Ny­erere Haynes

Dean Ackin sits at the bar ta­ble at the Tribe house on Ros­ali­no Street eat­ing cin­na­mon al­monds. he is re­mark­ably calm. Re­mark­able be­cause in six weeks the cul­mi­na­tion of ef­forts of the Tribe fam­i­ly will come to fruition on the two days of Car­ni­val. Ackin and his team are in the busi­ness of cre­at­ing fun. Us­ing his busi­ness back­ground he has been able to take a sec­tion called Plea­sures Car­ni­val and trans­form it in­to mega band Tribe. It all be­gan when his wife was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have a sec­tion in the pop­u­lar mas band Poi­son.

The first year as Plea­sures Car­ni­val was very suc­cess­ful and the fol­low­ing year saw an ex­po­nen­tial in­crease in mas­quer­aders. At this junc­ture it was re­alised that the sec­tion once tweaked would be able to stand-alone. Beau­ti­ful cos­tume de­signs, all-in­clu­sive food and drinks, tight se­cu­ri­ty and the feel good en­er­gy that flowed from the band strength­ened their po­si­tion in the Car­ni­val are­na and by 2005 saw the emer­gence of Tribe.

The name rep­re­sents the com­mon in­ter­est that mas­quer­aders share which is hav­ing fun un­der the sun. The band is fa­mous for in­te­grat­ing his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary el­e­ments in­to its cos­tumes while al­ways main­tain­ing a use of vi­brant colour. The 2005 mar­ry­ing of tra­di­tion­al Na­tive Amer­i­can and pret­ty mas con­cepts was high­ly suc­cess­ful and even vet­er­an mas man Pe­ter Min­shall was said to be im­pressed. "Get­ting T&T Car­ni­val on the map is my goal and adding to brand T&T is what we at Tribe are do­ing," said Ackin.

He stress­es that the suc­cess of Tribe is a di­rect re­sult of a sol­id team work­ing to­geth­er. "Each as­pect of our team is strong and our abil­i­ty to work to­geth­er makes us a for­mi­da­ble unit." The port­fo­lio of band­leader and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Tribe is a year round job. Of course there is some rest time for about two months af­ter Ash Wednes­day. While the en­tire or­gan­i­sa­tion rests im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Car­ni­val, the de­sign­ers are busy at work hash­ing band themes, re­search­ing con­cepts and sourc­ing ma­te­r­i­al for cos­tume pro­to­types. By May or June all de­signs com­plet­ed and await­ing ap­proval. Once the cos­tumes are ap­proved it's on to the pho­to shoots where ideas, skill and hard work are cap­tured and placed on the Tribe web­site.

By Ju­ly, it's time for the al­ways-an­tic­i­pat­ed band launch which has grown in pop­u­lar­i­ty and sig­nals the ref­or­ma­tion of the tribe. Reg­is­tra­tion be­gins in Au­gust and in a mat­ter of weeks the band is sold out. From Sep­tem­ber to Jan­u­ary the pro­duc­tion of cos­tumes takes place and then in Feb­ru­ary it's Car­ni­val all over again. De­spite all the de­mands of his job, Ackin still finds the time to play sports. He is an ac­tive foot­ball, crick­et, ten­nis and bad­minton play­er. He hopes that one day he will able to get in­to boat­ing as he finds the sea re­lax­ing and wants to spend time there with his fam­i­ly and close friends. "There are many sides of life, phys­i­cal, spir­i­tu­al and mar­riage...there must be a bal­ance for these as­pects to ex­ist suc­cess­ful­ly," said Ackin.

When asked about the out­sourc­ing of cos­tumes to meet the bands needs Ackin said,"While we utilise many lo­cal crafts­men dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, the fact still re­mains that there sim­ply aren't enough to man­age our de­mand. Al­so, gone are the days when a Car­ni­val mas­quer­ad­er would ac­cept a flawed cos­tume in the spir­it bac­cha­nal. When peo­ple pay their mon­ey they ex­pect a sol­id prod­uct and that is what we do and in­tend to keep do­ing. When it comes to re­li­a­bil­i­ty and de­sign ac­cu­ra­cy, out­sourc­ing serves its pur­pose," said Ackin.