Afropop Worldwide

It’s Carnival time all around the world, with lavish annual celebrations in New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro and Port of Spain, Trinidad and elsewhere, culminating this year on Feb. 28. The Beat covered the music of the 1993 Carnival in Trinidad with two eyewitness accounts by our correspondents Steven Seftel and Gene Scaramuzzo. And although the reportage is some 24 years old, each carnival has its own long-standing traditions--masquerade, parades, contests--components that repeat each year even as the songs and the singers change.