Vic­ki-Ann As­severo

Lord Kitch­en­er sang “Car­ni­val is over” but the im­print of the joy­ous sweet­ness re­mains. A big part of that sweet­ness this year was the mu­sic - from the phys­i­cal ac­ro­bat­ics of steel­pan play­ers’ crescen­dos and riffs to the haunt­ing ca­lyp­sos ad­dress­ing se­ri­ous so­cial is­sues and through to the so­ca fu­sions with melodies and lyrics that whirl and en­grain in the brain, giv­ing mas­quer­aders and oth­ers a sense of uni­ty and hap­pi­ness as they mouth the words and chip to the rhythms.

A pletho­ra of new young artistes en­er­gised the mu­si­cal sound­scape this year. Some­times it felt like the peo­ple them­selves mor­phed in­to mu­si­cal notes that res­onat­ed and gy­rat­ed through Car­ni­val 2025’s spec­tac­u­lar­ly beau­ti­ful blue sky days.

I am paint­ing this word pic­ture - in­ad­e­quate as it may be in cap­tur­ing that sub­tle yet ex­u­ber­ant essence that is the joy of a peo­ple re­dis­cov­er­ing the lib­er­ty and free­dom of cre­ativ­i­ty and one­ness in the spir­it - be­cause I want Port-of -Spain and by ex­ten­sion all of T&T and the en­tire world to know that PoS is a City of Mu­sic!

UN­ESCO, the in­ter­na­tion­al cul­tur­al and sci­en­tif­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion, grant­ed our cap­i­tal city this ac­co­lade in 2019, mak­ing it one of on­ly 76 cities with that des­ig­na­tion out of the 10,000+ cities in the world. PoS, con­se­quent­ly, be­comes part of the Cre­ative Cities Net­work, whose mis­sion is to chal­lenge cities to use the spir­it-giv­ing pow­er of the mu­si­cal arts to cre­ate cel­e­bra­to­ry spaces that in turn be­come en­gines for cre­at­ing mu­nic­i­pal wealth and well-be­ing.

When I asked peo­ple ran­dom­ly over the Car­ni­val sea­son, if they were aware of this ho­n­our grant­ed to PoS, very few knew. Peo­ple were sur­prised and pleased and then a lit­tle bit sad­dened that we had not made greater use of this very spe­cial brand­ing, es­pe­cial­ly at a time when we are known for more neg­a­tive at­trib­ut­es.

Hear Bun­ji Gar­lin’s open­ing lyrics to Car­ry It: “Yes, I can hear them say­ing, boy stop liv­ing in the past/Where can I find that en­er­gy, the raw raw mag­ic that comes down from the grass­roots?”

What in­fused the Car­ni­val fre­quen­cies this year was a cer­tain nos­tal­gia for the un­der­ly­ing uni­ty that cel­e­brates the full­ness of T&T’s di­ver­si­ty— times of deep­er com­mu­ni­ty in the pa­n­yards and neigh­bour­hoods, of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ ex­tem­po, of hand­made cos­tumes. Machel Mon­tano, hav­ing had time to re­flect and study, hear­kened back to the “ca” in so­ca. Both Machel and Bun­ji em­braced chut­ney as a form and con­tin­ued weld­ing it in­to so­ca, an in­te­gra­tion start­ed by Sun­dar Popo and Dru­patee Ram­goon­ai and con­tin­ued with Bol­ly­wood mu­sic.

In do­ing so, they give life to the beau­ti­ful metaphor of mag­i­cal en­er­gy com­ing down from the grass­roots. A para­dox, since roots are al­ready on the ground and un­der­ground. That con­tra­dic­tion is the essence of the mu­si­cal in­no­va­tion that epit­o­mis­es T&T. From bis­cuit tins and oil drums to Win­ston “Spree” Si­mon and Elie Manette and the con­tin­u­ing in­no­va­tions and evo­lu­tion of our na­tion­al in­stru­ment. Not so much past but her­itage, a con­tin­u­ous flow of merg­ing and fus­ing, tak­ing rel­e­vant el­e­ments of our as­ton­ish­ing mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism and reimag­in­ing and re­order­ing them in­to a new ex­pres­sion of present “now­ness.”

Be­fore Mi­cal Te­ja sings High­er Pow­er, there is a cho­rus –in­dige­nous Taino/Carib, African, In­di­an, birds chirp­ing, wa­ter falling—all those her­itage notes can be heard be­fore we get to the sub­stance “Spir­its com­bine, Body and Mind.”

Imag­ine the mu­sic mov­ing by it­self. We are here to touch the evanes­cent bub­bles of lives through our mu­sic. We, each of us, in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, can em­brace our­selves as a City of Mu­sic and evolve new ways of cel­e­brat­ing our cre­ativ­i­ty and shar­ing it with the world. I call on each of us to “car­ry it!” We don’t have to wait for per­mis­sion. Use the hash­tag #POSC­i­ty of Mu­sic! And tell your sto­ries. Let us make PoS alive with mu­sic through­out the year.