Colin Lucas has a long history with Carnival. Until his appointment to chairman of the National Carnival Commission (NCC) of Trinidad and Tobago in November 2017, people knew him for his music, particularly one massively popular hit in 1991: “Dollar Wine”
These days, he’s traded the moustache and tight shorts for a suit and tie and, in essence, oversees the whole of Carnival. He’s passionate but level-headed, and generous with jokes and opinions. He has a lot of ideas about what Carnival and its arts should be, and several about what they should not be. Lucas is of an older generation of Trinis who sometimes find themselves in conflict with the interests or aesthetics of the younger generation.
Unfortunately, many Trinis regard the NCC with skepticism, as they do most of the institutions that govern Carnival–and Trinidad as a whole. Money disappears into the vortex of the NCC, folks say; the governing body that Colin Lucas now runs often gets accused of mismanagement or even corruption. It’s tough to pin down hard facts to verify such claims, but it is true that money has been an issue in the Carnival institutions this year. And the unwieldy bureaucracy of the Carnival institutions very likely soaks up more funds than it makes use of. Blame gets tossed like a hot potato between the Ministry of Finance, the prime minister, the NCC, Pan Trinbago, and so on. But most agree that some of the blame is with the recession that Trinidad has been experiencing for a couple years. We’ll hear Colin Lucas’s thoughts on this subject.
You would imagine that, two weeks before Carnival, the man running the show would be in a mighty rush, but we sat down for a leisurely hour and a half to talk about all things Carnival. We started with his personal history. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
http://www.ncctt.org/new/index.php/media-centre/news/604-colin-lucas-on-carnival-today.html
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