Above: Edgar Whiley posing backstage at Queen’s Hall in 1989 before the staging of Viey La Cou. Photo by Mark Lyndersay.

BitDepth#1289 for February 18, 2021

On the day after Ash Wednesday, I’d normally indulge in a bit of post-mortem consideration of the Carnival season and this year’s fitful, turbulent non-event merits quite specific consideration.

With the gutting of opportunities for proximity, everyone involved in the festival has had to rethink what they do in the name of Carnival.

One thing has become clear, the presumption of disposability that has been the engine of Carnival’s continuous cycle of destruction and reinvention doesn’t work particularly well when it can’t be staged using established the patterns.
It’s time to burn that old script, tear up an ancient map that leads nowhere and reconsider exactly what Carnival has become after almost two centuries.

Is it a ritual?

If it is, then that should be codified, planned for and presented with the respect that ritual deserves, with clarity and proper funding.

Carnival rituals persist despite the efforts of its state-led management, which sidelined creations born of love into pan-handling for appearance fees and cheap trophies bought in bulk.

The importance of rituals came into deeper focus as the low-hanging fruit of “take a wine” died on the vine.
The persistence of traditional practitioners, the mobility of their creations and the navel-string narratives they have preserved became the creative foundation of a reimagined Carnival. Every piece of intellectual property created for Carnival 2021 leaned into tradition to find leverage to begin anew.

Is it a music industry?

It certainly is one measured by the volume of annual output.
Even with patronage of calypso tents in decline, calypsonians continue to compose work that goes largely unheard during the brief season.

Only a tiny fraction of the collective avalanche of soca music ever goes into wide circulation, even with the opportunities offered by online distribution.

Efforts at seeking wider audiences have proven to be fitful and sporadic; the greatest successes were the result of individual efforts instead of a collective marketing thrust or packaging initiative.

There is no doubting the transformative power that comes from mingling all the elements of the festival in the heat of the tropics.

It’s time for that to change, along with the notion of Carnival’s music as limited to a season. These aren’t carols.
Quite broadly, calypso is social commentary and soca is dance music, and those divisions blur delightfully in the best examples of each genre. There is room for both to grow.

Is it an event?

There’s a powerful event engine driving all the activities associated with in-person Carnival.
There is no reason that they should be powered down on Ash Wednesday and in recent years, many events have resisted those silos, breaking out on Macqueripe Road and at other remote locations that are comfortable with mud, powder and bacchanal.

Efforts at replicating in-person mingling have largely faltered because there is nothing quite like the nationwide mosh pit that is Trinidad Carnival at fever pitch.

It’s not for everyone. I often point out that I am in the thing but not of the thing, but there is no doubting the transformative power that comes from mingling all the elements of the festival in the heat of the tropics.

Is it a business?

It certainly is, but it’s one that’s badly run at almost every level. Only the biggest bands and most successful performers have broken free of the collapsed infrastructure that mismanages Carnival from vendors selling water right up to Dimanche Gras.

No business should operate without transparent auditing of its processes and finances and accountability for its spending. We don’t know enough about the business of Carnival because hard numbers get in the way of political engineering.

The kleptocracy masquerading as stakeholder representation has gutted Carnival of great minds, who left for better opportunities or to maintain their sanity.

So what is Carnival?

Carnival, as expressed in its parties and street parades, is a pure, intimate, public expression of joy and passion that melds its component parts into a transcendent whole.

The separation of those elements in 2021 has forced a reconsideration we might never have undertaken if it were not forced on us.

The first efforts at re-engineering Carnival have been a cold shower plunge into all the ways we have failed the potential of the festival and missed opportunities to develop and extend it.

The constraints defined by historical and habitual mandate can be reshaped for each aspect of Carnival and grown to fill their natural space.

Calypso and soca should be encouraged to seek audiences all year long and initiatives to do so supported.

Panyards should never be silent, their potential as music centres in communities across the nation leveraged to advantage.

And the masquerade should no longer be such a stranger to itself. Scholarship devoted to its study should be encouraged, the historical record of its creative evolution and access to both should be pervasive and readily accessible.

Carnival has grown at a remarkable rate since 1833.

It has long outgrown the physical space allotted to it, the time slot forced on it and the ambitions of its creatives. Trinidad and Tobago can’t even accommodate all the visitors who want to experience it.

It deserves to prance across the world, all year long, reaching the millions who have heard whispers of its influence and echoes of its beauty.

The crushing weight of covid19 destroyed expectations, now it’s time to push back into new spaces with all the force and creative invention gifted to us by genius ancestors.