Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed an­nu­al To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence will not be mak­ing a re­turn in 2024, as the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has de­cid­ed to scrap it due to its “un­sus­tain­abil­i­ty”.

How­ev­er, the THA says it will sup­port any jazz-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties planned for April 2024.

The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day by the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion Lim­it­ed, a year af­ter Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine raised con­cerns over the event’s fu­ture.

At that time, Au­gus­tine re­vealed the THA ex­ec­u­tive’s in­ten­tion to con­sid­er a new ap­proach, where­in pri­vate pro­mot­ers would take on a larg­er role and be­come ma­jor in­vestors in host­ing the fes­ti­val.

In its first re­lease on the is­sue, the com­mis­sion said, “This was in part due to the cur­rent mod­el of the fes­ti­val not be­ing deemed as sus­tain­able.”

In an up­dat­ed re­lease, it said the de­ci­sion was due to var­i­ous fac­tors af­fect­ing its fea­si­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“This de­ci­sion, while not made light­ly, aligns with our com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing high-qual­i­ty cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences that res­onate with the evolv­ing in­ter­ests of our au­di­ence.”

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment on the de­ci­sion, Min­is­ter of Tourism Ran­dall Mitchell wished the com­mis­sion all the best.

“The fes­ti­val and tourism prod­uct in To­ba­go falls un­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties, and Trans­porta­tion. And if fol­low­ing their last edi­tion in 2023, they now, in March 2024, deem the fes­ti­val event to be un­sus­tain­able, I could on­ly wish them the very best in re­or­gan­is­ing the pop­u­lar fes­ti­val in the near fu­ture for the sake of the as­so­ci­at­ed tourism stake­hold­ers (ac­com­mo­da­tion providers, tour op­er­a­tors) who de­pend on those pa­trons vis­it­ing the is­land dur­ing the pe­ri­od.”

Mean­while, news of the can­cel­la­tion left one tourism as­so­ci­a­tion and its mem­bers dis­ap­point­ed.

Unique Bed and Break­fast and Self Cater­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Kaye Trot­man lament­ed the po­ten­tial loss­es the in­dus­try will in­cur.

“It’s un­for­tu­nate that we had to come down to the wire of a ma­jor event like this to be told, on the eve of when it’s sup­posed to be hap­pen­ing, that it’s not go­ing to hap­pen. So the prepa­ra­tions and com­mit­ment of re­sources, it will be a chal­lenge for them to now face af­ter they have made in­vest­ments. It would be to no avail,” Trot­man said.

“It’s un­for­tu­nate we have to be do­ing things at last minute when it comes to this ad­min­is­tra­tion. The same thing hap­pened with Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties this year. Now for this to hap­pen, it seems as though this ad­min­is­tra­tion doesn’t have a prop­er hold on the tourism sec­tor on what needs to hap­pen for it to flour­ish.”

The first jazz event on the is­land, the Ply­mouth Jazz Fes­ti­val, was held in 2004. At the time, it cost CL Fi­nan­cial $30 mil­lion to host the fes­ti­val. But it was dubbed the “third Biggest Event on Plan­et Earth” by Forbes 500 mag­a­zine that year. Dur­ing that time, how­ev­er, for­mer tourism min­is­ter Joseph Ross an­nounced that gov­ern­ment was in dis­cus­sion with a com­pa­ny and pro­duc­ers of the Ply­mouth Jazz Fes­ti­val to take over lead spon­sor­ship of the event.

The THA took own­er­ship of the fes­ti­val from CL Fi­nan­cial and re­named it the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence in 2009 but it nev­er re­turned prof­its on the THA’s ex­pen­di­ture.

Over the years, the event at­tract­ed thou­sands to the is­land for a fea­tured line-up of sev­er­al lo­cal and for­eign artistes.

The last edi­tion, la­belled “The Re­turn”, was host­ed in 2023, post COVID-19, with a $12 mil­lion bud­get. It fea­tured head­line acts Boyz II Men, Kof­fee and Richie Spice.

But now, the THA feels a new di­rec­tion is need­ed for the event’s fu­ture; a di­rec­tion To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man Mar­tin George agrees with.

To re­store the fes­ti­val to its for­mer glo­ry, George rec­om­mends reestab­lish­ing the fes­ti­val’s qual­i­ty and cal­i­bre. How­ev­er, he felt the an­nounce­ment should have been made ear­li­er.

“This To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val had ac­tu­al­ly set the stan­dard and the bench­mark for Caribbean mu­sic fes­ti­vals in the three years that it was run by pri­vate en­ter­prise,” George said.

“The world of in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic is so in­ter­twined and in­ter­con­nect­ed. When play­ing in glob­al mar­kets, par­tic­u­lar­ly for mu­sic, there’s a lot that you have to con­sid­er at all times.”

George said cre­at­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic fes­ti­val of this mag­ni­tude needs care­ful plan­ning, ex­per­tise and a com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence.

He added, “Re­brand it, rein­vig­o­rat­ed it and re­vi­tal­ize it in pri­vate hands, let’s do it prop­er­ly. Let’s en­sure that what­ev­er you come back with is su­perb and su­pe­ri­or qual­i­ty.”

He stressed the im­por­tance for the new or­gan­is­ers to strive for “su­perla­tive and su­pe­ri­or qual­i­ty” to re­gain the in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion the event once had.

At­tempts to reach Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture and Trans­porta­tion Tashia Bur­ris were un­suc­cess­ful. Bur­ris is at­tend­ing the ITB Berlin Con­ven­tion in Ger­many with a team from the THA.

Head of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Al­pha Lord al­so could not be reached for com­ment up to press time.