Win­ford James

Our an­nu­al Car­ni­val nev­er ceas­es to amaze me, and the fea­ture that amazes me most is the wealth of de­light­ful in­no­va­tions that its ded­i­cat­ed cre­ators pro­duce in mu­sic and mas­quer­ade. I am awed by the fact that a lit­tle coun­try of a mere 1.5 mil­lion souls could cre­ate such mag­nif­i­cent arts for the plea­sure of lo­cals and for­eign­ers alike.

The Car­ni­val in­dus­tries are a sub­sec­tor of the cre­ative in­dus­tries, which are them­selves a sub­sec­tor of the coun­try’s cap­i­tal in­dus­tries. Their prod­ucts in­clude new and old mu­sic in the gen­res of ca­lyp­so, so­ca, chut­ney, steel­band, and brass, as well as pa­rades of bands of mas­quer­aders por­tray­ing a wide va­ri­ety of his­tor­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal themes, along with rev­el­ry across big en­ter­tain­ment stages and in the streets of our main cities.

These prod­ucts are a sig­nif­i­cant part of the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of our en­er­gy-dom­i­nat­ed econ­o­my, with im­port of in­put in­gre­di­ents, ex­port of old and in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts, and lo­cal sale and con­sump­tion of these prod­ucts. And, while they ben­e­fit to some de­gree from gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies, they are large­ly the out­put of rich pri­vate sec­tor in­no­va­tion.

To the best of my knowl­edge, there’s been no large-scale sys­tem­at­ic study to gauge the vi­a­bil­i­ty of these in­dus­tries but such da­ta as we have show clear­ly that they make mon­ey, though not near­ly as much as their po­ten­tial sug­gests they can.

When, for ex­am­ple, we look at the av­er­age vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture for Car­ni­val 2020 from the CSO’s sur­vey of 2,139 vis­i­tors, we see the fol­low­ing (all fig­ures in $TT): pre­paid pack­age: 1,366,655; en­ter­tain­ment: 12,980,444; in­ter-is­land trans­port: 111,896; land trans­port: 1,370,998; tours and sight­see­ing: 61,705; gro­ceries: 729,809; shop­ping: 1,270,489; med­ical: 47,903; oth­er ex­pen­di­ture (eg, home re­pairs):599,155; ac­com­mo­da­tion/meals: 7,340,926; busi­ness/con­fer­ence: 4,992; grand to­tal: 25,884,971.

The av­er­age vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture was $12,101 (ie, $25,884,971 di­vid­ed by $2,139 vis­i­tors).

These are fig­ures for the month of Feb­ru­ary 2020 on­ly, but we will do much bet­ter in the years im­me­di­ate­ly ahead if we are un­re­lent­ing in our pur­suit of a tar­get­ed trade bal­ance. (In­ci­den­tal­ly, a re­cent study con­duct­ed for the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank pro­duced da­ta show­ing that the seg­ment of the cre­ative in­dus­tries to which Car­ni­val be­longs was a net ex­porter, gen­er­at­ing a pos­i­tive in­tra-in­dus­try trade bal­ance of $3.9 mil­lion (TT).)

We al­ready have clues that Car­ni­val is eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able. One clue is that we keep churn­ing out Car­ni­vals year af­ter year. A sec­ond is that big­ger and big­ger Car­ni­vals are de­vel­op­ing pro­duc­tions with­out the ben­e­fit of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies. Bands like Tribe and shows pro­duced by Machel Mon­tano and his col­leagues are lead­ing the way, and they could not be as suc­cess­ful as they are if the Car­ni­val in­dus­tries were not vi­able. A third clue is that the mas bands have been evolv­ing to take ad­van­tage of not on­ly the do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic con­di­tions but the glob­al ones as well. For one thing, they are in­te­grat­ing with the glob­al val­ue chain to keep costs down.

A fourth clue is that fete pro­mot­ers are tak­ing ad­van­tage of the avail­able dig­i­tal tech­no­log­i­cal tools and process­es to im­prove their ef­fec­tive­ness.

A fifth clue is that the num­ber of for­eign vis­i­tors re­mains high, av­er­ag­ing 36,000 over the past nine years, and vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­tures are hold­ing at a high rate, if not ris­ing, av­er­ag­ing more than $388 mil­lion in 2019 and above $458 mil­lion in 2020.

Our Car­ni­val is spe­cial with, among oth­er things, its ca­lyp­so, so­ca, and chut­ney songs; its steel­band mu­sic and com­pe­ti­tions in dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories (small, medi­um, and large bands); its all-in­clu­sive ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions (Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta, Ca­lyp­so Monarch, Kaiso­ra­ma (Ex­tem­po & Freestyle), oth­er cul­tur­al in­ter­pre­ta­tions (eg, J’Ou­vert, Talk Ca­lyp­so, Jab Jab, Sailor Mas, Speech Band, Pier­rot Grenade). No oth­er Car­ni­val (de­riv­a­tives)–whether in the US, the UK, or Cana­da–has been able to suc­cess­ful­ly copy them. And this is a strength that can be plumbed to great eco­nom­ic ad­van­tage.

Where else in the world are new ca­lyp­soes pro­duced an­nu­al­ly in the quan­ti­ties and with the qual­i­ty as in Trinidad and To­ba­go? Re quan­ti­ty, there were 40 com­peti­tors in Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta this year.

So, in my view, the Car­ni­val in­dus­tries re­main a gold mine of eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty. Let’s keep en­joy­ing, cre­at­ing, and val­oris­ing them.