Pao­lo Ker­na­han

It was per­haps one of Spar­row's more in­sight­ful ob­ser­va­tions: "You must have bac­cha­nal if you want a good Car­ni­val!" Ear­ly in the sea­son bmo­bile has pre­sent­ed us with what is sure to be on­ly the first of many hol­low dis­trac­tions for Trinida­di­ans to bump their gums over. At the out­set, let me make it clear that from my per­spec­tive, bmo­bile has not com­mit­ted the egre­gious sin of which they are be­ing ac­cused–fail­ing to sup­port cul­ture. The union will ob­vi­ous­ly have some­thing to say about the mat­ter be­cause the CWU will al­ways be­lieve that it has a right to de­ter­mine how the com­pa­ny man­ages its fis­cal af­fairs. It is no stretch to sug­gest that the union be­lieves that the mon­ey paid to Be­y­once should have gone to the work­ers in­stead, but they are just not ready for this jel­ly!

With­out com­mit­ting too much thought to this, the idea that an in­ter­na­tion­al con­cert would some­how un­der­mine Car­ni­val is ab­solute rub­bish. We have a long es­tab­lished tra­di­tion of stum­bling out of the friv­o­li­ty of the Christ­mas sea­son, like the stub­born last pa­tron of a hawk and spit, ea­ger to open our wal­lets and let fly our dol­lars like pi­geons re­leased from a coop. Bmo­bile has been crit­i­cised by some en­ter­tain­ers for aban­don­ing one of their spon­sored events, the "b-square" freeco which had set­tled in as a sta­ple of the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar. "Dey showin' that dey not se­ri­ous about sap­portin' de cul­tear!" That po­si­tion re­al­ly has noth­ing to do with cul­ture. Car­ni­val for most lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers is the most lu­cra­tive time of year and the com­pa­ny's with­draw­al on the ba­sis of Machel Mon­tano's sab­bat­i­cal sim­ply means that some folks will not be able to "eat ah food" off that con­cert se­ries this year. That is not to say that I have any op­po­si­tion to the fine art of the hus­tle, but let's call a spade a spade. (Or in this case a shov­el, for I have nev­er heard Tri­nis shov­el it so well.)

Chat­ting with Rubadiri Vic­tor on the morn­ing pro­gramme, this young man re­al­ly crys­tallised the is­sue for the view­ers. Be­y­once has ac­tu­al­ly pro­vid­ed a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­bate the re­la­tion­ship be­tween cor­po­rate T&T and what con­sti­tutes cul­ture in this coun­try. In my opin­ion, sup­port for the arts must move away from this "feed­ing at the trough syn­drome." Each year thou­sands go cap in hand to the Min­istry of Cul­ture for tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to es­sen­tial­ly throw fetes. Ladies and gen­tle­men, you could have a pos­i­tive­ly eu­phor­ic ex­pe­ri­ence in a Car­ni­val par­ty, wine un­til you un­rav­el yuh spine, jock yuh waist and mash up the place! Hold a stranger and beg fuh more, get up in de mornin' and count yuh cold sores (sung to the tune of any so­ca of­fer­ing this sea­son), but does this re­al­ly rep­re­sent the soul of T&T? There is no doubt that cul­ture is a sub­jec­tive con­cern and though I con­sid­er all so­ca vile, it is ob­vi­ous that there is a de­mand for it (af­ter all, peo­ple will go to a com­e­dy fes­ti­val in this coun­try, look at a man in a hal­ter top and slathered-on lip­stick and laugh their blad­ders dry).

What we must ask our­selves is if there is an in­vest­ment to be made in the de­vel­op­ment and preser­va­tion of arts and cul­ture, should that cru­cial fund­ing be dunked down the toi­let of "one, get ready; two, get ready; three, hole on, hole on... DJ stop de track, like dem eh re­al­ly ready!" Rubadiri Vic­tor is es­pous­ing an en­dow­ment pol­i­cy that would first iden­ti­fy those in so­ci­ety with true artis­tic tal­ent and sec­ond pro­vide fund­ing to en­sure that such tal­ent is honed. He did not ful­ly agree with me, but I firm­ly be­lieve that con­certs like the So­ca Monarch and the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch are in­im­i­cal to the in­ter­ests of cul­ture. Con­sid­er this: the big­ger the prize mon­ey, the more pseu­do en­ter­tain­ers there will be tum­bling out from in front of their mu­sic soft­ware pro­grammes to be­come so­ca artistes overnight. This means an in­ter­minable show with sub-stan­dard per­form­ers with the best of the worst emerg­ing the vic­tor.

The or­gan­is­ers of the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch have com­plained about the dis­par­i­ty in fund­ing. This pre­lim­i­nary round of com­pe­ti­tion has 80 per­form­ers! Ad­di­tion­al­ly, chut­ney mu­sic in re­cent times has mount­ed a se­ri­ous chal­lenge to so­ca mu­sic, of­fer­ing a much high­er fe­cal con­tent-to-tal­ent ra­tio. I saw a video on tele­vi­sion the oth­er day that had me call­ing friends to have them tune in­to Syn­er­gy tele­vi­sion. There was a well known chut­ney "star" be­hind whom is teth­ered a for­lorn look­ing goat. In the fore­ground the per­former wines and wob­bles her knees on spindly legs in a voice high-pitched enough to make a vir­ile man go ster­ile" "Every time ah passin' de goat buttin' meh , de goat buttin' meh..!" As the per­former con­tin­ues her awk­ward at­tempt at ap­pear­ing saucy, the goat is be­com­ing more ag­i­tat­ed in the back­ground, per­haps frus­trat­ed at hear­ing these con­tin­ued ac­cu­sa­tions with lit­tle re­course to chal­lenge this fla­grant slan­der. Point is if there is true de­mand for this par­tic­u­lar brand of en­ter­tain­ment, then the mar­ket should pay for it, not the tax­pay­er. You will hear the ar­gu­ment that costs for stag­ing these shows are pro­hib­i­tive­ly high, from light en­gi­neers to sound sys­tems.

William Munroe of the Carib-bean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion quot­ed for me a fig­ure of $350,000 for the ser­vices of a light­ing en­gi­neer for one So­ca Monarch show (that mon­ey would on­ly be jus­ti­fied if he was a light­ning en­gi­neer). The ques­tion is, if gov­ern­ment fund­ing was not avail­able for that, would the so­ca artistes have per­formed in dark­ness? Again we are talk­ing about the "feed­ing at the trough syn­drome," sound sys­tem rental com­pa­nies know­ing of the big "gov­ern­ment mon­ey" cir­cu­lat­ing for Car­ni­val are now at­tach­ing prices that com­prise the sin­gle largest ex­pen­di­ture for a Car­ni­val band; this in turn dri­ves the prices of cos­tumes (that is not to say that all band­lead­ers source gov­ern­ment fund­ing). If it does not come from the trea­sury then it must come from the pri­vate sec­tor. This means that com­pa­nies out there des­per­ate to iden­ti­fy them­selves with the fete or the band pour sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey in­to some­thing with ephemer­al mar­ket­ing val­ue.

Folks like Rubadiri Vic­tor are hop­ing to show cor­po­rate T&T an­oth­er way of sup­port­ing cul­ture while achiev­ing a more last­ing mar­ket im­pact. I hate to be a nat­ter­ing nabob of neg­a­tiv­i­ty but that and a snake ride ah bike you are un­like­ly to see. A sum of $123 mil­lion is the es­ti­mat­ed al­lo­ca­tion for Car­ni­val this year. It is a shock­ing amount of mon­ey and we have very lit­tle say where it ends up. Of course the fo­cus is on Be­y­once and whether she will put poor so­ca per­form­ers on the bread­line. I would not wor­ry too much about the woman with the peanut but­ter thighs. I am more con­cerned with the dwin­dling prac­ti­tion­ers of wire-bend­ing, mid­night rob­ber mas and min­strels. But then, I sup­pose, if we re­al­ly liked it we woul­da put a ring on it.