prouder, and drenched in resistance. The very name Jab Jab comes from the French patois “diable,” meaning devil. The enslaved embraced this devil imagery as satire, mocking the European Christian idea of evil and throwing it back at the people who tried to strip them of humanity. By getting darker — covering themselves in molasses, soot, or oil — Jab Jab masqueraders reclaimed Blackness as power. Chains, horns, coffins, and chants added new layers of meaning: revolt, survival, unity, fearlessness.
“Jab Jab is a resistance and revolt against a system which is deliberately meant to break you,” Ian Charles of Jambalasee Grenada said. “And I mean break you on all levels of what makes you you. Your history, your culture, your mental, your physical, your spiritual, your educational, your economical, your right and everything.”
Ian is one of the loudest voices preserving Grenada’s Jab Jab culture. His family lineage runs through M.O.S.S International, the band that formalized Jab Jab as a music subgenre of soca. “It was formed and managed and executed by the Charles brothers, Don Charles, rest in peace, Ricky Charles and Leon Charles,” he explained. “They came up with the musical structuring of the 1991 ‘Jambalasee Rule’ road march out of Grenada, which went on to be nominated for the first-ever Caribbean Music Awards.”
Jambalasee, the entity Ian now leads, focuses on documenting Jab Jab traditions with a particular emphasis on its sound. “This is our new library. This is our new record-keeping method,” he said. “It was critical for us to use the different social media and the digital platforms to really get out there and have a verified source, an authority force under Jab Jab.” For him, the preservation of Jab Jab isn’t about nostalgia — it’s about ensuring that future generations have something concrete to reference.
Playing Jab Jab might look wild to someone seeing it for the first time. There’s often a misconception that it’s devilish, but in reality every detail carries meaning. The black oil and pigment are not random — they’re about fully owning who you are. Once upon a time, being Black meant being on the wrong side of the fence, marked as less than human under colonial rule. Enslaved people were treated as chattel, able to be “willed, killed, beaten, sold, given away,” as Ian reminded me. What looks like a smear of oil in the streets is really something deeper — a reappropriation of Blackness itself. In his words, “the power in it, the liberation is freedom, its resistance.”
The chains, too, speak volumes. “These chains are a beautiful piece,” Ian continued. “The one thing that was a symbol of capture. You were chained around your neck, around your feet, around your body. These chains right now on Spicemas route are a symbol of freedom. The broken chains, we are broken free.”
That energy on the road is transformative. Jab Jab in Grenada is understood as freedom, as a representation of the ancestors, and as a unifying force. Elders, teenagers, men, women — everyone was in it together. J’ouvert morning becomes one of the only times of the year when social, economic, cultural, religious, and gender lines fade away, and the entire community moves together as one.
Spicemas today has expanded far beyond those roots. The festival, which ran from Aug. 1 to Aug. 12 this year, drew thousands for events like Monday Night Mas — a glowing sea of lights down St. George’s streets — and Fancy Mas, the glittering costume parade full of feathers and jewels. The soca scene is booming, with competitions and road marches that fuel the sound of the season. It’s one of the Caribbean’s fastest-rising carnivals, and tourism has become a central part of its growth.
But with expansion comes a balancing act. “Spicemas right now has become so much of a festival in the sense of it becoming a product that not necessarily would you see the traditional elements on the main stage,” Ian said. “You’re gonna see more of a party atmosphere, more of a hypersexual atmosphere, more of a high alcohol consumption atmosphere versus the drums and the shell and the chants and the ritual.”
That concern isn’t about resisting change — it’s about making sure growth doesn’t erase identity. For Ian, Jab Jab has to remain at the center of Spicemas, even as neon trucks and DJs become more prominent. “We’ve been advocating for the past two years that at the start of J’ouvert, from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m., no amplified music,” he explained. “Because I can’t be walking into Spicemas, which is Grenada's official route, and I’m hearing amplified bass lines. The soul needs to be there and the soul is the music.”
The lesson here is bigger than Grenada. Cultures everywhere struggle with the tension between honoring tradition and embracing reinvention. When I asked Ian what other places could learn from Grenada, he stressed that it can’t be left to chance. Preserving culture has to be a deliberate move — one that starts with a solid foundation that’s documented, referenceable, and strong enough to guide growth without losing the roots. “It has to be deliberately thought out,” he told me. “Deliberately executed with the sole purpose in mind to keep the tradition alive while expanding it and allowing it to grow because culture grows. But you have to still be able to
Spicemas is many things at once: a party, a protest, a homecoming, a showcase. But above all, it’s proof that culture survives when people refuse to let it be erased. Grenada shows that tradition doesn’t have to sit still. It can be loud, messy, unrelenting — and still sacred.
And maybe that’s the greatest lesson Spicemas offers the world: freedom is not quiet. It doesn’t shrink itself to fit expectations or wait politely to be acknowledged. It takes up space, demands to be seen, and reminds us that culture endures when it is lived without apology.
source https://www.okayplayer.com/spicemas-grenada-cultural-lessons
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