The last National Music Festival was held in 2012, the much-loved biennial event has been beset by sponsorship and administrative issues but the T&T Music Festival Association has said the event will be back in 2016.
Jazz musician and secretary for the north committee, Chantal Esdelle, told the T&T Guardian the association held an annual general meeting and a central committee was elected in March.
The committee, under the directive of its chairman Victor Prescod, took the decision to host regional/youth festivals in 2015 as a precursor to the return of the national festival in 2016.
Esdelle explained they were embarking on regional festivals to put the festival back on the cultural landscape. She added the festivals were developed to allow students–mainly at the secondary school level–the opportunity to perform and engage at a certain level.
"The schools really missed not having the festival in the past two years, because it is something they looked forward to each time around," said Esdelle.
She said the music festival helps to plant the seeds of excellence early, as there is no other national event that can provide such experience for students and directors alike through different rewarding music education activities.
According to Esdelle, the regional festivals will be different to the national festival. There will be no national championships, qualified local adjudicators will be used instead of international ones, and the evening adult classes will not be included.
The central committee currently receives a Government subvention of $250,000 that it will put towards the regional festivals next year.
The Music Festival Association had been experiencing problems for quite some time now, Esdelle said, especially with the secretariat unable to find a permanent home. The various committees are "borrowing space" to hold meetings and other important events.
Esdelle said at the moment, the north committee uses the Bishop Anstey High School, the south committee has been using the Red Cross building in Les Efforts for years and the central committee meets wherever space is available.
When contacted for comment, Arts and Multiculturalism minister Dr Lincoln Douglas said in a telephone interview, he was unaware that the festival had been cancelled.
He also didn't know about the association's plans to host the regional festivals next year.
However, Douglas said if the association put forward a proposal outlining its goals and objectives for the return of the festival in 2016, the ministry will be more than willing to sit down and work something out.
On Festival Association's challenge in finding a permanent home, Douglas said the ministry had been working on creating a national home for all the arts in T&T.
"We have had some setbacks but we are looking for a central location for all the arts organisations to find a place to do their work. Early next year I will be more able to speak on this definitively," the minister said.
He said there have also been discussions of setting up an council which would be the mobilising and organising body for all the arts in T&T.
"The sooner an arts council is developed the less arts organisations would need to be coming directly to the state for everything,"said Douglas.
He said a note concerning the proposed arts council had already been passed in Cabinet and now the proper protocols were being worked out to put things in place.
The cancellation of the 2014 festival has disappointed many in the music fraternity.
Earlier this year, musical director of the Bishop Anstey High School choir Lorraine Granderson, told the T&T Guardian: "It is upsetting for all the young people who look forward to this music festival to participate in the competition, pace themselves and challenge themselves."
Asked what the impact of not having the festival has been, Esdelle said: "I think at this point people are just numb.
"You know there is so much going on in T&T with social issues that it's hard to feel anything anymore. Even now as we speak about the festival the enthusiasm and excitement that once revolved around this event is not what it used to be."
�2 Registration for the regional festivals is now ongoing until Saturday.
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For more information contact 622-8062/333-0402 or send email to: ttmfa.north@gmail.com/ ttscmfa@gmail.com