08/05/2026
: ORIGIN TRINIDAD & TOBAGO
To understand this properly, you have to start where "Caribbean Carnival" itself first took shape, in Trinidad and Tobago in the late 1700s.
In 1783, the island of Trinidad was underpopulated. As a result it was also struggling economically. It was ruled by Spain at the time. A French planter called Phillipe Rose Roume de Saint-Laurent had an idea. He approached the Spanish crown to partner with France to invite French planters to come settle in Trinidad to increase the population. This initiative was called "The Cedula of Population." Jose Maria Chacon, a Spanish governor in Trinidad agreed and as a result Trinidad's French influence developed.
The French brought with them, their culture, which included a pre-lenten masquerade ball.
The enslaved Africans were not allowed to take part in this. They would observe the French who were new to their island. The slaves found French traditions to be peculiar and amusing. As a result they would mock them in secret. They would dress up like the French, creating "costumes" to mock and tease their traditions. But when Emancipation came in 1834, everything changed. The Afro-Trinbagonoans were now free to take their expression to the streets. However, now they did not need to merely copy what they saw. They transformed it into something bold, loud, and real. Out of that moment is where many characters such as the "Jab Jab" was born.
The word "Jab Jab" is short for "Jab Molassie" a name that was coined in Trinidad and Tobago. “Jab” means 'devil' in French Creole, a language the slaves adopted and adapted, from their new owners. “Molassie” means molasses, which is a thick black substance that was produced in the sugar plantations in Trinidad at the time. The freed Africans in Trinidad wanted to embody a character that represented everything they despised on the plantantion - a molasses devil which personified the evils that existed on the sugar plantations. They also wanted to mock their nick names that they were given by plantation owners - the "black devils". So they covered themselves in molasses, wore chains and horns, and took to the streets, amongst several other "traditional" characters. By the 1800s, the Jab Jab was already rooted in Trinidad Carnival. It was part of the street, part of the sound, part of the rebellion that even showed itself during moments like the Canboulay Riots. .
Then the 1900s came, and Trinidad's economy began to shift. Sugar declined. Trinidad became more industrial with the rise and discovery of more oil deposits. Oil became accessible, and was growing to become part of the island's identity. As a result, oil rather than molasses became the prefered substance for the Jab Jab. Oil was readily available in Trinidad, and also easier to manage than molasses. It was black, raw, practical but also cultural. The molasses once reflected the sugar plantation era, but oil reflected Trinidad’s new identity as an oil producing nation. The Jab Jab character did not die, it just evolved with the environment. This was not random. It came from the land, the work, and the history of Trinidad itself. Grenada do not have oil. Therefore it is pretty clear that a character drenched in oil, could never originate in Grenada.
It was brought to the spice island because Trinidad Carnival traditions did not stay in one place. Caribbean people moved. Trinidad became a place where people from other islands came for work, especially in cocoa and oil. Among them were people from Grenada. They lived in Trinidad, worked in Trinidad, and experienced Carnival in Trinidad. They saw Jab Molassie in the streets, not as a performance, but as something alive. And adopted that experience into Grenada. The Jab Jab and The Grenada Carnival developed much later in the 1970s, more than a century later than Trinidad. Whether you call it Jab Molassie or Jab Jab, the point is, this character had already existed and witnessed in Trinidad for generations.
This is not folklore. Hear say. Or favoritism.
This is documented history.
If you don't know, know you know 🇹🇹💪
(Look out for part-two: How TRINBAGONIANS developed most trini-styled Carnival in Barbados, Jamaica, Canada, Nottinghill, Miami and the rest of the Caribbean).