J’ou­vert is the time when the spir­its of Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val are turned loose. It dates back to the pe­ri­od when the folk char­ac­ters, the La­ga­hoo, La Di­a­b­lesse and So­couyant roamed the streets, and when the an­ces­tors played dev­il mas in an at­tempt to re­mem­ber their con­di­tion un­der slav­ery, and to nev­er again al­low them­selves to be so hu­mil­i­at­ed and de­nied of their hu­man­i­ty.

This form of the street mas­quer­ade, with which we be­gin the street cel­e­bra­tions to­day, emerged af­ter the Can­boulay was banned in the 1880s by the colo­nial pow­ers. Thank­ful­ly, it has been rit­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly re-cre­at­ed in our times on the “fore-day” morn­ing of Car­ni­val Fri­day. So too has the J’ou­vert con­tin­ued to al­low that ca­pac­i­ty and free­dom for ridicule to con­tin­ue, and to throw blows on the so­ci­ety and its lead­ers in the ab­sur­di­ty of cos­tume, mim­ic­ry and lam­poon.

With­out doubt, the so­ci­ety ben­e­fits from the free­dom of ex­pres­sion of Car­ni­val, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the J’ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions, when the metaphor­i­cal bull-pis­tle is de­liv­ered on the rulers and lead­ing in­sti­tu­tions. This free­dom of the Car­ni­val, this re­lease valve of the so­ci­ety, per­forms the func­tion of de­pres­suris­ing the steam built-up over the pre­ced­ing pe­ri­od, and is said to be nec­es­sary to pre­vent who­lescale ex­plo­sion.

The J’ou­vert is al­so the time, 24 hours af­ter the Panora­ma re­sults are re­leased, and it has come to be un­der­stood that oth­er form of blows are lashed on the backs of de­ci­sion-mak­ers of the Car­ni­val. More than 30 years ago, ca­lyp­son­ian Mae­stro ex­pressed the view of many, that af­ter the com­pe­ti­tion is done and re­sults re­leased, the cho­rus of the mass­es will be raised: “They tief, tief, we want to see the score­sheet.”

In ef­fect, whichev­er band is de­clared win­ner, who­ev­er the ca­lyp­son­ian made monarch, the out­cry by the mass­es is re­al­ly against, in a gen­er­al kind of way, the es­tab­lished de­ci­sion-mak­ers who many be­lieve do not pos­sess the wis­dom of the mass­es in this “car­ni­valian” so­ci­ety.

Nonethe­less, Guardian Me­dia ex­press­es con­grat­u­la­tions to all of the 11 fi­nal­ists of the Na­tion­al Panora­ma, and to each one of the steel­bands­men/women, the num­bers of the lat­ter steadi­ly in­creas­ing. In­deed, we do not leave out the 112 oth­er bands, large, medi­um, and small, and the thou­sands of in­di­vid­ual play­ers who every year con­tin­ue to make mag­ic on the steel­pans.

Spe­cial con­grats to Rene­gades and All Stars, two of the old­est and most her­ald­ed of steel­bands, which a few decades ago put aside their weapons of con­flict and fo­cused their tal­ents and faiths in their cre­at­ed in­stru­ment. In the same breadth, con­grats to Ex­o­dus, from the East, miles away from the steam­ing caul­dron of the East Dry Riv­er in which the steel­band was forged; and there is no deny­ing too that steel­bands al­so came out in the ear­ly pe­ri­od from the west of the city, and the south of the coun­try.

As im­por­tant as the re­flec­tion on the his­to­ry and con­tem­po­rary is to al­low the mas­quer­ade to have val­ue for the coun­try, is the ex­pec­ta­tion that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice will pre­serve our in­her­i­tance by pre­vent­ing the crim­i­nal­ly-mind­ed from dis­rupt­ing Car­ni­val 2024.

The en­tire coun­try, out­side of the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, must as­sist the po­lice, where pos­si­ble, to per­form their func­tions.