Gyasi Mer­rique

Se­nior Re­porter

gyasi.mer­rique@cnc3.co.tt

Par­ty lovers hop­ing to start 2025 and the Car­ni­val sea­son on the right foot found the ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty at the 2025 edi­tion of Day One, host­ed by Il­lu­sions at Ho­tel Nor­mandie, St Ann’s on New Year’s Day.

The brunch-themed event plays on its name, invit­ing close friends, fam­i­ly, and those with spe­cial con­nec­tions to ring in the new year in a dif­fer­ent way than what might be deemed the norm.

“When we came up with the con­cept, we want­ed to find some­thing that was a touch­ing point with peo­ple’s feel­ings,” said Il­lu­sions co-founder, Dami­an Ba­boolal.

“And when Farmer Nap­py sang his song Day Ones, he talked about fam­i­ly and friends. And Jan­u­ary 1 is day one of the year that you are in, so that was a dou­ble mean­ing and the right name for an event like this.”

“Peo­ple are ac­cus­tomed to par­ty­ing on Old Year’s night or break­ing the new year with the fam­i­ly, go­ing to church or tem­ple, or mosque. So we saw that gap and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do an event. It is al­so syn­ony­mous with the first day of the Car­ni­val sea­son, so it’s killing two birds with one stone.”

Ba­boolal said that com­pared to its first edi­tion last year, at­ten­dance had near­ly dou­bled, which is en­cour­ag­ing as it was first con­cep­tu­al­ized for a three to five-year shelf life.

“I think it will on­ly grow in years to come. I think peo­ple like to dress up and are look­ing for that op­por­tu­ni­ty to wear their new kits and cel­e­brate the new year,” he said.

Pa­trons ap­peared quite ea­ger to link up for the very first time in the new year, as well as to test their Car­ni­val readi­ness for the long sea­son ahead.

Over 650 of them showed up from 6 am when doors opened, and par­tied well in­to ear­ly af­ter­noon. Colour­ful­ly dressed be­neath the nat­ur­al canopy formed by the venue’s large fruit trees, com­bined with dec­o­ra­tive fab­ric canopy for added shel­ter and am­bi­ence at the break­fast and drinks-in­clu­sive par­ty.

The ex­tra cov­er would have worked well in hot­ter con­di­tions. In­stead, over­cast con­di­tions soon gave way to wet­ter cir­cum­stances.

The true test of loy­al­ty to friend­ships and fete­ing came at around 9 am with a steady driz­zle as DJ Op­ti­mus and Team Joy were warm­ing up the crowd. The New Year bless­ings eased on­ly briefly be­fore re­turn­ing heav­ier than be­fore but on­ly a few par­ty­go­ers at­tempt­ed to es­cape to shel­tered ar­eas along the out­skirts of the venue.

In­stead, those who came equipped with them, opened their um­brel­las right where they stood and con­tin­ued to jump, wave, wine and car­ry on along­side their ‘day ones’. Some oth­er pa­trons used tra­di­tion­al hand fans and oth­er trin­kets pro­vid­ed by the pro­mot­ers to ei­ther shel­ter or wipe away the droplets in an ex­er­cise that grew more and more fu­tile. The rest sur­ren­dered to the el­e­ments and com­plied with­out much re­sis­tance to the com­mands of DJs Chucky Ray-Ban and Poi­son, Travis World and Car­do, and DJ Char­lotte and As­sas­in Singh who kept the so­ca hits rain­ing too.

Break­through artiste Wadicks opened for a sol­id cast of per­form­ers which al­so in­clud­ed reign­ing Road March cham­pi­on Mi­cal Te­ja, and the al­ways-con­sis­tent GBM Nu­tron.

While it was re­fresh­ing to see fete-lovers en­gage so whole-heart­ed­ly in the rev­el­ry of so­ca and show­ers, oth­er mat­ters loomed like dark clouds - di­min­ished pub­lic safe­ty, wors­en­ing crime, and the re­sult­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), which was an­nounced just days be­fore the event.

Ba­boolal ad­mit­ted that he and his team stood ready to piv­ot had the im­pli­ca­tions com­ing out of the Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ments been dif­fer­ent.

“I think it (SoE) was war­rant­ed based on the in­for­ma­tion that was giv­en to us by the gov­ern­ment and we sup­port it. We’re glad it was a no-cur­few State of Emer­gency be­cause that def­i­nite­ly would have af­fect­ed the Car­ni­val and this event specif­i­cal­ly.

“As pro­mot­ers, we want to work with the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure that we are pro­vid­ing the best and safest ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause T&T is the Mec­ca of car­ni­val, and for us to con­tin­ue to be looked at in that way, it was a nec­es­sary move. I just hope it doesn’t last too long.”

Look­ing ahead, Ba­boolal said Il­lu­sions will ei­ther host or col­lab­o­rate on at least five more events in Feb­ru­ary as well as ex­e­cute an en­tire sec­tion in sec­ond-year mas band, Spir­it Mas, on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

He said se­cu­ri­ty will be para­mount at each.

“Se­cu­ri­ty is al­ways high on our list of pri­or­i­ties. We will al­ways en­hance our se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures,” he said.

“We try to pro­vide shut­tles where pos­si­ble and safe park­ing, so they don’t have to park on the roads. We work with the au­thor­i­ties like the Po­lice and Fire Ser­vices to get the rel­e­vant strength from them. We hire pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty to work with the car parks, so peo­ple are safe from the time they ar­rive at the event, at the doors, and gates, and even af­ter the events. We do vol­un­tary breath­a­lyz­er tests and will con­tin­ue those types of things to make sure peo­ple en­joy them­selves safe­ly.”