Tag Archives: NCC

The hyped-up Carnival 2023 has concluded, but the lack of changes in the traditional infrastructure and other provisions continue visibly to hurt the annual festival. Immediately after Carnival 2020, the last one preceding the forced cancellation for two years because of Covid-19, I asserted that Carnival post-mortems are usually futile …

Views reportedly expressed by the well-qualified presenters at a webinar, entitled ‘Hosting and managing the Carnival Experience in Trinidad and Tobago in 2022 and Beyond’, converged with much of what I have been writing concerning Carnival and cultural development matters over several years, including last Sunday. The Trinidad Express newspaper …

“[…] Port-of-Spain has been converted into a huge playground in which 130 carnival bands, varying in size from 50 to 5,000 or more, will parade along a route of about ten kilometres of streets and avenues that were carefully selected to form a complete loop. “[…] One section of the …

‘Covid-19 will force us to re-build our economy,’ I wrote nearly two years ago, in April 2020. ‘We should place our vibrant performing arts at the core of the recovery agenda, not merely with the disproportionate focus on one transitory carnival season, which we may not even have in 2021. …

Our country has been widely shamed internationally by the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard’s fatal shooting of an illegal migrant baby.  The use of the label ‘accident’, the premature ducking of responsibility and due process as well as the crude, partisan political exchanges have compounded the shame. For the moment, …

The government has decided to permit gatherings to participate in the limited forms of Carnival celebrations that it has belatedly decided to promote this season.  Perhaps it should drop the ‘safe zones’ pretence. Such zones may not be workable with the freeing-up and ‘leggo’ of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival.  There …

No pelau is cooking for a semi-final Panorama Sunday, in which we should be revelling today. No coolers and food baskets readied for the Savannah. The magic drums are silent.   My soul’s feeling like it get planasse! The silence in the panyards sent me back to a brilliant Phase …

“[…] ACTT believes the Virtual Carnival also could be the leverage for the fast-tracking of T&T’s digital economy. With no physical Carnival we will lose 55,000 visitors—but we can gain 55 million pairs of eyes!  “We will never get a captive audience like this again…” The following press statement on …

Dr Hollis ‘Chalkdust’ Liverpool suggested that everything happening in Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere pales in significance to the ongoing ‘Murder Frenzy’—be it the Law Association’s fight to remove Chief Justice Ivor Archie, or whoever putting ‘dog in the curry’. But, last night, the nine-time Calypso Monarch champion was wrong. …

The National Carnival Commission (NCC) may have done more harm than good to the soca music industry by putting money into Soca Monarch. Soca Monarch organisers decided to give the so-called Power Soca more relevance and importance than the so-called Groovy. They decided to pay the Power Soca winner twice …

I raised one brow when Colin Lucas moved from being Chairman of the National Carnival Commission to becoming the Acting Chief Executive Officer. But my both eyebrows raised when he was succeeded by former UNC Minister of Culture Winston “Gypsy” Peters. Seamlessly moving from director to executive is not a …

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 …