Critical Mas to perform at Etienne Charles’ Road March in Concert

Etienne Charles’ upcoming Road March in Concert will once again feature a performance by a group of formerly incarcerated artistes known as Critical Mas.

Road March in Concert takes place on February 6 at Queen’s Hall and will honour legendary Road March king SuperBlue.

A media release said, this will be the second time Critical Mas is performing with the acclaimed jazz trumpeter and composer at his concert. Last year, the group performed at the first Road March concert dedicated to celebrating Road March songs through the years.

This year, the group will perform their second single, the lyrically fierce anthem Prison to Palace, produced by Trinibad singer Rheon Elbourne and producer ForbesZ, and featuring Charles alongside Critical Mas members Pappa Mel, Benifetzz, Mega Bites and Friday.

The group’s first single. Born a Criminal, which also featured Charles, was released on iTunes and Spotify in September 2024. An album is in the works for release this year.

“I am excited to welcome Critical Mas back to the stage with me. They are a wonderful group of very talented individuals and I am happy to provide a platform for them to showcase their creativity and also use their art to advocate for change. My work is all about creating awareness through art so I am honoured to have helped in the formation of this group and to propel them to national consciousness,” said Charles in the release.

Critical Mas is housed under the umbrella of Incarceration Nations Network (INN), a global prison reform organisation helmed by writer, professor and activist Dr Baz Dresinger. It was co-created by INN’s team leader in Trinidad, Nicholas Khan, who spent 15 years in prison and has since released two books of poetry and travelled to South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica and Antigua representing the Network, the release said.

The seed for the creation of the group was planted in 2022 when Charles and Dresinger discussed ways they can collaborate on justice solutions on the heels of the publication of her best-selling book Incarceration Nations and the debut of his landmark 2022 production San Juan Hill: A New York Story, which marked the reopening of David Geffen Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center.

Critical Mas was conceptualised along the lines of the San Juan Hill performance which was an immersive multimedia production that transported the audience via music, visuals, and original first-person accounts of the history of the San Juan Hill neighbourhood and the Indigenous, immigrant communities that populated the land on which Lincoln Center resides, the release said.

Research for this future production began in January 2024 with a month-long therapeutic arts workshop for a group of currently and formerly incarcerated artists in Trinidad. With each workshop, the collective of currently and formerly incarcerated artists and survivors of crime in Trinidad took shape and became Critical Mas.

The name Critical Mas is a play on the Carnival theme of the collective’s work and the fact that for the first time in the country’s history, a critical mass of people with lived experience of the justice system have a prominent platform with which to effect change.

“I am deeply grateful to Etienne for partnering with me on this project and providing a space on his stage for them to showcase their talents. I am also thankful to the wonderful men and women of Critical Mas for joining us in our efforts to create change in the justice system in Trinidad and Tobago. It has been proven that major artistic works about the criminal justice system lead to policy change which is urgently needed everywhere,” said Dresinger.

Critical Mas is among multiple justice projects that Incarceration Nations would be conducting in TT.

For more info visit: https://www.youtube.com/@CriticalMasTT or more info on Incarceration Nation visit: https://incarcerationnationsnetwork.org/ or e-mail Dr Dresinger at Bdreisinger@jjay.cuny.edu