Aba A Luke

Imag­ine this: Fri­day night, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, T&T's most an­tic­i­pat­ed hot spot for most when it comes to a good Fri­day evening lime... The strip is busy with ac­tiv­i­ty but amid the laugh­ter, the drink­ing and the po­lice pa­trols, dance­hall mu­sic and oth­er gen­res out­side of the so­ca vibe, blare from the speak­ers at Cro Bar, Stum­bling and a few oth­er joints on the scene. Now, con­sid­er the time of year-the ex­pec­ta­tions of tourists, and not to men­tion Tri­ni's who've come home for the sea­son from abroad. An­gered yet? On Jan­u­ary 20, in­to the wee hours of Sat­ur­day morn­ing, such was the case along the Av­enue as hun­dreds, if not thou­sands walked the length of the strip, pre­sum­ably try­ing to get them­selves in tuned to the Car­ni­val vibe.

Sad­ly, it re­mained not found for many, as from one bar to an­oth­er the mu­sic played by res­i­dent DJs of­fered lit­tle to boost the spir­it of the Car­ni­val sea­son. With thou­sands of so­ca tracks hav­ing been re­leased in the past ten years by artistes ca­pa­ble of in­ge­nious­ly mix­ing their so­ca with el­e­ments of pop, dance and even dance­hall mu­sic, is it ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary for DJ's to dis­re­spect T&T's art form to the ex­tent that hard­core dance­hall, pop and tranz mu­sic is played amid an on­go­ing C2K12 sea­son? One has to won­der what's next for Car­ni­val. Many may say it's all a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion, but is it re­al­ly progress when we're trad­ing our au­then­tic vibe for the en­er­gy and spir­it of oth­er peo­ple's cul­tures? What will tourists yearn to come to T&T for in the next ten years when our true so­ca mu­sic is no more, when our au­then­tic par­ty vibe has left us, trad­ed in for scenes from Mi­a­mi's nightlife-hot girls in high heeled shoes, dressed to kill com­plete with clutch purs­es and the nev­er-end­ing ap­pli­ca­tion of lip gloss and face pow­der? Why should they come here when Mi­a­mi is much clos­er and of­fers pri­mar­i­ly the same ex­pe­ri­ence? We're los­ing our­selves. Our "Trini­ness" is dy­ing slow­ly but sure­ly, and it is dy­ing by choice. This Car­ni­val has seen an abun­dance of groovy so­ca mu­sic re­leased by many of the big name artistes.

The hard­core so­ca vibes have tak­en a back­seat this year, al­beit the hand­ful of pow­er so­ca tracks re­leased by Na­dia Bat­son, one by Machel Mon­tano, one by Ker­win Du Bois, one by Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter, one by Fay Ann Lyons, a cou­ple by Bun­ji Gar­lin, and there may be a few more. But, there is un­de­ni­ably a move to slow down and "in­ter­na­tion­alise" the sound of our Car­ni­val-our so­ca. Where will this lead? In a re­cent in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Bun­ji Gar­lin apt­ly com­ment­ed, "Every­body fight­ing to take it in­ter­na­tion­al but no­body try­ing to mar­ket it so in­ter­na­tion­al comes to us." Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, if we show the world that we have no true iden­ti­ty as a peo­ple, the world will nev­er re­spect us for who we are. If we con­tin­ue to fol­low and fail to lead, we will nev­er stand erect and strong. What's even hard­er to come to terms with is the sad re­al­i­ty that in ten years, Car­ni­val with all its re­al rev­el­ry, the Tri­ni Car­ni­val that lent to the ti­tle, "The Great­est Show on Earth" will un­de­ni­ably be no more if our at­ti­tude to­ward what's au­then­tic con­tin­ues on the path it's on. Wake up! Re­alise that we are beau­ti­ful, and there's sim­ply no need to be that which we're not. Let's love us even with all our im­per­fec­tions and let's bring the world to "we t'ing!"