BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion’s (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud’s sug­ges­tions for a scaled-down Car­ni­val is a case of too lit­tle and too late, ac­cord­ing to Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers.

Car­ni­val stal­wart and pro­mot­er of pi­o­neer­ing Car­ni­val events like Co­ca Co­la Youth Fest and Ladies Night Out, Randy Glas­gow, said while he com­mend­ed Aboud for think­ing about the in­dus­try, Car­ni­val was a mas­sive cre­ative ma­chine that re­quired in­tense work and the co-op­er­a­tion of many to op­er­ate it. He said Aboud’s call, com­ing with just a month to go for Car­ni­val, was just too late.

He added plan­ning any­thing re­gard­ing Car­ni­val this late could be very risky in light of COVID-19.

Speak­ing on Aboud’s sug­ges­tion for a mov­ing panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, Glas­gow said it was not prac­ti­cal.

“These things re­quire prac­tice. He has to know. You just can’t lift up a thing and ex­e­cute it. You have to prac­tice to sound good and de­sign things to look good, so it re­quires a lot of work.”

Glas­gow, who will be host­ing his an­nu­al post-Car­ni­val Laugh Fes­ti­val vir­tu­al­ly said had the call been made per­haps two months ago, a way could have been found on how it could be rea­son­ably ex­e­cut­ed, work­ing with the au­thor­i­ties.

Ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty, pro­mot­er, dee­jay, and Scorch Mag­a­zine CEO, Kwe­si “Hop­py” Hop­kin­son agreed with Glas­gow, say­ing it was like try­ing to stop a mov­ing train.

“His sen­ti­ments, I ex­pressed since the an­nounce­ment of it. When the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced it I was on the ra­dio and all ask­ing why we tak­ing it so light­ly,” said Hop­kin­son.

He said Aboud’s call passed its time. “He can’t come now. He is a ma­jor voice. He should have sought this quite then. That is just to show, we are a re­ac­tive so­ci­ety,” Hop­kin­son lament­ed.

Mean­while Iw­er ‘So­ca Lord’ George, who said he had not had the chance to see Aboud’s sug­ges­tions, told Guardian Me­dia his in­ter­est at this time lay in bridg­ing the gen­er­a­tion gap in T&T’s ca­lyp­so and so­ca through his vir­tu­al cul­ture show­case—Re­turn of the Bands.

“I recog­nise we have two lost gen­er­a­tions in ca­lyp­so and so­ca. If you look at the ca­lyp­so tent, it went down two gen­er­a­tions now. And for two gen­er­a­tions now, most of the so­ca events you go to now, will not have live mu­sic. So I re­al­ly use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell it back to the gen­er­a­tion, to let them know this is how it was, to give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty go­ing for­ward,” George ex­plained.

His col­league in so­ca Aaron ‘Voice’ St Louis is al­so about the good vibes and keep­ing the cul­ture alive.

“I feel like this year should be pret­ty much for us to keep the cul­ture alive. I don’t think prof­it should be at the fore­front. Ob­vi­ous­ly, those things would def­i­nite­ly have to take the back burn­er, now. So I be­lieve pro­mot­ers and every­one who is in­volved should do it sole­ly for the love of car­ni­val and not with the idea of mak­ing a prof­it or any­thing like that.”

But for every­one still fuss­ing about a Car­ni­val 2021 hap­pen­ing or not, ca­lyp­son­ian and Ron­nie and Caro band leader Ron­nie Mc In­tosh, ad­vised it was time to get over it.

“From Ron­nie and Caro per­spec­tive there is no Car­ni­val and we have got­ten past that “ta­ban­ca” pe­ri­od since prob­a­bly Sep­tem­ber…Oc­to­ber, be­cause of the fact, that Car­ni­val is not sea­son­al for us, so ba­si­cal­ly dealt with that. A lot of peo­ple talk­ing about Car­ni­val now be­cause it’s a sea­son and they want to know how yuh feel­ing, and stuff, but we have moved on,” McIn­tosh re­lat­ed.

He said if the gov­ern­ing bod­ies de­cid­ed to present any­thing and their pres­ence was re­quest­ed, they will be present. But for now, they were mon­i­tor­ing in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal sit­u­a­tions and were fo­cused on the next Car­ni­val.