“I could def­i­nite­ly use a good fête right now.”

So sings so­ca Machel Mon­tano in his 2021 song Long Time.

And it is prob­a­bly a feel­ing a lot of Tri­nis can re­late to as we bat­tle with the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which can­celled Car­ni­val this year and oth­er pop­u­lar events in­clud­ing the Pt Fortin Bor­ough Day ear­li­er this month.

But while a fête may just be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for many of us to breathe a sigh of re­lief, for artistes and oth­er stake­hold­ers this is their life.

How­ev­er, with this coun­try’s COVID sta­tis­tics un­for­tu­nate­ly break­ing records dai­ly it seems we will be in­side for a long time.

This, how­ev­er, is not the case in the Unit­ed States as they are now see­ing the light at the end of the tun­nel.

The US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion on Thurs­day an­nounced that ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple will no longer need to wear a face mask or stay six feet away from oth­ers in most set­tings, whether out­doors or in­doors.

And this in­cludes fêtes.

Tick­ets for events card­ed for Labour Day in New York are al­ready be­ing sold out on­line. But there is no cer­tain­ty that lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers could fi­nal­ly start earn­ing a liv­ing again in the USA as this coun­try’s bor­der clo­sure threat­ens to keep them un­em­ployed.

“Any­one who is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed can par­tic­i­pate in in­door and out­door ac­tiv­i­ties, large or small, with­out wear­ing a mask or phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing,” CDC di­rec­tor Dr Rochelle Walen­sky said.

“If you are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, you can start do­ing the things that you had stopped do­ing be­cause of the pan­dem­ic. We have all longed for this mo­ment, when we can get back to some sense of nor­mal­cy,” she said.

But how will this lat­est an­nounce­ment af­fect this coun­try’s artistes who have been im­pact­ed by the pan­dem­ic?

Adan­na As­son, who has worked as a pub­li­cist for lo­cal artistes Patrice Roberts and Ker­win Du Bois and is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Cre­ati­vA Me­dia, said the CDC’s an­nounce­ment will cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties but there’s a big block­age pre­vent­ing them from tak­ing ad­van­tage of it.

“First­ly, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties at present for artistes to per­form in the USA and there have been for quite some time since there are states that are ‘open’,” As­son said.

One of the ma­jor is­sues at present is the cur­rent “trav­el re­stric­tions” in place, she said.

Any­one who wants to en­ter or leave T&T has to ap­ply to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry for a “trav­el ex­emp­tion” be­cause of the bor­der re­stric­tions cur­rent­ly in place.

“The Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ty re­mains get­ting na­tion­al of T&T back home. Ex­emp­tions and the grant­i­ng ap­provals will con­tin­ue to de­pend on the num­ber of per­sons in the queue and on the quar­an­tine space avail­able,” the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has stat­ed.

Be­tween March 22 last year and Feb­ru­ary 9 21,001 peo­ple ap­plied for an ex­emp­tion to en­ter the coun­try.

A to­tal of 12,509 were grant­ed an ex­emp­tion dur­ing the pe­ri­od leav­ing more than 9,400 still wait­ing.

“No con­sid­er­a­tion has been or is be­ing giv­en to en­ter­tain­ers to de­part Trinidad and To­ba­go and re-en­ter as we are see­ing hap­pen­ing in oth­er coun­tries in Cari­com,” she said.

‘We have been sit­ting by and watch­ing our coun­ter­parts from Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, An­tigua among oth­ers be­ing able to ex­it and re-en­ter their re­spec­tive coun­tries,” As­son said.

As­son re­vealed that many lo­cal artistes are feel­ing the pinch.

“Of course, the CDC’s an­nounce­ment cre­ates a new op­por­tu­ni­ty as states that are ‘not open’ will now be able to en­gage in en­ter­tain­ment. Once our en­ter­tain­ers here have the re­spec­tive doc­u­ments to work in the USA then it is en­cour­aged that they at­tempt to work as many have been un­able to for over a year and many are strug­gling at this point,” As­son said.

“I would al­so en­cour­age en­ter­tain­ers and en­ter­tain­ment stake­hold­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed once they’re com­fort­able. At this point I strong­ly feel that the ben­e­fits out­weigh the doubts,” she said.

Last year Cab­i­net ap­proved a one-off pay­ment of $5,000 in fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance for artistes and cre­atives who lost in­come as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, on Mon­day, an­nounced that al­most 1,000 Cul­tur­al Re­lief Grants were paid.

On April 26 the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) wrote to the Health Min­istry ask­ing that spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion be giv­en to the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor in the coun­try’s on­go­ing vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign.

“As you are well aware, the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor has been re­duced to “ground ze­ro” since March 2020. This means that all cre­atives and cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers have been trapped in a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion for more than a year now,” the let­ter stat­ed.

“While we un­der­stand and ac­knowl­edge that the en­tire world is en­gaged in this bat­tle against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, we would al­so like to un­der­line the re­al­i­ty in the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor, where sav­ing our liveli­hood is the same as sav­ing lives,” it stat­ed.

This would have helped lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers pre­pare to cap­ture job op­por­tu­ni­ties over­seas when bor­ders are re­opened and save the lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment space, TU­CO pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba stat­ed.

Asked if he felt the CDC’s an­nounce­ment would open an op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal artistes, Masim­ba said:

“Not sure but I think it’s more than like­ly. The biggest chal­lenge may be get­ting in and out of T&T.”

“I’ve said many times: As tough as this pan­dem­ic has been, we will get through it,” US pres­i­dent Joe Biden said af­ter the CDC an­nounce­ment ap­pear­ing along­side a mask­less vice pres­i­dent Har­ris in the Rose Gar­den at the White House.

“We will re­build our econ­o­my, re­claim our lives and get back to nor­mal. We’ll laugh again. We’ll know joy again. We’ll smile again —and now, see one an­oth­er’s smile.”