Traditionally, Jab Jabs would use any available substance, including stale molasses, tar, grease or mud, to darken their skins to an extreme blackness. Sparsely dressed and accessorised with items such as broken pots and pans, cattle horns and cow chains, the intent of the Jab Jab was – and still is – to horrify and gross out onlookers. Jab Jabs now appear in various colours, including yellow and blue.
 
 Jab Jab has also spawned its own calypso spin-off, “Jab Jab Music,’’ which is the most glaring indigenous, locally made artefact of  Grenada’s carnival.  Jab Jab Music is characterised by a deep rhythmic bass accompanying conch or flute blowing, and a repeated chant as part of the chorus. For example, Grenadian Tallpree scored a mega regional hit with his “Ole Woman’’ calypso.  Audiences everywhere were singing the refrain:

Ole woman we taking home
Ole woman alone
Ole woman alone we taking home
Ole woman alone
Ole woman we taking home

In actuality, Grenada’s Spice Mas is essentially about six weeks of festivities, spanning all of July to mid-August.  It’s an interval of frenzied, non-stop partying and cultural shows and competitions. It was not always held in that period. Historically, carnival preceded Lent as it does in places such as Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica and Brazil.

In 1981, Grenada shifted its carnival time and transformed it into a summer event, leading almost instantly to a surge in mid-year visitors and a blossoming in artistic presentation and creativity, particularly in calypso composition and competition.  Many tourists choose the final weekend as their arrival time, not daring to miss the culmination of the festival with its street masquerade on Carnival Monday and Tuesday, which are August 10 and 11 this year.  Masquerading on Monday opens with J’Ouvert.  The day ends with a spectacle called Monday Nite Mas.

The word J’Ouvert itself is Grenadian and Caribbean neologism. It's from the French words jour, which means day, and ouvert, which stands for open.  In its practical modern application, J'Ouvert – which begins at daybreak – marks the opening session of the final two days of carnival.

Monday of Spice Mas, August 10, will require a reservoir of stamina to keep pace with, and to consume, everything that is furnished in food, drinks and cultural showcase. For after J’Ouvert, there is only a small window for rest and relaxation before it’s off to the street parade of costumed bands.  All this is crowned with the presentation of Monday Nite Mas.

It’s only a recent phenomenon but Monday Nite Mas is a highly anticipated event.  A T-shirt party and theatrical show, it is set against the backdrop of the cooling evening temperature with steady winds blowing across the picturesque Carenage harbour and waterfront. It’s the Carenage – or “The Wharf’’ as many Grenadians are wont to call the place – that’s the main thoroughfare for Monday Nite Mas.

Preceding J’Ouvert and Monday Nite Mas are keen competitions for bragging rights and cash prizes in soca, calypso, beauty pageantry and steelpan.  Calypso and soca have had a few multiple-time winners; virtuosos like King Ajamu, Scholar, Flying Turkey and Smokey.

Between them, Angel Harps and New Dimensions have won more pan titles than there are fingers and toes on a regular man or woman. Harps, the champions of 2008, is Grenada’s oldest steelband, having been founded in 1965.  The band, whose musical arrangers have included a Catholic priest and a Commissioner of Police, was the first Grenada steel orchestra to record an album of pan music. The album, Brighter Out of Darkness, was released in 1973.