Welcome to the greatest show on Earth! It truly is grand, isn't it? Machel is right: The stage is in front of you, time to take advantage of it. Stamp on it! Put your own special stamp on it. Jump! Raise your flags! Wave your rags! Swing that towel! Salute this great festival in your honour.Look for Benjai and wine to the side, get on bad, be wotless-in the Carnival sense of the word. Kees is right too: You should be feeling like you just won a million dollars.This is indeed a great Carnival, filled with scintillating soca music that tells the story of our Carnival and our penchant for happiness.Benjai reminded us how much the world loves how a Trini looks and cooks; talks and walks. Countless soca songs have captured the energy of Carnival, and reminded us of our Carnival traditions-like crossing the Savannah stage.
So much history has passed through that Savannah stage. We've missed it, and it really is awesome that it is back. Yes, there will be the usual complaints; the usual human traffic jam of bands waiting ever so impatiently to cross the stage, but believe me, in the end, it will all be worth it.I know you'll have a great time celebrating with your friends and family this Carnival. There is no limit to the singing and dancing and eating that you can do when it comes to Carnival.Just try to stop for a minute, take a deep breath, and take it all in. Look around and really realise how awesome this celebration is. The entire country shuts down to celebrate you and the freedom that you possess. Relish the freedom you have to be yourself.
It is no secret: the world is in turmoil. In the last few weeks, so many people in the Middle East have taken to the streets to protest and even fight for the very basic human right of expressing themselves. They can't complain about their governments. They can't celebrate themselves or their history like you can.Those people protesting in the streets would never be able to imagine the freedom we have to express ourselves. If anyone told them about your Carnival, they would think it's a lie or a great myth.They cannot picture a place that turns its streets into a vast Carnival stage for anyone in the world to jump up and practise the fine art of self-expression.And we are so generous in spirit that we embrace the world and invite everyone to celebrate with us. We are bold enough and confident enough to know that even as a small country we can teach the world a thing or two.
Those places in this world that know a lot more hate than love certainly could learn a lesson or two from you chipping and wining your way down our streets this Carnival.Here, in Trinidad and Tobago, you can find deejays blasting music for Carnival bands and panmen marching to the beat of their own drums invented right here in Trinidad. We celebrate with mud and blue paint, fancy sailor costumes and plenty of feathers and bikinis.Here, a blue devil marches alongside a Bookman. A Dame Lorraine evokes a sense of our colonial past. We have bats and minstrels and Midnight Robbers.
This is a time to sing and dance and play mas-play yourself! You are the most important person in the world. You are a star. On this day, you write your own script, choreograph your own dance, express yourself in a way that captures the freedom you have, and the history you have in the struggle for that freedom.Carnival is an important celebration that symbolises the struggle for independence and the triumph of earning it. Carnival is the essence of the human spirit. There are those who scoff at Carnival and deem it a frivolous form of self-indulgence, but those people do not truly know our history. They certainly don't know the magic that the people of this island are able to conjure up every year.
Everywhere you turn during Carnival there is a sight to behold. You do not only see the beauty of this island, you help to create it.It will seem as though the world is brighter. For these two days the world is a happy place filled with smiling, laughing, dancing people who raise their hands in the air.The air is filled with rhythm and the smell of curry wafting through the air. Soca music drowns out all the woes of the world.We have a Queen and King of Carnival, a National Calypso Monarch, a Young King and a Soca Monarch, and that means we must have more royalty than any other country in the world!Have a great and safe Carnival. Be careful. Be responsible. Drink responsibly. Behave appropriately. Enjoy yourself. Create lots of great memories.Oh, and by the way, Benjai is right: We really do make good company.