Car­ni­val is bac­cha­nal, it is of­ten said.

But some­times the bac­cha­nal can linger long af­ter­ward.

Sev­er­al months af­ter Car­ni­val 2023 end­ed, an ad­ver­tise­ment made for the sea­son by An­gos­tu­ra has land­ed the com­pa­ny in hot wa­ter af­ter a New York-based record ex­ec­u­tive claimed the rum and bit­ters man­u­fac­tur­er used a sam­ple with­out seek­ing per­mis­sion from his com­pa­ny Char­lie’s Records.

The sam­ple comes from the late Win­ston “Ex­plain­er” Hen­ry’s mas­sive 1982 hit Lor­raine.

An­gos­tu­ra, the pro­duc­er of the world-fa­mous, epony­mous bit­ters, as well as rum and oth­er bev­er­ages, is now fac­ing the threat of le­gal ac­tion as a re­sult of its us­age of the jin­gle.

In its 2022 an­nu­al re­port, chair­man of An­gos­tu­ra, Ter­rence Bharath, boast­ed that “the group record­ed a his­toric achieve­ment as we crossed the $1 bil­lion rev­enue mark, which rep­re­sents the high­est record­ed sales in the his­to­ry of the com­pa­ny.” The com­pa­ny’s af­ter-tax prof­it de­clined by 8.2 per cent to $145.23 mil­lion last year.

Ex­plain­er passed away in Oc­to­ber 2022, just a few months be­fore the re­lease of the ad­ver­tise­ment and its ac­com­pa­ny­ing jin­gle called “Reign Again”.

An­gos­tu­ra said the jin­gle paid homage to Ex­plain­er and to the re­turn of Car­ni­val and is an adap­ta­tion of the leg­endary song Lor­raine.

The jin­gle was per­formed by An­gos­tu­ra brand am­bas­sadors, Nailah Black­man and Voice, and ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny the jin­gle and video “cap­ture the nos­tal­gia and ex­cite­ment many ex­pe­ri­ence for Car­ni­val and its fes­tiv­i­ties.”

The is­sue raised by Rawl­ston Charles of Char­lie’s Records is not that the song was reimag­ined by the young artistes. In­deed it is not even the first time the song was re­done as Ex­plain­er him­self joined Bun­ji Gar­lin for a remix of the song in 2005. He sad the is­sue is the use of the first four words ut­tered in the orig­i­nal song, “Taxi, Taxi. Air­port Kennedy.”

These words served as pre­lude to Ex­plain­er’s de­scrip­tion of his dire need to leave New York City and re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go to take part in Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties.

In a news re­lease, Charles said that he owns the syn­chro­ni­sa­tion rights for that sim­ple sam­ple and was not ap­proached by An­gos­tu­ra or any­one act­ing on the com­pa­ny’s be­half, for per­mis­sion to use it in their ad­ver­tise­ment. Syn­chro­ni­sa­tion rights are an agree­ment be­tween a mu­sic user and the own­er of a copy­right­ed com­po­si­tion (song) that grants per­mis­sion to re­lease the song in a video for­mat.

Charles is a mu­sic pro­duc­er who has been re­spon­si­ble for sev­er­al ca­lyp­so hits pro­duced as far back as the 1960s.

Charles said that his con­tri­bu­tion to Caribbean mu­sic, through his work and the work of his im­print, Char­lie’s Records, is de­serv­ing of the re­spect of even ma­jor com­pa­nies like An­gos­tu­ra Trinidad Ltd.

He not­ed that sev­er­al ma­jor ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in­clud­ing the Mighty Spar­row, the late Black Stal­in, Christo­pher ‘Tam­bu’ Her­bert, Ca­lyp­so Rose, Lord Kitch­en­er, Mae­stro, Ras Shorty I, Ex­plain­er, Su­per Blue, David Rud­der and Char­lie’s Roots, which was formed by Charles, have all been pro­duced un­der the Char­lie’s Records La­bel.

“The so­ca genre start­ed un­der my um­brel­la with Ras Shorty I, and Machel Mon­tano still records at my stu­dio. He record­ed last year and the year be­fore that,” said Charles in the re­port.

Charles has claimed that he at­tempt­ed to seek re­dress pri­vate­ly but was un­suc­cess­ful.

He said that he made sev­er­al at­tempts to speak with the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T and af­ter sev­er­al calls, he was even­tu­al­ly met with a less than favourable re­sponse bor­der­ing on a dis­missal of his con­cern by an em­ploy­ee there.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to COTT pres­i­dent Cur­tis Jor­dan for a re­sponse to the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, Jor­dan said it was the first time he had heard of the com­plaint and re­quest­ed a copy of the re­port of Charles’ claims so that he could per­son­al­ly in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.

Apart from at­tempt­ing to con­tact COTT, the news re­lease stat­ed that Charles and his team in T&T have sub­mit­ted a let­ter to the ad­ver­tis­ing agency tasked with cre­at­ing the ad­ver­tise­ment.

Charles, in that let­ter, in­formed the agency of his terms which in­clud­ed his right to com­pen­sa­tion.

He claimed that the ad­ver­tise­ment and the jin­gle in ques­tion had been used pri­mar­i­ly as a Car­ni­val 2023 prod­uct cam­paign.

He said the ad­ver­tise­ment was aired on ra­dio, tele­vi­sion, and mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal plat­forms. As a re­sult, it had a glob­al reach es­ti­mat­ed to be in the mil­lions.

“Many times, what we put in­to the song, as mu­sic cre­ators, is done to at­tract peo­ple so that when they hear the be­gin­ning of cer­tain songs, they then drop what they’re do­ing and re­act,” said Charles.

He ar­gued that the use of the open­ing words from the song Lor­raine was meant to have the same ef­fect for the An­gos­tu­ra White Oak com­mer­cial.

Charles, who still owns and op­er­ates Char­lie’s Records and its New York record­ing stu­dio, stat­ed he was will­ing to fight down to the end for what he is en­ti­tled to in re­la­tion to the song.

“They nev­er sought the rights, nev­er cared to do it, nev­er did their re­search. In the US, if some­thing like that hap­pened, those who com­mit­ted the il­le­gal act would try to iron out the sit­u­a­tion out of court, be­fore it had to reach the court.”

He stressed that even af­ter mak­ing the mat­ter pub­lic, he had not been con­tact­ed by An­gos­tu­ra.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to An­gos­tu­ra who ac­knowl­edged the com­plaint made by Charles.

In a state­ment, An­gos­tu­ra said, “We are aware of an is­sue be­ing raised in re­spect of a jin­gle. We have con­tact­ed our ad­ver­tis­ing agency and at present have be­gun in­quiries in­to the is­sue raised. You will ap­pre­ci­ate that mat­ters like this re­quire care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion be­fore An­gos­tu­ra adopts a po­si­tion.”

Charles stat­ed in the re­lease that those re­spon­si­ble for the use of the sam­ple with­out his con­sent should at­tempt to con­tact him to avoid lit­i­ga­tion pro­ceed­ings.

“Many times these is­sues must have at­tor­neys in­volved and I am cog­nisant of that. I am seek­ing re­dress via com­pen­sa­tion be­cause An­gos­tu­ra used my sam­ple to sell their prod­uct. I will not stop un­til the mat­ter is fair­ly ad­dressed and com­pen­sa­tion is re­ceived,” said Charles.

The Busi­ness Guardian at­tempt­ed to con­tact Charles for an in­ter­view on the mat­ter via What­sApp, but up to the time of this ar­ti­cle’s sub­mis­sion, he had not re­spond­ed to our re­quest.