Dr David Bratt

Around 11 am Car­ni­val Tues­day morn­ing, I re­alised that Car­ni­val 2026 was over. We had seen all the bands we want­ed to see. K2K, Lost Tribe and All Stars showed that all was not dead, there was some hope, there al­ways is. Shake­speare said of Cleopa­tra: “Age can­not with­er her, nor cus­tom stale/Her in­fi­nite va­ri­ety.” It’s the same with us and our cul­ture, “in­fi­nite va­ri­ety.” As soon as you think the Car­ni­val is over, along comes some­one try­ing a new thing, shout­ing out “Come leh we go!”

But it’s dif­fi­cult to re­mem­ber. All around us are the signs of a fes­ti­val run­ning it­self in­to the ground, spec­ta­tor ap­a­thy, stale mu­sic and cheap good­ie tricks. Car­ni­val has be­come a toss-up be­tween some tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters, sailors, jab jabs etc, a few pan sides try­ing to be heard and a vast group of ex­cit­ed young peo­ple danc­ing half-naked in the street. The on­ly pos­i­tives are the en­thu­si­asm of youth (fu­elled by al­co­hol and drugs) who see mag­ic in any­thing. And pan.

Could pan be the sav­iour of Car­ni­val?

Yet, I saw one of the sad­dest things J’Ou­vert morn­ing. In­vaders com­ing down Cipri­ani Boule­vard, on top of a truck, ac­com­pa­nied by no more than 20 sup­port­ers, weari­ly, slow­ly and in­di­vid­u­al­ly shuf­fling home. Band high above the heads of the poor 20 sup­port­ers, an­oth­er 15 to 20 play­ers, play­ing nice­ly but sad­ly.

Way up to the late nineties, af­ter meet­ing In­vaders and our friends in the back of In­vaders, Out­vaders, mov­ing with the pan through Green Cor­ner in­to Park Street, turn in­to Fred­er­ick and down to In­de­pen­dence Square, take a small wine, have a drink nuh, we sweet, turn to go home and some­where along the way, start push­ing the pan as the reg­u­lar push­ers be­gin to drop out, all the way up Aber­crom­by in­to Tra­garete and back to the pan yard, ac­com­pa­nied by sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple chip­ping and singing away.

A steel­band knows when it has been aban­doned. Pans should be shout­ing out the re­turn home. In­stead, they are cry­ing tears. But pan is re­silient. I have to be­lieve it will make a re­turn. Some­day, J’Ou­vert will re­vert to its orig­i­nal idea of ole mas and steel­band and not the Amer­i­can­ised fan­ta­sy of “Get in yuh Sec­tion” it now is.

For now, pan is stage. Pan is for con­certs. The road no longer be­longs to pan.

This is prob­a­bly what peo­ple want. Fetes are now stage con­certs. You get to dress up, stand in front of a stage decked off with some in­di­vid­ual bawl­ing in­to a mi­cro­phone, backed by win­ing young women and huge flags and take self­ies of your­self to send to oth­ers who are al­so tak­ing self­ies and send­ing them out, back to you and oth­ers in Brook­lyn, Toron­to, Lon­don etc, “Look! Lookame! I hav­ing a won­der­ful time!”

This has been trans­ferred to the street. Car­ni­val on the street has been trans­formed in­to a mov­ing con­cert, some­body on top of a truck shout­ing out for peo­ple to jomp, jomp, jomp … and peo­ple jump, up and down, just like a group of ex­cit­ed chil­dren danc­ing, the “kid­die dance!”

Most peo­ple seem to know the words of the songs by heart, which means they like it: jomp, jomp, jomp, jomp … hey, hey, hey and then some mean­ing­less rub­bish and here it comes around again, yuh won­der, yuh won­der, round and round it goes and where it go­ing to stop, no­body knows.

Turn on TTT Mon­day 2.15 pm, four moko jumbie on stage, not a spec­ta­tor in sight. Turn it off. 2.30 back on, this time there is a band of some 11 in­di­vid­u­als, women in some sort of dark brown shorts and bras, bot­toms ex­posed, the men in shorts. The band ac­tu­al­ly has a name. Off. Back on at 2.45, now there is an in­di­vid­ual with a sort of suit and a head­piece, they say he is por­tray­ing some in­di­vid­ual. Fifty-me­tre stage, one per­son on it? Nah man. Turn it off. This is a joke. Down­town, it’s the same. Emp­ty stage, emp­ty pave­ment.

Yes, the mas dead on Mon­day and dy­ing on Tues­day. Is there an open­ing for the true sound of Car­ni­val, the steel­band, to take ad­van­tage and make a re­turn to the street? Not every­body will agree or want that. Can All Stars re­peat on Mon­day, what they did on Tues­day? In All Stars you play mas. With oth­er bands you play your­self or the cos­tume. Can oth­er pan sides do this?

In the end, nat­ur­al se­lec­tion will take place and Car­ni­val will evolve as peo­ple want and Car­ni­val as we know it will be changed.