Crop Over masqueraders will play mas’ along a new route for Grand Kadooment that will begin in The City and ultimately wind up at cricket’s Caribbean Mecca, the head of the Barbados Association of Masqueraders (BAM), Jason Thompson, has announced.
It would be the third time in as many seasons that the route has been changed since the country emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The route change was a series of major adjustments to the festival announced late Friday at the Season of Emancipation and Crop Over 2024 media launch at Ilaro Court.
In 2022, revellers jumped from Warrens along the ABC Highway to the Emancipation Statue at the JTC Ramsay Circle but returned in 2023 to the previous route from Warrens to the Mighty Grynner Highway.
This year, Kadooment begins from the area of the Bridgetown Helipad. It then proceeds out to Hincks Street, along the Princess Alice Highway, passing Pelican Village; right turn onto Prescod Boulevard (Harbour Road); continuing to the Elsie Payne Roundabout, exiting onto the entire length of President Kennedy Drive, continuing past Kensington Oval and left at Eagle Hall; along Black Rock Main Road to the Frank Worrell Roundabout at the bottom of University Drive (Gordon Cummins Highway); and onto the Mighty Grynner Highway, parading down to Kensington Oval.
Thompson explained that a task force was set up at the end of last year’s Grand Kadooment to analyse the festival in collaboration with the National Cultural Foundation (NCF).
Last week, BAM’s talks with the Defence Force, Police Service, bandleaders and other figures revealed that there was a need for change.
“Change that would make things better for most stakeholders,” Thompson said. “We saw it as a need for wider roads, based on the experience that many of our bandleaders would like to offer to their masqueraders. We recognise that the spectators are forced to stand on the [sides] of the smaller roads and therefore there was a need for party zones . . . areas where persons can purchase from a stall, listen to some music and enjoy themselves within that space while they are waiting for the other bands to pass.
“Having a route that offers a picturesque view of our beautiful beaches is one added benefit to Destination Barbados, and finally, having a system that can be easily managed by the police and the armed forces,” the BAM president added.
Among other changes on the Crop Over calendar is the judging for the Pic-O-De-Crop finals which, according to Competition Coordinator Aja, will take place in two locations.
“When they move from one location to the next, the sound changes. You will go to one location where the sound is excellent and then go to another venue where the acoustics are bad,” he explained. “There are going to be two locations; next year, we will probably get one. July 15th will be the Stray Cats at the Daphne Joseph Hackett Theatre and then the Big Show on the 16th, House of Soca on the 17th and Shining Stars on the 18th, all at the Gymnasium. Then Super Gladiators will be at the Daphne Joseph Hackett Theatre and All Stars at the gym on the 22nd. Hopefully, we will see an improvement with Pic-O-De-Crop . . . . So we will see a higher standard of Pic-O-De-Crop this year.”
Bridgetown Market will now take place in the heart of the capital – the street fair’s original 1970s location – but with significant variations, running on four Fridays in the festival.
NCF’s Chief Executive Officer Carol Roberts said officials found “a number of environmental difficulties with the staging of Bridgetown Market in its traditional format” along the Mighty Grynner Highway.
Several site visits, she disclosed, were conducted with the Ministry of Health and the Environment Division, which discovered “very large swaths of land on the Mighty Grynner Highway that are no longer suitable for the kind of set-up that we would traditionally have on the highway”.
The Bridgetown Craft Market will stretch along Princess Alice Highway, from Pelican Village and the Bridgetown Fishing Complex to the Golden Square Freedom Park.
Roberts said the shift will allow people who want to “buy arts and crafts and see demonstrations, cultural performances and, of course, food and beverage, to visit Bridgetown on four Fridays during the Crop Over season, and we are also doing it in partnership with the Barbados Chamber of Commerce”.
The first Bridgetown Craft Market, Roberts said, will be held on Friday, June 28.
(STT)
