Many plan trips to To­ba­go around spe­cif­ic events on the is­land through­out the year.

The up­com­ing East­er week­end has tra­di­tion­al­ly been pop­u­lar, as have Christ­mas and New Year cel­e­bra­tions. Aside from hol­i­day long week­ends, events like Is­land Crash­ers, Great Fete and Great Race Week­end and re­cent­ly, To­ba­go Car­ni­val, have be­come high­light­ed as days ripe for a To­ba­go trip.

How­ev­er, last week, one such event was of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed to be off the cal­en­dar—The To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence.

On Fri­day, The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced it would not host the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence this year.

The an­nounce­ment that the event was off may not have been a sur­prise to some, as the THA had more than hint­ed at dis­in­ter­est in bankrolling the event.

Usu­al­ly, by mid to late Jan­u­ary, there would have been an an­nounce­ment of the dates and the head­line acts for the var­i­ous days of the fes­ti­val.

By Feb­ru­ary there was none such with Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties & Trans­porta­tion Tashia Bur­ris in­stead stat­ing THA was not in­ter­est­ed in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the event.

At a press con­fer­ence last month, Bur­ris said, “Since last year, the chief sec­re­tary was very, very clear when he said that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly would be get­ting out of the busi­ness of do­ing the jazz event. The jazz event cost just over $12 mil­lion to pro­duce and when you think about our Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion hav­ing an al­lo­ca­tion of $20 mil­lion, you’re talk­ing about a pro­duc­tion that takes more than 50 per cent of the al­lo­ca­tion for the year for that one event alone.”

Bur­ris then stressed that the onus was on pri­vate en­ti­ties to fill the void.

She said, “What I can say is that there are a num­ber of pri­vate pro­mot­ers who have in­di­cat­ed to the THA that they want to host ac­tiv­i­ties. The East­er week­end is very ear­ly in April this year. Some of them have in­di­cat­ed that they want to do ac­tiv­i­ties on the East­er week­end. They want to do ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing the month of April. They want to have ac­tiv­i­ties at the end of April. And we are look­ing at those pro­pos­als to see how the THA can come in as a spon­sor and sup­port. But the THA it­self as a body will not be re­spon­si­ble for host­ing a jazz prod­uct.”

In­deed, as Fri­day’s re­lease it­self al­lud­ed, last year Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had ques­tioned the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence ahead of the 2023 edi­tion as he all but stat­ed the on­ly rea­son the event was staged then was due to con­tracts which had been signed be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The con­sis­tent loss­es in­curred by the event over the years were al­so cit­ed by the chief sec­re­tary as he said a de­ci­sion would have to be made con­cern­ing its stag­ing.

The THA’s Fri­day re­lease again re­it­er­at­ed his feel­ings then us­ing his quote, “What this ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tends to do, how­ev­er, if we are to keep the Jazz Fes­ti­val is to tran­si­tion so that pri­vate pro­mot­ers are the ones run­ning most of it.”
For­mer THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis, how­ev­er, called the de­ci­sion of the THA to opt out en­tire­ly, as un­for­tu­nate.

He said that the event’s ab­sence would have an ad­verse im­pact on the cre­ative and tourism sec­tor as, typ­i­cal­ly, ho­tels, guest hous­es and vil­las have seen in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty.

“I know for a fact that dur­ing that pe­ri­od, oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els in To­ba­go will al­ways es­ca­late to 80 per cent and above, across all your prop­er­ty seg­ments. It was al­ways a pe­ri­od of time where peo­ple in the tourism sec­tor look for­ward to that boost to the econ­o­my,” said Den­nis, who al­so ques­tioned if enough, or any ground­work, had been done by the THA to fa­cil­i­tate the tran­si­tion to a pri­vate event.

In­deed, in the ab­sence of the ma­jor fes­ti­val, there had been ad­ver­tise­ments for Jazz events in To­ba­go en­ti­tled Jazz and Mu­sic Week­end set to be held on April 26 to April 28 with three events named “Come Een”, “Beach­front Jazz” and “Brunch on the Greens” with sev­er­al ho­tels and restau­rants us­ing these events to pro­mote “Jazz week­end” of­fers so as to sal­vage the traf­fic pre­vi­ous­ly seen dur­ing the jazz week­end.

How­ev­er, these events lack the pro­mo­tion as well as the in­ter­na­tion­al acts that had been a draw at the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence.

While there were hints the event may not oc­cur, the tim­ing of the an­nounce­ment did take some stake­hold­ers by sur­prise.

Pres­i­dent of The Unique Bed and Break­fast & Self-Cater­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, Kay Trot­man, told Sun­day Busi­ness while she felt many stake­hold­ers were nei­ther here nor there as to whether the event would come off or not, the of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment’s tim­ing was less than ide­al.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that we have to come down to the wire be­fore that de­ci­sion is of­fi­cial­ly made. Jazz would have been in a month or so. They would have known be­fore­hand, be­cause of the plan­ning that should have gone in­to it, that it was not like­ly to have hap­pened. They should have, there­fore, bet­ter en­gaged the tourism sec­tor, the pub­lic and stake­hold­ers. So it is most un­for­tu­nate that you have to come down to the wire be­fore that (an­nounce­ment) is done.”

Trot­man added this ap­peared to be a trend re­cent­ly.

She said, “This seems to be a trend with the ad­min­is­tra­tion be­cause they did the same with some as­pects of the Feb­ru­ary Car­ni­val. They wait­ed un­til the last mo­ment when peo­ple would have put out en­er­gies and ef­forts and re­sources, on­ly to be told that some el­e­ments of the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion were be­ing can­celled. So it is in­deed for us, and that is putting it mild­ly, very un­for­tu­nate that this has hap­pened.”

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber Mar­tin George as well ques­tioned the tim­ing of the an­nounce­ment, al­though he shared the view that the re­turn of To­ba­go Jazz to pri­vate en­ti­ties should re­vi­talise the event.

“The no­tice is par­tic­u­lar­ly late to be telling peo­ple now that you’re not go­ing to have it be­cause there are lots of peo­ple who look for­ward to it on an an­nu­al ba­sis. But if you are go­ing to have it re­brand­ed, rein­vig­o­rat­ed, re­vi­talised in pri­vate hands, then let’s do it prop­er­ly,” said George.

“Let’s do it cor­rect­ly. Let’s en­sure that what­ev­er you come back with is some­thing that is of such su­perla­tive and su­pe­ri­or qual­i­ty that you can at­tain once again, the high­lights of in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, which that brand ‘The Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence had from its in­cep­tion. That’s how you cre­ate an in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic fes­ti­val.”

George was point­ing to the fact that the event had orig­i­nal­ly been the Ply­mouth Jazz Fes­ti­val, which was fund­ed by the CL Fi­nan­cial group pri­or to the col­lapse of Cli­co. He not­ed then, the show had been hailed as one of the best in the Caribbean but the qual­i­ty had dropped af­ter it was over­seen by the THA.