Car­ni­val and so­ca may be in Ron­nie McIn­tosh’s blood, but while oth­ers are dou­bled over in de­spair from the loss of this sea­son, the cul­tur­al icon has got­ten over his Car­ni­val ta­ban­ca for 2021. The so­ca vet­er­an and mas­mak­er feels that as far as the fes­ti­val is con­cerned, all of its stake­hold­ers should use the down­time for a to­tal re­set.

“For us, for ‘Ron­nie and Caro’, there is no Car­ni­val. It’s dif­fi­cult for mas bands to put on any­thing be­cause our whole thing is in­ter­ac­tive and about num­bers. We came to terms with the fact, maybe since Ju­ly/Au­gust, that there will be no Car­ni­val,” he told the Sun­day Guardian.

“A lot of peo­ple may be now talk­ing about it be­cause the re­al­i­ty now step­ping in. It’s un­for­tu­nate that Car­ni­val is sea­son­al for so many peo­ple, but for us, Car­ni­val is not sea­son­al. We have been pre­pared for this mo­ment and we are just fo­cussing on mov­ing for­ward.”

In re­sponse to the sug­ges­tion last week by Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud about hav­ing a small su­per­vised pa­rade with six-feet wide cos­tumes to sep­a­rate mas­quer­aders, judg­ing of mov­ing steel­bands and open-air ca­lyp­so tents to com­mem­o­rate the sea­son and keep it alive on the world stage, McIn­tosh said, “In terms of what Aboud men­tioned, there would be some in­ter­est for him. At the end of the day, what­ev­er you’re hav­ing, if it’s mak­ing lit­tle cos­tumes and what­ev­er, there is no for­eign or­der­ing in terms of ma­te­r­i­al. I’m not say­ing his idea is bad, but at the end of the day, the on­ly per­son who will gen­er­ate any in­come from that would be him.”

In any case, McIn­tosh said, if there was any­thing to be done, peo­ple did not have to wait on gov­ern­ment bod­ies to do it.

“Every­body has sug­ges­tions and ex­pect­ing the NCC would get in­volved by hav­ing a vir­tu­al show­case. At the end of the day, NCC is more the in­fra­struc­ture.

“For Car­ni­val we don’t ever go through the one gov­ern­ing body. There are a lot of things done pri­vate­ly. Why we zoom­ing in on NCC to find out what we do­ing?”

Should the gov­ern­ing bod­ies em­bark on a vir­tu­al show and ex­tend an in­vi­ta­tion to his mas band, “Ron­nie and Caro”, though, he said he would “def­i­nite­ly” par­tic­i­pate.

The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic which reached the shores of T&T in March last year did lit­tle to de­ter Car­ni­val 2020. With lin­ger­ing cas­es lo­cal­ly and mount­ing out­breaks world­wide, how­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of this year’s cel­e­bra­tions to­wards the end of Sep­tem­ber 2020.

The son of gift­ed mu­sic arranger, Art De Coteau, McIn­tosh has long been in­volved in lo­cal cul­ture. He start­ed at the age of sev­en, play­ing the per­cus­sion at ca­lyp­so tents. His singing ca­reer be­gan in 1984 with pop­u­lar mu­sic band, “Shandileer” which changed its name to “Mas­sive Chan­de­lier”. Ris­ing to front­line vo­cal­ist of the band, he did stints with Blue Ven­tures and At­lantik. He won So­ca Monarch in 1995 with “On the Road” (Ah Come Back Home) and tied with Su­perblue in 1997 with “Ent”.

His in­tro­duc­tion to mas pro­duc­tion came in 2004, when he and his wife, Caro, cre­at­ed sec­tions in “Mas­quer­ade” and “Lega­cy”. They con­tin­ued up to 2007, ul­ti­mate­ly de­vel­op­ing the mas band, “Ron­nie and Caro” in 2008. They dom­i­nat­ed the medi­um cat­e­go­ry and lat­er moved to the large band cat­e­go­ry where they con­tin­ue to make their mark.

“So ba­si­cal­ly all I know all my life is cul­ture in terms of in­come,” he said.

Apart from lo­cal rev­enue, his band would have lost in­come from fes­ti­vals in St Mar­teen, Ba­hamas and Tor­to­la, McIn­tosh said.

“This sit­u­a­tion would af­fect any­body fi­nan­cial­ly, but we deal­ing with it. You have to deal with it,” he said, teas­ing with “Wild”, a spin-off event of their cus­tom­ary Fri­day pave­ment lime which he has in the works.

McIn­tosh stressed the es­sen­tial role of Car­ni­val in this coun­try.

“Car­ni­val is our high sea­son and peo­ple need to re­spect that. We have one high sea­son that con­tributes to the econ­o­my, your san­i­ty, free­dom every­thing. Our high­est dis­play of uni­ty is al­so Car­ni­val time that’s an­oth­er plus. A lot of peo­ple see it as fun and sea­son­al, but to us it’s not that.

“And for some rea­son, these are the ar­eas that are last on any ad­min­is­tra­tion’s list. Cul­ture has al­ways been on the back burn­er,” he said.

Though McIn­tosh dis­missed the need for main­tain­ing the two days as hol­i­days this year, ques­tion­ing the pur­pose it would serve, he called for a sys­tem­at­ic study of the eco­nom­ic im­pact of Car­ni­val on this coun­try’s GDP to help bring re­spect for this as­pect of cul­ture.

Band­lead­ers may want to re­view the way they op­er­ate, as well, he felt, start­ing with a re­vamp of cos­tume pack­age prices.

“The all-in­clu­sive ex­pe­ri­ence has got­ten so com­pet­i­tive you al­ways have to add some­thing to com­pete. Elim­i­nate cer­tain things in the cos­tume pack­age that would al­low us to re­duce the cost.”

In his sig­na­ture trench coat and fe­do­ra hat, McIn­tosh could al­ways be count­ed on to de­liv­er mag­net­ic on­stage per­for­mances. In his hey­day, the lead vo­cal­ists and so­ca bands set the pace, charg­ing the fetes with high en­er­gy. Af­ter a ten-year-plus hia­tus, he re­turned to the mu­sic scene, ap­pear­ing large­ly as a cel­e­brat­ed guest and lat­er com­peti­tor on the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch stage.

To­day the “Don­key Dance” singer is one of the few artistes from his era who still en­ter­tains. He lament­ed the lack­lus­tre at­mos­phere in fetes nowa­days de­spite the best ef­forts of per­form­ers.

“Now you go to a fete every­body stand up with they heels and they clutch purse and phones. As soon as the artiste comes on stage they tap­ing so peo­ple could know they there. If the artiste says put your hands in the air, no hands free be­cause they have the phone and they have the clutch purse.”

At least the pan­dem­ic may have left one small ad­van­tage, McIn­tosh felt. Stuck at home, peo­ple may be forced to ful­ly ex­pe­ri­ence and re­vive the cul­ture by look­ing back at footage of Car­ni­val sea­sons gone by.

Q&A with so­ca vet­er­an and mas band­leader Ron­nie

Tell me how you see the im­por­tance of Car­ni­val as a “leg­go” pe­ri­od in terms of pre­vent­ing di­vi­sive­ness and ten­sion among us as seen in oth­er so­ci­eties.

Be­sides the mas­quer­aders, I will deal with the oth­er peo­ple who are in­volved. This can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val af­fects so many ar­eas; for one, the ho­tels. The on­ly time the ho­tels are ful­ly booked is Car­ni­val. The la­dy with the lit­tle an­nex who does rent out to peo­ple from New York, you have the car rental com­pa­nies, it’s a whole chain re­ac­tion, but a lot of peo­ple just fig­ure you up­set just the band­lead­ers. There’s the maxi (taxi) man who has the con­tract to take 12 peo­ple to Mara­cas for the bake and shark, in town for the ‘tam­brand’ ball and red man­go to car­ry back (abroad)…

In terms of the ac­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence of the mas, it’s about san­i­ty be­cause a lot of things hap­pen in the coun­try and we just play (them) off and look for­ward to Car­ni­val. It’s the time uni­ty is the high­est. Those two days are amaz­ing. You can’t even ex­plain how peo­ple op­er­ate for them two days. A lot of peo­ple don’t re­al­ly go any­where dur­ing the course of the year. They go a cou­ple fetes and they look for­ward to their mas and af­ter Car­ni­val they back in­side.

What did be­ing an artiste mean for you, es­pe­cial­ly at the high­points of your ca­reer?

The move­ment from dif­fer­ent bands was just busi­ness de­ci­sions. It ba­si­cal­ly was a job. I ap­proached it as a pub­lic ser­vice and still con­tin­ue to do so. My job was to en­ter­tain the peo­ple af­ter a stress­ful week when they come out on a week­end to par­ty. And I still per­form with a high lev­el of en­er­gy. That is in me. That so­ca, that per­for­mance thing is in my sys­tem, in my blood.

How is be­ing a band­leader dif­fer­ent from be­ing an en­ter­tain­ment artiste?

It’s ba­si­cal­ly the same be­cause you’re pro­vid­ing a ser­vice. At the per­for­mance, peo­ple pay their mon­ey to be en­ter­tained, so you give them their mon­ey’s worth and with the mas it’s about cus­tomer ser­vice. They pay for a ser­vice, not just the cos­tume, you pay for a pack­age. Hence the rea­son I was able to make that tran­si­tion.

Which one are you more fond of?

I think both of them are just as im­por­tant. I de­vel­oped a love for the mas and I al­ways had love for the mu­sic. I think it’s umm…60/40; the mu­sic is the 60 (laugh­ter).

Tell me about your most mem­o­rable mo­ment as an artiste and as a mas­mak­er.

Win­ning my first So­ca Monarch with “On the Road” (Ah Come Back Home) in 1995 and de­feat­ing Su­perblue. It was mo­men­tous! The group I hung out with was over­ly-hyped any­way in terms of lime, so we just took our lim­ing be­hav­iour to a high­er lev­el which was kind of al­most im­pos­si­ble be­cause in those days, win, lose or draw I was al­ways fly­ing. It was a col­lec­tive vic­to­ry too be­cause those days the Ron­nie McIn­tosh team was close to 40. Every­body in the squad would have con­tributed in some way…

In terms of mas, the most mem­o­rable sit­u­a­tion would be bring­ing out the band for the first year and win­ning the medi­um band cat­e­go­ry and get­ting the re­sults while do­ing the fi­nances and the fi­nances look­ing like we couldn’t do it again the fol­low­ing year. The prize mon­ey didn’t off­set every­thing, but it gave you en­cour­age­ment. Cel­e­bra­tion took over.