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Someone suggested rather irately that I write about how the rich and powerful operate with a different code, with such impunity that they get away with behaviour that is abhorrent to the moral masses.
Several people have been raising indignant voices, and the air is vibrating with their vehemence. I share their outrage, but I am more inclined to try to dredge up the loveliness that still shimmers around us.
(via Caesar’s Army.)
It’s not that I think we should avert our eyes, but I have this feeling that when you cast your gaze upon beauty in all its forms, it gives you a sense of hope and appreciation.
Unless we believe that there is something worth our support, we are more likely to fall into apathy and indifference, ruled by the what’s-the-point mantra that defines hopelessness.
In the midst of this season, there has been much talk about the future of the spectacle we call carnival, the future of the mas, the pan, the calypso, all the accoutrements of this annual festivity.
Photo: NCC.
Much of it has focused on the sustainability, the economic value, the shrivelling of the traditional aesthetic… it’s a familiar heap of concerns.
The idea of boosting tourism—an industry which Trinidad, not Tobago, has never paid much attention to—has now become a serious concern, especially because of the imperative of diversifying the economy; a path that has been neglected for so long that we are paying the price for this folly.
But Trinis have been so comfortable in their skins that they never thought it worthwhile to encourage tourists.
But since it is on the cards, this idea of promoting us as a tourist destination, we might as well find a way that does not disfigure our gorgeous features.
Photo: Newsday.
In 2023, the indefatigable events-organiser, Jules Sobion, suggested that a ministry of festivals be created. Intrigued, I called him to find out what he had in mind.
He saw himself as a “new-age concierge”, creating packages like a festival of fetes, or a street foods festival—aspects that could be brought together and marketed so that there could be something for everyone in this all-year extravaganza.
Here is some of what I wrote about it then.
Annually, we have 14 public holidays, most of them affiliated to some sort of festivity, religious and otherwise. Divali, Eid, Christmas, Easter, Phagwa, Hosay, Emancipation, Indian Arrival, Spiritual Baptist Liberation, Independence and Labour are just some of the days we have transformed into seasons of celebration.
(Courtesy Globe Trotting In The Grio.)
Then there are others on the calendar like Tobago Jazz, Blue Food, Heritage Festival, We Beat Festival, the Santa Rosa Festival, and in the second week of October 2024, we marked the First People’s Celebration.
If you calculate that even if it is for a day (and it is more often for a season), the preparations for celebrations consume a significant amount of time and energy and focus.
It is enough to fill a whole year with continuous activity. But we always hear complaints about lack of financial support, no real training in the required skills—not just the artisan aspects, but the management and organisational tools to develop. Again, the steelband community has led the way here.
I don’t want us to mistake the suggestion of structure and training as a way of dropping ourselves into the laps of the slick corporate types, who have overrun and massacred the whole concept of mas so that it has barely any survivors now.
I am talking about teaching people our history and the techniques and the latest ideas in the production of high quality events and creations that use sustainable home-grown materials and practices to bring everything together so that when you see it, you recognise it as something distinctly ours.
Outside of the characters and costumes of Carnival, if you think about what goes into the construction of a tadjah for Hosay, or a Ravan for Ramleela, and all the various skills needed to produce elaborate costumes, it is a shame that they disappear after the event. They could be displayed in museums.
(Copyright Stefan Falke.)
Imagine if Trinidad and Tobago could have festivals throughout the year that present combinations of these things.
I was listening to an introspective and engaging interview with Wendell Manwarren on YouTube, which was so insightful and rooted that it ought to be heard by anyone trying to engage the carnival arts.
It is my gut feeling that should there be a way to make it happen. Manwarren should lead the movement into this development of our festivals and arts.
I certainly believe that he has the kind of respect for all the forms that have existed from the different realms, to include them—not in the all-inclusive way that has become vulgarly exclusionary. But as beings with equal rights to be seen and heard and celebrated.
Knowing that the world of creative minds is full of characters with diva-sized egos, there will obviously be clashes in such an organisation. But I think that if there is a leader with a record of managing the institution that 3Canal has been, then there will be enough respect to keep it together and to build something meaningful.
It will need state-funding, or a combination of private and public sector support—but it needs to have independence and respect for our history at its core.
Is there any good reason why we shouldn’t consider this approach?
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
