GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

At a time when climb­ing food prices feel like a week­ly rit­u­al and in a Car­ni­val land­scape dom­i­nat­ed by large, high-bud­get mas­quer­ade bands, one mi­ni Car­ni­val band in Bel­mont, bear­ing the name of one of T&T’s most trea­sured band­lead­ers, is chal­leng­ing the norm with a sim­ple but trans­for­ma­tive idea with its Pay What You Can “bonus” of­fer­ing.

For the band Berke­ley Car­ni­val Rev­o­lu­tion, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is not an ad­di­tion or a mar­ket­ing hook—it is the foun­da­tion of every­thing its does.

“It’s kind of straight­for­ward. So in my po­si­tion there are times if I have to go to a pay-what-you-can event, I could prob­a­bly be able to pay maybe up to $500. But there are times that I def­i­nite­ly can’t even af­ford to pay $5 for an event. I def­i­nite­ly un­der­stand that in these eco­nom­ic times. So while we do ask for a do­na­tion or sug­gest a do­na­tion of $150, we do un­der­stand that some peo­ple can af­ford to pay more and some peo­ple can’t af­ford to pay that ei­ther. But that should not ex­clude you from par­tic­i­pat­ing and cel­e­brat­ing our cul­ture,” said band­leader Cherisse Lau­ren Berke­ley, who has spent her en­tire 34 years im­mersed in the cul­ture.

So baci­cal­ly, some­one in a short pants and jer­sey-what­ev­er his or her con­cept of mas may be-can join.

The flex­i­bil­i­ty res­onates es­pe­cial­ly deeply this year, as the coun­try con­tin­ues nav­i­gat­ing eco­nom­ic hard­ship. And it showed as 2026 has brought the band its largest wave of in­ter­est yet. Last year, the en­tire band num­bered just 25 peo­ple and this year there’s an an­tic­i­pat­ed 50.

“This year it (the band) def­i­nite­ly took off. When I start­ed the band at the NCC (Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion) lev­el it re­al­ly start­ed with six peo­ple. We are at a point where we con­tin­ued to be a mi­ni band and I don’t want that to re­al­ly change. But it might end up be­ing that we have to turn peo­ple away which is some­thing that I feel kind of feel a how about. That is be­cause I be­lieve that every­body should en­joy the cul­ture but at the same time I have to work with­in the re­sources that we have so that every­body is com­fort­able and cared for,” Berke­ley added.

The Pay What You Can mod­el is not on­ly de­signed to keep the event ac­ces­si­ble but al­so funds key ser­vices along the route.

“We sup­port the lo­cal ven­dors along the pa­rade route. We have a mu­sic truck. We have se­cu­ri­ty and a road team as well as a rest shut­tle,” Berke­ley added.

In fur­ther ex­plain­ing the con­cept, Berke­ley was care­ful with the ter­mi­nol­o­gy.

The band does not have “sec­tions” in the tra­di­tion­al sense.

“Our band is pri­mar­i­ly for in­di­vid­ual por­tray­als. This year we have 11 in­di­vid­ual por­tray­als at the NCC com­pe­ti­tions and that’s what the band was pri­mar­i­ly for as well as the Pay What You Can. Any­body else who came af­ter those are the bonus ... Pay What You Can isn’t a sec­tion,” she ex­plained adding, “It’s just an op­tion. The band it­self is built around in­di­vid­ual por­tray­als. The bonus peo­ple are ex­act­ly that—the bonus. They’re not the pri­ma­ry fo­cus, but we wel­come them.”

While Berke­ley Car­ni­val Rev­o­lu­tion has ex­ist­ed in­for­mal­ly since 2017, par­tic­i­pat­ing in events such as the Bo­cas Lit Fest, the band de­buted of­fi­cial­ly on the road four years ago.

The ear­li­est days were hum­ble ones, Barkley re­called.

The Car­ni­val Rev­o­lu­tion is not mere­ly about cos­tum­ing—it’s a “protest mas” band.

That iden­ti­ty is both in­ten­tion­al and his­tor­i­cal.

“Car­ni­val is ac­tu­al­ly a protest. It came out of ri­ots. It was a time for peo­ple. So we con­tin­ue that lega­cy of protest mas and we have dif­fer­ent mes­sages and each char­ac­ter por­trays a dif­fer­ent con­cept of a protest they want to cham­pi­on a cause for. So for ex­am­ple, this year we are al­so part­ner­ing with the Crop­per Foun­da­tion who are do­ing a film project and some of our cos­tumes are cen­tred around cli­mate jus­tice. They’re al­so cos­tumes cen­tred around war and femi­cide as well as non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, noise pol­lu­tion etc.

“... A lot of it is cen­tred around like tra­di­tion­al mask char­ac­ters with a whim­si­cal twist so we have these large heads that are al­most car­toon-like in na­ture that make it very whim­si­cal. We al­so do con­ven­tion­al-like con­cept mas pieces but they are not the run-of-the-mill feath­er and beads. They tell a sto­ry and they have lots of de­tails and per­son­al­i­ty and re­al­ly show the mas­quer­ad­er that’s in them or the de­sign­er who made them, be­cause some­times we have in­stances where we put peo­ple in cos­tumes that we’ve made,” Berke­ley said.

One of the band’s most dis­tinc­tive of­fer­ings is its cos­tumes built en­tire­ly from re­pur­posed ma­te­ri­als do­nat­ed from across the coun­try—bot­tle caps, cloth rem­nants, card­board, paint, even dis­card­ed J’Ou­vert sup­plies.

Cor­po­rate T&T, Berke­ley added, has al­so has been com­ing in­to the fold, a con­cept she de­scribed as “nice” as this rarely oc­curs with the small­er bands.

Call for greater ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty in mas cul­ture

In a call for in­clu­siv­i­ty with­in Car­ni­val cul­ture, Berke­ley em­pha­sised that the essence of mas be­longs to every­one—re­gard­less of fi­nan­cial means.

She un­der­scored that mon­ey should “nev­er, ever, ever” be a de­ter­rent to par­tic­i­pat­ing in tra­di­tions their an­ces­tors helped shape as she urged mas­quer­aders, cre­atives and cul­tur­al stake­hold­ers to em­brace more ac­ces­si­ble path­ways to par­tic­i­pa­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the ris­ing cost of cos­tumes and ameni­ties con­tin­ues to lim­it in­volve­ment for many.

“I think pri­mar­i­ly mass is for every­body and we should nev­er ever ever let mon­ey be a de­ter­rent for en­joy­ing what our an­ces­tors have paved the way for. So if that means make your own stuff and go on the road and just be on the road and claim your space, do that,” she said, en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple not to feel ex­clud­ed if they can­not pur­chase pre­mi­um cos­tumes.

She al­so is­sued a call to ac­tion to the lead­ers of larg­er, more es­tab­lished bands, en­cour­ag­ing them to con­sid­er of­fer­ing low-bud­get or econ­o­my op­tions.

The goal, she said, is not to di­min­ish the pre­mi­um ex­pe­ri­ence but to widen the cul­tur­al door­way for those who may oth­er­wise be left out.

Re­flect­ing on ef­forts al­ready made, Berke­ley said, “I was grate­ful that we had an­oth­er mi­ni-band part­ner with us and I wish that more small­er en­ti­ties can come to­geth­er and share ameni­ties and costs so that way it be­comes more ac­ces­si­ble. So it is not just the peo­ple who want to play in my band or your band but every­body.”

A lega­cy root­ed in com­mu­ni­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty

Berke­ley’s com­mit­ment to ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty runs deep in her fam­i­ly line.

She is the niece of leg­endary mas­man Wayne Berke­ley, a name syn­ony­mous with artistry, in­no­va­tion, and a gen­er­a­tion of Trinidad Car­ni­val his­to­ry.

Her moth­er, Su­san Berke­ley, and her fa­ther, Cle­tus, were al­so in­volved in mas, with her par­ents’ once op­er­at­ing a kid­dies band in Ch­agua­nas called Tagal­lie and As­so­ciates.

“I’ve al­ways been in a mas camp,” she says. “If it wasn’t with Wayne, it was with my mom’s side or fam­i­ly friends with a J’Ou­vert band. Mas is just part of my life.”

Still, she is quick to note that her band’s busi­ness mod­el is dif­fer­ent.

“I un­der­stand a band can be a busi­ness,” she says, “but I view mine as a life­long com­mu­ni­ty project. What­ev­er prof­it comes in goes right back in­to the band.”

There is, how­ev­er, one area where she proud­ly fol­lows her un­cle’s foot­steps: mer­chan­dise. She not­ed that Wayne was decades ahead of his time in de­sign­ing col­lectible jer­seys for each year’s por­tray­al—so de­tailed and artis­tic that many hang framed in the fam­i­ly home.