by Laura Dowrich-Phillips Loop magazine
The way Carnival is marketed is one of the issues occupying the attention of Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts.
Speaking to Looptt, the Minister said if we want people to come to Trinidad and Tobago for Carnival we need to be sure what we are promoting.
“What is important is that we don’t lose who we are. If we go the avenue of only promoting the beads and feathers, what it has has been successful in doing is spawning "disaporic Carnivals" around the world. What that has done is ensure that people who live in New York or the UK don’t have to come for Trinidad Carnival to experience it. What we need to be very sure of is who we are and what we are promoting," she said.
“Traditional Carnival is our base, that is what it started off with and that is what is unique to Trinidad and Tobago so if we want people to come to Trinidad and Tobago, we have to be sure about what we are promoting as Trinidad and Tobago Carnival."
Replies
The ingredients of Trinidad Carnival that captured the imagination of the world in the 1950s , and became synonymous with the entire Caribbean were the calypso and the steelband ..
Those aspects of Trinidad culture made the Carnival unique , and marketable, and still have some appeal today.
Those are the aspects ot the culture we have to use as building blocks for any attempt to promote Trinidad's Carnival as an unique and premier world festival.
Which suggests not necessarily a return to the past , but definitely a re connection with our roots , the roots of our culture.
Bring in the bajans to market we ting, or even the Jamaicans. Eh?
We cannot put everybody in the same boat, she has to be given a chance. Most governments would love to ban greed but as you know the flesh is weak, people see it as their opportunity to dip in the pot.
All I am saying now Cecil is see you same time next year and we will judge then if anything has improved or changed.
Now yuh talking Martin Maitland
The real problem is that the academians (except for a very few) want part of the PAN/CARNIVAL ACTION but they were too far removed from the process in their early years to bring any understanding to this phase of the development of PAN. So you could bring all the doctors and lawyers and put them in charge of the MINISTRY and they will bungle the administration -- and administration is the principal challenge facing the PAN right now.
It's been invented and accepted and disseminated worldwide. What we lack now is ADMINISTRATION. And anybody who would hire a BIOCHEMIST to run a CULTURAL ORGANIZATION should himself be fired from being president of the company.
So Martin and Cecil could wait til next year to judge. But I say if I see somebody putting a square peg in a round hole in the daytime, I will not wait until the nighttime to light a candle to see how much progress they have made.
You're wrong , Patrick Ramdoo.
Marketing carnival WILL BE a revelation , at least from my perspective from having lived in New England for over forty years, an area that should be a prime marketing target.
The only advertising of Carnival I'm aware of was done by calypsonians , in their musical appeals to come to Trinidad to "jump up in a steelband" , which is a pure fantasy today.
Wrong about what, Glenroy? Learning how to market carnival? You really believe that New England is a "prime marketing target"? I'd like to hear your reasons. I could agree that marketing carnival will be a revelation, since it has never been done....successfully.
New England is cold like hell , Patrick. If you can't sell a mid winter Carnival in the tropics there, then you can't sell it anywhere.
And btw , I also wonder if there is an infrastructure in T&T to support a large increase in tourism.
It's impossible to get a moderately priced hotel room in T&T at carnival , and the nation never really focused for on the services necessary for a strong tourist industry , preferring to depend on the energy sector instead. ( not that I blame them)
So maybe that's why they've never bothered to promote and advertise the island and its culture , as other countries do.
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