Illustration by Jason Jarvis
When I was a little girl, it was bad form for a middle-class lass to play Brown Girl in the Ring and actually wine when she had to “show them her motion”, as the game instructs. Today, that kind of mild schoolgirl wining is passé. I’ve seen tiny tots wine down to the ground at Carnival time, displaying a wondrous nonchalance to how far we’ve come in just twenty years.

Jamette culture is truly ascendant. The word jamette comes from the patois “diametre”, meaning someone from the fringes, a socially unacceptable person. Well, what’s on the fringes depends on your centre. Wining, which was once jamette behaviour, is not only acceptable now, it’s celebrated.

At Carnival, people of all colours and social strata engage in wining. To wine, if you don’t know, is to move your hips and waist in a “winding” motion, hence the name. The dance is peculiar to calypso, although someone with real skill and dedication could wine to any kind of music.

I have identified roughly twenty terms associated with wining. There are few words in our language, this lilting thing that is Trini, with such versatility. Wining not only has fine and delicate gradations — degrees of wine, as it were — but has come to have particular resonance as a metaphorical act. Wining, in metaphor, is an act of insouciance, of superiority. I didn’t just beat you; I wine in your face.

The actual wine, the thing done typically between a man and a woman, to music, at a party, has come to mean so much more than what it is. How a wine is carried out could portend the start or the end of something, or indicate a person’s stature or lack of it. For, even with the democratisation of jamette culture, a real enthusiastic, no-holds-barred, down-to-the-ground wine reveals you as either an artist or a member of the working class. The converse, the barely-there social wine, marks the pretender to class and status.

You’ll hear these wining terms in calypso and soca (I love when calypsonian David Rudder sings, “She do a dollar wine on the party line”, in the classic “Ballad of Hulsie X”), but increasingly they are creeping into everyday language.

Wine up: to wine vigorously

Wine down: to wine while lowering the bottom to the ground in a squat

Wine around: to wine in a circular motion, or to move around while wining

Tief a wine: to creep up behind or in front of someone and wine on them surreptitiously

Take a wine: to boldly do same

Give (someone) a wine: to allow someone to wine on you; a pity wine

Wine back: to actively participate in a wine initiated by someone else

Wine to (music): self-explanatory

Small wine: a short wine

Hard wine: a particularly vigorous wine, usually on someone

Slow wine: a wine to a slow so. . .

  If you already have an account, please LOGIN HERE
  If you do not have an account, CREATE ONE NOW – FREE! It only takes a few minutes, and you can then:

• Gain instant access to the full online archives of Caribbean Beat and the Caribbean Review of Books
• Manage your subscriptions to Caribbean Beat, ENERGY Caribbean and the Caribbean Review of Books (coming soon — print subscribers only)
• Register for and manage your subscriptions to our newsletters, with the latest news about MEP’s books and magazines, job openings, sales, contests, opportunities to submit your work, and more (coming soon)