#BTEditorial – Crop Over is ours – make the most of it

Following Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s announcement on February 26 that there will be a Crop Over Festival this year, the Ministry of Culture and the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) have revealed the details about the Government-staged events.

For the most part, the festival has kept its marquee events, with only one major casualty being Junior Kadooment. However, the replacement will be school parades in which students get to masquerade in their school bubbles.

According to the NCF’s Chief Cultural Officer Andrea Wells, the creativity and festivity will still be present as traditional Junior Kadooment band leaders and designers will be going into the schools and producing the costumes, with assistance from the students who are to benefit from the exercise.

The opening of the festival on July 2 will go back to the traditional Ceremonial Delivery of the Last Canes at Portvale Sugar Factory. This event remains symbolic as it dates back to the early years and the reason for the festival. The other event of cultural importance is the Folk Concert which will be held on the Day of National Significance on July 26 at Golden Square Freedom Park.

The Pic-O-De-Crop Calypso Competition returns, allowing reigning monarch William Classic Waithe to finally defend his 2019 crown if he so chooses. This event remains at Kensington Oval on July 29. Junior Monarch takes on a fresh structure as it is to be more community-based and will now include Bashment Soca entries.

Following Pic-O-De Crop, the Foreday Morning Jam will be staged at four different locations.

Soca Monarch, too, has an amendment, as for the first time the people will decide and not a panel of judges. Artistes and managers alike were calling for this format for years in order to make sure the popular songs were included. On many occasions, the most popular and most played songs did not make the finals of this competition based on the criteria.

Ironically, those artistes singing the popular songs, which were excluded from the competition, would end up being guest artistes at the same Soca Monarch show, with suggestions that they were needed to help draw a crowd.

According to Wells, when the public has selected their top entries, there will be a concert, not a competition, with all the soca lovers’ favourites. The event will be held at the spacious Botanical Gardens on July 31. It will be interesting to see the attendance at this showcase given that the public is deciding who should be there.

Of note is the fact that the date for this has shifted from the penultimate weekend of Crop Over to the final weekend of the summer festival. In other words, it will now be staged on the same Sunday when Cohobblopot was traditionally held. There has been no NCF-produced event on that last Crop Over weekend Sunday in many years. 

Conversely, the one main pan event will take the spot that Soca Monarch once occupied. This event brings together Pan Fusion usually held at Ilaro Court and Pan Pun De Sand which was on Brandon’s Beach, and will be held at the Botanical Gardens on July 24.

Bridgetown Market will be broken down into a series of art and craft market days. There will be activities throughout Bridgetown over a number of Saturdays culminating on August 6 in Golden Square Freedom Park. The visual artists are not left out as the annual Fine Arts exhibitions will be mounted at numerous locations.

As expected, the climax of the festival, Grand Kadooment, is the one event that has been the hotbed of debate. Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Dr Shantal Munro-Knight said the heavily-patronised event will be held in two locations with two routes on August 1. One in Warrens, St Michael and the other is Checker Hall, St Lucy.

Stakeholders appear to have varying views on this. A few have welcomed the change while others raised concerns about moving the Grand Kadooment and Foreday Morning jumps away from the Mighty Grynner Highway. Some have said the two locations may not work as envisioned.

Some bandleaders are concerned that there is not enough time to source their material and produce a band without taking a financial hit. Others believe the festival should focus on events only this year and leave the colourful Monday morning spectacle to next year.

“Come big or don’t come at all,” some have said.

It is not too late for the Government, NCF and stakeholders to iron out these issues. The reality is, as Minister Munro-Knight said, Crop Over does not belong to the Government, it is not the NCF’s, it is not the stakeholders’, Crop Over belongs to all of us. Let level heads and productive dialogue prevail.

The Government has shown its hand and outlined its plans. We expect it to ensure the festival is well-produced and seamless. We expect that tent managers, private promoters and artistes will declare their hands as well. We expect that corporate Barbados will show what this festival means to our people and our economy. We expect the Ministry of Health to ensure the season is staged in the safest possible environment. We expect that patrons will come out and patronise their festival and comply with the COVID protocols to ensure there is no spike in cases during or after that time. Yes, we expect a lot. After all, Crop Over is ours, we must now make the most of it.