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Carnival History Sources

Who really started Carnival?

Carnival History Sources

Ask around the Caribbean and every island has an answer. I went looking for the actual records, from 965 to today. Here's every source behind the video, so you can check my work.

Drew Atlas

By Drew Atlas, co-host of the Carnival Mix on CJSW 90.9 FM · Updated October 26, 2026

Watch the video on YouTube, 13 minutes.

How each source is graded, A to D
A
Original document. I have the page itself.
B
Official source: a national library, carnival commission, archive, museum or tourism authority.
C
Historian or journalist, named. I haven't seen the original document behind it.
D
Not confirmed. Claimed somewhere, but nobody has produced the document. Not in the video.

Chapters
965The name and the date · 1500sAcross the ocean · 1783Trinidad, 1783 · 1838Whose Carnival? · 1890sThe sound · 1945The islands and the world

69 sources

The name and the date

Carnival's name and its place on the calendar came from Europe.

ItalyCHistorian or journalist

The earliest known use of the word Carnival is in 965, in a Latin document from near Rome, as a payment deadline.

Giovanni Kezich, Carnevale. La festa del mondo (Laterza, 2021), pp. 121 to 129, as summarized by Romolo Capuano and Aleteia

Kezich himself doubts the usual "carne levare" (put away the meat) origin of the word. Most dictionaries still give it (Etymonline), and that's how the video explains it.

VeniceBOfficial source

Venice's carnival organizers date their first record of Carnival to 1094.

Venice Carnival, official site

Details you'll often see added, like a public holiday in 1296, come from secondary sources, so the video leaves them out.

Across the ocean

Carnival reached the Americas with the colonies. The oldest Caribbean record I could find is from Santo Domingo.

BrazilCHistorian or journalist

Portuguese colonists brought Entrudo, a rough pre-Lent street game, to Brazil in the 1500s.

Oliveira Neto and Santos, Ateliê do Turismo (2024)

Martinique and GuadeloupeCHistorian or journalist

France settled Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1635, and its Carnival customs came too.

Standard histories of both islands, including the tricentenary history Guadeloupe 1635 to 1935 (Manioc)

1635 is the year of settlement. When Carnival itself arrived there isn't dated.

Dominican RepublicAOriginal document

Santo Domingo, 1578: sworn witnesses described Carnival as an old custom in the city, with memories going back to the early 1550s. Residents in masks threw oranges and wax balls filled with scented water, the royal judges rode through the streets throwing them back, and there were masked dances at night.

"Many residents went in masks to the Casas Reales by day, to throw oranges and wax balls full of scented water at the president."

"yvan muchos vecinos con mascaras ante las casas Reales de día a tirar naranjas e ojos de çera llenos de agua de holor al dicho presidente"

Juan Caballero de Baçan, witness, 1578. My translation.

A report opened on April 30, 1578 by Diego de Villanueva Zapata, prosecutor of the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo, with eleven witnesses. The original is in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville (Patronato 173, N.1, R.21). Full transcription: Paola Andrea Berrío, Historia y Sociedad no. 33 (2017), pp. 365 to 396 (DOI).

One witness had seen every official review of the judges since 1552 and said the orange throwing was never held against them. The Council of the Indies wrote back: stop it from now on. The historian who published the record notes that Black and Indigenous people were left out of this Carnival.

Dominican RepublicDNot confirmed

La Vega, Dominican Republic, dates its carnival to 1520.

Some researchers give 1520 (CCNY Cohen Library), but nobody cites a document. Anthropologist Carlos Esteban Deive dates the oldest record to Santo Domingo, 1578, the entry above (Acento).

Santo Domingo's longtime city historian, Manuel Mañón Arredondo, wrote that records exist from before 1520, without saying which. In the video only as an on-screen card that says no document has been found.

CubaAOriginal document

Havana, Sunday, February 9, 1698: Black and mixed-race women, armed and outlandishly dressed, formed a company to celebrate Carnival.

"On Sunday the 9th, the Black and mulatto women, armed and outlandishly dressed, formed a company to pass the time of Carnival."

"La Domenica 9. le Nere, e Mulate, armate, e vestite bizzarramente, fecero una compagnia, per passatempo del carnasciale."

My translation.

Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri, Giro del Mondo, vol. 6 (Naples, 1700), p. 306. He was in Havana from December 1697 to March 1698 (Adrian Denis, Common-place).

CubaAOriginal document

That's one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of Black people playing Carnival in the Caribbean.

Same book. The same traveller describes Black, mulatto and mestizo riders racing at Carnival in Acapulco a year earlier (vol. 6, p. 31).

The Santo Domingo record is older, but its historian notes that Black people were left out of that Carnival.

New OrleansCHistorian or journalist

March 3, 1699, Mardi Gras day: Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, a French explorer from Montreal, camped on the Mississippi below where New Orleans is today and named the spot Pointe du Mardi Gras. When the French founded New Orleans in 1718, the holiday came with them.

Frank de Caro, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 64 Parishes; The Advocate, quoting Iberville's journal. Iberville was baptised at Ville-Marie, now Montreal, in 1661 (The Canadian Encyclopedia).

HaitiCHistorian or journalist

Haiti: a Carnival at Le Cap in 1730.

Pierre de Vaissière, Saint-Domingue, la société et la vie créoles sous l'ancien régime (1909), as cited by the Bibliothèque haïtienne des Spiritains

In the video, credited to Vaissière by name.

The whole regionCHistorian or journalist

Carnival came with the Catholic powers: Spain, Portugal and France. Britain had broken with the Catholic Church and didn't bring Carnival to its islands. Its colonies' great feast was Christmas.

Nicolette Bethel, Telling the difference: Junkanoo vs Carnival (2015), a Bahamian anthropologist: the British, "having broken with the Catholic church", had done away with pre-Lenten revelry.

Trinidad, Grenada, Dominica, Saint Lucia and St Vincent were British too, but their Carnival came from French Catholic settlers.

JamaicaAOriginal document

Edward Long described Jonkonnu in The History of Jamaica in 1774.

Edward Long, The History of Jamaica (London, 1774), vol. 2, p. 424

Long defended slavery and the book is openly racist. It's cited here only as a dated record.

Jamaica and the BahamasBOfficial source

Jonkonnu is a Christmas masquerade, not a pre-Lent Carnival. The Bahamas has it as Junkanoo, on record there from the early 1800s.

Smithsonian Magazine; Isaac Mendes Belisario's Jamaica prints (1837) show the Christmas masquerade

St VincentCHistorian or journalist

St Vincent, Christmas 1791: William Young, a planter visiting his estates, described the "moco jumbo", a masked stilt dancer out with musicians. It's the earliest known written record of a moko jumbie in the Caribbean.

Robert W. Nicholls, The Mocko Jumbie of the U.S. Virgin Islands: History and Antecedents, African Arts 32, no. 3 (1999), as summarized by Ray Funk in Caribbean Beat (2018). Young's account appeared in his Tour through the several islands of Barbadoes, St Vincent, Tobago, and Grenada, in the years 1791 and 1792.

Not in the video. Like Jamaica's Jonkonnu, it was a Christmas masquerade. Historian Dr Adrian Fraser dates the stilt men's first appearance at St Vincent's Carnival to 1913 (Searchlight, 2026).

Trinidad and TobagoCHistorian or journalist

Historian John Cowley found no solid evidence of Carnival in Trinidad before 1783.

John Cowley, via Musical Traditions

Trinidad, 1783

Trinidad's Carnival came with settlers from around the region.

Trinidad and TobagoCHistorian or journalist

Spain's 1783 Cédula de Población offered free land to Catholic settlers in Trinidad: half as much to free people of colour, and extra land for each enslaved person a settler brought. Settlers came from Grenada, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Dominica.

Cedula of Population, citing Besson (2007)

St Vincent too: Vincentian historian Dr Adrian Fraser names it with Martinique, Guadeloupe and Grenada as islands whose French planters moved to Trinidad after 1783 (Searchlight, 2012). The video's list leaves it out.

Whose Carnival?

Before emancipation it belonged to the planters. After, the people they enslaved took it over.

Trinidad and TobagoBOfficial source

Before emancipation, Trinidad's Carnival belonged to the elite: the planters, and by the 1820s free people of colour too. Enslaved people were kept to their own separate celebrations. The nèg jadin, the field slave, was one of the planters' costumes.

National Carnival Commission of Trinidad and Tobago, Negue Jadin, which describes pre-emancipation Carnival as "celebrated exclusively by the plantocracy"

Trinidad and TobagoBCOfficial source and historian

Before emancipation, the planters acted out Canboulay at Carnival.

NALIS Carnival guide: before emancipation, whites reenacted the Cannes Brulées. Often dated to 1827: Tara Bhajan, Traditional Carnival Characters of Trinidad (2001), via Trinidad Express, and Murphy, Journal of Festive Studies (2024)

The video drops the year. The 1827 date rests on one timeline, and the main eyewitness account was printed decades later, in 1881.

Trinidad and TobagoBOfficial source

Trinidad's national library dates Trinidad's first street parades to 1839.

NALIS, Carnival subject guide: "From the inception of street parades in 1839"

Trinidad and TobagoCHistorian or journalist

By the 1840s, Canboulay opened Carnival, between midnight and dawn.

Murphy, Journal of Festive Studies (2024), with firm evidence from 1846

New OrleansCHistorian or journalist

New Orleans, 1857: the Mistick Krewe of Comus held its first Mardi Gras parade.

Mistick Krewe of Comus, a secret society; 64 Parishes: "The city's custom of parading began with the Mistick Krewe of Comus in 1857"

Puerto RicoCHistorian or journalist

Puerto Rico: Carnival in Ponce is on record by 1858.

Carnaval de Ponce, citing documents from 1858

The famous vejigante masks came later, in the early 1900s.

St VincentCHistorian or journalist

Kingstown, St Vincent, February 1879: masquerading had been banned since 1872. Masqueraders came out anyway, and when the police tried to stop them, the town rioted for several nights. The acting governor, Laborde, asked for the warship HMS Blanche and banned masks in Kingstown's streets on February 12.

Laborde's dispatch of February 15, 1879, as published in Searchlight, Historical Notes (2014). Historian Dr Adrian Fraser, Making Sense of the 1879 Carnival Riots, Searchlight (2022)

Not in the video. It came two years before Trinidad's Canboulay riots.

Trinidad and TobagoBCOfficial source and historian

In 1883 the law went after drum dances. In 1884 it banned torches, drums and stick bands in processions, and set Carnival's start at 6 a.m. Monday.

National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago, the 1884 proclamation; Tara Bhajan (2001), via Trinidad Express

Trinidad and TobagoBOfficial source

J'ouvert comes from jour ouvert: daybreak.

Richard Allsopp, Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, p. 776, as cited in J'ouvert

The first J'ouvert parade on record is 1910 (Bhajan, 2001).

New OrleansCHistorian or journalist

New Orleans: Black people shut out of mainstream Mardi Gras built their own tradition. By the 1880s they were masking as Indians on Mardi Gras day, and they still do.

Smithsonian Magazine, What You Should Know About the Mardi Gras Indians: archival evidence dates the practice to the 1880s, with Becate Batiste's Creole Wild West

Why they mask as Indians is debated: homage to Native people who helped the enslaved escape, Kongolese roots, and the Wild West shows of the time are all put forward.

New OrleansBCOfficial source and historian

New Orleans, 1909: Black working men from a marching club called the Tramps paraded on Mardi Gras as the Zulus. Shut out of the white krewes, they built their own. They incorporated as the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club in 1916, and in 1969 the city let Zulu parade on Canal Street, the route kept for the white parades.

Louisiana State Museum, From Tramps to Kings: 100 Years of Zulu: origins in 1909 as a marching club, and Canal Street in 1969. New Orleans Historical: the Tramps, and incorporation in 1916. On the segregated krewes: NPR

Not in the video. Added thanks to a viewer who pointed it out.

The sound

Every time something was taken away, something louder replaced it.

Trinidad and TobagoCHistorian or journalist

Tamboo bamboo was on the road by the 1890s.

Tara Bhajan (2001), via Trinidad Express: tamboo bamboo music evolving in 1897

Trinidad and TobagoAOriginal document

In September 1914, the Victor record company recorded Julian Whiterose in Port of Spain. The label logged the songs as "calipso".

Discography of American Historical Recordings, UC Santa Barbara: Victor sessions, Port of Spain, September 11 and 12, 1914; Victor 67035, "Single tone calipso" IV and V, J. Resigna [i.e., Julian Whiterose], recorded September 12, 1914

BrazilCHistorian or journalist

Rio: Deixa Falar (1928) is usually called the first samba school, and a newspaper staged the first samba school parade competition in 1932. Mangueira won.

DW, via Poder360

Trinidad and TobagoBOfficial source

Alexander's Ragtime Band is usually credited as the first band on the road with metal pans, in 1939. Steelbands came out in force when the war ended in 1945.

National Carnival Commission, History of the Steelpan

BrazilCHistorian or journalist

Salvador, 1950: Dodô and Osmar played amplified instruments from a 1929 Ford, the start of the trio elétrico.

A Tarde

Trinidad and TobagoCHistorian or journalist

Harold Saldenah is credited with organizing mas bands into sections in the 1950s. The Harts were on the road from the early 1960s, and bikini mas took over in the 1980s.

Trinidad Express, on Saldenah; Caribbean Beat, on Harts

Trinidad and the worldBCOfficial source and historian

What Trinidad's freed people built, the mas, J'ouvert, calypso and the steelpan, became the model for Caribbean carnivals around the world.

Steelpan: National Carnival Commission. Notting Hill's start with Russell Henderson's steelband, and Trinidad-born Claudia Jones: London Museum. Harlem: Gotham Center. Jamaica: UWI Museum and Trinidad Guardian (2016). More than a hundred Trinidad-style carnivals: Caribbean Beat (1994)

The islands and the world

The islands made Carnival their own, and it travelled with the people who moved. In date order.

The whole regionCHistorian or journalist

By the end of the 1950s, Carnival was all over the region: Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Grenada, St Vincent, Antigua, Curaçao, and on the mainland from Barranquilla to El Callao.

Cuba: Havana's Carnival officially brought back in 1902 (Cuban carnival). Curaçao: a Carnival parade first mentioned in 1872 (Curaçao History). Barranquilla: first notable date 1888 (Barranquilla Carnival). El Callao, Venezuela: Carnival and calypso brought by Trinidadian and other Caribbean migrants who came to work the gold mines in the 1800s (Calypso de El Callao; UNESCO, 2016). Antigua: first official Carnival 1957, below.

New YorkCHistorian or journalist

New York's carnival took to the street in Harlem in 1947 and moved to Brooklyn around the end of the 1960s.

Gotham Center, on Ray Allen's Jump Up!

Sources differ on the Brooklyn year: the Gotham Center says 1971 for Eastern Parkway; other accounts say 1969. So the video says "right around then".

ArubaBOfficial source

Aruba held its first island-wide Carnival in 1954. The oil refinery had recruited workers from Trinidad, Jamaica and British Guiana, and they brought the Trinidad style with them.

Visit Aruba, Aruba's Carnival history: "It was these immigrants that enriched Aruba with the Trinidadian style of carnival."

Aruba's first carnival-season parties were club balls from 1921.

CuraçaoBOfficial source

Curaçao: an 1872 ordinance on parades is the first mention of a carnival parade. In 1901 a newspaper reported Carnival celebrated "according to Spanish American customs", started by Venezuelans living on the island, at a private club. Oral history credits the Jolly Fellows Society with taking Carnival to the streets in 1947. In 1971 the first Festival di Tumba made tumba Curaçao's own Carnival music. Before that, the Carnival music was calypso, brought by Eastern Caribbean workers at the Shell refinery.

Curaçao History, with the National Archives of Curaçao: First Carnival Parade, citing Publicatieblad 1872, no. 27, and 1901, Carnival's first celebration, citing De Curaçaosche Courant, February 22, 1901. Tumba: Biblioteka Nashonal Kòrsou, Curaçao's national library; Kòrsou Tadushi.

The 1947 date rests on oral history. The first Festival di Tumba was held at the Roxy Theater in Pietermaai.

AntiguaCHistorian or journalist

Antigua: a one-day carnival for Queen Elizabeth's coronation in June 1953 led to the first official Antigua Carnival in August 1957, which also marks emancipation.

Latrishka Thomas, Antigua Observer (2023): Maurice Ambrose drew up the plan after seeing a carnival in the Virgin Islands, and John Ferdinand Shoul chaired the first Carnival Committee.

Antigua's emancipation came on August 1, 1834, with no apprenticeship (historian Natasha Lightfoot). Its first steelband competition was in 1949 (Pan On The Net).

St Kitts and NevisBCNational Archives, government and researchers

St Kitts: the first Carnival opened at Warner Park on December 18, 1957, and Mighty Kush was crowned the first Calypso King three days later.

Stan Lewis, National Archives of St Kitts and Nevis: A Carnival Journey. The government dates today's National Carnival, Sugar Mas, to 1970, and it marked its 50th in 2021: SKNIS

Before that, Christmas Sports carried the islands' street masquerade. They grew out of the plantation Christmas break. The oldest Christmas record I found nearby is from Nevis, December 1735, when guards were posted against enslaved people gathering for the holiday (Colonial Office records, cited in the University of Bristol's Mountravers study).

BarbadosBOfficial source

Barbados: Crop Over began as the plantation harvest celebration. It dwindled in the 1940s as the demand for sugar fell and plantations closed, but it never fully died out: former plantation workers remember Crop Over celebrations through the 1950s and 60s. Tuk music grew out of festivities like Crop Over, and the folk characters who came out with the tuk band, like Shaggy Bear and Mother Sally, were popular at Crop Over time. In the 1970s Julian Marryshaw of the Barbados Board of Tourism led the revival, and the decorated cart parade began in 1974.

National Cultural Foundation, Barbados: The Crop Over Story, and its Crop Over activity book. The characters: Tuk band

Only the 1974 revival is in the video. Crop Over is a harvest festival, not a pre-Lent Carnival.

LondonBOfficial source

1948: Lord Kitchener arrived at Tilbury on the Empire Windrush and sang London Is the Place for Me for the newsreel cameras.

Royal Museums Greenwich, History of the Empire Windrush: the ship reached Tilbury Docks on June 22, 1948, and the Pathé report of the arrival ends with Aldwyn Roberts, Lord Kitchener, singing the song

LondonCHistorian or journalist

Lord Kitchener performed at Claudia Jones's 1960 carnival. In 1962 the Mighty Sparrow made his first trip to England for her carnival, and that year he talked Kitchener into going home to Trinidad.

Ray Funk, Notting Hill Carnival: Mas and the mother country, Caribbean Beat, issue 100 (2009): Kitchener is listed among the cabaret soloists in 1960; 1962 was Sparrow's "first trip to England"; "Sparrow convinced Kitch to return to Trinidad, which he did later that year."

The talk happened in Manchester, not at the carnival itself.

LondonBOfficial source

Notting Hill hit the street in 1966, with Russell Henderson's steelband. Sound systems came in 1973. It draws more than a million people each August.

London Museum, Origins of Notting Hill Carnival

TorontoBCOfficial source and historian

Toronto's Caribana began in August 1967, the Caribbean community's gift for Canada's centennial. It was started by a committee led by Dr. Alban Liverpool.

1967 and the centennial: The Canadian Encyclopedia, Caribana. Dr. Liverpool chaired the Caribbean Centennial Committee: NOW Toronto; Ron Fanfair (2017); Library and Archives Canada web archive, which calls him "the driving force behind the formation of the Centennial Committee". The parade in August 1967: The Globe and Mail archives; Spacing

Sources split on the parade day, August 5 or 6, so the video says August. The committee's 1967 letters list Samuel A. Cole as executive chairman and Liverpool as event chairman (History of Caribana, citing Toronto council minutes and the Toronto Star).

GuyanaCHistorian or journalist

Guyana became a republic on February 23, 1970, and celebrated with Mashramani, which grew out of an earlier Independence Carnival.

Mashramani

Trinidad and TobagoCHistorian or journalist

1973: Lord Shorty recorded Indrani, calypso with Indian instruments. He called the sound sokah, the soul of calypso. His album Endless Vibrations is the one that made soca stick.

Patricia Meschino, Long live soca!, NPR Music (2023), republished by KAXE: Indrani brought in the dholak and dhantal; Shorty described the sound as "the soul, the spirit, the depth of calypso"; soca is a journalist's respelling of his sokah. Endless Vibrations: Georgia Popplewell, The Blackmans: all in the family, Caribbean Beat, issue 70 (2004)

Sources split on the year of Endless Vibrations: Caribbean Beat says 1975, others say 1974. The video doesn't give one.

Trinidad and Tobago and SurinameCHistorian or journalist

Indo-Caribbean music has its own line into Carnival. Chutney grew from the folk and wedding songs Indians brought on the indenture ships. Suriname's Ramdew Chaitoe and Dropati made the first big records, and Sundar Popo's Nana and Nani took it into the mainstream in Trinidad. In 1987 Drupatee Ramgoonai named the crossover chutney soca, and the Chutney Soca Monarch began in 1996.

Caribbean Beat: Chutney Soca Succession, on Om Shanti Om and Drupatee's 1987 album. Early records: Chutney music and Music of Suriname, citing Rajendra Saywack (1999). Folk songs on the indenture ships: NPR (2015). The first Chutney Soca Monarch, 1996: TV6; Trinidad Guardian

Sources split on dates: King of Suriname is dated 1958 in some histories and 1968 in others, and Nana and Nani 1969 or 1970.

Jamaica and TrinidadCHistorian or journalist

Byron Lee and the Dragonaires played Trinidad Carnival for the first time in 1974.

Caribbean Beat

Trinidad and TobagoBOfficial source

1977: Calypso Rose, from Tobago, became the first woman to win the Road March. In 1978 she won Calypso King, and the title was renamed Calypso Monarch.

Tobago House of Assembly: "She was the first woman to win the national Road March title in 1977 with her song Tempo." "Rose won the 1978 Calypso King Competition, which was renamed the Calypso Monarch."

MontserratCHistorian or journalist

1982: Arrow, from Montserrat, recorded Hot Hot Hot, the biggest-selling soca song of all time.

Stabroek News (2010): recorded in 1982, "the biggest selling soca hit of all time"; Global Voices (2010)

JamaicaBCOfficial source and historian

Jamaica Carnival took to the streets on April 22, 1990, with a team Byron Lee invited from Trinidad, Peter Minshall among them.

Date: UWI Museum, Le' Wi Play Mas. The Trinidad team: Trinidad Guardian (2016)

Jamaica and MontserratCHistorian or journalist

Tiny Winey, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, 1984: written by Arrow, with his brother Hero Cassell on vocals. Both from Montserrat.

Discogs, Tiny Winey (Dynamic Sounds, Jamaica, 1984): songwriter Alphonsus Cassell; vocals Justin Cassell and Marvin Brooks; arranged by Leston Paul; produced by A. Cassell and Byron Lee. Brothers, and Montserrat: Wikipedia, Justin Cassell

Discogs copies the credits printed on the record. I haven't seen the label myself. It lists a second singer, Marvin Brooks; the card only names Hero.

JamaicaCHistorian or journalist

Byron Lee is called the father of Jamaica Carnival.

Jamaica Gleaner (2011)

Not in the video

Nobody has produced the document yet.

Martinique and GuadeloupeDNot confirmed

Martinique and Guadeloupe: enslaved people's Carnival balls, described in 1842.

Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, Voyage aux Antilles (Paris, 1842 to 1844), Library of Congress

The book is real and public domain. I haven't yet seen the page with the passage. Granier de Cassagnac defended slavery, so his account needs that context.

MartiniqueDNot confirmed

Martinique: a colonial order restricting Carnival masks in 1831.

One study is said to cite it. Nobody has produced the order.

Pictures and music

  • The Mighty Sparrow at Harbourfront, Toronto, 2006. Photo: John Leeson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
  • Calypso Rose, 2009. Photo: Jean-Pierre Jeannin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
  • Lord Kitchener, 1945, with Lord Pretender. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
  • Mighty Sparrow show ad, New York Amsterdam News, July 26, 1969, p. 21. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
  • Mighty Sparrow and Calypso Rose, New York Amsterdam News, 1971. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
  • Jaw-Bone, or House John-Canoe, Isaac Mendes Belisario, Kingston, 1837. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
  • Album cover: Lord Shorty, Endless Vibrations. Shown to identify the record I'm talking about. The artwork belongs to its owner.
  • Album cover: Arrow, Hot Hot Hot. Shown to identify the record I'm talking about. The artwork belongs to its owner.
  • Single cover: Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, Tiny Winey, 30th anniversary release (Disky, 1987). Shown with the 1990 Jamaica Carnival card to picture Byron Lee. The artwork belongs to its owner.
  • Drums: my own arrangement, built from the Versilian Community Sample Library, VCSL, released as CC0.