Pe­ter Ray Blood

Record ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion, record mas­quer­aders, record Jum­bo jet brings in vis­i­tors, record spec­ta­tors, record prize mon­ey, safest Car­ni­val in years-just some of the sound bites re­peat­ed ad nau­se­um by the mar­ish and parish of Car­ni­val 2012. But, af­ter 73 years of Panora­ma, a cen­tu­ry of record­ed ca­lyp­so mu­sic, and 93 years af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian staged the first Car­ni­val Pa­rade of the Bands at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, we are yet to es­tab­lish an all-en­com­pass­ing, suc­cess­ful blue­print for T&T Car­ni­val. Some­body is mak­ing a ton load of mon­ey out of the an­nu­al fes­ti­val but it is def­i­nite­ly not the artistes or ar­ti­sans that pro­duce this unique ex­pres­sion of a peo­ple, and which at­tracts ten of thou­sands to our shores. I am speech­less and filled with anger and dis­gust at the lev­el of dis­re­spect that is still shown to our Car­ni­val artistes by the pro­mot­ers and pow­ers that be. Take for in­stance, last week's shock­ing dis­clo­sure that the new South Ca­lyp­so Monarch got a first prize of $12,000, and pre­vi­ous­ly, the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal­ists hav­ing to re­sort to threats and the ac­tions of long time bad­johns to get a prize in­crease to at least match that giv­en to the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch. Some­thing has got to be rad­i­cal­ly twist­ed and I'm sick with our ad­min­is­tra­tors of Car­ni­val to al­low such dis­re­spect to be­fall our cul­tur­al icons, the cus­to­di­ans of a our col­lec­tive soul as a peo­ple. A busi­ness place in Port-of-Spain gave a fe­male so­ca di­va $30,000 to as­sist her at the start of the sea­son, and here it is, all the wealthy, lu­cra­tive en­er­gy and pe­tro­le­um cor­po­ra­tions in the south­land can­not do­nate one-tenth of the prize mon­ey the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch re­ceived to give to the ca­lyp­so monarch of the na­tion's sec­ond city?

A ray of hope?

Al­though peo­ple were dis­ap­point­ed at not see­ing Bri­an Mac Far­lane's win­ning Band of the Year pro­duc­tion of Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, or Queen of Car­ni­val win­ner Cherisse Bovell as The Weep­ing Madon­na, Champs in Pan, Plus was ex­cel­lent pro­duc­tion by Ian Wilt­shire of Is­land Style, and Pan Trin­ba­go. Triple-ti­tle so­ca su­per­star Machel Monarch and his HD band gave a scin­til­lat­ing per­for­mance, with the small au­di­ence get­ting a rare treat of be­ing up close to the num­ber so­ca artistes on the plan­et.

Get off the ra­dio! And the TV too....

NCC, Pan Trin­ba­go and the ra­dio and TV sta­tions need to do some­thing dras­tic about the peo­ple they hire to do ra­dio and tele­vi­sion com­men­tary at Car­ni­val shows. These peo­ple have not even a mod­icum of archival his­to­ry about any­thing per­tain­ing to pan, mas or ca­lyp­so; know ab­solute­ly noth­ing about any as­pect of Car­ni­val be­yond a cou­ple years ago (and some of that knowl­edge) is in­cor­rect. It is painful try­ing to fol­low Panora­ma, or Di­manche Gras, or the Pa­rade of Bands for two days as these fly-by-night, wan­na-be com­men­ta­tors, who must be do­ing the job for free, speak a moun­tain load of go­b­ar on the TV and air­waves.

Al­most none of them de­serve be­ing paid.

Just as pa­thet­ic are some of the folk that an­chor live Car­ni­val TV shows, as well as the colour com­men­ta­tors. Less than a hand­ful of them col­lec­tive­ly from all fre­quen­cies have lit­tle of knowl­edge of what they are see­ing or talk­ing about. Some are al­so colour blind, while oth­ers are yet to grasp why there is a mon­i­tor in front of them -the de­vice whose im­ages the view­ing au­di­ence is see­ing. Al­so leav­ing much to be de­sired are the di­rec­tors and pro­duc­ers of these tele­vised events who take com­mer­cial breaks ei­ther dur­ing a per­for­mance on stage, or as one is about to be­gin. I am sure that I speak for every tele­vi­sion across the land that the overkill of ad­ver­tis­ing two com­e­dy shows af­ter every act, of every show, was one of the worse ideas ever in tele­vi­sion land. It's bad enough that ra­dio sta­tions al­low pro­mot­ers to buy 30-minute and one-hour block ads, with the mu­sic of the same artistes be­ing played re­peat­ed­ly an en­tire day.

Is ah bac­cha­nal

This seemed to have es­caped most peo­ple but can some­one please ex­plain how come a Car­ni­val band can win Band of the Year as a Medi­um band at one venue, and about two miles away at an­oth­er venue, place fourth in the Large band cat­e­go­ry? Is it that they picked up about 200 mas­quer­aders along the way to the sec­ond venue, or vice ver­sa.

Cepep is bess

On a pos­i­tive note, I failed last Fri­day to big up the men and women of Cepep. You guys were sim­ply mag­nif­i­cent over the Car­ni­val sea­son. I looked at you all with ad­mi­ra­tion and re­spect as you cleaned up af­ter every per­former ex­it­ed stages at com­pe­ti­tion venues, and, af­ter every mas band at the enor­mous Queen's Park Sa­van­nah stage. I don't know if the peo­ple who hired you saw you, but I did. I live in the heart of the na­tion's cap­i­tal and when I woke on Wednes­day morn­ing, with the ex­cep­tion of stands erect­ed in the the city and sub­urbs, there was nary a sign of de­bris or garbage any­where, not even a dis­card­ed head­piece. It felt sur­re­al­is­tic, know­ing just mere hours be­fore as I went to bed, thou­sands of rev­ellers and spec­ta­tors were still about, dirty­ing the streets. Cepep, your work­ers and su­per­vi­sors de­serve a spe­cial com­men­da­tion for a job well done at keep­ing Char­lie away.

Back to the fu­ture?

As I close and emerge from Car­ni­val 2012, look­ing for­ward to the next five months, is the gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion, cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go, and pro­mot­ers con­spir­ing to sur­prise the en­tire coun­try with what is planned to cel­e­brate the na­tion's 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence? Aside from a cou­ple C2K12 ca­lyp­soes, one by Singing San­dra, and Ros­alind Gabriel's mas bands, if an alien land­ed to­day from Mel­mac or Al­pha Cen­tu­ri­on, they would not know that T&T's gold­en an­niver­sary as a na­tion is on Fri­day, Au­gust 31. This coun­try is clear­ly di­vid­ed by those hell bent on oust­ing the in­cum­bent chair­man of the UNC; ob­tain­ing a no-con­fi­dence vote in the prime min­is­ter; thwart­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by al­most every ma­jor pub­lic en­ti­ty; mash­ing up TTFA; re­mod­el­ling the Con­cor­dat; and eject­ing a po­lice com­mis­sion­er, they seem to have com­plete­ly for­got­ten that they should have been plan­ning the 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence since be­fore the 49th an­niver­sary sev­en months ago.

But, it's our na­ture to be al­ler­gic to prop­er long term and ef­fec­tive plan­ning, so In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions aside, the same can be said for Car­ni­val 2013, re the Pa­rade of the Bands, the pa­rade route, the prize mon­ey for every sin­gle com­pe­ti­tion, the judg­ing of Panora­ma, the re-in­ven­tion of Di­manche Gras; should ca­lyp­so fi­nal­ists sing one or two songs etc. With Car­ni­val days 2013 less than a year away, like every oth­er pre­ced­ing year, the pow­ers that be shall wait un­til the last minute and, with lots of sound, fury and blus­ter, and plen­ty ma­m­aguy speech­es and launch­ings, and do the same thing all over again, with the same mis­takes.