K2K Al­liance and Part­ners’ in­au­gur­al win as Over­all Band of the Year was be­wil­der­ing for many band­lead­ers, not be­cause they felt they weren’t de­served win­ners but be­cause many bands had no clue the new cat­e­go­ry ex­ist­ed.

“Based on my lit­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tion with cer­tain band­lead­ers (none of them) were in­formed. At the end of the day, even the band who won the cat­e­go­ry from what I un­der­stand, even they weren’t aware that this was hap­pen­ing,” Ron­nie and Caro band­leader Ron­nie McIn­tosh, who had won Band of the Year au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as the large band win­ner for the pre­vi­ous three years.

K2K band­lead­ers, twins Kathy and Karen Nor­man, al­so con­firmed they had seen the new cat­e­go­ry on the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) web­site but had lit­tle clue what it was about.

Lost Tribe cre­ative di­rec­tor Valmi­ki Ma­haraj al­so con­firmed he was not aware of the new cat­e­go­ry, while many mas­quer­aders in the band ini­tial­ly be­lieved they had won Band of the Year on­ly to learn that K2K had that ho­n­our un­der the new rul­ing.

The an­nounce­ment was a shock to the me­dia as well, as re­porters learnt about the cat­e­go­ry for the first time dur­ing the NCC’s an­nounce­ment of re­sults on Wednes­day. NCC of­fi­cials con­firmed they did not make a pub­lic an­nounce­ment about the new cat­e­go­ry, nor did they in­form the me­dia about the change. This fact al­so wor­ried McIn­tosh.

“It’s kind of weird that even though you had that meet­ing and you made that de­ci­sion, at least the me­dia should be in­formed so that even if there was a meet­ing and I wasn’t present then at least when you in­form the me­dia at least the pub­lic is in­formed,” said McIn­tosh, who said he had learnt about the change in des­ig­na­tion for medi­um-sized band in a sim­i­lar man­ner years ago, which prompt­ed his change to the large band cat­e­go­ry.

“How it came out, it was like we not telling you what we plan to do, we telling you what we did. Ba­si­cal­ly, all I could say, if there are min­utes of that meet­ing it would be nice to see some min­utes to see who was present and who is this pan­el,” McIn­tosh said, urg­ing of­fi­cials to be more trans­par­ent with their de­ci­sion mak­ing.

Mc In­tosh still con­grat­u­lat­ed K2K Al­liance and the Lost Tribe on their vic­to­ries, al­though he re­it­er­at­ed that the NCC’s ap­proach to it was prob­lem­at­ic.

How­ev­er, NCC com­mis­sion­er Ros­alind Gabriel said the new cat­e­go­ry was not hid­den from band­lead­ers.

“It’s a lit­tle strange to hear that be­cause it was in the rule book. A list of all the com­pe­ti­tions be­ing judged for Band of the Year was in the rule book and that’s there. It’s list­ed there but prob­a­bly they missed it,” said Gabriel, who clar­i­fied that the Over­all Band of the Year was se­lect­ed by a pan­el of 10 judges from the win­ners of each cat­e­go­ry, mi­ni, small, medi­um and large.

She said the change was made to give fur­ther in­spi­ra­tion to mas­mak­ers.

“We want­ed to give an equal chance to all. We felt it would en­cour­age in­no­va­tion too and it would en­cour­age the medi­um, small and mi­ni bands be­cause now they know they could win more than mi­ni band or small band or medi­um band of the year.”