Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Vet­er­an To­ba­go band­leader Mar­cellin Nedd has de­scribed the 2026 na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tions on the is­land as the “worst ever.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Nedd ac­cused the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) of un­der­min­ing the na­tion­al fes­ti­val and di­vert­ing all re­sources to­wards the Oc­to­ber cel­e­bra­tion.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has re­peat­ed­ly said the aim is to move away from the na­tion­al event and fo­cus on the Oc­to­ber car­ni­val as the flag­ship event.

How­ev­er, Nedd, who heads Mar­cellin Nedd & As­so­ciates, said band­lead­ers and the pub­lic were left frus­trat­ed ow­ing to a lack of fund­ing, in­ad­e­quate ad­ver­tis­ing and poor or­gan­i­sa­tion, and she be­lieves this was all de­lib­er­ate.

“It was very stress­ful,” she said.

“For me, this was one of my worst Car­ni­val. It is 24 years I am do­ing this on my own, and it was not good—very stress­ful.

“For this year, I can tell you the par­tic­i­pa­tion was not good. Last year it was bet­ter. Per­sons were say­ing they ain’t hear­ing any­thing about Car­ni­val. It was not ad­ver­tised. When you hear the con­flict...stress­ing on To­ba­go hav­ing its two Car­ni­val and Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion giv­ing mon­ey, it just throw a damper.”

She added, “The ad­min­is­tra­tion that we have here keeps shift­ing the goal­posts. They just can’t get it right.”

On Feb­ru­ary 2, To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion CEO Kern Cow­an an­nounced a $7.5 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for this year’s cel­e­bra­tion­—an in­crease from the $5.8 mil­lion bud­get­ed in 2025. How­ev­er, Nedd claimed band­lead­ers did not re­ceive what they were promised. She said the grants to bands were not on­ly in­suf­fi­cient but late.

“You come and say a large band is $11,000—yuh give $3,300. How much can that do? In ju­nior bands, you have per­sons get­ting $1,700 from a grant. That not good enough. If yuh say yuh giv­ing a grant, give ah grant,” Nedd said.

“It was in a hot mess. One minute they say we will get the as­sis­tance, we will get the full amount. Then yuh come and give us (less) on the day in ques­tion. We get the mon­ey the week of Car­ni­val.”

Asked whether the na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion in Trinidad on a grander scale nat­u­ral­ly over­shad­ows To­ba­go’s equiv­a­lent, Nedd said both cater to dif­fer­ent mar­kets.

“You have per­sons who don’t like the Trinidad Car­ni­val but they pre­fer to come and play with a To­ba­go band. It has its ups and downs.”

On the ac­tu­al or­gan­i­sa­tion of the fes­tiv­i­ties, Nedd said there was chaos sur­round­ing the time for Kid­dies Car­ni­val this year, with the sched­ule con­tin­u­ous­ly be­ing changed.

“You can’t be telling us Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day, Kid­dies Car­ni­val is 1 pm-6 pm, then yuh hear­ing 10 am-2 pm, then it went from 10 am-4 pm. Come on...It was a whole hul­la­baloo.”

Nedd said the THA was out of touch and urged greater con­sul­ta­tion with Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers.

“They just have a whole set ah peo­ple sit down in ah of­fice and they fig­ure they know best. They nev­er make a Car­ni­val cos­tume in their life. Some of them nev­er even play a mas in their life. They will sit there and bad talk the same band­lead­ers yuh want to take part in the events. In a short while, in time to come, Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val will come just like To­ba­go Fest end up—dead in the wa­ter.”

Band­leader Jen­nelle East­man, of YEN-K World De­sign in col­lab­o­ra­tion with East­man New Cre­ation, mean­while la­belled the THA’s han­dling of the Car­ni­val as “sab­o­tage.”

“They want to shut it down, that’s why they sab­o­tag­ing we. They do we re­al wicked­ness this year,” East­man said.

East­man said many band­lead­ers were short of funds as cheques were on­ly dis­trib­uted the Thurs­day be­fore Car­ni­val. She said de­spite her best ef­forts ad­ver­tis­ing her band on so­cial me­dia up to the week be­fore Car­ni­val, peo­ple were still ask­ing whether To­ba­go was hav­ing any cel­e­bra­tion. She said bands re­ceived just 40 per cent of the funds they were promised.

“They said they would get back to us for tra­di­tion­al mas (fund­ing), but nev­er got back to us. I reg­is­ter for tra­di­tion­al mas but I end up not fight­ing up. I am not putting my­self out of the way for no­body. I could have try to go on the road, but the vibes wasn’t there,” East­man said.

“This year will be the last year with me and THA and this mas thing. I feel I go­ing in Trinidad.”

She said sup­pli­ers in Trinidad are usu­al­ly very flex­i­ble, even with short no­tice, but she says they will even­tu­al­ly get fed up, leav­ing To­ba­go mas in a mess.

Ef­forts to con­tact Au­gus­tine, Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett and Cow­an for a re­sponse to the band­lead­ers’ con­cerns were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.