IslandMix

. And The Silly Season Goes On – Groovy with Ricky Jordan - Friday 21, May-2004
So!?! I see Barbados is playing the annual Crop-Over game once again.
Year in, year out it continues, and according to one Trini soca artiste: “Ah tired ah de same ting, over and over...”

It is high time that some sanity was brought to this situation. Fuh real!

And it’s not that I don’t take the National Cultural Foundation (NCF), Barbados Association of Tent Managers (BATMAN), United Artistes of Barbados (UAB), Bert Panta Browne or even The Admiral seriously.

Truth be told, the leaders and senior members of those organisations, including Ian Estwick, Peter Boyce, Desmond Weekes and others, have a solid track record in the music industry, and have paid their dues to entertainment in Barbados.

At the same time, however, each of these men know – in their heart or hearts – that Crop-Over, besides providing a forum for good music and an event for thousands of visitors and Barbadians to enjoy, also provides that rare opportunity for some people in the industry to savour a moment in the sun.

The publicity for those organisations and many calypso-related artistes is not high-profile all year, not even at the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA), which is an NCF showpiece.

Therefore, the six weeks or so of Crop-Over create the prime opportunity to air greivances which could have been thrashed out all year; and “photo ops” with the Crop-Over partners opposing each other over a table then smiling later for the cameras.

My concern, however, is with the media getting too involved and buying this yearly, publicity-hungry game hook, line and sinker.

We as journalists should be more analytical in our thinking, with the ability to see through what are real issues and what is little more than illusion.

Let me predict now that a meeting or series of meetings will soon be held, and all the parties now arguing over rights and the lack thereof will be happy and Crop-Over will come off.

And by next year, they will argue about the same issues – probably with a new spin. Over and over and over....

In fact, to add fuel to the make-believe fire, we now have an opinion from The Admiral, whom I mistakenly considered to be more critical in his thinking since he has worked in the media for so long.

Yet, he publicly blasts the Concerned Group of Producers from the wrong angle, stating they should have sought an amicable meeting with the Government; hardly realising that the concerned group had been seeking such meetings for nearly two years!

Armed with this lack of knowledge, he then wrongfully blames the group for “holding Government to ransom”.

In the meantime, the artistes have promised to not only boycott Crop-Over but Admiral’s Festival Stage. Another joke, since this is one of their prime areas for publicity during Crop-Over - the forum where they get the opportunity to either hammer or commend local music, or to blast journalists who have the temerity to criticise a Gabby, a Bag or a John King.

It’s also the forum where many, who don’t know an iota about music, get to posture and pontificate about the rudiments and origins of soca and calypso. This is the season when everybody becomes an expert – one of two silly seasons.

So where do we go from here? I would suggest to the NCF, BATMAN and UAB to meet in September when the two bodies are not terribly busy, and thrash out their matters related to songs, lyrics, the amount of finalists best suited to Pic-O-De-Crop, prize monies and so on.

The only matter they should be discussing at this time (May-June) should be contracts; not deadlines for songs, not who has pirated whom. Piracy goes on all year.

And even so, members of these bodies know who the pirates are; they know who run the pirate ships from within the recording studios and radio stations. So who are we fooling yearly when people get up in arms over piracy?

What hurts also are the many other Barbadians genuinely interested in seeing Crop-Over grow, including a number of returning nationals who can’t understand why these issues have to be played out in the media with the same result every year.

They annually beg for an end to this nonsense, but are ignored, resulting in yet another potential patron or visitor being turned off.

In the meantime, if you see me at any of the Press conferences recording the same grievances just mentioned, or covering some of the Crop-Over events; I’m simply doing my job.

But I remain convinced that these grievances and issues are the essence of frivolity fuelled by a thirst for publicity; with the media caught dead in the middle.

*********


AS IF Crop-Over controversy wasn’t enough, two main Christian events – Gospelfest and Jesus Week – are poised to clash. For the first time ever, the two events will run at the same times.

Based on my recollection, Jesus Week is held around June each year, and not late May as Gospelfest is.

But it goes deeper than this. Jesus Day, an internationally celebrated event, falls 50 days after Easter, thereby celebrating the birth of the church, or Pentecost as recorded in the Biblical book of Acts.

In the last two years, the day has fallen somewhere in early June but this year will be celebrated May 30, and the organisers of Jesus Week have decided to hold their celebrations May 23-30, clashing with the May 22-30 Gospelfest.

While it’s too late now to reschedule, the organisers of both events could have seen this coming; the Gospelfest folk could have shifted their festival a week earlier or the Jesus Week folk could have started, not ended, their activities on Jesus Day (May 30).

I’m sure the clash has some Christians in a quandary, but who knows? It may be a blessing in disguise.

rickyjordan@nationnews.com

Ah glad 2 know it ent cancel...Moni had meh rell nervous yesterday