Yvonne Ba­boolal

Christ­mas, with all its ex­pens­es, is bare­ly over but Car­ni­val cos­tumes rang­ing from $2,900 to $6,000 have al­ready been paid for. That's the word from the pro­duc­ers of at least two large bands who said they are pret­ty much sold out al­ready. "The band is pret­ty much sold out. We have one sec­tion left," Luis Hart, band­leader of Harts said yes­ter­day. "We are ahead of the game. We nor­mal­ly sell out by the end of Jan­u­ary." The words re­ces­sion and eco­nom­ic de­cline are not a big part of the vo­cab­u­lary of those in Car­ni­val cir­cles.

They are say­ing that mon­ey is not the on­ly fac­tor that de­ter­mines whether some­one plays mas or not. Pas­sion and love for the ex­pe­ri­ence of Car­ni­val are the ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to the de­ci­sion to play mas, band­lead­ers say. "It's a form of es­capism to ease the stress, I guess," Hart said. He added: "When things get hard, peo­ple may not be able to trav­el like they used to and it may be cheap­er to spend mon­ey on a cos­tume."

Hart said he had seen no in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple who played mas with his band but he had not seen any de­crease ei­ther. "It's been the same over the last two years." This year, Harts is de­pict­ing Greek mythol­o­gy in its 18 sec­tions and prices in the men's sec­tions range from $1,900 to $3,660. In the women's sec­tion, prices are from $2,800 to $5000 and $6,000. Dane Lewis, band­leader of Is­land Peo­ple al­most echoed Hart's com­ments.

"We are very close to sold out," Lewis said. "Peo­ple are in love with their Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence. The things you like, you don't let go. "Car­ni­val has gone through its re­ces­sion, rain and sun and it has sur­vived. "Car­ni­val has a lot of pas­sion in it. Eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions con­tribute to a per­cent­age of the de­ci­sion to play mas or not. "But the love and feel­ing I get from my Car­ni­val al­so de­ter­mines whether I plas mas or not," Lewis said. Prices in the band, He­roes, range on an av­er­age from $2,900 to $4,000.

Lewis said the band's num­ber have re­mained con­sis­tent. This year, Is­land Peo­ple will be telling a sto­ry in He­roes and its 12 sec­tions are called chap­ters. The sto­ry is about the re­ces­sion and all the nat­ur­al and man made dis­as­ters that af­flict­ed the world over the last cou­ple of years. How­ev­er, while some bands are say­ing they are sold out, it's not the same sto­ry with oth­ers. Band pro­duc­er of Tri­ni Rev­ellers, David Cameron, said it de­pends on which band it is. Cameron said the cur­few in­sti­tut­ed dur­ing the state of emer­gency af­fect­ed his band's op­er­a­tions and caused a lull in pro­duc­tion.

"Be­cause of the cur­few things were in a lull. Our work hours were cut short. "We had to make a lot of ef­fort to get back in­to nor­mal op­er­a­tions. "Af­ter the cur­few was lift­ed peo­ple start­ed com­ing out and reg­is­ter­ing." Cameron said while clients out­side of T&T reg­is­tered in No­vem­ber, De­cem­ber last year for Car­ni­val 2012, the greater vol­ume of lo­cals are yet to reg­is­ter. "They will start reg­is­ter­ing from now," he said. Cameron is not ex­pect­ing the re­ces­sion to af­fect the band's sales. "We had that (re­ces­sion) last year too," he not­ed. "I have not seen any in­di­ca­tors as yet that it will ad­verse­ly af­fect sales this year."

As a mat­ter of fact, he said there are more new Car­ni­val bands this year. Whether they are bring­ing new peo­ple in­to the mas are­na or pulling them from oth­er bands is yet to be known, he said. Tri­ni Rev­ellers' band this year is Car­ni­val-The Gold­en Years, de­pict­ing great de­sign­ers and band­lead­ers from 1951 to 2000. Prices in the fe­male sec­tions range from $2,400 to $3,800 and in the male, from $2,000 to $2,600. Cameron said sev­er­al oth­er bands like Lega­cy, D Krewe and Show­time would have the same ex­pe­ri­ence as Tri­ni Rev­ellers-sales would now start for them. Bri­an Mac­Far­lane said when his band closed sales for 2011 the num­bers reg­is­ter­ing were up by 20 per cent.

He's ex­pect­ing the same this year. Mac­Far­lane said he de­signed his cos­tumes to cost less this year, us­ing ba­sic cot­ton. On­ly two of his ten sec­tions have been sold out, thus far, he said. But he's con­fi­dent. Prices range from $2,500 to $4,000. "I have not seen any neg­a­tive ef­fect of the re­ces­sion on sales," Mac Far­lane said. Mac­Far­lane's pre­sen­ta­tion this year is na­tion­al­ist with red, white and black cos­tumes cel­e­brat­ing T&T's 50th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary. The state of emer­gency, crime and uni­fi­ca­tion are themes in his mas.