SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

A to­tal of 75 small, medi­um and large bands have reg­is­tered with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) to cross the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah stage for the Pa­rade of the Bands on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

Con­fir­ma­tion came from an NCC source who has been putting prepa­ra­tions in place for the two-day street pa­rade. The spokesman said mas­quer­aders will have ac­cess to six routes.

The colour-cod­ed routes out­lined in an NCC 2018 Car­ni­val map which the T&T Guardian ob­tained have been list­ed as Band, So­cadrome, Pic­cadil­ly, Ex­it, Emer­gency and Es­cape.

The on­ly change, the source said, was that bands con­verg­ing at the cor­ner of Park and Char­lotte Streets will be al­lowed to turn west of Park Street as an es­cape route.

“Ba­si­cal­ly So­cadrome, Pic­cadil­ly and the band routes have re­mained the same as last year. There are no ma­jor changes,” the source said.

So­cadrome and Pic­cadil­ly have the short­est route with the Band route be­ing the longest.

The So­cadrome route shows that band mem­bers will gath­er at the Nel­son Man­dela Park fol­low­ing which they will make their way in­to Wood­brook be­fore pro­ceed­ing in­to the Jean Pierre Com­plex.

So­cadrome’s Danielle Jones-Hunte said they will be work­ing with the NCC’s route.

The start­ing point for the Band route be­gins at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah where mas­quer­aders will pro­ceed on­to Tra­garete Road then turn off at the Queen’s Park Oval in­to Wood­brook and head back in­to the cap­i­tal city.

NCC has des­ig­nat­ed four judg­ing points—Vic­to­ria Square, South Quay, Pic­cadil­ly Greens and the Sa­van­nah for bands en­ter­ing the small, medi­um and large cat­e­gories of the Pa­rade of the Bands com­pe­ti­tion.

Last year, NCC re­placed Adam Smith Square with Vic­to­ria Square as a judg­ing point.

Of the four judg­ing points, the source said the bands must cross three with the sa­van­nah be­ing manda­to­ry.

With the or­gan­is­ers of this year’s So­cadrome open­ing up the Jean Pierre Com­plex stage to all mas­quer­aders and in­di­vid­u­als on Car­ni­val Tues­day, the source said they ex­pect things to be busier than usu­al.

The source said on Sat­ur­day for the Ju­nior Pa­rade of the Bands they will do an ex­per­i­ment near the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal which has been des­ig­nat­ed “a no noise zone” where they would play mu­sic us­ing a dee­jay and two speak­er box­es.

“We will play the mu­sic at a rea­son­able lev­el for the chil­dren and once this works the same con­cept will be ap­plied for Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day for the adults. We have been in dis­cus­sions with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty to en­sure com­pli­ance.”