Mas band leaders report good sales ahead of Carnival climax

Carisa Lee

Re­porter

[email protected]

With less than four days un­til Car­ni­val Mon­day, mas band lead­ers are re­port­ing pos­i­tive sales, with some of them com­plete­ly sold out.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed three sites yes­ter­day where dozens of peo­ple were seen col­lect­ing their kits for the road.

Those play­ing with Ron­nie and Caro’s The Webs We Weave this year col­lect­ed at One Wood­brook Place yes­ter­day. But band leader Justin McIn­tosh ad­mit­ted he was not ini­tial­ly sure they would get to this point.

“It start­ed off a lil shaky, I won’t lie, with the geopo­lit­i­cal stand­point and with the clos­ing of cer­tain lo­ca­tions for fetes. Peo­ple weren’t sure if Car­ni­val was still go­ing to take place or if that was go­ing and get can­celled as well, so it kind of slowed down a lil bit ... You al­ways won­der­ing, like, ‘Damn, is this the year it takes the fi­nal hit?’ he said.

How­ev­er, he said there was a resur­gence in sales at the be­gin­ning of the new year, and now they very close to be­ing sold out, with close to 1,200 pa­trons.

“We have very lim­it­ed cos­tumes right now, like we are reach­ing to the point where if peo­ple leave them back, we have time to re­sell,” he said.

First-time mas­quer­ad­er Afiya, who chose to be in the front­line of her sec­tion in her first Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence, said she saved for months ahead of Car­ni­val. Al­though she lives here, she ad­mit­ted to be­ing wor­ried about whether the show would go on with the geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

“Of course, I was wor­ried be­cause the mon­ey did al­ready spend and I thought if Car­ni­val wasn’t sure what was go­ing to hap­pen with the mon­ey, but now it is promis­ing ... save, save, save, I work at a day­care, so I put aside, put aside,” she said.

Monique Robert­son, from the Bronx in New York, said she was con­cerned when she heard that cer­tain fetes had to be re­lo­cat­ed, as she al­so came to ex­pe­ri­ence a pop­u­lar fete.

“Es­pe­cial­ly with Stink and Dut­ty, be­cause that is the main rea­son I came. I heard the Prime Min­is­ter is caus­ing hav­oc out here, but yeah, I’m glad every­thing came to­geth­er and I’m hav­ing a won­der­ful time,” Robert­son said.

Over at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann’s, where col­lec­tion for sold-out The Lost Tribe cos­tumes is un­der­way, or­gan­is­ers said they did not ex­pe­ri­ence any con­cern from pa­trons about geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions or oth­er is­sues.

Com­mit­tee mem­ber Alex Hospedales said this year they were able to work out some of the kinks in their process.

“We do have a sold-out band again this year, so that speaks a lit­tle bit for it­self for me,” she said.

How­ev­er, Trinidad and To­ba­go–born mas­quer­aders who live in Eng­land, Ma­ri­na and Shel­don Ifill, ad­mit­ted they were a bit scep­ti­cal about vis­it­ing amid re­ports com­ing out of the coun­try, but still de­cid­ed to make the trip.

“To be hon­est, yes, we had a dis­cus­sion about it, but when you in a rock and a hard place, you have fam­i­ly here and still your cul­ture is here and home is here, the neg­a­tiv­i­ty is there, but some­times it’s more mag­ni­fied out there,” Ma­ri­na said.

“I com­ing to see my fam­i­ly, so if any­thing hap­pen­ing, I want to make sure my fam­i­ly okay and take a fete at the same time and jump on the road. So, it’s a win, win for me,” Shel­don added.

At the Hilton Ho­tel, where dis­tri­b­u­tion for Bliss cos­tumes was un­der­way, band leader and de­sign­er Humzah “Humzee” Mo­hammed said the band has been sold out since Au­gust last year. He added, how­ev­er, that they re­ceived con­cerned calls which they had to ad­dress, even with lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion.

“In­stead of pan­ick­ing any­one, we just wait and lis­ten and fol­low the di­rec­tives,” he said.

He has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 peo­ple play­ing with his pri­vate sec­tion, Acen­dia.

All three mas band rep­re­sen­ta­tives said they are ready to en­sure those play­ing in their bands have a safe and en­joy­able ex­pe­ri­ence.