Carnival 365

“We want permission to mash up the place

“To give the music some jammin’ space”

Permission to Mash Up the Place, David Rudder

“Do you have minutes?”

This is the message I send and she replies, “I have a few.”

My friend and I no longer ask each other if we have time or a moment or if it’s convenient to call. Since we both have jobs that involve paring unnecessary words, a little precision is beautiful.

Since last year I’ve been hearing about how long this Carnival season is. People are thinking about their money because the season is so long, the money needs more stretch to accommodate more fetes and concerts. Or they’re not paying any mind to the trifles thrown out now because the season is long and bigger things are in the future.

Being hard to please is not unique to us. But Carnival never fails to be a bobolee. Just last year we were rushing around like mad ants because the season was too short.

But what I’ve grown into is not understanding why the season has any time at all attached to it. To wit: why is there a season?

It’s not quite that I understood, so much as I simply accepted it before. Carnival has a season. Not unlike Christmas or mangoes. It makes sense that we cannot be wining down the road in leftover (hark!) Christmas-tree garlands 365 days without a break. Who has the stamina for that other than Bunji and Fay-Ann?

But why is it that a certain kind of fete and the bulk of new Carnival-adjacent music must be corralled into a time between Boxing Day and Ash Wednesday? The in-demand musicians jump out of our Carnival and spend the rest of the year singing their way through all the TT-style carnivals around the world. Eventually, they come full circle back to us.

The big glitzy bands, the ones who figured out how to sell an experience and not just a costume, they too orbit into the Carnivalsphere for months of mas in other places, other spaces.

Apart from the people participating, how alien does this seem in these other worlds? (Why does all of this make me think of David Bowie? Other than the fact that he was the ultimate alien?)

So if the people making the mas happen are making mas all year round, I don’t get why we must still be corseted into few months. There is a reason J’Ouvert in July and the like were born. Some of us need fetes. Not limes or parties or soirees. A cooler fete with a relaxed vibe. A hard fete. A back-in-times fete. Any kind of fete. I think they’re out there somewhere some of the time, but it’s not something I know as the norm. Something I can reach out and grab two tickets for at any moment.

And yes, it’s a lot about the music. I want tunes to be dropping all year. I want us to have an expectation of new music in a never-ending way like a Taylor Swift tour. This is how we grow. Not just as an industry and something marketable, but as art. As the way we are.

The word “culture” gives me motion sickness the way it gets tumbled in all directions. Because of the abuses heaped on this unfortunate word, I can’t say the feeling of Carnival all year could/would/should be our culture.

This is how there will be space not just for Voice but for many new Voices and other voices. This is how we make space and have momentum for people to experiment and fail and try again and try and keep trying and new sounds will eventually take.

Once upon a time people tried new things. Once Sparrow was a radical moment in music history. So too Lord Shorty (by any name). Once Shadow was an astonishing phenomenon (ok, that never changed). Once Rudder was a sensation and no one even thought what he was singing was calypso or soca.

All these markers that will populate the history books were like pauses. Deep breaths taken by the rest of the music of the time as it waited to hear what this new thing was. These great changes happened or at least were revealed during Carnival seasons. This is true.

But imagine if there were simply more opportunities, more time. Do we need a crucible to make our art?

I’m leaning to “no.” We have the time. We need to give ourselves permission.