Grenada's boatbuilding island where carnival involves masquerade dances from West Africa, and the Big Drum Nation ceremony is performed for the ancestors
Carriacou, the largest of Grenada's Grenadine islands, is a flat coral island of pastel-coloured houses, rum shops, and a boatbuilding tradition that produces the handsome Carriacou sloop — a working fishing and inter-island transport vessel built without plans in the same way for generations. The Hillsborough anchorage is small-scale and welcoming, with a market day that brings inter-island traffic from across the Grenadines. What makes Carriacou culturally distinct is the retention of African religious traditions brought by enslaved people from specific West African nations — the Big Drum N…
Carriacou's African-descended population retains remarkably strong cultural connections to specific West African origins through the Nation Dance tradition. Family oral histories record which 'nation' their ancestors came from, and ceremonies are performed to specific rhythms associated with each nation. This specificity — naming the Igbo, Cromanti, Temne, Manding — is unusually preserved compared to most of the Caribbean, where the trauma of enslavement erased specific African origins within a generation or two.