For Car­ni­val 2023, a new Car­ni­val band is dar­ing to dream as it at­tempts to break in­to the mar­ket through a unique brand and wider in­clu­sion.

Dream Car­ni­val launched on Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 23 at Off­side Restau­rant in San Fer­nan­do and is al­so set to host an­oth­er band launch in Cen­tral Trinidad this week­end, but it is set to pa­rade in Port of Spain.

Band­leader Shas­tra Ma­haraj ex­plained the band in­tends to cater to Car­ni­val lovers from South and Cen­tral Trinidad, who want to be a part of Car­ni­val but could not get in­to the tra­di­tion­al ma­jor bands which oc­cu­py the Port of Spain pa­rade.

“I am a Cen­tral band­leader com­ing in­to Port-of-Spain. So the aim re­al­ly, there are a lot of peo­ple with­in the Cen­tral/South com­mu­ni­ties that are very pas­sion­ate about play­ing Car­ni­val. And I said, why not pro­vide that sort of medi­um or ve­hi­cle for us to get to­geth­er and play in Port-of-Spain as well? So as op­posed to us al­ways jump­ing on­to the ex­ist­ing bands, which is great, it’s al­ways nice to sort of have your own thing, to shake up things a lit­tle bit, bring cre­ativ­i­ty that you need to shake up things a bit,” she said.

The two-year ab­sence of the tra­di­tion­al pa­rade of bands fur­ther em­bold­ened her in her de­ci­sion to cre­ate Dream.

“Car­ni­val stemmed from the need for ex­pres­sion. So that’s re­al­ly where it came from, the dor­mant COVID time did have a lot of us in a mode of re­flec­tion, so things that we were sleep­ing on, or stuff that we had as deep-root­ed de­sires, we would have said, Okay, let’s try this year, if not this year, then when? Let’s come out this year,” she said.

She said the band ini­tial­ly thought about par­tak­ing in Cen­tral mas, but the lim­it­ed op­tions with­in the re­gions prompt­ed her de­ci­sion to take the band to Port-of-Spain.

“Cen­tral does have its ap­peal but un­for­tu­nate­ly, I think (we’d have to wait) un­til Cen­tral starts to prob­a­bly do a lit­tle bit more,” she said at the band’s soft launch of its mas camp at the cor­ner of Cor­ne­lio and Baden-Pow­ell Streets in Wood­brook, “I think for things to change with­in the cen­tral are­na. It needs to have a cul­tur­al shift or re­al in­cen­tive and up­heaval of what’s go­ing right now.”

To fur­ther ac­com­mo­date the Cen­tral and South mas­quer­aders, Ma­haraj has al­ready made arrange­ments to pro­vide shut­tles for pa­trons from lo­ca­tions in South and Cen­tral Trinidad. So far shut­tle lo­ca­tions are be­ing planned at Lazy Lizard Restau­rant and Bar in Ch­agua­nas and Mick­el’s Restau­rant and Bar in San Fer­nan­do.

Apart from tar­get­ing a larg­er base from South and Cen­tral Trinidad, Ma­haraj al­so ex­plained that her band was al­so plan­ning to in­clude the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in her band as she ac­knowl­edged the com­mu­ni­ty has be­come more and more em­bed­ded in our cul­ture.

“Our di­as­po­ra is chang­ing; we are be­com­ing more in­clu­sive. The re­al­i­ty is a lot of Venezue­lans are now a part of our cul­ture,” she said.

Ma­haraj ex­plained the band was ea­ger to step out­side what was typ­i­cal­ly ex­pect­ed, as she ex­plained it planned to even present cos­tumes which fell a bit out­side of the typ­i­cal biki­ni, beads, and feath­ers. Ma­haraj said through the band an av­enue was cre­at­ed for ex­pres­sion and new­ness un­der Ma­haraj’s cre­ative di­rec­tion and fo­cus on “mod­ern but yet dig­ni­fied cos­tumes.”