Mashramani

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 The Mashramani is a vibrant celebration that involves street parades, colorful dress, floats, and music. There are masquerade  bands, as well as costumed men and women dancing to lively African music and calypsos. 

 This celebration is home to the Mashramani Calypso competition. This was the primary calypso event in Guyana through the 1980s. Calypso is also considered to be the most musical tradition of Mashramani. Calypso did begin to decline in the 1970s because it did not have the kinds of depth of traditions that people in Trinidad and Tobago had, it was still continued in Guyana as a Mashramani competition activity with not much of a presence outside of that season.  

 Another event on the Mashramani calendar is the Guyana Chutney Monarch. There are many different competitions that tae place leading up to Mashrami as well. This includes a calypso competition between children and adults, a steel-band competition, and a masquerade band competition. There is also the tradition of crowning a shanto king. This can be traced back to the carnivalesque tradition where a calypso king would be crowned. In Guyana they dropped the calypso ideas and replaced it with shanto because it was argued that shatno was indigenous to Guyana while calypso was not, however calypso still remained very popular in Guyana.