Out of UWI Campus Carnival, Jamborii invests in mas

The recently launched Jamborii mas band is offering people of all walks of life to play mas or J’Ouvert for what the organisers say is a a reasonable price, given the current economic situation. Jamborii is located on Woodford Street, Port of Spain.

Franklyn Mayers, better known as Stryker, is the band's founder and the brain behind the variety of designs offered by this mas band. Mayers is also a radio announcer and DJ on Red Hot 96.7.

Production manager Devika Singh said the production cost of each costume is around $1,000-$1,500, excluding other services – DJs, security, drinks and food for the two days on the road. Mayers’ packages cost $2,995 regardless of what costume design is chosen, no matter how extravagant or low-key.

He said he was able to offer this price across the board because of Singh’s “expertise” in how to maximise the use of the material so there’s no waste.

“This way, we can save something and you can save something.”

Mayers recalled, “Jamborii was born out of UWI Campus Carnival in 2011. Primarily, we started out as a J’Ouvert band...we maintained a J’Ouvert footprint as well.

"But the intention from day one was to go to mas as well. It is a costly endeavour to get into, so I think it literally had to take this long to build up the resource pool to execute it properly.”

Building a financial pool wasn’t the only aspect of the business that needed to develop, he said. Meeting and establishing a relationship with Singh also took some time. Singh is Mayers’ production manager, or “fairy” as she likes to describe herself, since, she said, she starts work at all hours of the night and within a few hours, she has passed or achieved the target set for her. She has been in the Carnival production realm for over 20 years.

“Devika is now like the engine room, if I could take a line from Olatunji, behind the mass-production side of it. With her wealth of knowledge and guidance, that is how we were actually able to produce and come at a price point that would be affordable.”

Mayers said getting all resources – feathers, jewels, and the different type of clothing necessary for the costume and to create the packages for customers – cost him around $250,000. He said the band can try and cater to the designated amount, but when it arrives at customs, it is “at the mercy of the authorities.”

“This is quite unfortunate. He thinks the government "should look into in terms of subsidising (it),because we would only bring coloured feathers into the country for cultural needs – which is Carnival. There doesn’t seem to be any buffer for the creators when it comes to sourcing.”

He and Singh said the prices of materials fluctuate often: one feather can cost US$10 one day and drastically increase to US$25 the next.

Mayers said, “I would say we are about TT$400,000 in already, and we are not even talking about final preparations for the road and retaining local service providers and retaining their services. This is just a start-up.”

Mayers said the decision to make Jamborii a mas band was taken last November, and purchases were already being made during that time.

But since the start of production and offering packages, Mayers admitted, it’s been a “bit disappointing in terms of numbers.”

“As a small band, we were catering for 300, and we’re about halfway there, but the numbers are a bit disappointing in the sense that we were expecting a very big Carnival.”

Weighing in on the cost of materials, Singh said she’d have to source materials from various companies in the US and China rather than using locally-based suppliers.

Those, she said, were "very limited. Though importing is expensive, and the drama to get the stuff here is a whole different story, we import not because it’s easier, but because it’s necessary.”

The band's theme this year is Nostalgia. It's portrayal for J'Ouvert is Mischief J'Ouvert.

Mayers said, “We wanted to capture an element of everything we would have missed for the past two years (when there was no Carnival because of the covid19 pandemic). So for a period of time we weren't able to experience nature, you couldn’t go to the rivers or beaches. To capture that, we have a series of costumes called Wanderlust and it has that greenery, that element of nature and the environment.”

Jamborii is also offering customers a “Maracas vibe” with a variety of costumes in blue, yellow and brown, representing the sea, the sun and sand respectively.

It also has a costume line called Elemental which is meant to commemorate UWI since it was the reason he started Jamborii. The purple and pink costumes were inspired by a UWI colleague of his who is majoring in chemistry.

“We also have Breaking Dawn,...coming from the darkness of night, the black (of the costume) to then coming into the gold of sunlight. We didn't have to overthink it, and I remember having a meeting with the committee and I said, ‘Let's capture it without mentioning covid19. We don't want to talk about the virus.’”

In this way, he said, though there was no “real mention of the virus” the costumes were able to capture the concept and the effects of it.

Though they entered the game late, Mayers said he feels Jamborii has already established a “solid footprint” both digitally and physically. Mayers uses Instagram to bring awareness to his brand by getting models to show off his costumes and asking people who bought their pieces to ensure they tag Jamborii's handle, @jamboriimas when they are posting.

“We also have a lot of people that come just to inquire or take a peek because they’ve seen the costumes on social media and they want to come in person and check it out.”