jab molassie

Noun

jab molassie (plural jab molassie)

1. (Trinidad-and-Tobago) A traditional character in the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival dressed as a devil, mostly naked and covered in molasses or grease and a colourful dye.
   • A second masquerade character used in the play was the Jab Molassi, or molasses devil. At carnival he is the leaping, prancing masker, his body daubed with black or blue paint, sometimes with molasses, who threatens to besmear spectators unless they pay him off.1972, Errol Hill, The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre, Austin, Tx.; London: University of Texas Press, →ISBN, page 109, column 1
   • For the past three years, his forces of evil and good have waged a pitched battle in a Carnival trilogy that concluded last year in Washington, D.C. There, whorish Madame Hiroshima, wearing a two-story, 3,000 ostrich-plumed mushroom cloud, and 60 jab molassie and tassa drummers led a parade of...1986, Américas, English edition, Washington, D.C.: Pan American Union, General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 43