ABSTRACT
The term jamet or jamette refers to the Black working-class populace of urban Trinidad and Tobago in the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. A jamette sub-culture emerged in response to harsh socio-economic conditions, namely overcrowding, unemployment, crime, and poverty. This class, which comprised singers, domestics, drummers, pimps, and prostitutes, for example, epitomized the opposite of the upper-class elite and notions of decency and respectability. Jamette is often used to describe the Black working-class urban woman of this period and the Carnival of the late nineteenth century. This chapter seeks to highlight the role and contributions of the jamette to the development of cultural expressions, such as stickfighting, the steel pan movement, Carnival, and women’s sociopolitical agency relating to their involvement in protests, such as the Water Riots, into the early twentieth century. The policing of Black women’s sexuality, body, and behavior in public spaces, and criticism of who they were and what they re/presented, is also examined in this period. The issues remain relevant, as from the mid-twentieth century, Carnival is woman. Women are the dominant mas players at Carnival, a time that allows one to be free and for some women, “to bring out the jamette inna me.”
