Carisa Lee

T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) PRO Val­mi­ki Ma­haraj says every­thing is run­ning “smooth­ly” for the Car­ni­val sea­son.

Ma­haraj said TTC­BA pres­i­dent Mark Ayen had vis­it­ed nu­mer­ous mas bands re­cent­ly and en­quired about their readi­ness, which he said seemed to be on track.

“So far so good. This year we had an ex­tra two weeks of Car­ni­val, so for all mas prac­ti­tion­ers, that al­ways gives me one ex­tra breath be­tween prepa­ra­tion and the road,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj, who al­so de­signs for The Lost Tribe, could not give the of­fi­cial num­ber of mas­quer­aders ex­pect­ed on the road for Car­ni­val 2025. How­ev­er, he said in his band the re­sponse had been great, as peo­ple were ap­proach­ing the longer sea­son dif­fer­ent­ly.

“The thing about prepar­ing for a fes­ti­val is you pre­pare for things to pop up. As a band­leader, in ad­di­tion to speak­ing from the TTC­BA per­spec­tive, I think there will al­ways be some­thing that pops up, but your pre­pared­ness for the some­thing pop­ping up is what re­al­ly is the key fac­tor,” he said.

Lost Tribe was in the mid­dle of cos­tume dis­tri­b­u­tion when Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Ma­haraj.

Al­so in the mid­dle of dis­trib­ut­ing cos­tumes were Yu­ma Vibe TT ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

PR/com­mu­ni­ca­tions co­or­di­na­tor Bibi Khan said they were ready for the road and had a few sur­pris­es for their mas­quer­aders. Khan could not con­firm the num­ber of mas­quer­aders in the band or if they had hit their tar­get but said thou­sands had reg­is­tered with them. In 2023, the band took to the streets of Port-of-Spain with 5,000 rev­ellers.

“Our dis­tri­b­u­tion is still on­go­ing un­til Fri­day (yes­ter­day), and we have a steady flow of per­sons com­ing to col­lect,” Khan said.

At Ron­nie and Caro’s Wood­brook camp, Ron­nie McIn­tosh said they were ready to hit the road with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,500 mas­quer­aders this year.

“All lo­gis­tics in place. We still in the process of dis­trib­ut­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing go­ing quite smooth,” he shared.

Band leader of medi­um-sized Mas Band Ex­ou­sia, Col­in Prov­i­dence, said they were ready for their es­ti­mat­ed 500 mas­quer­aders. He said they on­ly have a few cos­tumes re­main­ing.