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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Tobago mas no longer in limbo

by

767 days ago
20230117

Af­ter be­ing shroud­ed in un­cer­tain­ty, To­ba­go band lead­ers will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year’s car­ni­val.

Con­fir­ma­tion of their in­volve­ment came on Tues­day dur­ing the me­dia launch of To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2023 from the head of the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion John Arnold and fol­lowed threats from the mas fra­ter­ni­ty to boy­cott next month’s event over in­suf­fi­cient fund­ing.

Tues­day’s event which fea­tured mas­quer­aders and al­so in­clud­ed en­ter­tain­ment and mu­si­cal per­for­mances could have had a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent look fol­low­ing the re­cent im­passe be­tween the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and the To­ba­go Band Lead­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TBLA).

Ques­tioned about whether there were dis­cus­sions fol­low­ing the fall­out with the TBLA led by in­ter­im chair Gem­ma Bed­low-Den­nis, the Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion’s CEO said he has been in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion and has re­ceived the as­sur­ance that the is­land’s streets are set to cas­cade with colours.

He said, “The mas par­tic­i­pants are here, they’re here be­cause Ms Bed­low said they will be par­tic­i­pat­ing.”

Arnold said there has been no change to the $1.3 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion which had caused the con­tention.

Arnold said, “One of the things I said on the air, and I’m sure you heard, is the whole thing about what I call fund­ing em­pa­thy on the gov­er­nance side and fund­ing em­pa­thy on the cre­ative side, the is­sue is how do you mar­ry those two and how we meet in the mid­dle and that hap­pens from con­sul­ta­tions, ne­go­ti­a­tion and dis­cus­sions, that we did. All this was dis­cussed in­clud­ing the flow of the pro­gramme, the cal­en­dar of events so at this point, bar­ring any oth­er in­struc­tion, as far as I know, the bud­get re­mains the same.”

John not­ed that ac­com­pa­ny­ing Bed­low-Den­nis’ change of heart were pledges of the spec­tac­u­lar.

He said, “She has promised two things, that we will see more par­tic­i­pa­tion and al­so the qual­i­ty of the mas, there will be sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in that for 2023.”

Dur­ing the stand-off, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine not­ed that the band lead­ers had done much more with mas for much less dur­ing the is­land’s Oc­to­ber car­ni­val.

Arnold, who al­so agreed, said preser­va­tion of the art form trumped all else.

He said, “We have to, and the mas lead­ers agree, we’ve got to in­vest in some more train­ing and al­so aware­ness to get more peo­ple in To­ba­go to play mas.”

Arnold al­so stat­ed that dis­cus­sions were held with health au­thor­i­ties on the is­land over COVID-19 con­cerns.

He said while a mask man­date is not in place, he is en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to take the nec­es­sary steps to pro­tect them­selves.

Mean­while, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and trans­porta­tion Mea­gan Mor­ri­son called for con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion among car­ni­val stake­hold­ers on the is­land to strength­en the is­land’s car­ni­val of­fer­ing.

Mor­ri­son said, “As we ush­er in this new chap­ter I am ex­pect­ing great­ness, I wel­come any rec­om­men­da­tions, con­cerns and sug­ges­tions that come from you for I can­not do it my­self, this ad­min­is­tra­tion can­not do it them­selves we need you stake­hold­ers to en­cour­age and sug­gest and to do it with love.”

Fol­low­ing the re­cent an­nounce­ment by the Chief Sec­re­tary to move away from car­ni­val on the is­land in Feb­ru­ary and in­stead have it staged in Oc­to­ber, Mor­ri­son said un­less stake­hold­ers agree to move away from the na­tion­al leg of the fes­tiv­i­ties, it will con­tin­ue for now as part of the cal­en­dar of events.


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