Tag Archives: carnival

What a great result from the Panorama semi-finals last Sunday. The two groovy “young boy” songs Year for Love and Hello—subject only to a tie for fourth place with Lightning Flash—ran first, second, third and fourth as played by Renegades, Despers, Phase II and Skiffle respectively. These songs create a …

Carnival, the Greatest Show on Earth, was one of my favourite times of the year. Apart from the extra holidays we all received, it was a time when the church would go out to camp somewhere in the countryside to get away from the noise and the confusion and the …

“[George] Singh’s outburst was a public exposé of what the Indo-Trinidadian (Indian) community had always known, i.e. Indian culture (e.g. chutney, pichakaree) is given marginal or no space in ‘national’ and regional shows (e.g. CARIFESTA). […] “In all his anger, Singh was careful not to confirm what almost every Trinidadian suspected …

On Wednesday last, we received news that the Revue Calypso tent was the latest victim of money problems in the cultural milieu. This news was made worse when readers digested that the Revue was more than 50 years old and had been founded by the late Lord Kitchener. Kitchener’s body …

Massive: that is the extent of the opportunity presented by “Massive” Gosine’s “Rowlee Mudda Count.” It is an opportunity to have a meaningful discussion about taste and standards in public and cultural life. It does not matter whose count is referenced. The central issue is whether the unrelenting references to …

Okay, so who’s playing up with their Count at the Ministry of Finance? Just hours after, Chutney Soca Monarch (CSM) promoter George Singh declared that the competition would be scuttled due to a withdrawal of funding from the National Lotteries Control Board (NLCB)—after a directive from the Ministry of Finance—the …

Five months, four weeks, three days, two hours, one minute, one second, two ticks and one tock. As I begin to write, that’s how long it has been since the last note sounded on Carnival 2017. And at the NCC, Kenny De Silva is still chairmanning. Now let me say …

Forty days and 40 nights. And counting… NCC has had its say. Communications is largely silent. Tourism has been silenced. Community Development, Culture and the Arts has had nothing to say. But the volume of kangkatang in this year’s Carnival, it seems to me, makes a proper post-mortem imperative. And …

“You don’t have to be an expert to realize that Panorama pieces are saturated with arrangers’ attempts to evoke certain emotions in the listening audience, which, in turn, are designed to elicit particular responses… “Successfully executed and then terminated with a flourish, these figures often have the effect of making …

Winston Churchill, the glowing imperialist, at the time when he was seeking to have Europe fortified against Nazi Germany, referred to Italy as the soft underbelly of Europe. What Churchill meant was this: However successfully Europe was fortified, it would be vulnerable to the attack through the soft underbelly of …

The record breaking success of Full Extreme is thoroughly deserved.  I will add to the boiling pot of opinions of why it struck such a deep chord.  For me it is a restatement of the saying that laugh and cry live in the same yard. I am otherwise reluctant to …

“Is it that the ole mas is dying out on its own or is it an assisted ‘death’? “A long-running sentiment among ole masqueraders—including those from a band I am currently writing a book on—is that there have been influential people in the San Fernando City Corporation who became displeased …