MINISTER?OF?CULTURE Stephen Lashley, with optimism and gusto, is promising much ado of this year’s Crop Over Festival. One feature will be, he says, “major involvement” of our youth.
After all, this is International Year Of The Youth. So we wait with bated breath to see how much more the young will participate in a festival some people say is already dominated by them.
And, 2011 is as well the International Year Of Culture; so Mr Lashley will want to do something or a series of things that is spectacular. We are not quite sure yet what, and neither, apparently, is he.
But all in good time, he suggests.
For one thing, “nothing definitive” about Crop Over this year did he give at his Press conference on Monday.
Well, he won’t until meetings with stakeholders, which he says are to start at monthend.
Mr Lashley must be given some credit for publicly suggesting he would rather discuss most of the matters pertinent to the festival with the stakeholders before these usual official announcements.
Music to the ears
This will be melodic music to the ears of Crop Over stakeholders. They have never shied away from letting it be known that there has been too much “secrecy” in National Cultural Foundation
(NCF) planning for the annual festival, protecting it from scrutiny, and that too often many a decision has been presented fait accompli to them.
We do not think stakeholders will be miffed, however, at reading in the Press that the controversial Soca Royale (why not Royal in the first place we don’t know) is no more.
Stakeholders were trying to impress upon the last NCF board that the Royale was a nonsense; but it was one of those decisions taken without proper prior discussion and, in spite of all the opposition to it, insisted upon.
A greater portion of common sense and a good deal of diligence could have avoided the TC crisis at Bush Park: two monarchs set against each other, and the crowd deciding before the final showdown whom they didn’t want.
Thanks to Mr Lashley, nothing like this will happen again – not any time soon.
A new-look festival? Hardly. A seemingly more practical one? Yes.
The fairs appear to be back; and there is some spirited inclusion of the Almighty, with gospel music.
Glory be to God!