Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

The last cou­ple of columns looked at Car­ni­val eco­nom­ics and con­clud­ed it looks like a scam, a mas­sive feed­ing trough for po­lit­i­cal/cul­tur­al hogs. That con­clu­sion was da­ta-based�a par­lia­men­tary re­port on the NCC, gov­ern­ment sources, and a ba­sic knowl­edge of eco­nom­ics and cul­tur­al econ­o­my. But oth­er, al­ter­na­tive facts and con­clu­sions are out there. Ca­lyp­son­ian De Fos­to was on CNC3's Morn­ing Brew show on Mon­day, pre­sent­ing many of them. He be­lieves Car­ni­val gen­er­ates about $2 bil­lion. And "some­body" told him it was clos­er to $10 bil­lion, and he wants his share. (The clip is here https://youtu.be/DK7Kt4gzN­pY.)

De Fos­to's song, of which a snip­pet was played on the Morn­ing Brew, said, in essence: "Don't treat we so. We want we mon­ey!" It's log­i­cal if ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, steel­bands­men, NC­BA, TU­CO, be­lieve they gen­er­ate bil­lions of dol­lars, to want their share of it. In­ci­den­tal­ly, the Min­is­ter of Tourism be­lieves Car­ni­val gen­er­at­ed $350 mil­lion last year (though she pro­vid­ed no da­ta on how that num­ber was de­rived). De Fos­to's log­ic would be sound even if this low­er num­ber were true: a $350 mil­lion re­turn for a $250 mil­lion in­vest­ment is great. If it were true.

This (no­tion of Car­ni­val prof­it gen­er­a­tion) is rel­a­tive­ly new. Car­ni­val eco­nom­ics has al­ways been a po­lite way of say­ing "State hand­out". In news­pa­pers and stud­ies of Car­ni­val pri­or to, say, 1990, you'd be hard pressed to find any no­tion that Car­ni­val was a mon­ey mak­er. To take a ran­dom year, 1984. The Guardian's ed­i­to­r­i­al on Feb­ru­ary 16, re­port­ed a dropoff in the ho­tel book­ings that year, and float­ed the idea that "if tourism is to be de­vel­oped...Car­ni­val must play an im­por­tant role." It al­so asked whether or not the drop-off in tourist ar­rivals might not have been a re­sult of the "hor­rors" suf­fered by vis­i­tors the pre­vi­ous year.

In the same year, Pan Trin­ba­go de­cid­ed to re­frain from ask­ing the Min­istry of Cul­ture for more mon­ey be­cause of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. In the 1960s, the gov­ern­ment made it­self the god­fa­ther of the steel­band move­ment, and tried to strong-arm the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in­to sup­port­ing bands.

So where did this no­tion come from? It start­ed with the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion of 1991�1995. Al­fred Agui­ton was ap­point­ed head of the NCC, and first float­ed the idea of mon­etis­ing Car­ni­val at a press con­fer­ence in 1992. (I was there.) Nat­u­ral­ly, it flopped. But what re­al­ly gave life to the idea was the ac­ces­sion of the UNC gov­ern­ment of 1996. Sud­den­ly (to "cul­tur­al" peo­ple out­side gov­ern­ment) the Car­ni­val be­came of su­perla­tive na­tion­al im­por­tance. Once the Man­ning gov­ern­ment cheat­ed its way back in­to pow­er in 2002, it im­me­di­ate­ly in­creased Car­ni­val fund­ing and in­ten­si­fied its pro­mo­tion as the "na­tion­al" fes­ti­val. And some­where in there the no­tion that it gen­er­at­ed all these fan­tas­tic re­turns was craft­ed.

UNC Cul­ture Min­is­ter Sen Daphne Phillips said in the Sen­ate (on Sep­tem­ber 12, 2000), Car­ni­val fund­ing had in­creased from $11.5 mil­lion in 1995 to $19 mil­lion in 2000. This was a mod­est in­crease of less than 20 per cent per year. By the time the PNM left of­fice in 2010, it was more than $100 mil­lion, an in­crease of 1,000 per cent. In 2011 it was $231 mil­lion. When the PP left of­fice in 2015 it was over $300 mil­lion.

What ac­count­ed for this in­crease? Sim­ple: the PNM's po­lit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion that the best way to stay in pow­er was to Car­ni­valise the so­ci­ety. This meant the vi­ral spread of Car­ni­val, the in­sis­tence on its "na­tion­al im­por­tance" and its African ori­gin to en­rage its base with ideas of own­er­ship and en­ti­tle­ment. It al­so kept the pop­u­la­tion dis­tract­ed while the PM, his pals and his prophet­ess got up to all kinds of mis­chief. The PP, once it got in, saw it sim­i­lar­ly: as a con­ve­nient way to dis­tract the pop­u­lace from their own im­pres­sive mis­chief.

But, as any good Marx­ist knows, cap­i­tal needs cul­ture to make it le­git­i­mate. Once the mon­ey be­gan to grow from tens to hun­dreds of mil­lions, a Car­ni­val eco-sys­tem formed. Seg­ments, groups, be­came de­pen­dent on it. To pro­tect the flow of mon­ey, jus­ti­fi­ca­tions were re­quired and all sorts of ar­gu­ments and the­o­ries emerged about the im­por­tance of Car­ni­val to na­tion­al iden­ti­ty, to tourism, to art. Car­ni­val Stud­ies ap­peared at ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, along with Car­ni­val con­fer­ences, Car­ni­val acad­e­mies and spe­cial in­ter­est groups.

Each group had its ra­tio­nale, which took as start­ing point the ax­ioms of prof­it, na­tion­al­is­tic/pa­tri­ot­ic ben­e­fit, and artis­tic val­ue. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, none of these was true. Car­ni­val's ex­pan­sion was made pos­si­ble on­ly by gov­ern­ment's in­creas­ing fund­ing, not its own eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial. It was not and is not fi­nan­cial­ly self-sus­tain­ing and pos­sess­es no or neg­a­tive in­nate in­tan­gi­ble val­ue. (Look at the so­ci­ety for proof of that.) Peo­ple might think it's valu­able, but not so much to ac­tu­al­ly in­vest in or pay for it.

So now, mon­ey done and peo­ple like De Fos­to are en­raged at the loss of in­come, but it's not just ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. Many have built aca­d­e­m­ic and oth­er ca­reers and busi­ness­es in the last 10 to 15 years on this foun­da­tion. Ex­cept those busi­ness­es don't make mon­ey, they just take it from the gov­ern­ment. I doubt the pro­mot­ers of the big shows, ISM, Chut­ney SM, could show a cred­i­ble busi­ness plan to a bank for a loan.

Bot­tom line, the hus­tlers are in pain. Some hus­tlers might even have drunk their own Koolaid and be­lieve they're re­al­ly what they think they are–pa­tri­ots, or some such twat­tery. I have no sym­pa­thy ei­ther way be­cause crit­i­cal think­ing and dis­sent at the Car­ni­val ar­gu­ment, ex­pa­ti­at­ed on­ly in this col­umn (nowhere else that I know of), has been sti­fled, ig­nored, and dis­sem­bled for years. In fact what's hap­pen­ing now re­sem­bles an in­vest­ment bub­ble (a la the US de­riv­a­tives mar­ket crash of 2008), which a few peo­ple point­ed out be­fore hand and were ig­nored and re­viled. As De Fos­to might say, "bub­ble buss."