As one of the un­doubt­ed gi­ants of Trinidad Car­ni­val, there is no doubt that the pass­ing of Wayne Berke­ley from this earth on Thurs­day will be mourned by many in the mas­quer­ade fra­ter­ni­ty in par­tic­u­lar, but more gen­er­al­ly by those who have made the prop­a­ga­tion of this coun­try's cul­ture their life's work. The Car­ni­val records would in­di­cate the ex­tent to which Mr Berke­ley was a dom­i­nant force as a band­leader and a de­sign­er at a time when Trinidad Car­ni­val was at its most cre­ative-from the mid-sev­en­ties to the mid-nineties. From 1989 to 1994, Mr Berke­ley was un­beat­able, win­ning Band of the Year with Hero Myth, Nine­teen Nine­ty, Swan Lake, Ti­tan­ic, Strike Up the Band, and Mi­rage.

The oth­er dom­i­nant de­sign­er and band­leader back in the days when Car­ni­val was re­al­ly king-and rep­re­sent­ed the cre­ative ex­pres­sion of all that is good and bad in us-was Mr Berke­ley's cre­ative ri­val, Pe­ter Min­shall. While the de­bate over who was greater will con­tin­ue to be a talk­ing point among some of us, like the de­bate among crick­et afi­ciona­dos about Bri­an Lara and Sachin Ten­dulkar, the fact is that both Mr Berke­ley and Mr Min­shall have made tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tions to the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and to the sense of self of the Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian. This coun­try's or­di­nary mor­tals take pride in the achieve­ments of the coun­try's gi­ants-peo­ple like Er­ic Williams, ANR Robin­son, Bri­an Lara, Dwight Yorke, Jit Sama­roo, Trevor Mc­Don­ald, VS Naipaul, Derek Wal­cott-and are able to walk the world for­ti­fied by the knowl­edge that this land has cre­at­ed or nur­tured many world greats.

Wayne Berke­ley clear­ly stands among the pan­theon of great Trinida­di­ans. The fail­ing and the tragedy of this coun­try is that af­ter two booms-the oil boom of the 1970s and the nat­ur­al gas boom for much of the last decade-there is still no place, or space, where some­one can go to see, touch, hear or ex­pe­ri­ence the works of Wayne Berke­ley, Pe­ter Min­shall or George Bai­ley. More 60 years af­ter the full flow­er­ing of mas­quer­ade bands parad­ing through the streets of Port-of-Spain and oth­er parts of the coun­try in cos­tumery in­flu­enced by glob­al and his­tor­i­cal themes, events and trends, there is still no place, or space, where some­one can go to ap­pre­ci­ate the great­ness of the cre­ativ­i­ty of our peo­ple. To a large ex­tent, the works of Wayne Berke­ley re­main etched in the mem­o­ries of those who played in his bands and the thou­sands who looked on in awe from the streets as his cos­tumes went by.

If we are to ho­n­our the mem­o­ry of Wayne Berke­ley's huge con­tri­bu­tion to this coun­try, sure­ly en­sur­ing that there is a place and space that al­lows a full ex­pe­ri­ence of past Car­ni­vals would be the way to go. Re­lat­ed to the first fail­ing, is the sec­ond: There is no struc­tured, in­sti­tu­tion­alised means by which the achieve­ments and the knowl­edge of a Car­ni­val great like a Wayne Berke­ley, a Pe­ter Min­shall, a Pat Bish­op or a Boogsie Sharp can be dis­sem­i­nat­ed be­yond a small clique so that the ge­nius that re­sides in them (and oth­ers, of course) can be shared with oth­ers. The Gov­ern­ment or one of the coun­try's uni­ver­si­ties should or­gan­ise mas­ter class­es where the liv­ing ge­nius­es of the Car­ni­val arts can in­ter­act with those com­ing up. This is one of the ways in which Car­ni­val can re­sume its role as an an­nu­al ex­pres­sion of cre­ativ­i­ty rather than a tired re­gur­gi­ta­tion of pre­vi­ous­ly copied works and mo­tifs. Again, the coun­try would ho­n­our the cher­ished mem­o­ry of Wayne Berke­ley by en­sur­ing that his ge­nius-and the ge­nius of oth­ers-could be shared through the ages.