Kenley John, Shortmus Productions, and Shacomba Phipps

Carnival Costumes and Dance
Baltimore, Maryland

Carnival is a traditional festive season that occurs in the weeks leading up to the Lenten season, often culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten period. (The word Carnival comes from the Latin for "farewell to meat," as many people mark the Lenten season by abstaining.) Celebrated throughout the transatlantic world, Carnival is perhaps most popular in New Orleans, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, and other islands in the Caribbean. It dates back to enslaved people on French plantations in the Caribbean in the 1800s who celebrated “Playing Mas”—or masquerade—as part of a beloved pre-Lenten tradition. Today, in many Caribbean communities, the socially liberating celebration of Carnival is a national obsession, with participants spending the better part of the year in preparation for this multiday celebration.

One of the festival's key traditions involves the making of elaborate, sculptural costumes, constructed out of both natural and manmade materials. While the casual observer might view the costumes, the large steel drum bands, the celebratory street parades, and other Carnival mainstays as simple revelry, these crafts are actually fiercely competitive, as costume makers vie to outperform one another and gain the status of “top costume.” 

Carnival costume maker Kenley “Shortmus” John hails from the island of St. Vincent, situated between St. Lucia and Grenada in the Caribbean Sea. After moving to Baltimore, he founded Shortmus Productions, a performing arts group that constructs more than 100 costumes from scratch each year for Caribbean-style carnival celebrations across the country, including the annual CaribeFest in Virginia Beach. "My costumes symbolize the beauty of life in the tropics," says John in an interview with the Baltimore Sun. "My costumes are an expression of ... our cultural heritage. It tells the story of who we are and where we're from."

Another distinct aspect of Carnival celebrations are stilt walkers, sometimes called “Mocko Jumbie” or “Moko Jumbies.” Writer Katherine Brooks explains: “The term ‘moko jumbies’ combines what many have interpreted as a name for an African deity, Moko, and the West Indian word for ‘spirit,’ jumbie. Taken together, the two concepts have amounted to a centuries-old art form consisting of extravagant costumery and gravity-defying dance, in which individuals mime the movements of a towering, protective god.” Baltimorean Shacomba Phipps is a stilt walker whose grandfather brought the tradition from Nigeria to the island of St. Thomas. Phipps and his crew perform on 13-foot stilts, cavorting as spirits who strike fear into the hearts of evil-doers.

Clyde Jenkins

Colonial Dress Traditions, Heirloom Apples, Apple Grafting, and Basket Making
Stanley, Virginia

Photo: Pat Jarrett

Clyde Jenkins grew up in an old homestead in the Shenandoah Mountains in Page County that his family has inhabited for generations. Working the land, he has derived many skills from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries including basket making and heirloom apple growing.

Before the last half of the twentieth century, a wide variety of apples were grown regionally, with apple types grown according to the varying soil, weather, and habitat conditions across the United States. The advent of a national market, driven by the development and consolidation of supermarket chains, has reduced the number of available apple varieties to a dozen or so that keep well, respond well to extensive spray programs, and have an attractive and uniform outer skin. Much of the flavor that our ancestors cherished in apples has been sacrificed. The old regional varieties have become difficult, if not impossible, to find—and some have disappeared entirely. Clyde is an expert apple grower, dedicated to finding the most richly flavored fruits available that will grow well in central and western Virginia. One of his specialties is grafting, which describes any of a number of techniques in which a section of a stem with leaf buds is inserted into the stock of a tree. Grafting is useful for more than reproduction of an original cultivar. It is also used to repair injured fruit trees or for combining an established tree with one or more different cultivars. The Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans all practiced grafting, and it remains a valuable and widely-used horticultural method.

In addition to being an authority on apple varieties, Clyde is also a brilliant basket maker, relying mainly on white oak strands he weaves together. The traditional skill of making baskets from white oaks is hundreds of years old, involving an in-depth study of the grain structure of the tree. Each white oak tree behaves differently, so basket makers must work with hundreds of trees to gain an intimate understanding of the nuances of the wood.

Clyde also has amassed a collection of ceremonial dress and costuming accessories from the Colonial and Civil War periods. Sticking with the 2018 Virginia Foklife Area theme of masquerade, he will be displaying these costumes as well as adorning himself in authentic Colonial period attire.