Carisa Lee

News of a Car­ni­val 2022 came too late. That’s the view of so­ca artiste Patrice Roberts, who be­lieves the time is too short now to ex­e­cute any event.

“I un­der­stand that we are op­er­at­ing with a high lev­el of un­cer­tain­ty but there is bare­ly any time,” she told Guardian Me­dia via Zoom yes­ter­day.

Roberts said she was hap­py to hear the an­nounce­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter of planned events but wished it was com­mu­ni­cat­ed ear­li­er.

Roberts is not the on­ly so­ca artiste with that view.

Ter­rin Jaiga Cal­en­der said some dates should have been set al­ready in some­thing like a Safe Zone cal­en­dar.

“It’s just fluff at this point be­cause we’re smack in Jan­u­ary al­ready,” he said.

The singer said he be­lieved those in au­thor­i­ty should have put some­thing in place al­ready, us­ing ex­am­ples from oth­er coun­tries.

“Hon­est­ly speak­ing, it’s not that dif­fi­cult to host events even in­side the pan­dem­ic it’s just that I don’t think that they con­sid­er the arts a pri­or­i­ty like that,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Jaiga, those in the in­dus­try al­ready knew that events would have to be scaled down, so he doesn’t know why an an­nounce­ment was made ap­prox­i­mate­ly a month be­fore Car­ni­val 2022, es­pe­cial­ly since in the last two years, many in the in­dus­try have not made any mon­ey, is­sues he said has not been ad­dressed.

“We al­ready know that it had to be con­densed but it could have been han­dled way bet­ter even with the ris­ing num­bers,” he said.

On Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that Car­ni­val 2022 was still pos­si­ble.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, he said the Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts. along with oth­er stake­hold­ers, will meet this week to dis­cuss the for­mat.

Jaiga asked who are the stake­hold­ers speak­ing on their be­half, as he is yet to meet any.

This view was shared by Down Dey singer Ja­son “GBM Nu­tron” Carter, who said there is no rep­re­sen­ta­tion for many peo­ple who make up the in­dus­try.

“There is no union for the wire ben­der, there is no union for the bar­tenders, there is no union for the sound com­pa­nies, so who are these stake­hold­ers for re­al. Are they speak­ing for every­one, are they con­sid­er­ing the roles of every­one in­volved in a car­ni­val sea­son?” he asked.

“These are the peo­ple.”

Carter said he was still hap­py to hear the an­nounce­ment of Car­ni­val 2022.

He said this gives them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make mon­ey and re­build some of what they lost in the pan­dem­ic.

“The peo­ple that work the fetes, the peo­ple that take on jobs as bar­tenders, the peo­ple that work as ven­dors the hair­dressers, the make-up artiste, the de­sign­ers, those are the peo­ple that I wor­ry about,” he said.

Carter, who re­leased ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en so­ca songs re­cent­ly, with­out the con­fir­ma­tion of a Car­ni­val sea­son, said many artistes do this out of pas­sion.

“My role and func­tion is to cre­ate and de­liv­er mu­sic whether there is a car­ni­val or not,” he said.

It’s the same for Roberts, who said she loves her job and her sup­port­ers who ad­mire her both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“It’s re­al­ly tough some­times, even if it’s tough to not re­lease mu­sic…my fans fu­el my en­er­gy,” the singer, whose new re­lease ti­tled– Mind My Busi­ness– is a top favourite this sea­son,” she said.

Jaiga, who re­leased sev­en songs for the sea­son, agrees. He said he will al­ways do mu­sic be­cause he’s a pa­tri­ot when it comes to the art.

“I’m def­i­nite­ly a cit­i­zen of so­ca, me do­ing mu­sic is just a part of who I am,” he said.

Jaiga said it costs some in the busi­ness ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$5,000 to pro­duce a song.

De­spite this, these three so­ca stars in­ter­viewed said they spent mon­ey with­out know­ing if there would be a Car­ni­val be­cause of their pas­sion.