Becoming Mi Djab La: Story, Spirit, and St Lucian Masquerade
What this Episode Offers
A grounding in the history and evolution of St Lucian masquerade traditions
Reflections on Djab traditions, ancestral memory, and African cultural retention in the Caribbean
A discussion of masquerade as living archive, performance pedagogy, and cultural inheritance
Conversations about womanhood, resistance, embodiment, and the politics of voice in Caribbean cultural spaces
Discussion of theatre and storytelling as tools for intergenerational cultural transmission
Exploration of youth engagement, mentorship, and helping young artists reclaim and reinterpret heritage
A deeper meditation on creativity, ancestral continuity, and what it means for culture to remain alive across generations
Beginning with childhood memories of Djabs moving through the streets of Castries during the Christmas season, Kentillia Louis, a storyteller and theatre practitioner, reflects on the histories, rituals, and ancestral continuities embedded within St Lucian masquerade traditions. The conversation explores the layered meanings of characters such as Papa Djab, Ti Djabs, Mary Ensette, Seraphina, and Uncle Sam, while tracing connections between masquerade, African enslavement, rebellion, embodiment, and collective memory.
At the centre of the episode is Kentillia’s creation of the She-Jab, a masquerade character developed in response to the absence of women within the Djab tradition and the silencing of women’s experiences within Caribbean societies. Through the She-Jab, the conversation moves into questions of womanhood, violence, menstruation, resistance, spiritual power, and cultural transformation.
Together, we reflect on masquerade as a living practice that evolves across generations rather than a static tradition to be preserved unchanged. Kentilla discusses youth engagement, theatre as cultural pedagogy, the role of storytelling in preserving and reshaping heritage, and the tensions between tourism, cultural authenticity, and creative freedom in the Caribbean.
The episode also examines what it means to claim space within one’s own culture without apology. Throughout the conversation, masquerade emerges as a site of reckoning, inheritance, experimentation, and becoming, a space where history remains alive and where new cultural possibilities continue to emerge
