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Whither goes T&T Carnival?
Posted: Friday, March 19, 2004
by Peter Blood, www.guardian.co.tt
One of the perennial problems with T&T Carnival is too many of the people in key positions of influence, including judges, who determine its direction, progress and longevity are people who have never created, achieved or made any significant or valid mark in the development or evolution of the damn festival.
Another problem is that too few of Carnival's custodians have any vision or are capable of respecting or appreciating the festival as a serious industry; one which can make a significant contribution to the nation's overall GDP. They can't even fully comprehend Carnival's potential as a tremendous earner of much more foreign revenue than it currently attracts, neither can they conceptualise the dynamics or legalities required by the international entertainment market.
Competition is also killing "we Carnival" - because of the amount of subjectivity and bias that pervade judges' panels and because our art should not be subjected to competition and adjudication at all.
It is why avant-garde progressive musicians like Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, Terrence "BJ" Marcelle and Liam Teague will probably never win a national Panorama title for many years to come and why we end up with the same seven bands in every final.
The custodians of "we Carnival" can't conceive or see beyond their nostrils, so no planning, funding, development programmes, nada, nothing, zilch is being done, or is ever done, before the end of November preceding Carnival.
It's because of no planning as well that when pan technicians like Wallace Austin, Bertram Kellman and Bertie Marshall, masmen like the Bailey brothers and Follette Eustace die, we will probably have to hire pan tuners from Britain and Sweden, or bring in costumes from Taiwan and Brazil. We seem incapable, mentally, socially, culturally, spiritually of seeing the bigger picture and planning ahead, anticipating the future and perpetuation of our arts and culture.
It is why no one can go anywhere in T&T and see a costume which won King or Queen of Carnival on display at any museum or facility. It is why last Thursday I had to beg Ministry of Community Development official Norvan Fullerton to "sneak" four American visitors into a private Ministry function at Hilton Trinidad, where Exodus was performing, so they could hear what pan sounds like (in "the land of the steelband") before they returned to the States the following day.
After half a century of pan, and its ascendancy as "the national instrument" of T&T, where is its performing facility? Where does a visitor go during the week to see and hear pan played?
Next year marks 25 years since I've been in journalism deliberately deciding, upon leaving my lucrative profession in computer science, to consciously dedicate half of my life to try and do something positive to uplift all aspects of T&T culture. But I fear that I will return to my Maker and will not have made one iota of difference to the morass of mediocrity and unprofessionalism I met in Carnival and the arts in 1980.
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