MASHRAMANI is Guyana’s unrivalled and rich, multicultural equivalent of a Caribbean Carnival – costumed revelers jumping up in colourful costumes on streets, in gay abandon, to combined instrumental musical variations representing the vast nation’s different, but common, national ethnic and other cultural expressions.

Like everywhere, the objective is to celebrate a day of fun, but not in observance of the uninhibited Christian festival that precedes the 40-day Lenten Season.

Instead, ‘Mashramani’ celebrates Guyana’s birth as a Republic on January 23, 1970, the name so deeply-rooted in Amerindian culture that its origins still remain unrooted, forcing legendary West Indies cricketer, Basil Butcher, David Singh and the other original organisers in Linden to adopt the adapted indigenous name.

Fuelled by its popularity, what originally started off as a Linden-based celebration eventually expanded to Berbice and Georgetown, becoming an annual event looked forward to by Guyanese everywhere, of all walks of life and all different political complexions.

‘Mash’ is a different version of the same every year – people jamming to music with unlimited and unrestricted fun, food and (lots of) drinks, like there’s no tomorrow.

In 2016, the celebration of the indigenous version of an original Christian cultural festival in a multi-religious republic took place on May 26 to mark Guyana’s 60th Independence Anniversary — only to return to February 23 in 2017 — until 2020.

There are many similarities in how Caribbean carnivals are named: ‘Mashramani’ is said to mean “celebration after co-operative work” in keeping with the designation of the new nation as ‘The Co-operative Republic of Guyana’.

In Barbados, the annual “Crop Over” carnival also celebrates the traditional end of the annual sugar cane crop, with its Kadooment – a variation that’s typically Bajan.

The Caribbean’s Carnival Mecca is Trinidad & Tobago and today’s giant globally-popular festival has its roots in Slavery, when enslaved Africans also ‘celebrated’ the enforced Christian ritual of pre-Lenten festivals observed by their European masters.

Carnival also eventually led to the Steel Band in Trinidad & Tobago (developed in the early 1900s) as the only officially-recognised musical instrument invented in the 20th Century.

In Saint Lucia, enslaved Africans also adapted the end-of-crop and pre-Lenten Christian observances and developed the diversionary La Rose and La Marguerite Societies — supposedly honouring two flowers named after Christian saints, but actually using localised replicas of the European societal dress and symbols of power to spread revolutionary messages in their own languages, while dancing and singing to the beat of conga drums and music from indigenous instruments.

The Rose and Marguerite Flower Festivals are still widely observed by Saint Lucians at home and abroad on August 30 and October 17, respectively — their Catholic saints’ feast days — when the churches island-wide dedicate special masses.

Elderly Saint Lucians in Guyana, including the large community at Mahdia, still celebrate La Rose and La Marguerite festivals.

Up to 2019, there was a carnival event somewhere in the Caribbean or the Diaspora virtually every month of the year, starting with the traditional Dimanche Gras and Carnival Monday-and-Tuesday events preceding Ash Wednesday, when, according to Christian tradition, costumes from the ‘pagan’ celebrations are burnt and the ashes crossed on the foreheads of Christians attending Ash Wednesday Mass, when the ‘Playing-Mas’ season gives way to the 40 Days of the Lent.

While revelers spend an entire season ‘Playing Mas’ and ‘Jumping-Up’ and attending ‘King and Queen of the Bands’ and ‘Calypso Monarch’ events in Trinidad & Tobago every February, at the same time neighbouring Grenada’s carnival events follow Independence (February 7) celebrations with a special ‘Jab Jab’ element featuring mainly young men with skins dabbed in thick pitch tar – and some with live snakes too…

Saint Lucia and other islands, decades ago, tied their carnivals to tourism and shifted the celebrations to July, largely for economic reasons – a move Christian churches have faulted for declining interest (in those countries) in Ash Wednesday observance and the following Lenten Season leading to Easter.

And in between island carnivals are the celebrations by Caribbean nationals in the Diaspora – from ‘Notting Hill Carnival’ in London to ‘Labor Day Jam’ in New York to ‘Mardi Gras in New Orleans’ to ‘Toronto Mas Parade’ – and now, with Caribbean nationals of Chinese origin and Caribbean students in China also organising annual carnivals in both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan.

For two years, carnival revelers worldwide were forced to painfully endure stay-at-home and social distancing protocols after all brands — Ole Mas, Jump-up, Parang, Crop Over, Kadooment, Jab-Jab, Flower Festivals, et al — including Mashramani — were struck-off the annual national cultural calendars by COVID-19 in 2020.

But 2022 is here and with-or-without much care about whether ‘Deltacron’ is a real illness or a cultivated curse, or whether Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day, revelers across the region sound and seem determined to hit the road on Carnival Day — whenever, wherever…

But still, not so fast, as some Caribbean governments are also toying with new ideas for safe festive innovations in the COVID-19 era.

Saint Lucia has a proposed ‘Vax Mas’, which, if approved by health authorities, will (hopefully) feature ‘only vaccinated’ revelers in a controlled ‘safe bubble’ environment.

But most governments prefer to take more cautionary approaches that play to the public gallery while heeding the warnings and concerns of health officials by arranging online and hybrid activities mainly planned for home audiences.

The COVID-19 carnival disruption has rubbed all stakeholders the wrong way — bands unable to plan with big numbers, calypsonians and steel bands demotivated by slim state financial allocations and designers only to create for online display.

But be all that as it may, though, like everywhere else, Mashramani 2022, while planned to go viral, is still virtually expected to spread the Guyana carnival virus on February 23, in a land of many races, religions and cultures, celebrating in whichever-what-way as One People in One Guyana.

Happy Mash 2K22, Guyana!