Senior Reporter
andrea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt
Lost Tribe is turning ten in 2025, a fact that has left its creative director, Valmiki Maharaj, stunned.
“The fact that we are having a conversation about ten years is crazy to me,” he said.
“I really can’t even tell you that when we started even, that I saw us being here, not that I saw us not being here, but it’s just that it seems like if it’s just passed so quickly.”
In those ten years, the band has won multiple Band of the Year titles and has been praised for reintroducing creativity to the modern parade of the bands. The Lost Tribe bandleader, however, believes that creativity was not lost but the methodology had shifted.
“I saw many other launches that use that and have storylines. And I was like, you know, I love this. I love this. People criticise bikini and beads mas for losing their culture and storytelling. Sometimes I question is it that we have lost it or is it that the storytelling has shifted?”
Maharaj said, “I think that the storytelling of modern-day Carnival has almost shifted from the streets to the internet, where these bands spend insane amounts of money behind developing photo shoots and themes and websites and videos and photography and elaborate sets that represent their themes so that the masqueraders get the buy-in from before.”
Maharaj acknowledged that while Lost Tribe will turn ten, the band unfortunately has not been on the road for ten years, as the country did not have a parade of bands in 2021 and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those years, however, Maharaj described as “big moments of growth.” During that time, the band produced two feature films, including the award-winning Lavway.
The story told in Lavway is connected to the 2025 theme of Lost in Time.
“In Lavway, we had a conversation. The opening showed you that the story was being narrated by Savannah. And Savannah had two siblings. The two siblings were Time and Carnival. So the three siblings are Time, who is the older brother, Carnival, who is the sister, and Savannah, who is the younger, troublesome, you know, little brother that they both are very protective over, but who loves human beings and he’s always here with us. And he told the story of Lavway. Lost Tribe’s theme this year is going to be told by Time and Carnival.”
Maharaj told Guardian Media that the decision to establish Lost Tribe ultimately came during a period when he considered leaving mas design altogether. He approached Tribe CEO Dean Ackin intending to inform him of his departure, but the Tribe leader asked him to consider something else.
“I met with Dean, and I said, you know, I feel like I may be done with this mas thing,” said Maharaj, who then explained that during that conversation he explained his initial feelings about changing how he was involved in the design process.
“Through those conversations, I told him, I said, give me two weeks, and let me think about what it is I see, and I can’t describe it, I can’t put it into words, but let me come back and tell you what I’m thinking. And I came back with this idea for this thing that wasn’t even called Lost Tribe yet.”
When he returned with his idea, he was adamant that he needed to create something that appealed to the new age.
“My intention with this band is not to dust off the old dresses from the warehouses of, you know, Minshall and Wayne Berkeley, but to create something new, you know, create something that spoke to the new modern masquerader.
Lost in Time will officially launch during Sunset Stage this weekend, under the Tribe umbrella at Queen’s Park Savannah.
Yesterday at Adam Smith Square, Woodbrook, there was a costume reveal, theatre, traditional mas, food, and technology. There was also a Moko Stage where traditional Carnival characters performed and workshops on stilt walking were given.
