OPTIMISING USE OF NBN’S TELEVISION CHANNELS

While almost everyone regrets the closure of the NBN and with it its two television stations, Trinidad and Tobago Television (ttt) and The Information Channel (TIC), the leasing of TIC’s Channels 4 and 16 by the National Carnival Commission, (NCC) provides NCC with the unique opportunity of promoting all aspects of the nation’s culture 17 hours a day, 6 am to 11 pm, for the next three months. Admittedly, the emphasis would be on Carnival given the NCC’s raison d’etre, and Carnival, unlike any other major cultural offering is, undoubtedly, a truly national festival. However the NCC should use the opportunity offered by NBN’s stumbling to promote the variety of fares of the cultural melting pot that is Trinidad and Tobago’s. In this way it can effect a greater understanding by each group of the cultural contributions of the others.

It should seek to give continuous, informed exposure not only to Carnival but to Hosay, Phagwa, Orisha and Spiritual Baptists observances inter alia. And with respect to Carnival it can film old time Carnival mas — black and blue devils, jabs jabs, pierrot grenades, burrokeets, dames lorraine, sailor mas’ with its fireman’s dance, Red and Black Indians, midnight robbers, minstrels, bats and moko jumbies — and televise them for the benefit of a younger generation already sated with highly commercialised mas.’ Because its natural emphasis is on Carnival the NCC may wish to consider taking its (leased) television cameras into several of the leading masquerade camps and videotape the construction of Carnival costumes, while at the same time assigning staff members to interview organisers of bands re discussion on what went into the finalising of choices for their Carnival productions, the design of costumes and the materials used.

The fact that the costumes of some of the bands are still being made will allow for the television cameras to zoom in on their being stitched, glued and otherwise packaged. Wire benders, seamstresses and shoemakers can be shown at work with band or section leaders explaining the significance of design, highlights and colour coordination. Videotaping can also be planned for the featuring of Calypsonians at rehearsal and on stage, as well as their back up singers a critical component to the success of many a tune. Calypsonians, those who actually compose songs, can be recorded explaining how they go about the selection of themes and tunes, and their working alongside arrangers of the music for their work. What the public sees and hears at the Calypso tents and at Dimanche Gras very often represent months of hard work and rehearsals.

In like manner the musical offerings by steel orchestras are as a result of careful selection and fashioning by arrangers and long, long months of rehearsal into rehearsal until everything is just right. The NCC should go into the recording studios, some of them indeed makeshift; the tents, the panyards and the mas’ camps and film and word picture what in essence are slices of history in the making. And in the process tell the story to the aficionados of pan, Calypso and mas’ of the effort and sometimes uncertainty, the sacrifice and the sweat and tears that all go toward that first note by a steelband at Panorama preliminaries, the first line by a Calypsonian at a tent at opening night and the pushing off by a mas’ band on Carnival Monday. But as I noted earlier although Carnival hugs all in its national embrace, yet there are other fingers that make up the country’s cultural hands.

The National Carnival Commission should optimise the use of NBN’s former TIC’s television Channels 4 and 16 to record the many faces of Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural pot pourri. The NCC can begin by going to the yards and into the homes or tents where those hauntingly beautiful tadjahs are created for Hosay and record how they are built painstaking stage by painstaking stage. Its relevant staff can for the benefit of viewers interview the designers and builders of the tadjahs and the other devotees, who make the drums on which the music will be played by the talented musicians who will lead the thousands on both nights of Hosay. NCC should film, too, the preparations for and the actual days and nights of Hosay and Phagwa, the colour and verve of Phagwa and the scores of young and not so young sprinkling abeer on each other.

While the major Hosay celebrations are in St. James and one of the important points, the North-Western end of the grounds of Queen’s Royal College, St. Clair, an area which Muslims regard as sacred, cameras could, along with St. James and the grounds of Queen’s Royal, go to whatever other areas of Trinidad Hosay is observed. Let viewing audiences into why the annual pilgrimage is made to the North-Western end of the Queen’s Royal compound and why the carefully built tadjahs are thrown into the sea at the end of Hosay. Here is an opportunity to tap, television wise, into the cultural mosaic of Trinidad and Tobago and assist each group to better appreciate the finer points of other cultures. Admittedly, the National Carnival Commission, with the focus on Carnival as its name suggests, may strike some as not the proper vehicle for the filming of non-Carnival events. But it is the opportunity presented which matters and of which full advantage should be taken.

Here is a chance, without the normal stress on commercialism, to record on film and telecast for the benefit of audiences what makes us unique as a people. Hopefully, too, the exercise if undertaken by the NCC will be able to assist greatly members of the various religions, sects, ethnic groups and cultures to understand each other all the more. This is not to say we do not as a people regret the passing of ttt, a station which produced some excellent family values television — Teen Dance Party, Mastana Bahar, Hazel Ward-Redman’s Twelve and Under and Holly Betaudier’s Scouting for Talent, Rikki Tikki, Know Your Country and Uncle Ian Ali’s feature among others. However, regrets apart, optimum use should be made, culture wise, of the time between the closure of NBN and the proposed reopening of a new State owned broadcast and telecast network in the officially announced six months’ time.