Cherisse Moe

Who would have thought that a T&T-style Car­ni­val, in all its feath­ers, biki­ni and bead­ed splen­dour, would ex­plode on­to Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard, Hol­ly­wood, Cal­i­for­nia? Keron Adams did. The Trinidad-born, Los An­ge­les res­i­dent, is mak­ing it hap­pen on June 30. Adams, the pres­i­dent of the LA based Reg­u­larz En­ter­tain­ment-a Caribbean pro­mo­tions com­pa­ny- said it took a lot of per­sis­tence and a glossy Car­ni­val mag­a­zine to seal the his­to­ry-mak­ing deal. "When I sat down with the Hol­ly­wood Street Clo­sure Com­mit­tee, con­sist­ing of busi­ness­men, coun­cil of­fi­cials and res­i­dents, it took about ten min­utes to get their ap­proval. We showed them one of the Car­ni­val mag­a­zines from this year and they were very ex­cit­ed.

That mag­a­zine was def­i­nite­ly the ul­ti­mate sell­ing point for us. They said they couldn't wait to see it in re­al life," he said. Adams has hailed the up­com­ing Car­ni­val, The Los An­ge­les Cul­ture Fes­ti­val, and is op­ti­mistic it will be a grand af­fair. He hopes it will al­so at­tract some of Hol­ly­wood's biggest names, in­clud­ing some with lo­cal con­nec­tions like Nic­ki Mi­naj, Heather Headley, Nia Long and Tatyana Ali. And what's Car­ni­val with­out so­ca? Well Adams has that cov­ered as well. So­ca stars Machel Mon­tano, Rik­ki Jai, Kees, KI, Ed­win Year­wood, TC, Ben­jai, JW and Blaze and De­stra, are among those he's hop­ing will per­form.

Es­ti­mat­ing that the fes­ti­val would cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$750,000, Adams re­veals that he's ap­peal­ing for gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate sup­port to help make the event a suc­cess and take T&T cul­ture to the world. "We on­ly get one chance to make a first im­pres­sion. We need to make it a good one. We must sup­port what we have. We need every­body 150 per cent be­hind us on this," he stressed. "At the end of the day, be­sides push­ing our cul­ture, it would al­so bring busi­ness to T&T." Dubbed Play Ah Mas, Adams said the pa­rade will fea­ture one large band with over 13 sec­tions and aims to of­fer both lo­cal and for­eign mas­quer­aders the ul­ti­mate Tri­ni Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence. Prices for the cos­tumes, he said, will range from US$75-US$150.

Adams, who mi­grat­ed to the US five years ago, said the up­com­ing fes­ti­val, cur­rent­ly be­ing pro­mot­ed via fliers, word of mouth and var­i­ous so­cial net­work­ing sites, is al­ready cre­at­ing a buzz in Hol­ly­wood. Stat­ing that the event will now be an an­nu­al af­fair, the for­mer Tran­quil­i­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary stu­dent al­so has big plans to make it the "sec­ond biggest Car­ni­val in the world af­ter Trinidad." "Who would have thought that Car­ni­val would be on the streets of the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame? You can't get big­ger than Hol­ly­wood. It's the en­ter­tain­ment mec­ca of the world. All Car­ni­val lovers, come out and sup­port." He con­tin­ued, "The Car­ni­val will co­in­cide with the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Awards be­ing held in Hol­ly­wood and the BET Awards that same week­end so we are hop­ing that stars will be at­tract­ed to come and see what it's all about...There are a lot of Caribbean peo­ple in LA but there are those who have nev­er left LA and have heard about T&T Car­ni­val and say they want to ex­pe­ri­ence it."

With such a huge project on his hands, Adams knows that there will be the nay-say­ers. To them, he's pay­ing no mind. Shrug­ging off the crit­i­cism he con­clud­ed, "I love so­ca mu­sic. I love my cul­ture. I think by us do­ing this, it would be a move in the right di­rec­tion. It doesn't get any big­ger than Hol­ly­wood re­al­ly."