An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Lost Tribe is turn­ing ten in 2025, a fact that has left its cre­ative di­rec­tor, Valmi­ki Ma­haraj, stunned.

“The fact that we are hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about ten years is crazy to me,” he said.

“I re­al­ly can’t even tell you that when we start­ed even, that I saw us be­ing here, not that I saw us not be­ing here, but it’s just that it seems like if it’s just passed so quick­ly.”

In those ten years, the band has won mul­ti­ple Band of the Year ti­tles and has been praised for rein­tro­duc­ing cre­ativ­i­ty to the mod­ern pa­rade of the bands. The Lost Tribe band­leader, how­ev­er, be­lieves that cre­ativ­i­ty was not lost but the method­ol­o­gy had shift­ed.

“I saw many oth­er launch­es that use that and have sto­ry­lines. And I was like, you know, I love this. I love this. Peo­ple crit­i­cise biki­ni and beads mas for los­ing their cul­ture and sto­ry­telling. Some­times I ques­tion is it that we have lost it or is it that the sto­ry­telling has shift­ed?”

Ma­haraj said, “I think that the sto­ry­telling of mod­ern-day Car­ni­val has al­most shift­ed from the streets to the in­ter­net, where these bands spend in­sane amounts of mon­ey be­hind de­vel­op­ing pho­to shoots and themes and web­sites and videos and pho­tog­ra­phy and elab­o­rate sets that rep­re­sent their themes so that the mas­quer­aders get the buy-in from be­fore.”

Ma­haraj ac­knowl­edged that while Lost Tribe will turn ten, the band un­for­tu­nate­ly has not been on the road for ten years, as the coun­try did not have a pa­rade of bands in 2021 and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Those years, how­ev­er, Ma­haraj de­scribed as “big mo­ments of growth.” Dur­ing that time, the band pro­duced two fea­ture films, in­clud­ing the award-win­ning Lavway.

The sto­ry told in Lavway is con­nect­ed to the 2025 theme of Lost in Time.

“In Lavway, we had a con­ver­sa­tion. The open­ing showed you that the sto­ry was be­ing nar­rat­ed by Sa­van­nah. And Sa­van­nah had two sib­lings. The two sib­lings were Time and Car­ni­val. So the three sib­lings are Time, who is the old­er broth­er, Car­ni­val, who is the sis­ter, and Sa­van­nah, who is the younger, trou­ble­some, you know, lit­tle broth­er that they both are very pro­tec­tive over, but who loves hu­man be­ings and he’s al­ways here with us. And he told the sto­ry of Lavway. Lost Tribe’s theme this year is go­ing to be told by Time and Car­ni­val.”

Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia that the de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish Lost Tribe ul­ti­mate­ly came dur­ing a pe­ri­od when he con­sid­ered leav­ing mas de­sign al­to­geth­er. He ap­proached Tribe CEO Dean Ackin in­tend­ing to in­form him of his de­par­ture, but the Tribe leader asked him to con­sid­er some­thing else.

“I met with Dean, and I said, you know, I feel like I may be done with this mas thing,” said Ma­haraj, who then ex­plained that dur­ing that con­ver­sa­tion he ex­plained his ini­tial feel­ings about chang­ing how he was in­volved in the de­sign process.

“Through those con­ver­sa­tions, I told him, I said, give me two weeks, and let me think about what it is I see, and I can’t de­scribe it, I can’t put it in­to words, but let me come back and tell you what I’m think­ing. And I came back with this idea for this thing that wasn’t even called Lost Tribe yet.”

When he re­turned with his idea, he was adamant that he need­ed to cre­ate some­thing that ap­pealed to the new age.

“My in­ten­tion with this band is not to dust off the old dress­es from the ware­hous­es of, you know, Min­shall and Wayne Berke­ley, but to cre­ate some­thing new, you know, cre­ate some­thing that spoke to the new mod­ern mas­quer­ad­er.

Lost in Time will of­fi­cial­ly launch dur­ing Sun­set Stage this week­end, un­der the Tribe um­brel­la at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Yes­ter­day at Adam Smith Square, Wood­brook, there was a cos­tume re­veal, the­atre, tra­di­tion­al mas, food, and tech­nol­o­gy. There was al­so a Moko Stage where tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters per­formed and work­shops on stilt walk­ing were giv­en.