Evo­lu­tion is a nat­ur­al part of cul­ture. There is an or­gan­ic phase in every fes­ti­val’s lifes­pan when or­gan­is­ers in­tro­spect to see how they can adapt to mod­ern tastes while pre­serv­ing rit­u­als that root the event in the past.

Car­ni­val ap­pears to be at a wa­ter­shed mo­ment where a num­ber of sig­na­ture events are in flux, and or­gan­is­ers should be cau­tious about leav­ing the prod­uct with an amor­phous iden­ti­ty be­cause of too many changes.

Take Pan Trin­ba­go’s re­struc­tur­ing of the Panora­ma cal­en­dar. The first test of Pan Trin­ba­go’s de­ci­sion to re­lo­cate medi­um band fi­nals to To­ba­go comes this week­end when steel­bands face off at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um on Sun­day. So far, the de­ci­sion to put sin­gle pan fi­nals in the Christ­mas sea­son and move small band fi­nals to an ear­li­er date has been hailed a suc­cess.

But the ju­ry is still out on one el­e­ment of the Panora­ma meta­mor­pho­sis: scrap­ping the North Stand. For a sec­ond year, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) main­tained its stance that the North Stand was an un­nec­es­sary ex­pense. North Stand devo­tees ques­tioned whether to at­tend Panora­ma se­mi-fi­nals last week­end be­cause their cus­tom­ary tow­er­ing struc­ture has been sub­sti­tut­ed with a small­er, short­er plat­form un­der a row of tents. The change threat­ens to push away pan lovers who miss the en­er­gy of the North Stand, a wor­ry­ing con­cern giv­en the peren­ni­al fear that the au­di­ence for steel­pan is di­min­ish­ing.

These are on­ly the lat­est in a slew of changes to Panora­ma. In 2017, NCC lumped small, medi­um and large steel­bands in­to a marathon semi­fi­nal that be­gan at 9 am. That year, they al­so scrapped the once-pop­u­lar Greens, on­ly for the venue to re­turn in 2018. Then, it dis­ap­peared al­to­geth­er.

Kings and Queens fi­nals have jumped around like a jumbie on the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar. The mas­quer­aders were pulled out of Di­manche Gras a few years ago and forced to fight for at­ten­tion on Fan­tas­tic Fri­day—the same day as the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch fi­nals. In 2018, Kings and Queens re­turned to Di­manche Gras, on­ly to be boot­ed out again a year lat­er and pushed to Car­ni­val Wednes­day. Now, the fi­nals are back on Car­ni­val Sun­day.

The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) has re­turned to its orig­i­nal two-song for­mat for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nals af­ter whit­tling it down to one song per ca­lyp­son­ian in 2017.

As even NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters has at­test­ed, the brand­ing of T&T’s Car­ni­val as the “world’s great­est show” is un­der threat from the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of re­gion­al car­ni­vals. Ja­maica, Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos are ex­pand­ing their tourism prod­ucts through con­sis­tent mar­ket­ing and easy-to-ac­cess pack­ag­ing of their events. The con­stant tin­ker­ing with T&T’s Car­ni­val could leave as­pects of the fes­ti­val dif­fi­cult to de­fine, es­pe­cial­ly for vis­i­tors.

If pa­trons can­not mar­ry their ex­pec­ta­tions to a plau­si­ble fore­cast of how the event will pan out, they’ll be­come scep­ti­cal about spend­ing their mon­ey.