As the curtain fell on another Carnival season, Festivals Commission Chair Elizabeth Makhoul said she was feeling positive about how this year’s festivities had been executed.
The theme this year was ‘Ah Love It Here’—a reference to the posthumously released Ricardo Drue song – and it saw the crowning of the newest Carnival Queen Desrie Markham, along with the triumph of established juggernauts Hells Gate Steel Orchestra, and King Young Destroyer in the Panorama and Calypso Monarch competitions respectively.
There were also some new additions to the Carnival scene: Jaquiel ‘Young Vice’ Jacobs and the New Gen Band with their song ‘Gravity Falls’ dominated the Party Monarch and Road March competitions.
Makhoul told yesterday’s Observer AM show, “There are some things that we need to look at and tweak, there’s some things that we implemented that I think worked, but in everything, you know, you have to learn from experiences and…so I think that we would be looking at some changes for next year in certain areas.
“But definitely we feel good about Carnival 2024, we feel good about the theme that we had for this year, celebrating Ricardo [Drue],” she said.
In addition to the much-loved soca star, Makhoul also paid tribute to Festivals Commission employee Keith Yearwood, who died in June, stating that he was a pillar of the organisation.
A number of changes were made to this year’s festivities, including reverting the Party Monarch competition back into a one-song contest.
“In talking to the artists one-on-one, a lot of them felt like they were spending too much for presentation and they weren’t getting enough practice time with the bands and, of course, the bands have their job, because you had the same band in the junior soca and the senior soca, same thing with calypso—one band in the junior calypso and the senior calypso – so that meant one band has to learn about 100 songs in less than two weeks,” Makhoul said.
“So, I’m glad we made that decision because … this is the best presentation I’ve seen in years coming out of our soca artists.”
Makhoul also responded to suggestions to move Carnival out of the city.
“What we need to do, first of all, is to do the proper investigation. One thing I will say we need to do is start early…we held up the parade [Tuesday] for two and a half hours because masqueraders weren’t in their bands yet,” she said.
Makhoul continued that while mas’ is growing in Antigua and Barbuda, it is difficult to find another location which would offer the logistical ease of St John’s.
“They say they want to go around the stadium. By the time you put Insane and Myst together, that is exactly right around the stadium—they have about 10 to 11 trucks so imagine that stretch around the stadium; it’s going to be stagnant because you can’t move because they’re that big,” she noted.
Makhoul also noted the difficulty in finding an alternative location which would allow persons to safely park their cars, with access roads to ensure participants and bystanders can get to the parades efficiently.
