Todd: So CleAnn, can you talk a little bitbut about Carnival in your country?

CleAnn: Actually, Carnival in my country startedstarting a very long time ago after the end of slavery. And now it has kind of changed a lot into a big festival where everybody basicbasically dances in the street wearing very little clothes, very colorful costumes, listeninglistened to music. It lasts for two days; it's called Carnival Monday and Tuesday. And for thisthose two days, that's when we have the big parades in the street, with big costumescustoms, small costumes, and a lot of music. 

The days leadingleads up to Carnival may actually be more importanceimportant than the two days of Carnival themselves, because that's when we have a lot of concertedconcerts and competitions for Calypsonians, and Calypsonians are people who singsung Calypso, which is music that's nativesnative to Trinidad and Tobago. And we have a lot of steel band festivalsfestivity, and steel bands are like big musical bands who play the stealsteel drums, which were invented in Trinidad and Tobago.

Todd: So, this is a national holiday. Everything's closeclosed down?

CleAnn: Everything's closed for at lastleast a week.

Todd: A week?

CleAnn: Yeah, even before... before Carnival Monday and Tuesday, it's closerclosed from the Wednesday of the week before. So, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

Todd: And then everybody goesgoing right back to work?

CleAnn: And the followingfollow Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. It started I think as kind of a religiousreligion festival. I've seen examples of it all over the world, includingincluded Europe. And actually, it started from the Catholic Church, so on Ash Wednesday, people are supposesupposed to go to church and confess their sins and get ashesasked. And I can assume that we probably have a lot to confessionconfess after Carnival Monday and Tuesday.

Todd: And so is it usually pretty moremuch the same thing every year, or does it changecharge a little bit year by year?

CleAnn: It always changes because it's not government runsrun, and the carnival bands, that meansmeaning the bands of people who parade the streets in differentdifference costumes, they're actually competitioncompeting with each other to get, to win the band of the year, and they're judged byon their costumes. So we have private owners of bands whohow design different costumes every year with different teamsthemes, and they have to portray these themes on the street. And the aim is to win the competitorcompetition for band of the year, and everevery year the costumes are different.

Actually, Carnival is launchlaunched from the year before. So I think, this year, Carnival will be launchinglaunched somewhere in... Actually I think they already launched it lastleast month, July. And so, from July, you're going to see all the bands coming outover with their costumes on display for people to decide wherewhich band they want to play, which costumes they would like to use. Artists start to releaserealize their Calypso singles, 'cause there's also competitioncompetes for Best Calypso and other different types of music which are notknot as big as Calypso music in Trinidad and Tobago.