Eti­enne Charles’ Road March in Con­cert will once again fea­ture a per­for­mance by a group of for­mer­ly in­car­cer­at­ed artistes known as Crit­i­cal Mas.

This will be the sec­ond time Crit­i­cal Mas is per­form­ing with the ac­claimed jazz trum­peter and com­pos­er at his con­cert. Last year, the group per­formed at the first Road March con­cert ded­i­cat­ed to cel­e­brat­ing Road March songs through the years.

This year, the group will per­form their sec­ond sin­gle, the lyri­cal­ly fierce an­them, Prison to Palace, pro­duced by well-known Trini­bad singer Rheon El­bourne and renowned pro­duc­er ForbesZ, and fea­tur­ing Charles along­side Crit­i­cal Mas mem­bers Pap­pa Mel, Benifet­zz, Mega Bites and Fri­day.

The group’s first sin­gle, Born a Crim­i­nal, which al­so fea­tured Eti­enne Charles, was re­leased on iTunes and Spo­ti­fy in Sep­tem­ber last year. An al­bum is in the works for re­lease this year.

“I am ex­cit­ed to wel­come Crit­i­cal Mas back to the stage with me. They are a won­der­ful group of very tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als and I am hap­py to pro­vide a plat­form for them to show­case their cre­ativ­i­ty and al­so use their art to ad­vo­cate for change. My work is all about cre­at­ing aware­ness through art so I am ho­n­oured to have helped in the for­ma­tion of this group and to pro­pel them to na­tion­al con­scious­ness,” said Charles.

Crit­i­cal Mas is housed un­der the um­brel­la of In­car­cer­a­tion Na­tions Net­work, a glob­al prison re­form or­gan­i­sa­tion helmed by well-known writer, pro­fes­sor and ac­tivist Dr Baz Dresinger.

It was co-cre­at­ed by INN’s Team Leader in Trinidad, Nicholas Khan, who spent 15 years in prison and has since re­leased two books of po­et­ry and trav­elled to South Africa, Brazil, Ja­maica and An­tigua rep­re­sent­ing the net­work.

The seed for the cre­ation of the group was plant­ed in 2022 when Charles and Dr Dresinger dis­cussed ways they can col­lab­o­rate on jus­tice so­lu­tions on the heels of the pub­li­ca­tion of her best-sell­ing book In­car­cer­a­tion Na­tions and the de­but of his land­mark 2022 pro­duc­tion San Juan Hill: A New York Sto­ry, which marked the re­open­ing of David Gef­fen Hall at New York’s Lin­coln Cen­ter.

Crit­i­cal Mas was con­cep­tu­alised along the lines of the San Juan Hill per­for­mance which was an im­mer­sive mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­tion that trans­port­ed the au­di­ence via mu­sic, vi­su­als, and orig­i­nal first-per­son ac­counts of the his­to­ry of the San Juan Hill neigh­bour­hood and the In­dige­nous, im­mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties that pop­u­lat­ed the land on which Lin­coln Cen­ter re­sides.

Re­search for this fu­ture pro­duc­tion be­gan in Jan­u­ary last year with a month-long ther­a­peu­tic arts work­shop for a group of cur­rent­ly and for­mer­ly in­car­cer­at­ed artistes in Trinidad. With each work­shop, the col­lec­tive of cur­rent­ly and for­mer­ly in­car­cer­at­ed artistes and sur­vivors of crime in T&T took shape and be­came Crit­i­cal Mas.

The name Crit­i­cal Mas is a play on the Car­ni­val theme of the col­lec­tive’s work and the fact that for the first time in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, a crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple with lived ex­pe­ri­ence of the jus­tice sys­tem have a promi­nent plat­form with which to ef­fect change.

“I am deeply grate­ful to Eti­enne for part­ner­ing with me on this project and pro­vid­ing a space on his stage for them to show­case their tal­ents. I am al­so thank­ful to the won­der­ful men and women of Crit­i­cal Mas for join­ing us in our ef­forts to cre­ate change in the jus­tice sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It has been proven that ma­jor artis­tic works about the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem lead to pol­i­cy change which is ur­gent­ly need­ed every­where,” said Dr Dresinger.

Crit­i­cal Mas is among mul­ti­ple jus­tice projects that In­car­cer­a­tion Na­tions would be con­duct­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Eti­enne Charles’ Road March in Con­cert takes place to­day at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s, Port-of-Spain. The sold-out show will ho­n­our the leg­endary Road March king Su­perBlue.