Green energy is the investment of the future and carbon energy is slowing moving toward divest status. What does this mean for a country like Trinidad and Tobago whose largest source of income for the last century has been oil?
On 30 November 2018, Petrotrin was shut down with the country’s largest refinery officially closed after 101 years in operation. Approximately 5,500 permanent and temporary/casual employees lost their jobs. Oil margins continue to become narrower and this trend is not going to be reversed in the future.
When Trini Jungle Juice disclosed its tag line, taking you global in 2003, at first, the critics said it is wrong, Caribbean culture belongs in the Caribbean. Then many carnivals started spouting up and supplementing the already established Labor Day in NY, Caribana in Canada and Notting Hill Carnival in London. Today Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Atlanta, Houston and DC are just a few of the major players in North America. You can see the many global carnivals that have sprouted up with the count approaching 80 in the year 2020. See more details on here http://www.trinijunglejuice.com/home/carnivalcalendar.php
The critics said in 2010, Trini Jungle Juice is right but what you do is not important. I guess because the status quo was only local marketing mattered and how does that spend impact local economy? Then another decade later they said what you are doing is right and it is very important.
Soca is currently the biggest single genre in the cruise liner commerce. Carnival is the biggest part of Trinidad’s tourism dollars and most importantly this is the one thing that makes the Caribbean distinguishable and unique. The luxury of calling carnival enthusiast “foreigners” and holding them at arm’s length into popular events is something that must be revisited emphatically and immediately.
What Trini Jungle Juice is doing is important for the culture of Soca. It is another step forward in the dream to make this a major global genre. It is important for the future economy of the many countries that promote it by injecting money into that economy threatened by recession. It is important for national pride, something that the younger generations will need to stand on. This is for your son, your brother, your wife, your daughter and your sister. This is important.
Serious critique is not found on Facebook or Instagram, that is cow dung. It can only be had if the critique knows the goals of the vision. Despite all the critic’s comments we continue to move our passionate soft ideas to become future realities. It is not vision but inspection of the global economy, concern for the future of our culture and concern for family and friends of our “local” economy that drives us on our global carnival mission. This is more than meditation over a vision. This is the reason we do events like MENTAL which support local ticketing online and printers, venues, culinary vendors and entertainment artists. We Trini Jungle Juice and our many vanguards are grounded in reality with toil of our blood, sweat, and tears to make events like this one succeed because the future of our culture is at stake and we will not stop until we are victorious.
Our vision is so simple you can put it on a t-shirt, “Take Carnival Global”. Bring more people into the marketplace and expand the market size. Make the Global Carnival community feel at home in Trinidad. Our intuition is more of our mantra NOT one of those vision statements, you can get that off the internet. Intuition can see further than vision, so we are forced to trust in ours. The outcome is very clear, things are changing, and we need to reinvent ourselves or become a relic.
Stephen Choo Quan
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