Joel Julien and Soyi­ni Grey

Tribe Car­ni­val sur­prised mas­quer­aders by open­ing reg­is­tra­tion for Car­ni­val 2023 at 7 pm on Tues­day and less than 23 hours lat­er, it was al­ready sold out.

Tribe Car­ni­val rep­re­sents six large bands—Tribe, Bliss, Harts, Lost Tribe, Rogue and Pure.

On what should have been Car­ni­val Tues­day (March 1), while mas­quer­aders were deal­ing with the ta­ban­ca of not be­ing able to hit the road in their cos­tumes, they re­ceived a sur­prise email from Tribe Car­ni­val.

The sub­ject was Tribe Pop Up reg­is­tra­tion for Car­ni­val 2023.

“The mag­ic of T&T Car­ni­val 2023 is right around the cor­ner...join the mag­ic,” it stat­ed.

Tribe stat­ed that for a pre-book­ing fee of US$15 and US$150, mas­quer­aders would be guar­an­teed a spot in the sec­tion of their choice.

The email was sent to all reg­is­tered mas­quer­aders who played with the bands in 2020.

By 5.45 pm on Wednes­day, Tribe Car­ni­val post­ed on its Face­book page that it was sold out.

“If you didn’t catch the POP-UP, don’t wor­ry. You’ll have an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to reg­is­ter when we launch lat­er this year,” Tribe Car­ni­val stat­ed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Ltd, Tribe Car­ni­val’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dean Ackin said peo­ple are “very, very ready for Car­ni­val 2023.”

“Of course, we have no in­ten­tion of mov­ing ahead with Car­ni­val and hav­ing a street pa­rade or at­tempt­ing to have a street pa­rade un­less we get of­fi­cial word from the Gov­ern­ment that Car­ni­val 2023 is on, but we ex­pect that based on what we are see­ing and what is hap­pen­ing with the virus and what is hap­pen­ing with the coun­tries around the world re­mov­ing pro­to­cols, peo­ple get­ting back to their nor­mal lives, learn­ing to live with the virus, we are re­al­ly hop­ing that we can get an ear­ly word for them ear­ly enough so that not on­ly our band, but all Car­ni­val bands and every­one in­volved in the Car­ni­val and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try can plan prop­er­ly for it,” Ackin said.

Ackin said Car­ni­val band prepa­ra­tion is a year-long ac­tiv­i­ty.

“There­fore, we need to plan from ear­ly, we need to pre­pare from ear­ly, we need to pro­duce from ear­ly, so we need to know what we are pro­duc­ing and how many we are pro­duc­ing for and hence this ties back to us check­ing the tem­per­a­ture and see­ing what the in­ter­est lev­els were and how many peo­ple were in­ter­est­ed in Car­ni­val 2023,” he said,

“I can tell you by the re­sponse and feed­back we have got­ten, based on reg­is­tra­tion and based on the buzz that it has cre­at­ed, I think that peo­ple are ready they are very, very ready for Car­ni­val 2023.”

Ackin said the Pop-Up reg­is­tra­tion was done to give mas­quer­aders the ex­cite­ment they long for.

“Since get­ting a taste of Car­ni­val, the mas­quer­aders were ask­ing us for some­thing spe­cial on Car­ni­val Tues­day and we de­cid­ed this Pop-Up reg­is­tra­tion will have a very pos­i­tive and up­lift­ing im­pact on them,” he said.

He said the feed­back was “over­whelm­ing.”

“Many Caribbean coun­tries have an­nounced the re­turn of their Car­ni­val and we be­lieve based on the trends and once noth­ing comes about to de­rail these trends and there is not the ad­vent of a new vari­ant, we are con­fi­dent and op­ti­mistic that Car­ni­val 2023 will be sanc­tioned by the T&T gov­ern­ment,” he said.

Mean­while, Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Jerome Pre­cil­la said the Taste of Car­ni­val start­ed by tast­ing “bit­ter like car­ille” be­fore evolv­ing to a sweet cup­cake.

Pri­vate events space Sound Forge said their sev­en days, sev­en con­certs “De­fend We Cul­ture” se­ries was a suc­cess.

But more im­por­tant­ly, it was a con­fi­dence boost­er that may have shown them a way to make ad­di­tion­al mon­ey on their ex­ist­ing live-event for­mat.

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Ains­ley King said the ex­ec­u­tive tried their best and made de­ci­sions for the love of the cul­ture. He thanked his mem­bers for their co­op­er­a­tion, say­ing their self­less­ness sur­prised him.

The sit­u­a­tion, though sour, re­in­forced the need, in his mind, for TU­CO to move to­wards free­ing it­self from the gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion.

“We have to look more in a di­rec­tion where we could be more self-re­liant,” he ex­plained.

“Where we could at­tract fund­ing for our­self, be­cause what is hap­pen­ing with gov­ern­ment fund­ing, you know? Some­thing is not right.”

De­spite her sor­row that ca­lyp­so did not have the sea­son they want­ed, Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ros­alind Gabriel said T&T had put on a show this year that re­in­forces its dom­i­nance.

Gabriel said we showed the world that “Trinidad and To­ba­go is the home of Car­ni­val,” and no one who saw the cos­tumes, and knew of their shock­ing­ly short pro­duc­tion time could ever dis­pute that ti­tle.

In short, she said the Taste of Car­ni­val was sweet and she is now look­ing for­ward to full meal in 2023.

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