CEN­TRE STAGE

?I re­turned to Trinidad for Car­ni­val 2010 af­ter a brief hia­tus and found that much has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

Af­ter vow­ing nev­er to play mas again fol­low­ing dis­ap­point­ing ex­pe­ri­ences with Pe­ter Min­shall's lat­ter pre­sen­ta­tions and long waits to en­ter the Sa­van­nah at night, I missed play­ing and in­quired of friends who in­sist­ed that Bri­an Mac Far­lane was the way to go this year. The truth is noth­ing has changed as far as ex­pen­sive cos­tum­ing or lack of fore­thought for the com­fort of the mas­quer­ad­er. Mac Far­lane's band got un­der­way at 10.30 am on Tues­day and there were long waits at each of the five judg­ing points, in­clud­ing a four-and-a-half-hour wait to pa­rade at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah at 8.30 pm on Car­ni­val Tues­day. What is go­ing so wrong for Car­ni­val in T&T? The sim­ple an­swer is that there is in­creas­ing­ly lit­tle val­ue be­ing of­fered to con­sumers. Every suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neur out­side of T&T will tell you that the for­mu­la for a sus­tain­able and last­ing en­ter­prise is that there must be a win-win propo­si­tion for the busi­ness own­er and for cus­tomers. The busi­ness own­er can­not con­sis­tent­ly win at the ex­pense of the cus­tomer. The sat­is­fied cus­tomer must walk away be­liev­ing that he/she re­ceived val­ue in the ex­change. Val­ue was a core el­e­ment miss­ing for every event that I at­tend­ed this year with the sole ex­cep­tion of the Be­y­once "I Am" con­cert, for which I pur­chased VVIP tick­ets–more on this lat­er.

The ex­pen­sive all-in­clu­sive fetes con­tin­ue to of­fer noth­ing ex­cep­tion­al: all the mediocre food and top-shelf drinks that one can con­sume. What if you do not drink or drink lit­tle? And the same mu­sic at every fete be­comes mo­not­o­nous af­ter your sec­ond one, year af­ter year. The ca­lyp­so tents are rel­a­tive­ly in­ex­pen­sive but the shows are too long (man­age­ment re­fus­es to ed­it their line-ups and to elim­i­nate the mediocre) and their ac­com­mo­da­tions are un­com­fort­able. The Car­ni­val band cos­tumes that range from $3,000 to $4,500 are very ex­pen­sive when one con­sid­ers that you play on­ly on Tues­day and spend the en­tire day– ex­cept for a to­tal of one hour of jump­ing up–wait­ing to go on stage. Panora­ma and Di­manche Gras in a make-shift shed is not al­lur­ing for tourists, or even dis­cern­ing lo­cal cus­tomers.�What else is there left for us "tourists?" Well thank­ful­ly there was Be­y­once: her pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and rea­son­ably priced tick­ets that in the US would have eas­i­ly cost at least US$5,000 for front-row ad­mis­sion with­out food or drinks. Notwith­stand­ing com­plaints heard from those who pur­chased VIP and gen­er­al ad­mis­sion tick­ets, please know this: there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty that one would be able to pur­chase any tick­et in the US for a Be­y­once con­cert for less than US$250, and nei­ther food nor drink will be in­clud­ed in the price.

The con­di­tions in the Sa­van­nah for Be­y­once were not ide­al. The spon­sors had to cre­ate some­thing out of noth­ing and I com­mend TSTT for an ad­mirable ef­fort un­der very dif­fi­cult dry-sea­son con­di­tions.

Go­ing for­ward, here are five ideas for the NCC's and Gov­ern­ment's con­sid­er­a­tion that will help re­bal­ance the mon­ey-for-val­ue propo­si­tion for vis­i­tors to Car­ni­val:

(1) All band cat­e­gories should draw lots for judg­ing on ei­ther Mon­day or Tues­day each year. This would al­low mas­quer­aders to en­joy their ex­pen­sive cos­tumes for two days and on-look­ers will have some­thing to see each day.

(2) Steel­bands must be sep­a­rat­ed by a dif­fer­ent route from the "big trucks."

(3) Bands that wish to be judged at night must be fa­cil­i­tat­ed on both Mon­day and Tues­day nights, there­by re­turn­ing night mas and night­time jump-up to Car­ni­val.

(4) Judg­ing for the Road March com­pe­ti­tion must be done at dif­fer­ent points from the Band of the Year com­pe­ti­tion to pre­vent pay­ing cus­tomers in the stands from go­ing crazy lis­ten­ing to the same song all day long. This is not en­ter­tain­ment, it is mu­si­cal abuse!

(5) Con­sol­i­date the five judg­ing points in­to one. Five judg­ing points serve to se­vere­ly slow the move­ment of bands, es­pe­cial­ly the ones that make elab­o­rate pre­sen­ta­tions be­fore the judges.

With­out ma­jor changes, Car­ni­val as we know it will cer­tain­ly die from cus­tomer bore­dom and fi­nan­cial abuse.

?Ian D Quan-Soon

New York City