Tobago's living stage for heritage: each year, residents of this small Caribbean island celebrate their rich and complex past while building pride in their cultural identity for modern generations.

• Author: Murphy-Larronde, Suzanne

The first, tentative drops of rain begin to fall shortly before 11 a.m., quickly escalating into dense, silvery sheets that sweep down the jungle-carpeted hillsides of Tobago's Main Ridge Reserve and across the fishing village of Charlotteville into the Caribbean Sea at Man O' War Bay. Dampened but undeterred, the Technicolor cortege continues along its winding route from Fort Campbleton for half a mile, chugging, rocking, pulsating to the percussive calypso rhythms of dashikiclad musicians known as the Tamboo Bamboo Band, their brassy-voiced "chantuelle" singer and her backup vocalists, followed by fifty other costumed revelers of all ages and growing numbers of new arrivals.

Then, as the merrymakers near a small cluster of prim, roadside cottages, the clouds part and as if by command the sun reappears. While the performers pause for a breather and a chance to mingle with the onlookers, a loudspeaker announces the arrival of fresh bread from Uanna McKenna's old-fashioned dirt oven just steps away, and soon a half-dozen local bakers in tropical print dresses are filtering through the crowd. On their heads they balance wooden trays replete with mouth-watering goodies like potato pone (a sweet potato and pumpkin pudding) and spicy Bajan cakes that are quickly snapped up by the hungry spectators. "Ancient ways have come back in fashion on Tobago," Hilda Caesar proudly declares as she pockets the change from the sale of two coconut tarts and prances off in search of other customers.

Indeed, still more views of Charlotteville's "ancient ways" are on tap as the paraders head for the banks of the Mouchez Camps River, where village women carrying basins piled high with laundry begin their reenactment of a wake ritual that calls for washing the clothes and other belongings of the recently departed. In accordance with this West African custom, they first rinse their hands in white rum and then set to scrubbing, accompanying themselves with bawdy songs meant to ease their grief. Still farther along at a crumbling colonial estate, spectators gather beneath another make-shift stage atop the flat roof of an old drying house. There, performers representing emancipated nineteenth-century slaves bring to life another bygone tradition called "dancing the cocoa." Using a mix of cooking oil and water, they gingerly polish fermented cacao beans with their own bare feet to prepare them for market day.

As the sun blazes down with growing intensity, the revelers advance on downtown Charlotteville, where they join neighbors and visitors for a copious community lunch of curried crab cakes and dumpling, cassava and corn coocoo, steaming helpings of...