Continuing wrong Carnival traditions

IT WAS a celebration of tradition and culture, but hardly anyone turned up.

The National Carnival Commission (NCC), the TT Carnival Bands Association (TTCBA) and festival stakeholders should take note of the low attendance at Sunday’s Traditional and Conventional Mas Competition at the Queen’s Park Savannah.

Traditional mas is hardly the sexiest draw on the calendar, but it has in the past received a lot of attention. Sunday’s event was free. Few cared or knew.

The low turnout might be easy to overlook if isolated. Unfortunately, it followed a clear pattern. Crowds have been small as well at calypso events.

There was also low attendance at the Senior Kings & Queens Preliminaries on Tuesday, another event for which there is traditionally a low attendance but which was being held for the first time since the pandemic.

Organising groups need to take all of this as a sign that their approach has been all wrong.

Strapped for cash, they should have aimed to produce distinctive shows that could easily migrate online and come up with more compelling formats.

Instead, the unhealthy dependency of some organisations – such as calypso tents – on state entities continues.

Tents are now bickering, and even threatening legal action, to get a fair share of the largesse. They should instead be trying to be less dependent on the State.

Many organisers may have been blindsided by the last-minute nature of funding approval. But the fact that we are in a pandemic is hardly news. There is no good reason why entities have not reimagined their operations.

With so many mouthing platitudes these days about the importance of culture and traditional art forms, it is very had to understand the lack of appetite for trying new approaches that could help our culture live.

It is a travesty there will be no Calypso Monarch because of a lack of consensus between organising groups.

At its best, calypso performs the same functions as the Fourth Estate. It brings news to the people, speaks truth to power, entertains and persuades.

Given that we are at such a crucial historical crossroads it is incredible that we are staging Carnival with the voices of our calypsonians effectively silenced.

We cannot imagine how Sunday’s Dimanche Gras show – which is to be staged under the unpromising theme “Déjà vu” – will distinguish itself from tepid productions of Carnivals past.

Perhaps all should take note of attempts by people like Nesta “Sekon Sta” Boxill and Arvinder Rampersad to take traditional Carnival elements, such as the cooler fete, and reapply them to the present circumstances.

We need tradition in Carnival. But the low audience turnouts thus far suggest one tradition we do not need is a stubborn refusal to change.