We made it! What next for Vincy Mas?

Remember the song, “No rain…can’t stop we Carnival”? Well, we had a bigger challenge than rain this year. A bigger challenge than the fire at Police HQ which almost resulted in a showdown between government and masqueraders more than two decades ago. This time a full-fledged hurricane but perhaps the influence of the Beryl name, familiar to Carnival and culture, may have saved us from the worst. So, we made it, not without severe limitations and some confusion at the end. As we sum up Vincymas 2024, we can still count it a success in the circumstances, but what have we learnt from our latest experiences? They continued along the line of frustrating challenges over the past five years during which a range of unforeseen circumstances have tested our ability to adapt to a number of natural disasters and medical outbreaks, as in the Covid pandemic. The varying nature of those circumstances have severely tested our ability to adjust to changing circumstances, but we can no longer settle for ad hoc experiences. They have also demonstrated our vulnerability and that is the context in which we should respond. We have learnt that our Mas can be not only the “hottest” but the “wettest” or “windiest” depending on location. So, the critical issue of the sustainability of Vincymas in the context of climate change, not even dreamt of when we changed to the hurricane season 47 years ago, is a very real one for us. We can neither ignore nor escape from this reality.

Of course, there are other factors intrinsic to the festival to which we must pay attention and adjust. Take the matter of accommodating modern trends, not all positive, to the roots of our Carnival and balancing the dollars and cents with the common sense. The festival is now a big money-maker for the country as a whole and the temptation is to allow money to “run things”. But Carnival itself is much more than this, and while we cannot ignore financial and economic interests, we must find a way to balance them with our cultural heritage. We therefore have an excellent opportunity for some reflection, rethinking and readjustment. As indicated earlier, our resilience in the face of climate change must now become an issue of primary importance. It must encompass every area of our preparations for the festival, whether in the type of costumes we design and build or in the physical arrangements we make for the stage, accommodation etc for the venues. It is better to be proactive than to wait until after tragedies which can now be reasonably predicted if the adjustments are not made.

We need to take a more strategic long-term vision of the carnival which must involve not only the physical requirements but also the superstructure; what type of management and administrative structures are necessary, what should be our strategic focus, how to strike a balance between the roots of carnival and the marketability of the festival to outsiders. Also, what is the role of the component parts in all this?

Then there are the specifics. Thus, any one knowledgeable with the evolution of our kaiso must be worried about its future. We do not seem to have been able to handle the emergence of Soca and as a result, our calypso seems to lack both bounce and humour.

The once much-anticipated Calypso Monarch competition is rapidly becoming a shadow of its glorious past. In addition, in a modern world, calypsonians must begin to pay serious attention to musical ability and not feel that poor diction and the lack of other essentials will be enough to win the crown. Is that the limit of our ambitions in a modern world with so many possibilities and opportunities open?

Similarly, our mas creators must find a way to cater for the foreign contingents, while preserving and enriching our creative and historical contexts. We are more than capable of all these. Will some merger of these talents existing in small bands help, or is petty rivalry to forever supersede development imperatives?

We have been seeing the emerging possibilities in the field of pan but there are formidable obstacles. It is many times more challenging and expensive to produce a top class steel band (please stop calling them “pan sides”) than it was two decades ago, and grossly unfair to expect a 25-player band to compete with a band, sponsored and three times its size.

Can the respective components begin some introspection leading up to an early revaluation? We cannot just wait until Carnival is on the horizon to have discussions about prize money and the like. Time to take an early re-evaluation of our beloved festival.