The roots of carnival in Jamaica lie at UWI

The most well-known origin story of carnival in Jamaica involves the legendary Byron Lee bringing the Trinidad-inspired celebration to the land of reggae in 1990. But the glamourous Easter ‘fete-ing’ – today an explosion of music, colourful costumes and lots of skin – has far humbler roots, decades earlier at the foremost institution of learning in the Caribbean. From ‘ole mas’ to ‘pretty mas', the first inklings of carnival in Jamaica sprung up on the Mona Campus of the University ...