He did not say only that women should take responsibility.

He simply said there comes a time when a woman must recognise she is in a deleterious relationship and should get out.

That is not a guarantee she will be safe — there is a need for greater support from the State.

But many women have exited such situations and gone on to make good lives for themselves and their children.

What he was saying is that this is the first, and perhaps most critical, step for women to take to protect themselves.

There is simply no justification for the vilification poured on him by people with an axe to grind and whose attacks should be looked at suspiciously.

Any fair examination of his statement will satisfy the objective observer of his intent.

Karan Mahabirsingh Carapichaima

The PM has sadly missed the point of the current anger and disquiet coming from the population — that we no longer care who was to blame for things of the past but are more interested in action now from the Government that was put there to fix the problems.

He would be better served putting the correct people in place to solve the horrendous crime problem and fixing the economy rather than wasting time on these PR exploits. It’s time to show he is a leader capable of solving the nation’s problems.

S Rampersad San Fernando

Apparently Khayyam is not aware of what the ban entails. It is just a suspension from certain countries, namely: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Not all Muslim countries.

Also, the “ban” is just a temporary halt on refugee admissions for 120 days. It is not a Muslim ban. Why is that so difficult to understand? While it is true that Muslims have lived in several countries and the majority of them are peaceful and law-abiding, for Khayyam to make the brittle argument that Muslims lived happily, peacefully, and lovingly in America during the time of former President Barrack Obama and the previous Presidents is testament to his lack of recent historical knowledge.

Apparently Khayyam isn’t aware of the 9/11 attacks which happened under President George W Bush and the first World Trade Center attack which took place in 1993 under President Bill Clinton.

What about the attacks during Obama’s tenure? There were the Fort Hood shooting in 2009, the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, the Chattanooga shootings and the San Bernardino attack in 2015, the Orlando massacre in 2016 in which the perpetrator, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to ISIS. Then there was the most recent attack in December last year in which a Somali “refugee” rammed people with a car then embarked on a stabbing spree.

But Trump is a “pharaoh” and will be “thrown into hell on Judgment Day” for wanting to protect US citizens from religious extremists hell-bent on causing havoc everywhere they go? We all see the recent carnage and destruction they have caused in Europe. Most notably in France, Belgium and Germany. But Trump is Herod? Can Khayyam please tell me who has Trump killed? If Trump will be “thrown into hell on Judgment Day” for having “no mercy for Muslims,” where will the perpetrators of the aforementioned terrorist attacks go?

Paul Simmons Morvant

This is why this matter is being deliberately delayed and it now looks very much like the idea is going to be thrown through the window in order to satisfy the Privy Council and the human right organisation.

The long and short of it is that the lives of citizens are less important than the rules and regulations of both the Privy Council and the human rights organisation.

Our politicians must comply with the wishes of the majority of our citizens and restore the death penalty now if they want to remain in the corridors of power here.

GA Marques via email

Speaking at the official launch of Victoria Keyes on the Diego Martin Highway yesterday, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley revealed the plan to those present.

“In St James, even as we complete this development, you would find another 200 units or so which have remained largely unattended for the past six years. What we intend to do, as we sell these units, … that we would begin the completion of those units on George Cabral Street, but those would not be completed at this level, at this cost, and they would not be multi-million dollar units,” he said.

Rowley stated the initial intention of the HDC was to build low to medium income housing at Victoria Keyes. However, in the 12 years since construction of the units began, the finishing was changed, facilities were added, and cost increased considerably.

“It would be inconceivable in the housing distribution programme for lower-income and middle-income persons to make properties available at $3 million and $4 million so the State was forced to sell these units on the open market. The alternative would have been wholly unacceptable public policy,” he said.

Rowley stated the HDC had over 100,000 applicants and that it was not realistic to expect the government to provide housing for everyone.

He said Government would continue to make a significant contribution to the housing situation, but lamented that Government was ‘not seeing the kind of response’ they were hoping for from the Private Sector to assist.

He said the Housing Ministry was discussing other arrangements to make the most of the ‘little money’ available to them, and that Government intended to use competition and other policies to bring the cost of construction more in line with a realistic marketplace.

Going into more detail, Minister of Housing and Urban Development Randall Mitchell stated that 12 years ago, the Victoria Keyes project was estimated at $2.5 million but in 2011, the then government instructed the HDC to enlarge the apartments, and to include facilities such as a multi-storeyed car park, pool, club house, and tennis court.

These modifications raised the cost to $652 million so that the apartments became financially outof- reach to lower- and middle-income earners. Therefore, the ruling Government made the decision to place 206 of the 264 units up for sale on the open market.

The cost of the one, two, and three-bedroom units on floors three to eight cost ranges from $1.4 million to $4.5 million.

However, 48 units on the ground and first floors of the three towers were reserved for allocation through the Rent-to-Own Programme and targeted towards the physically challenged.

“We are giving the opportunity of home ownership to those HDC applicants at the uppermost band of earners on the database. Those applicants, who may be professionals, and their families will have a chance to own one of these sought after units. “These are persons who may not have the ability to qualify to purchase a unit now, but who will surely be able to in 3-5 years from now. These units will be subject to the usual HDC qualifying criteria,” he explained.

Ten apartments would be retained for use by the State.

Abdullah and several other prominent Muslim leaders, including president of the Islamic Missionaries Guild Imtiaz Mohammed and Jamaat Al Muslimeen leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, were not invited to the meeting, but remained steadfast in their view that some of the proposals contained in the amendment to the Anti-Terrorism law were seriously flawed and needed to be revisited.

Abdullah predicted that the meeting with Dillon will bear little or no fruit. “Having meetings with those individuals are of no use at all,” he said. “Those individuals are not able to offer solutions to what is happening right now.” Abdullah said while many of the leaders who attended the meeting would have been able to speak on aspects of the faith, they were out of touch with what was happening on the ground.

“They like to sit and talk about issues of the religion, but in terms of being relevant, they never know what is taking place,” he claimed.

Asked why he felt the specific Muslim groups were left out of the meeting, Abdullah said: “The Government knows if they meet with us they will be challenged with the questions we will pose to them. It is unfortunate what is happening at this point in time.” The national security minister’s meeting with the selected group of Muslims came almost one week after Abdullah and other Muslim leaders met in an emergency session at the Islamic Missionaries Guild, Kelly Village, Caroni, to discuss the Government’s proposals for amending the Anti-Terrorism Bill.

The group, Muslims of Trinidad and Tobago (MOTT), has since called for the existing legislation to be repealed, insisting that it infringed the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, particularly those travelling to Syria and other Middle-Eastern countries.

At a recent post-Cabinet news briefing, Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi said the Government was bolstering the existing anti-terrorism legislation with a view to minimising the likelihood of citizens joining terrorist organisations overseas.

This came after National Security Minister Edmund Dillon announced in the Senate that there were some 130 citizens who left local shores to join terrorist organisations.

Among other things, the Government proposes stiff penalties for those found to be in support of people bent on joining terrorist organisations and a revision of the provisions for the investigation of suspected terrorists and the gathering of information by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

The amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Bill are expected to be laid in the Parliament tomorrow.

Dillon’s meeting on Friday with members of the Muslim community sought to devise a strategy for collaboration by which information could be shared with respect to identifying potential terrorist recruiters and those seeking to go overseas to engage in conflicts, a statement from the Ministry of National Security said on Friday.

Among the groups represented at the meeting were the National Islamic Counselling Services, Islamic Resource Society, National Muslim Women’s Organisation of T&T and the Trinidad Muslim League.

The US Government was involved in the discussions also, which is expected to be an ongoing initiative.

The meeting came as Justice Frank Seepersad declared three men as terrorists for conspiring to commit a terrorist attack in 2007 at John F Kennedy International Airport, New York, by exploding fuel tanks and the fuel pipeline under the airport.

The men, Trinidadian Abdel Nur, former Guyanese parliamentarian Abdul Kadir and US naturalised Guyanese Russell De Freitas, were deemed as terrorists in accordance with Section 22 (B) of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2005.

However, Abdullah yesterday maintained the Anti-Terrorism Act should be repealed.

“This is still my opinion. We do not need a terrorism bill here. What we need is a crime bill,” he said.

“The Government of Trinidad and Tobago, the Attorney General, the Minister of National Security are paying too much attention on something that has no effect on Trinidad and Tobago.

Abdullah accused Al-Rawi and Dillon of instilling fear in the hearts of the people in the country.

He said citizens should not be concerned about terrorism.

“This is the land of calypso, sun, sea, sand. In the Guinness World Book of Records, we have the most amount of holidays in the country.

What terrorism are they talking about? “We have been living here without any threats to us, apart from the 1970 (Black Power) uprising and the 1990 attempted coup.” Reiterating that the MOTT has called for a meeting with Al-Rawi, Abdullah again argued the bill casts aspersions on Muslims and other non-Muslim devotees alike.

At 35, Gray, a former Fulbright scholar, is an innovation engagement officer with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and tells Sunday Newsday her passion for humanitarian causes began from a young age.

“Growing up, my two biggest dreams were to be a professional singer and to change the world. I grew up with a mother who was a social worker, and as far as I can remember, I always felt a deep affinity with humanitarian causes. I remember crying whenever I watched the news about human suffering,” she says.

She also recalls at the age of eight wondering what she could do to help victims of the July 1990 attempted coup. Originally from Diamond Vale, Diego Martin for her early schooling she attended Diamond Vale Government Primary and then Bishop Anstey High School.

She took some time exploring her artistic side when she joined the Marionettes Youth Chorale at 15, and then did a BA in music at the University of the West Indies (UWI) to fulfil “big dreams of maybe ending up on Broadway or recording music.” At 19 she filled out a UN volunteer application but was not accepted.

“There was something about the humanitarian field that also called out to me. I think for many years I had a hard time reconciling the two.

I never in a million years believed that I would be doing what I do now.

I dreamt it, but never imagined it, especially not while I was at UWI.

At UWI I thought my career would be strictly arts-related, but I’d begun to toy with the idea of doing arts for social good, and thought that that would be where I would find my happy medium.” From 2000-2005 she worked as a community educator, and then in 2007 spent a year as a programme manager with the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. She got a 2010 Fulbright Scholarship to do a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Public Policy and Management, which she described as “the perfect programme that fed my two passions.” Also that year she worked as a marketing specialist in Washington, DC, and led research and co-produced a White Paper for the White House Office of Social Innovation.

In 2011 she worked in Johannesburg, South Africa for a startup non-profit that gave business training to micro-entrepreneurs, 60 percent of whom were asylum-seekers from neighbouring African countries.

“So many parts of this experience were impactful to me. Listening to their stories, especially the stories of those who fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was tough. I listened to stories of men who literally had to flee on foot as the rebels approached and had already killed their families.

”There was one guy in particular I would never forget. He was in church on a Sunday when his neighbours came running in to tell him that the rebels had just killed his father and they were searching for him. He literally ran into the jungle and hid for days, and walked until he finally got to the border. From there he made his way down to South Africa.

“There is so much resilience in people who’ve suffered like this. He cried while telling me his story. I cried with him,” she recalls.

She also remembers mentoring a young girl from Malawi who wanted to start her own hairdressing business.

“What I always took away from everyone I interviewed was that they still had hope. They all knew in their hearts that one day things would get better and they kept working towards that.” The following year she traded Africa for Barcelona, Spain, and worked for two years as an associate director of marketing and communications.

And how did she end up at UNHCR? “I literally saw my job online and applied for it. I’d been applying for UN jobs for about ten years and never expected in a million years to get it, but I did. It was really that simple. No connections, nothing.

“But I’d developed an affinity for refugees and asylum-seekers while working in South Africa. I feel in many ways that I can relate to the concept of being a stranger in another land. Not that being an expat is anything at all like being a refugee, but the feeling of not being home is something I can empathise with,” she says She explains that as an innovation engagement officer, she was first hired to engage UNHCR staff, refugees, and other, private-sector partners through the agency’s corporate innovation programme. This aimed to empower staff and refugees to submit ideas for solving specific challenges.

Winning ideas were put into practice.

“My duties are quite varied, though. A typical office day would consist of lots of meetings and phone calls.

”But I do travel to the field often – to refugee camps and communities, and to different UNHCR operations around the world. One day I could be at my desk in Geneva, or speaking on a panel at a conference. On another day I could be in a UN convoy supported by armed military, driving to a camp close to the border with Somalia, or in a tiny plane flying two hours to land on an airstrip in Ethiopia, where you only hope it doesn’t rain so the plane can land. It never really gets boring.” Based in Geneva, Switzerland, for almost three years, she works in a special unit called “Innovation” where she and the other staff “basically look for better or more efficient solutions to some of the most complex challenges of being a forcibly displaced person.” She is now in charge of research and design for financial-technology solutions for refugees, who are often left out of the formal banking economy for a number of reasons.

“I’m working with some great private-sector partners and we are investigating different technologies around digital payments and remittances. I also am spearheading a project that would empower refugees to design and manufacture their own innovations, giving them dignity, and decreasing their dependence on others.” On helping refugees to help themselves, Gray explains the basic concept is “one of dignity and independence.” “Being a refugee often means waiting. Waiting on someone to give you something, waiting on someone to grant you status, waiting to be resettled, waiting for the war to end so you can go back home. There’s lots of waiting.

“I am a big believer in empowering refugees so that they can take more control over their circumstances and create things for themselves. It’s the difference between handing out a solar lantern to a refugee family or teaching a family how to build a circuit board and create a light. In the latter example, they now feel a sense of power to create change in their lives. That feeling is everything.

It’s a feeling that many non-refugees take for granted.” Her work in Africa included heading a “Humanitarian Innovation Jam” in Kampala, capital of Uganda, which brought together 40 refugees and 40 humanitarians for a two-day workshop with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Refugees become part of the process, rather than passive recipients of aid. What stood out most is that the young refugees who were there articulated that they wanted to be able to change their own communities, that they need knowledge and support,” she said.

In March last year she helped organise a special leadership lesson with Pakistani activist and youngest-ever Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, who addressed adolescent refugee girls living in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya. She explains that, as someone committed to education for girls, Yousafzai wanted a chance to address girls and to encourage them to pursue their education, no matter how difficult.

Gray also recalls meeting a teenage girl who said she wanted to be Somalia’s first female magistrate.

“This experience impacted me the most, because there is something truly exceptional about witnessing someone who can articulate a dream that could seem (from the outside) so impossible, but having absolute confidence in herself that she would make it come true.” Gray said as a former teacher in Trinidad she has a passion for children and young people and thinks “a child who doesn’t even believe he or she can even dream of something outside of his/her circumstance is one of the saddest things to witness.” “Every young person should have a dream, or an idea about what impact they would like to make in the world.” The most rewarding aspect of her job is being part of an organisation committed to the cause of protecting people forcibly displaced by war or conflict.

“It’s rewarding to work as part of something bigger that seeks to protect and assist some of the world’s most vulnerable.

It feels rewarding to know that the little I do is part of something bigger and meaningful.” She made a call to action to support refugees, adding that the Living Water Community takes care of refugees in Trinidad and UNHCR now has representation here.

Gray returns home every other year and says she misses her family and the food – she cooks Trini food wherever she is and recalls making pelau for Germans while living in Berlin and watching them eating the “bun-bun.” Inspired by people of all cultures enjoying local food, she has toyed with the idea of opening a gourmet Trinidadian restaurant.

Her plan, however, is to return home one day and start her own social enterprise to benefit not only Trinidad, but the entire Caribbean.

Because of her responsibilities with UNHCR she does not have time for her other passion of music.

A biography of her, she says, would be called I Walk with Lions – a tribute to one of her favourite experiences: walking with lions in Zambia.

“I also would choose this title because I recognise that anything ‘great’ that I’ve ever done is because of the lions around me: my family, my faith, my friends, and anyone that I’ve ever encountered in my work. I’ve had so much support throughout my life, I could never take credit for anything. It’s all about the lions I’ve encountered. And so I walk with lions both literally and figuratively.”

The 28-year-old intends to stamp her brand on the world. “When you wake up, everything must be J Angelique. Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up and live in a J Angelique apartment, put on J Angelique clothes, drive a J Angelique car and just go to work by J Angelique. That is me and that is my world and people like it,” she said. And she wants to bring what she likes to the rest of the world.

Forde runs her business at a clothing store in Valsayn along with business partner, Rian Codrington.

Forde holds a BSc in Sociology with a minor in International Relations and a MSc in Development Statistics, but has always had a love for sewing.

Both her grandmothers were seamstresses, and while attending the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine campus she hosted a number of fashion shows. It was during one of these events in 2012 that she realised she could make her passion a career.

“I started in 2012 when I debuted my first collection. I debuted it at UWI, JFK, St Augustine. My collection was then Caribbean Butterfly, when we did our first Monday wear collection.” Forde said she has always been fashion forward. “Just how I knew I wanted to do Statistics, I knew I wanted to do fashion,” she said.

“I think it was something very much intrinsic and I gave it a shot,” she added.

She uses her knowledge gained at university to run her fashion business.“Fashion is a business as well and it helps when you can manipulate numbers and forecast trends, not only in styles but also numbers.” Sociology, being the study of society, helps to keep Forde’s fashion real. “It is based on people and what people do. We, therefore have collections geared toward everything. From mas to bridal to readyto- wear, if you’re going on a yacht. What you do on a daily basis that is sociology, you know how to analyse the daily living.” Since her debut, Forde says she has grown and her business is less seasonal since she caters to so many things. “Some people might think it is a disadvantage that you’re not focused on, say, swimsuits or one type of dress, but I have to eat every day of the year. So when you’re not playing mas and you’re not buying Monday wear you have to buy work clothes. When you’re not buying work clothes and you’re going out, you buy that. If you’re getting married, you buy that.” Creating pieces that people could relate to and being able to wear everything has helped Forde develop her business even more. In TT, she said, people were open to local fashion. Although she does not like the slogan support local, since “it is not a charity case. I want people to buy it because they want it”.

Forde has taken steps to perfect her art having done short courses in draping, fashion forecasting among others.

“My mother sewed all my clothes when I saw younger. My grandmothers were seamstresses. So it is was a natural ability at first,” she said. She does not sew her own clothing but employs two seamstresses to put together her four or five collections per year.

When she first decided to make fashion her career, her mother, Gillian Forde was “okay with it. It was my dad (Roger Forde, QC) who had the problem.” Her father had ambitions of her being a lawyer like him and was not generally pleased about her career choice. He has since, however, changed his mind, seeing the success of her work.

As to her future ambitions, “I think everyone wants their clothes in Macy’s, but for me clothing is only one aspect. Because I am so ingrained in the Jin Forde/J Angelique world, I want to do clothing and more things.” Forde has since branched into the event management field and is also seeking to try her hands at real estate. Clothing and fashion is just one aspect of what she seeks to accomplish.

She has hosted a series of high teas in Barbados as well as events in TT, bringing how she sees the world closer to people.

She has already launched her new ready-to-wear collection for 2017 called WildFlower and plans to do more business and bridal wear this year.

She defines her style as very feminine, utilising light colours, light fabric using chiffons and nets, as well as creating sexy and easy to wear gowns.

She has styled local television personalities Desha Rambhajan and Hema Ramkissoon, and created a costume for soca artiste Machel Montano in 2015 for Crop Over in Barbados.

She is also a fashion consultant on a Cup of Joe with Joel Villafana on TV6 and co-owns a section in Baje International, a Barbadian Crop Over band.

Forde is patient about her brand being an international household name.

“When the time comes it will come. I think it will be in the form of not a shop necessarily but at least my clothes would be stocked somewhere,” she said. In the meantime, she remains busy building her world.

For more on Janelle Forde’s fashion visit www.jangelique.com

But what is the Carnival Institute? An official brochure says it has the task of “gathering knowledge and artefacts related to Carnival and other festivals, collecting, analysing, preserving, conserving and disseminating this knowledge to the public.” This information is disseminated through lectures to schools and the general public, Carnival workshops, documentary films for cinemas, TV and YouTube, post-graduate lectures and supervision, student internships, and print publications.

Dr Hollis “Chalkdust” Liverpool, programme professor at the Academy of Arts, Culture and Public Affairs at the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), told Sunday Newsday he started the institute in 1998 while he was the director of culture.

“We launched it but there was no place for it. We went to the NCC (National Carnival Commission), because Carnival falls under the NCC, and they gave us a building on Victoria Avenue, with me as director,” he recalled.

However, he said, the NCC felt it could not support the institute financially, and moved it to a small room at the Normandie Hotel.

Liverpool soon stepped down as director and the institute fell under the late Pat Bishop. “By being in that little area, it lost all its meaning. You can’t have a Carnival institute parked up in a room in a hotel.

And so it just decimated the whole thing. It went to naught,” he said.

The NCC eventually revived the institute under Dr Kim Johnson, relocating it to Jerningham Avenue, Belmont.

However, while the new space was larger than the room at the Normandie, Liverpool said it still simply was not big enough.

“The NCC doesn’t really have an idea what is a Carnival institute, because a Carnival institute must be big and sprawling. It should be a space for students to come in and do research, it should have a museum, a room where you can push a button and listen to icons singing, a room to show documentaries, a small printery…

“Up to now it can’t come off the ground because it doesn’t have the aesthetics or the funding.” Liverpool added that the institute should be both a living and virtual museum, also containing King and Queen costumes, and the outfits of influential calypsonians throughout the years.

He lamented that an institute in the US Virgin Islands had acquired many of the Mighty Sparrow’s outfits.

“That should be in the institute here! But where would we put them?” However, he did not blame the lack of funding for developing the institute solely on the government.

Instead, he believed it should be sponsored by companies and financial institutions.

The current director, Dr Kim Johnson, has similar thoughts.

He agreed the institute was understaffed and underfunded, as the government subvention covered mostly salaries, rent, and utilities, and suggested that companies and corporations sponsor individual projects to aid in the preservation of the country’s culture.

He said corporations gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor fetes or concerts, “things that would last one season or even one evening,” instead of contributing to something that would last generations.

For example, he said he would appreciate funding for a YouTube channel in order to teach interested people how to play pan or write calypso or parang songs. For that, the institute would need to hire people to develop a curriculum and to serve as instructors, film crews, and editors, but it did not have the money.

“Give me $30,000 and I can make that a global, go-to space.

With funding I could teach the world; without it, I’m spinning top in mud,” he said. Johnson added that our culture was “losing its youth” because people did not want to engage young people in “their medium” – technology and the Internet – in order to pass on the knowledge.

But funding is not the only challenge.

He stressed that the Carnival Institute was a research and educational institute, so he believes it should be under the Ministry of Education rather than the NCC, which falls under the Ministry of Community Development, Culture and the Arts.

He also believes it should be associated with the University of the West Indies (UWI) and UTT , as the institute’s clients range from PhD students to primary-school children.

“The NCC is concerned with organising Carnival and deals with things like calypso tents, portable toilets, putting up the North Stand, the routes for bands and things like that. The institute has nothing to do with that, and the NCC really isn’t interested in what we do,” he said.

In his three years as director, Johnson said there had been three NCC chairmen, but despite requests to discuss the goals and needs of the institute, he had only been able to speak with the current chairman, Kenny De Silva.

“The idea of presenting my vision of the Carnival Institute, what we could do, what is our potential – I have never been able to do that, because they were busy dealing with the North Stand and such.

If I want to spend $500 I have to go to them…The idea of research and education is outside of their scope, beyond their vision or interest,” he said.

In a brief telephone interview with Sunday Newsday, De Silva admitted the NCC should be more involved with the work of the institute and said it would attempt to do so in the near future. He also acknowledged that funding was inadequate, saying the institute was “trying to do as much as they can with the little they have.” And while he recognised that the institute should play a much wider role in society, he said the level of funding necessary for all the archiving and gathering of material needed for the preservation of our Carnival history made that very difficult.

Johnson said the Carnival Institute had a lot of financial potential, but the government was not taking the lead. He noted the number-one reason people visit Trinidad and Tobago was for Carnival, yet this mecca for pan, calypso and Carnival had no Carnival museum. He pointed out that if a person was interested in reggae, they would visit the Bob Marley Museum in Jamaica, and those interested in art would visit the Louvre in Paris, or the Tate Museums in the United Kingdom.

Steelbands around the world would love the opportunity to learn the history of the instrument at a tertiary level, or simply how to play. Also, Trinidad-style carnivals held the interest of people around the globe who would like to know more.

“Carnival is important to TT . It’s important that we study it, it’s important that we educate people about it, it’s important that we improve it, because it is declining. The Carnival Institute has a very important cultural and economic role to play,” he said.

Johnson added that traditional mas had roots in Africa and Haiti, as well as parallels in other Caribbean countries, and people could not properly understand Carnival until those links were explored. All of these were important intellectual and cultural links that the institute needed to develop, but, since he could not even get money to go to Tobago with two people for a week to film, he doubted it would happen soon.

However, he said the institute had begun the process of establishing links with research institutes in other islands. It could be supervising students from educational institutions around the world, playing its part in educational tourism, which is one of the most valuable forms of tourism, as it could lead to people remain in the country for years.

“The potential is vast. We have so many Japanese, American, British, and other people who come to play in our steelbands for Panorama. We could be positioning ourselves at the centre of a global network, because there are carnivals and steelbands all over the world that were inspired by us and they look to us. We are a mecca with a natural network. Let us develop it for our culture and our economy,” he said.

The institute is developing several documentaries, which are in different stages of production. These will focus not only on Carnival, but also on other festivals and aspects of TT culture, including Phagwa, Christmas, Hosay, a Kali puja, and a bongo wake.

Johnson stressed that the events and interviews needed to be filmed and properly archived, which takes up a lot of digital space, so proper data storage and backup was necessary.It was also necessary for the institute to have a proper online presence, where anyone who wanted to know about anything relating to Caribbean culture could go, while putting Trinidad at the centre.

The Ministry of Culture told Sunday Newsday it had also asked the institute to develop a concept for the establishment of a Carnival Museum at Fort San Andres in Port-of-Spain, working in collaboration with the NCC and the National Museum. The ministry said the partnership with the museum and further development of that initiative had the potential to provide space for the institute to become a more integral part of the Carnival landscape and to gain more prominence.

For years, some artistes have blamed a “soca mafia” for their lack of success, saying that the mafia determined what would be a hit by controlling what songs would play on the airwaves, favouring certain artistes.

However, John, who has been part of the entertainment circle for about a decade, said he did not believe the rumour of a soca mafia was true. “If you are truly talented, it would be very hard to hide that. If you are really talented and the crowd is for you, there is no way to really hide that. In terms of airplay, that could be controlled to an extent but I wouldn’t call it a mafia.” He added that an artiste could not have a mediocre song and expect it to become popular or played on radio. “The artiste has to come good. They need to be serious about their craft. That’s the only way to guarantee success but there is no one formula to that success,” he said.

Therefore, John explained that, while he tries to get his clients in major shows. He also books them for smaller ones, including appearances at bars and boat rides in order to get people familiar with the songs. If people know the music and like it, he said, then requests by promoters and audiences would lead to bigger shows.

At the moment, John manages soca artistes K Rich (Kenneth Richards) and Jahmoun (Mendoza), as well as DJs Jo Jo The Don, and Selector Caleb.

However, Dynamik Regime also does event promotions, and social media marketing for small businesses, events, and artists including performers, photographers, and videographers.

John started in the entertainment industry with his party and event promotion company, “Dynamik… the Next Level,” then became a radio show cohost.

He began managing his co-worker, DJ Akil Borneo who later became soca artiste 5Star Akil. However, after several years he took a break and about two years ago, returned to the business to manage Borneo.

“People were seeing my creativity in his transition, how he was building as an artiste. It was very hard to make the transition from DJ to soca artiste and be taken seriously. When people saw that transition, I was approached by other artistes to work with them. However, I made a calculated decision not to do so until last year when I strategically selected who I wanted to work with,” he said.

And so, with new clients and the new social media aspect, John re-branded the company about six months ago. He said he saw the need for social media assistance since artistes’ schedules were very hectic and personally keeping up with their social media presence would be difficult.

Also, he noticed that many advertisers were focussing on social media so he felt that an active online presence was important.

Despite these efforts, John admitted that the Carnival season started off “tough” as promoters cut back due to the recession.

Therefore, instead of having a variety of artistes performing at an event, promoters seem to prefer DJs and one or two artistes with this year’s more popular songs. Fortunately, however, he said as Carnival Monday and Tuesday draws closer, things were picking up for other entertainers, including his clients