Boston Caribbean Carnival 2014: Mas, Soca and Caribbean Culture Take Over the Streets
Boston’s Caribbean community filled the streets with color, Soca and mas on Saturday, August 23, 2014, for the annual Boston Caribbean Carnival, a celebration that had already been part of the city’s cultural landscape for more than four decades.
The 2014 festivities stretched from early-morning J’Ouvert into the main Carnival parade, with masqueraders, elaborate costumes, sound trucks and thousands of spectators gathering through Roxbury and Dorchester. Competitive bands brought themed presentations to the road as Boston once again celebrated the traditions of its diverse Caribbean community.
Julianspromos documented the Carnival through a Boston-based media team. Marsha Monelle hosted the coverage, Calvin Tucker operated the camera, and Julian C. Hackett edited the footage for Julianspromos.
A Boston Carnival Tradition Since 1973
Boston Caribbean Carnival traces its history to 1973, when Trinidadian Ken Bonaparte Mitchell and Ivy Ponder helped introduce a Caribbean-style Carnival celebration to the city.
What began as a much smaller procession eventually developed into one of New England’s major Caribbean cultural events.
Although rooted heavily in Trinidad and Tobago Carnival traditions, Boston Carnival grew to represent the wider Caribbean diaspora, with communities connected to Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Montserrat and other islands participating over the years.
By 2014, the Carnival had become an established Boston summer tradition.
Boston Carnival 2014
Carnival Day began with J’Ouvert, where revelers took to the streets in the early morning covered in paint and dancing to Caribbean music.
Later came the main parade, with bands presenting full costume themes as they made their way toward Franklin Park.
The competitive bands documented in 2014 included T&T Social Club, Soca & Associates, D’Horizon, Socaholics, Dynasty Production Inc., D’Midas International, Mirage Masqueraders and Peace Mas.
T&T Social Club captured Band of the Year with its presentation “Lights on Broadway,” narrowly defeating Soca & Associates’ “Island Pride: Show Me Your Culture.”
Other presentations included:
D’Horizon – “Birds of a Feather”
Socaholics – “Mystical Garden”
D’Midas International – “Zulu Nation”
Mirage Masqueraders – “Harlem Nights”
Peace Mas – “7 Wonders”
The year’s King and Queen competition also produced memorable portrayals. Tamara Compass of T&T Social Club won Queen with “Reaching for the Stars,” while Garfield Charles of D’Horizon captured King with “Kachechei: Dance of the Firebird.”
Together, the bands, individual masqueraders, music and spectators turned the road into a celebration of Caribbean identity in Boston.
Marsha Monelle Hosts for Julianspromos
Hosting the Julianspromos coverage was Marsha Monelle, a Dominica-born media personality, singer and Caribbean entertainment host with an established connection to Boston’s Caribbean media scene.
By 2012, Monelle was hosting 617Live TV’s Caribbean Scene, where her work included interviews with Caribbean artists such as Machel Montano, Bunji Garlin, Fay-Ann Lyons, Kerwin Du Bois, Farmer Nappy, Lyrikal, Shaggy and Beres Hammond.
Her background also included performing arts and journalism, making her an experienced on-camera presence before the 2014 Julianspromos assignment.
That experience gave the Boston coverage a local media connection rather than simply sending a New York-based team into the city for Carnival Day.
A Different Julianspromos Production Setup
The Boston Carnival footage is also a notable exception within the Julianspromos archive.
For this assignment, Julian C. Hackett did not operate the camera.
Instead:
Host: Marsha Monelle
Camera: Calvin Tucker
Edited by: Julian C. Hackett
The setup demonstrated another way Julianspromos was expanding its Caribbean media coverage by 2014.
Rather than requiring Julian to physically travel and film every event, Julianspromos could work with contributors in another city, then bring the footage into its own post-production workflow for editing and distribution.
That helped extend the platform’s Carnival documentation beyond New York while maintaining the Julianspromos media presence.
Looking Back
The 2014 Boston Caribbean Carnival highlights preserve a colorful chapter of a celebration whose history already stretched back more than 40 years.
The footage captures J’Ouvert, competitive mas, Soca and the costumes that transformed Boston’s streets on August 23, 2014.
It also documents another stage in Julianspromos’ growth beyond New York.
With Marsha Monelle hosting, Calvin Tucker behind the camera and Julian C. Hackett editing the final footage, the video preserves both Boston Caribbean Carnival and an early example of Julianspromos coordinating original Caribbean media coverage in another U.S. market.
