Pe­ter Ray Blood

Ac­cord­ing to TFC boss Lois Leslie: "The To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion is seek­ing to trans­form the face of Car­ni­val Launch in To­ba­go, in­ject­ing new ideas, dy­namism, en­er­gy, and ex­cite­ment in­to the event.

The Com­mis­sion in­tends to es­tab­lish the To­ba­go Car­ni­val Launch as a ma­jor lo­cal tourism event on the an­nu­al na­tion­al Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, tar­get­ing the lo­cal tourism sec­tor and en­tic­ing many pa­trons from Trinidad to at­tend. "This event is in­tend­ed as a key pro­mo­tion­al event for Car­ni­val 2011 in To­ba­go. The in­ten­tion is to in­te­grate ed­u­ca­tion and en­ter­tain­ment. To this end the Launch will be an all day event spread across sev­er­al venues in Scar­bor­ough."

De vil­lage

To­day's pro­ceed­ings will kick off with the open­ing of a Car­ni­val Vil­lage at the Scar­bor­ough Es­planade at 10 am, with dis­play booths erect­ed, mount­ing dis­plays by Pan Trin­ba­go, Tu­co, NC­BA, NT­BA and oth­er Car­ni­val Spe­cial In­ter­est Groups. The li­braries of To­ba­go will mount an ed­u­ca­tion­al Car­ni­val dis­play.

De pa­rade

From ear­ly af­ter­noon tra­di­tion­al cos­tumed char­ac­ters will in­vade Scar­bor­ough, in­ter­act­ing with the pub­lic as they go by, dis­trib­ut­ing Car­ni­val mem­o­ra­bil­ia and Cal­en­dars of Events. Char­ac­ters ex­pect­ed to show up in­clude Jab Mo­lassie, Dame Lor­raine in her dif­fer­ent forms, Pier­rot Grenade and Ba­by Dolls.

They will be joined lat­er by oth­er par­tic­i­pants for the street pa­rade. The street pa­rade will move from Tam­brin Square at 4 pm and head down­town to the Scar­bor­ough Es­planade. The pa­rade will in­clude tra­di­tion­al and con­tem­po­rary cos­tumed mas­quer­aders, tam­boo bam­boo, pan-'round-d-neck and con­ven­tion­al steel­band mu­sic. Schools will be in­vit­ed to fea­ture sig­nif­i­cant­ly in this pa­rade.

De launch

The for­mal Launch of Car­ni­val 2011 will take place at the Es­planade and will in­clude the speech­es, any spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tions, and a Car­ni­val stage pro­duc­tion. Guests will then be in­vit­ed by char­ac­ters to join the pa­rade for a jump up to steel­band and DJ mu­sic through down­town Scar­bor­ough and in­to Gar­den­side Car Park, for the cul­mi­na­tion of the Launch.

De fete

To­day's Launch will cli­max af­ter dark at the Gar­den­side Carpark with a mam­moth fete and the pub­lic will be treat­ed to top class en­ter­tain­ment, fea­tur­ing ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, so­ca artistes, con­ven­tion­al steel­bands, DJ mu­sic and, of course a well stocked bar.

De lagniappe

If you think to­day's launch is it in To­ba­go think again as the sis­ter isle will be rock­ing un­til Ash Wednes­day. Next Fri­day night, what promis­es to be an­oth­er mas­sive par­ty-To­ba­go So­ca Spree-is sched­uled for the sprawl­ing carpark of Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um. Then on the fol­low­ing night, So­ca Un­der the Samaan Tree will be held in Scar­bor­ough. Round off that week­end On Jan­u­ary 30, The To­ba­go Cul­tur­al Com­mit­tee will host its Top ten Stars of Gold Awards, Mt Irvine Ho­tel, To­ba­go. So, if I am miss­ing again next week­end you should have a very good idea where I will be.