BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Bri­an Baig has told lo­cals who are ex­press­ing their sat­is­fac­tion with Hol­ly­wood ac­tor, Michael B Jor­dan’s apol­o­gy and de­ci­sion to re­name his cur­rent J’ou­vert ti­tled rum, “don’t be so quick to cel­e­brate as T&T might have burned an op­por­tu­ni­ty bridge.”

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Baig, who has a back­ground in In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Law (IP), said it was an op­por­tune time for T&T to change the nar­ra­tive—turn­ing a neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion in­to a pos­i­tive one and us­ing it to its ad­van­tage.

“This is where the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), could have worked to­geth­er with the gen­tle­man in what­ev­er way. The Min­istry of Cul­ture could have looked to work to­geth­er with the gen­tle­man and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­ture could have even been pro­mot­ed,” Baig said.

He added, “This is the beau­ty of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty where­in which; now the coun­try can ben­e­fit from it. What you call na­tion brand­ing. And this is why Trinidad and To­ba­go need to live out­side the box.”

He said T&T need­ed to take a look at how na­tion brand­ing was done in oth­er coun­tries like Scot­land and even In­dia.

“With our na­tion brand­ing, they could have used the steel­pan with the J’ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions, with J’ou­vert rum and they could have had a big cel­e­bra­tion out of J’ou­vert, in­stead of be­ing just all an­gry.”

He said though lo­cals have their right to ex­press dis­plea­sure, much of the out­rage was un­nec­es­sary as T&T did not own the word J’ou­vert, nor has any own­er­ship of it, been es­tab­lished by those in charge of the sec­tor.

“If we are go­ing to act like this. Who is pro­tect­ing the cul­ture? Is it go­ing to be the NCC? Is it go­ing to be the Min­istry of Cul­ture? Who is go­ing to do it? He asked.

Ex­plain­ing the his­to­ry of the word J’ou­vert from a post-eman­ci­pa­tion pe­ri­od and why T&T had no sole claim to it, Baig said, “J’ou­vert is com­mon­ly used for Car­ni­val, not on­ly in Trinidad but in the Caribbean. So to say it should be pro­tect­ed spe­cif­ic to Trinidad, it is go­ing to be very dif­fi­cult to do that be­cause it’s a com­mon term.”

He said the word J’ou­vert by it­self, could not be reg­is­tered just like that and would have to be ac­com­pa­nied by a sym­bol or lo­go to be le­git­i­mate­ly trade­marked.

Re­it­er­at­ing that T&T’s re­sponse to Jor­dan’s J’ou­vert Rum could have hurt T&T’s chance to pen­e­trate the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket on a high note, Baig said,” He’s a known in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tor. He would have been with the Black Pan­ther movie. They could have looked to work with to pro­mote J’ou­vert.

He added,” “Yes I know it is about rep­re­sent­ing our Iden­ti­ty, and we must pro­tect our cul­ture, but you don’t go about pro­tect­ing cul­ture by burn­ing bridges too.”

Baig’s sen­ti­ment was echoed by brand am­bas­sador and mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tive Avion Mark who said it was one thing for lo­cals to ex­press how they felt, but on the oth­er hand, some of it was a poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the na­tion’s peo­ple, when the at­tacks be­came per­son­al and out of hand.

Jor­dan’s apol­o­gy post­ed to his In­sta­gram (IG) sto­ries, ear­ly yes­ter­day came mere days af­ter a pe­ti­tion was filed against him and lo­cals who ac­cused the Fan­tas­tic Four ac­tor of cul­tur­al­ly ap­pro­pri­at­ing the J’ou­vert brand, syn­ony­mous with T&T, dragged the Cal­i­for­nia-born ac­tor on so­cial me­dia.

The con­tro­ver­sy even made head­lines on ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al news net­works like CNN, BBC, and Ya­hoo, which all re­port­ed on the heat­ed top­ic.

A post by Guardian Me­dia em­ploy­ee Xaria Rae Rox­burgh, even at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of Tri­ni-born rap­per Oni­ka “Nic­ki Mi­naj” Ma­haraj who en­dorsed the post that sought to ex­plain the his­to­ry and sacral­i­ty of J’ou­vert and told Jor­dan to fix it.

Be­neath the screen­shot post which re­mains on the Ma­haraj’s IG wall, she wrote: “I’m sure MBJ didn’t in­ten­tion­al­ly do any­thing he thought Caribbean peo­ple would find of­fen­sive, but now that you are aware, change the name and con­tin­ue to flour­ish and pros­per.”

But de­spite the pos­si­ble dam­age done, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning is hop­ing a re­la­tion­ship can be forged with Jor­dan to ben­e­fit both par­ties.

Man­ning, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia, yes­ter­day, said “The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go should work with Michael B Jor­dan to de­vel­op this rum in­to a glob­al brand.”

He said such a re­la­tion­ship could be a boost for the cul­ture and arts sec­tor in T&T and not­ed it might not be too late to achieve this.

“He has apol­o­gised, we all make mis­takes, but I think it is still some­thing we can use to ben­e­fit Trinidad and To­ba­go, “he told Guardian Me­dia.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Tourism, Cul­ture, and the Arts Min­is­ter, Ran­dall Mitchell for com­ment, but all calls and a What­sApp mes­sage went unan­swered.