Leroy George

In 2018, in­for­ma­tion gath­ered from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) and the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was used to cal­cu­late how much rev­enue was gained from vis­i­tors to T&T who trav­elled specif­i­cal­ly for the pur­pose of cel­e­brat­ing Car­ni­val.

This re­port was done at a time be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a time when T&T cel­e­brat­ed Car­ni­val to­geth­er. It was dis­cov­ered in that year, us­ing an av­er­age of how much mon­ey each sur­veyed vis­i­tor said they spent in our na­tion at the time of their de­par­ture, that T&T Car­ni­val had gen­er­at­ed in to­tal an es­ti­mat­ed TT$318,948,168 in that year. Re­ports from pre­vi­ous years showed sim­i­lar re­sults.

Of the 33,873 per­sons who vis­it­ed T&T dur­ing the afore­men­tioned pe­ri­od, 62 per cent of those sur­veyed said they vis­it­ed specif­i­cal­ly to cel­e­brate Car­ni­val.

Six per cent of these vis­i­tors to T&T in gen­er­al vis­it­ed To­ba­go in par­tic­u­lar, which is in­hab­it­ed by 5 per cent of this na­tion’s over­all pop­u­la­tion.

Car­ni­val, both in T&T, has been a big in­come gen­er­a­tor over the years and stake­hold­ers had every rea­son to be ex­cit­ed about To­ba­go’s first-ever in­de­pen­dent­ly cel­e­brat­ed Car­ni­val in Oc­to­ber of 2022.

In an­tic­i­pa­tion of To­ba­go’s first-ever au­tonomous Car­ni­val, Masim­ba George, aka “Sim­ba Li­on,” the leader of mu­sic group “Kan­nec­tion Gen­er­als,” in­vest­ed over TT$10,000 to­wards the pro­duc­tion of sev­er­al small­er mu­sic projects which, as one of To­ba­go’s more pop­u­lar so­ca artistes, he ex­pect­ed to make re­turns on. By Oc­to­ber 27, 2022 (the day be­fore Car­ni­val), he es­ti­mat­ed that he had made in to­tal less than TT$3,000 in­come from mu­si­cal ap­pear­ances.

This year, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Di­vi­sion of Tourism an­nounced that $17.5 mil­lion was spent by To­ba­go’s gov­ern­ment on To­ba­go’s first-ever stand-alone Car­ni­val. George is won­der­ing why he is com­ing up short on his in­vest­ment on him­self as a well-known To­ba­go so­ca artiste.

With no Car­ni­val hap­pen­ing in Trinidad while To­ba­go cel­e­brat­ed this Oc­to­ber, sev­er­al Trinidad cre­atives were free to come to To­ba­go to of­fer their ser­vices, cre­at­ing com­pe­ti­tion for the spot­light for To­ba­go cre­atives like George.

Mu­sic was not al­ways George’s dream. He played foot­ball for Rox­bor­ough Sec­ondary, where he at­tained six CXC O’Lev­el sub­jects be­fore go­ing on to Sixth Form at Sig­nal Hill Com­pre­hen­sive, where he gained one CXC ‘A’ Lev­el sub­ject while al­so play­ing foot­ball for that school. George earned a schol­ar­ship to at­tend a New Mex­i­co USA Uni­ver­si­ty through the To­ba­go Coach­ing School, where he was coached by leg­endary train­er Bertille St Clair, who is fa­mous for al­so coach­ing na­tion­al foot­ball hero Dwight Yorke.

While at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty in New Mex­i­co, he be­came friends with a few un­der­ground hip-hop artists. George was paid on av­er­age $US150 a day as a movie ex­tra for three dif­fer­ent movies. Grad­u­al­ly, George was drawn away from foot­ball and in­to the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

Geroge moved from New Mex­i­co to Switzer­land, where he played for a di­vi­sion three foot­ball club. He worked as a par­ty pro­mot­er in Eu­rope for a few years. He teamed up with oth­er like-mind­ed pro­mot­ers to bring to Switzer­land leg­endary dance­hall artist Spice.

When his pro­mo­tion com­pa­ny was born in Switzer­land, it was called “Kan­nec­tion Fam­i­ly.” George re­turned to To­ba­go and he even­tu­al­ly changed his com­pa­ny name from Kan­nec­tion Fam­i­ly to Kan­nec­tion Gen­er­als.

To­day, his com­pa­ny boasts sev­en artistes, four of whom per­formed at the To­ba­go So­ca Stars com­pe­ti­tion pre­lim­i­nar­ies lead­ing up to the fi­nals, which two Kan­nec­tion Gen­er­als artists qual­i­fied for.

The Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion is re­spon­si­ble for To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val. George be­lieves the THA has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to fa­cil­i­tate the growth of To­ba­go’s en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try to pre­serve To­ba­go’s cul­ture.

When George no­ticed that of the many events that led up to To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val, very few To­ba­go so­ca artistes had been em­ployed to en­ter­tain, he took to a Face­book Live to voice his con­cerns. His Face­book Live sparked a trend on so­cial me­dia, where artistes main­ly from To­ba­go would make sim­i­lar videos. Grad­u­al­ly, the events lead­ing up to To­ba­go’s first in­de­pen­dent Car­ni­val be­came more dec­o­rat­ed with To­ba­go so­ca artistes.

While To­ba­go’s first Car­ni­val build-up was not with­out hic­cups, To­bag­o­ni­ans be­gan hear­ing more songs from their own artistes grac­ing the ra­dio sta­tions and the feel of some­thing unique, au­tonomous and fes­tive seeped in­to the air.

A con­ver­sa­tion was sparked on the is­land about what re­spon­si­bil­i­ties the To­ba­go artiste has to be able to com­pete with their coun­ter­parts from oth­er is­lands, as well as what can be done to pro­mote To­ba­go’s cul­ture with the use of tax­pay­er dol­lars through gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions. One thing that seemed to be agreed on by all par­ties in­volved is that the up­com­ing To­ba­go Car­ni­val looked promis­ing.

To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val even­tu­al­ly came and so did some heavy rains at times, “the on­ly thing rain does stop is crick­et” said many res­i­dents and vis­i­tors alike as they par­tied like it was 1999. By most ac­counts, (in­clud­ing George’s), To­ba­go’s first Car­ni­val was an epic hit.

A re­port on the eco­nom­ic side of things is ex­pect­ed to be giv­en by the THA soon enough. Many per­sons feel op­ti­mistic that To­ba­go’s cre­atives will not be left out the next time around and much of the op­ti­mism that is shared has been ac­cred­it­ed to the spark that George cre­at­ed when he took a stand for all the cre­atives of To­ba­go.

Leroy George is the Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer for To­ba­go Writer’s Guild. For more in­for­ma­tion, call or What­sApp at 1(868)620-5799 or email to­bagowrit­ers­guild123@gmail.com or find them on Face­book and In­sta­gram @To­bagoWrit­ers­Guild