Losing the Battle of the Beads... (Where Carnival Gone)

Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli famously said - “There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Easily the most brazen lie ever told to the people of this country stripped down and devoid of any statistics to support it is that our Carnival is the greatest show on  earth. Far from being unique, first, biggest, most watched, or any of the other superlative adjectives that have been attached to that untruth over the years, the cold reality is that our Carnival is dying, slowly, collapsing on itself in a writhing orgy of drunken stupor while others around the world and in our hemisphere (contradicting our Tourism Minister) have been experiencing exponential and explosive growth in visitor arrivals and tourism dollars. As examples, compared to our thirty to forty thousand visitors Rio Di Janeiro enjoys an average of one point one million visitors for Carnival alone who, according to global management consulting firm Berners Consulting, spend a mind boggling seven hundred and forty million US dollars (approximately five billion TT dollars) into their economy over the Carnival week alone. And if you think those are amazing numbers, check out New Orleans, who in 2011 (last available numbers) welcomed nine million visitors who spent over a two week period a whopping five point five billion US dollars (or thirty five billion TT dollars), approximately sixty percent of our entire fifty billion estimated revenue collection for all of 2013 according to the Government of Trinidad & Tobago.

Now obviously the question on everyone's minds has to be, if all that is said here is true, why aren't we doing anything about it? The short answer is, I don't know. Cultural activists, mas men and patriotic others have been ringing the alarm bells and publicly lamenting the death of carnival for years to no avail simply because we have never elected to Office men and women of sufficient vision to understand both the qualitative and quantitative value of our culture. Think those arrival and revenue statements are startling? What about the impact on the society of cohesion and community, the unifying, crime defeating value of the culture itself? Oxford Dictionary defines culture as - “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” In other words, the living memory and combined expression of a people  committed to posterity as art. Now how does that fit in with the, mind-numbing, 'imported-from-China' vapor that our Carnival has become? Not wanting to rant the same rant everytime but clearly our inability to lead from in front has left the weight of profiteering dollars suffocating the very goose even as it tries to wrench one more golden egg from the dying carcass. Where is the vision? The background music of our culture, Calypso, has literally been thrown aside to make way for its dying offshoot soca, and what soca itself has become is so devoid of substance, were it not for the three or four flag bearers (Machel, Destra, Iwer, Kes) and handful of imitators that sing practically the same 'four lines and a hook' every year it would not survive the decade as is.

 I have compared what our Carnival has become in the past to a wedding reception without the wedding, a celebration of 'nothing' where everyone shows up for the drinks and dancing. Surely there is something more of us, something rooted 'deep within our Caribbean belly' that wants to cry against this, isn't there? Abraham Lincoln asked  - “Is leadership telling people what they want to hear, or taking them where they need to be?” For our purposes the answer to that may lie in the dwindling spectators along the mas route, the empty stands and the tuned out audience. When it finally dawns on those busily gyrating their wares for all to see that no one is watching anymore, the absurdity of what our carnival has become might dawn on us all. If we're lucky when that day comes there might still be something left worth saving, but until then, put yuh two han' in de air, put yuh foot up in de air, wine like yuh jus doh care, and han' han' han' han' han' han' han' han'