Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne said Car­ni­val 2024, his first as may­or, was a suc­cess.

"I think I think that things went very well. We don't give our­selves enough cred­it for the abil­i­ty that we have to host this sig­nif­i­cant fes­ti­val," he told re­porters as he an­nounced the re­sults of Down­town Car­ni­val 2024. Al­leyne said he was di­rect­ly in­volved in sev­er­al stake­hold­er meet­ings to en­sure a smooth fes­ti­val."

"You will not spare thought for what prepa­ra­tions T&TEC has to put in place, for ex­am­ple, in case there's any out­age of pow­er on Car­ni­val Tues­day, there are many stake­hold­ers that come to­geth­er every sin­gle year to make this fes­ti­val a suc­cess," he said. Al­leyne said he was pleased with the work of all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing TTPS, the City Po­lice and CEPEP who joined with staff of the Port of Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion to en­sure the city was clean af­ter two days of pa­rade of the bands."

As the May­or read the re­sults of the Down­town Car­ni­val he not­ed at­ten­dance was high­er than in pre­vi­ous years which he hoped could con­tin­ue.

"The resur­gence in in­ter­est at the down­town Car­ni­val Stands is be­cause of the work that we're do­ing in the city. It's be­cause of the lead­er­ship of Coun­cil­lor [Jen­neil] Fred­er­ick in lead­ing the Down­town Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee. We will con­tin­ue to do that work and we ex­pect to be able to reap the ben­e­fits of that go­ing for­ward with even greater at­ten­dance for Car­ni­val 2025 and be­yond," Al­leyne said.

Over the years as bands opt­ed to take oth­er routes to judg­ing points, pa­trons com­plained the Down­town mas on South Quay was be­ing ne­glect­ed. This year there were on­ly three judg­ing points. Adam Smith Square and Vic­to­ria Square are no longer judg­ing points. The Queen's Park Sa­van­nah was a manda­to­ry point while Pica­dil­ly Greens was op­tion­al. It opened Down­town (South Quay) to judge Band of the Year.

RE­SULTS

Once again Lost TRIBE took the Large Band ti­tle with their por­tray­al of Fly.

Pa­parazzi came sec­ond with their por­tray­al of IHO­KA and Ron­nie and Caro were third with Bush­fire: The Ris­ing of New Life.

K2K Al­liance and Part­ners once again copped the medi­um cat­e­go­ry with the Salt Cross­ing

Ki­net­ic Mas was sec­ond with the por­tray­al Yokoso and Im­age Na­tion’s J’ou­vay plac­ing third.

In the small cat­e­go­ry, First Cit­i­zens Orig­i­nal Jab Jab won with An­ces­tral War­riors

Trib­al Con­nec­tion Cul­tur­al Pro­mo­tion: The Spir­it Call­ing came sec­ond and

Dog Sol­diers - Pow Pow Fes­ti­val plac­ing third.

In the Down­town Road March race, Mi­cal Te­ja’s DNA (played 59 times) was the most played fol­lowed by Bun­ji (43 times) and Olatun­ji Year­wood’s In­ven­tor (9 times).

In a new cat­e­go­ry called "Pana­ma­nia" Massy Trinidad All Stars added an­oth­er win to its 2024 tro­phy case in ad­di­tion to the $30,000 prize.