unseen carnival photos st maarten carnival 2014 will be a blast

I'm doing end a year inventory. Lotsa videos and photos I'm just discovering have not been posted. When I get a better laptop and better internet I'll post everything, until then...I'll just tease.

DUTCH ST MAARTEN CARNIVAL GRAND PARADE AND 2ND DAY PARADE ARE TO SEPARATE THINGS!!! photos judith roumou

During the Grand Parade for Dutch St Maarten carnival, you'll see choreography, elaborate costumes, and the musicians stay decent. 2nd day parade now, is a completely different story. The winners have already been called so the girls, the troupes and the bands can relax. Second day parade means the competition is over, now they can have fun. In the photos above The Survivor dancers already won best troup 2012, the day before, so for second day, they are just celebrating. I use a lotta second day parade to cut my videos, and there's controversy because people believe it's the main parade, and its not.

FRENCH ST MARTIN CARNIVAL VS. DUTCH ST MAARTEN CARNIVAL video nokturna9/judithroumou

The best thing about St Maarten, is that we have almost two of everything. The best part of that is two CARNIVALS, Jouverts, 2nd day etc. Well why attend both St Martin and St Maarten carnival? Because they are completely different and unique. The french government does not really support their carnival, so there is always a battle to get ready, but they always do fantastic. The Dutch government does fund some of carnival, but there is a lot of nepotism, cronyism, corruption and disorganization in Dutch Carnival.

In Dutch Carnival, as you can see by my videos...everything goes!!! They get wild, and bruck out in style. They now have choreography, but St Maarten is know for the bachanal on Jouvert and 2nd day parade. 5 million worldwide viewers cannot be wrong. Dutch St Maarten carnival is more than about being entertaining, its about being provocative. Most of the stuff is done tongue-in-cheek but not everyone gets it. St Martin carnival is all about culture, and ORGANIZATION. The head Police told the organizers during Carnival 2012, he said "I don't care what time you start, you're done by 6pm!" The organizers had to hit the streets. You cannot just show up when you want to for St Martin Carnival. And they dance orderly down the streets, nothing to outrageous. When they get to Main Street by the Merie, they break into CHOREOGRAPHY! And I love it. Above is a basic routine during 2011 St Martin Carnival. When you watch the 2012 videos, the choreography was bigger, longer, splashier. I didn't attend this year, because there was too much going on. I will in 2014. Enjoy the videos, and the behind the scenes commentary. 

ST MAARTEN CARNIVAL HEAD DANCES ETC all video judith roumou

one of the most outrageous dances during carnival is when the ladies start dancing on their heads. I believe that came from the Jamaican Dancehall scene. There are a lot of Jamaicans here, and in St Maarten, Jamaican music is very popular and their artist and dancers have a lot of influence not ust in St Maarten but around the Caribbean. Although the Jamaicans might be the originators, in St Maarten you will the the innovators. Girls lined up side by side doing their own versions of Heap Top dances. This video shows only a little, but I will post the videos where the girls are competing in the streets during carnival

CARNIVAL 2014 PHOTOS AND VIDEOS .......IN 3...2.....1

Usually the carnival videos etc are either run through the website, the wordpress.com blog, Youtube and other social sites. This year will be a bit different...why? Because I still have video from 2012 and 2013 that has to be processed. As you can see the camera quality has improved over the years, but improved quality means, higher resolution. And higher resolution means more upload time. Everyone knows that in Strange Maarten the internet and telephone service resides somewhere in the twilight (Sint Maarten doesn't REALLY exist on the internet. :) So I'm working on a more efficient system. Enjoy the Carnival 2014 photos and videos....we always make it interesting.