Gillian Cal­iste

The Mer­ry Monarch is ex­pect­ed to reign on the streets and en­ter­tain­ment are­nas of T&T once again come Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary 2023. Fu­elled by the pent-up en­er­gy and an­tic­i­pa­tion com­ing off of the pan­dem­ic which con­strained fes­tiv­i­ties for the past two years, Car­ni­val 2023 or C2K23 is ex­pect­ed to be a mega one. Lead­ing the charge in de­clar­ing the 2023 fes­ti­val “The Moth­er of All Car­ni­vals” is the gov­ern­ing body for Car­ni­val the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC).

The or­gan­i­sa­tion sched­uled the 2023 Car­ni­val Launch for No­vem­ber 5, 2022. at the Grand Stand, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah at 5 pm af­ter post­pon­ing it from its ini­tial date of Re­pub­lic Day last month due to com­pet­ing Gold­en Ju­bilee In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions. A J'Ou­vert Ex­pe­ri­ence, a Mega Con­cert, a Pan Jam Zone, a Rum and Wine Street, a Kid­die Zone and an Art and Craft Vil­lage fea­ture on the line­up of the events planned.

Asked last week to ex­pand on the na­ture of the ad­ver­tised events for the launch and on any oth­er spe­cial fea­tures which may have been added to make Car­ni­val 2023 stand out, the NCC's Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Of­fi­cer Kyle Pil­grim said the or­gan­i­sa­tion would hold a board meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 26 af­ter which such in­for­ma­tion would be giv­en. Up to Oc­to­ber 27, no in­for­ma­tion was forth­com­ing.

Mean­while, hav­ing launched por­tray­als “Awak­ened Trea­sure” and “202WE” re­spec­tive­ly, bands like Yu­ma and 2020 sec­ond run­ner-up for Band of the Year The Lost Tribe are al­ready in­di­cat­ing that cos­tumes for many of their sec­tions have been sold out. 2020 Band of the Year Ki­net­ic Mas are gear­ing up to “Ex­hale” on Car­ni­val Mon­day and trans­form in­to “Cy­ber Na­tion” on Car­ni­val Tues­day, while pop­u­lar medi­um band K2K Al­liance and Part­ners will show­case “World Wars–In the time of Sa­lomé”, lessons on the phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal as­pects of war when the great­est road­show on the plan­et kicks off in a few months.

“Utopia” is part of Ronnie and Caro's “This is Paradise”.

Photos courtesy Ronnie and Caro

Sun­day Guardian asked so­ca vet­er­an and mas­mak­er Ron­nie McIn­tosh of big band Ron­nie and Caro– 2020 Band of the Year first run­ner-up–what the at­mos­phere in the lead-up to C2K23 has been like for the band thus far. He was at his Cor­ner Ana and War­ren Street, Wood­brook mas camp en­sur­ing that cos­tumes for his clients were packed and ready to be sent to To­ba­go for the is­land's first-ever Car­ni­val this week­end. He said start­ing with To­ba­go mas, the at­mos­phere was abuzz as peo­ple were ex­cit­ed and plan­ning on show­ing up to C2K23 in full force.

“I could safe­ly say from our end, the ex­cite­ment, the en­er­gy and the in­ter­est are def­i­nite­ly there,” he said.

He said his for­eign and for­eign-based clients were steadi­ly reg­is­ter­ing for their cos­tumes as they were usu­al­ly the first ones to do so as they had to give them­selves enough time to plan their en­tire trip to T&T for Car­ni­val. He added that whether lo­cal or for­eign, re­al mas­quer­aders “didn't play” when it came to book­ing their spots in the band.

Apart from mas­quer­aders for T&T Car­ni­val, his band out­fits and ser­vices mas­quer­aders at fes­ti­vals in var­i­ous parts of the Caribbean.

“All our for­eign Car­ni­val clients are back on. The Ba­hamas is back on, St Croix is def­i­nite­ly back on–ear­ly Jan­u­ary. St Maarten is back on, St Thomas is back on. Every­body's on,” he in­formed.

How­ev­er, McIn­tosh was not so sure how the NCC or­gan­is­ers would cap­i­talise on the an­tic­i­pa­tion of the peo­ple in the wake of the COVID squeeze on events, to make the 2023 ex­pe­ri­ence unique.

He said the in­de­pen­dent pro­mot­ers and stake­hold­ers were the ones who usu­al­ly were left to in­no­vate and put a new spin on Car­ni­val.

Ronnie McIntosh.

Innis Francis

“The gov­ern­ing body has not in­tro­duced any­thing new for the last how much years. What are they go­ing to do to make this the 'Moth­er of All Car­ni­vals'? Are in­de­pen­dent pro­mot­ers bring­ing dif­fer­ent things to the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar? A li'l J'Ou­vert here, cool­er par­ties there; dif­fer­ent things have been pop­ping up. I anx­ious­ly await to see what new func­tions, what new ven­tures the gov­ern­ing body is go­ing to bring to the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar,” he said.

For Ron­nie and Caro's “This is Par­adise” 2023 pre­sen­ta­tion, they again have cre­at­ed 12 sec­tions and this time, the band has formed an al­liance with de­but­ing band Dream by Shas­tra Ma­haraj to share re­sources like shut­tle ser­vices and spon­sors. Dream aims to pro­vide a space for peo­ple from South and Cen­tral who wish to play mas in Port-of-Spain and it al­so in­tends to cater to the Venezue­lan mar­ket.

McIn­tosh said Ron­nie and Caro would help in­tro­duce the new band to the pub­lic and “chap­er­one” them on the road on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

McIn­tosh has been in­volved in lo­cal cul­ture since age sev­en and a band­leader, along­side his wife, Car­o­line, since 2008. They dom­i­nat­ed the medi­um cat­e­go­ry and lat­er moved to the large band cat­e­go­ry where they have cap­tured the Band of the Year ti­tle on three oc­ca­sions.

For To­ba­go cel­e­bra­tions this week­end, Ron­nie and Caro pro­duced 200 cos­tumes for three sec­tions for “A Trib­ute to Blaxx” by To­ba­go band Jade Mon­key Mas. McIn­tosh felt that judg­ing from the To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­ence in the pan­dem­ic's af­ter­math, some quick so­lu­tions would have to be found to make the C2K23 mega event a suc­cess.

“Be­cause it's dif­fi­cult to get a flight. It's dif­fi­cult to get a ho­tel room or a guest house or an an­nex. It's dif­fi­cult to get a rental car at this point be­cause due to the pan­dem­ic a lot of the rental car com­pa­nies had to sell a per­cent­age of their fleet to stay alive. Now that Car­ni­val is back on and the in­ter­est is there for rentals, I guess the rental car com­pa­nies will have to find the fund­ing to pur­chase new ve­hi­cles. But there's no rental car avail­able, no ho­tel avail­able (at present), there are no flights avail­able. But the en­er­gy is def­i­nite­ly there.

“To­ba­go Car­ni­val is the first-ever and right now it's shap­ing up to be a bumper one in terms of the cos­tum­ing, the street pa­rade, even the J'Ou­vert. A high per­cent­age of the peo­ple com­ing in are for­eign­ers, well, for­eign-based mas­quer­aders and Tri­nis, of course,” he said.

He sug­gest­ed that all stake­hold­ers work in tan­dem to co­or­di­nate any Car­ni­val T&T hosts.

“I felt that Caribbean Air­lines and even the fer­ry, they made it too dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to get across. Caribbean Air­lines start­ed putting on flight late which af­fect­ed the cos­tume sales. An in­di­vid­ual can­not pur­chase a cos­tume be­fore they get a con­firmed tick­et, it's go­ing to have a last-minute rush for cos­tumes be­cause peo­ple just got their flights,” he said.

Point­ing out that for East­er get­ting ac­com­mo­da­tion in the sis­ter isle was al­ready dif­fi­cult, he said for a mas­sive event like Car­ni­val it would be much worse. Thus, prop­er plan­ning for these events is cru­cial.

Caribbean Air­lines bumped their flights up by five per day one week be­fore To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

“It's all con­nect­ed. Car­ni­val takes plan­ning, we can't just get up two weeks be­fore and say let's go make 500 cos­tumes, so they can't wait 'til the week be­fore to say, look, we put on two flights,” he said.

McIn­tosh said the plan­ners should do all they could for such events since it was about build­ing the econ­o­my, and he was al­ways will­ing to give sug­ges­tions. He re­called that he had spo­ken to the me­dia on the is­sue of hav­ing di­rect flights to To­ba­go for the is­land's in­au­gur­al Car­ni­val out­side the reg­u­lar sea­son main­ly held in Trinidad.

“Do not bring peo­ple from New York to Port-of-Spain, then to put them in Pi­ar­co, then put them on stand­by to bring them To­ba­go. Put some char­ter flights on so it could have di­rect ac­cess–Toron­to/To­ba­go, JFK/To­ba­go, Mi­a­mi/To­ba­go. But you still bring­ing peo­ple to Pi­ar­co and them women com­ing with their three, four suit­cas­es. Them four suit­cas­es now, can't fit on the small plane,” he said.

He said there should al­so be easy ac­cess from Trinidad to To­ba­go on a per­ma­nent ba­sis.

“It's sup­posed to be like Port-of-Spain to San Fer­nan­do. If you get up a morn­ing and you feel to take a li'l sea bath in Store Bay or Pi­geon Point, you should be able to get a tick­et, spend the day at Pi­geon Point and walk back to the air­port and come home,” he said.

“Jewel” is one of the sections in Yuma's “Awakened Treasure” for C2K23.

Yu­ma: We are cater­ing for a lot of new­bies

Tanya Gomes who co-di­rects Yu­ma along with Sean Bur­kett said that nine out of the band's 13 sec­tions had been sold out. She said the band ful­ly agreed that 2023 would see “the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals”.

“We have a lot of new­bies who we’re cater­ing for. We feel en­er­gised and ex­cit­ed over the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al re­sponse. Our band size has in­creased, and we are ful­ly equipped to give our mas­quer­aders the best ex­pe­ri­ence on the road,” she said. To en­hance the 2023 ex­pe­ri­ence for its typ­i­cal 4,500 mas­quer­aders, she said the band has added a cos­tume de­liv­ery ser­vice op­tion for those who are un­able to make it to Yu­ma's dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre.

“It is an ef­fi­cient and con­ve­nient way of col­lect­ing cos­tumes, and we be­lieve this fea­ture will elim­i­nate a lot of con­ges­tion.”

Tanya Gomes.

SHIRLEYBAHADUR

Yu­ma is al­so plan­ning a spe­cial de­sign for Car­ni­val Mon­day by Marie Col­lette who has been de­sign­ing with the band for over five years and whom many con­sid­er to be the pi­o­neer of Mon­day wear that dif­fers from a band's Tues­day cos­tume.

Known for their in vogue de­signs and ap­peal to the young and vi­brant, Gomes de­scribed Yu­ma as “the em­bod­i­ment of Car­ni­val 2023–whether it is build­ing the mo­men­tum, liv­ing vic­ar­i­ous­ly through past mo­ments or cre­at­ing and sus­tain­ing the ex­cite­ment YU­MA is the Vibe!” she said.

Vis­it Ron­nie and Caro the Mas Band @http://www.ron­nie­and­caro.com

Vis­it Yu­ma @http://www.yu­mav­ibe.com

“Mint” from “Awakened Treasure” by Yuma.

Photos courtesy Yuma