Mash is no splash

Feb 21, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

I was with some friends when this man came up and joined the conversation. He had a deep Jamaican accent, very deep. After he had left I was told that he was working in Guyana as a disc jockey.
I remarked that it was nice that the CARICOM Skills’ Certificate was working. I exclaimed how pleased I was that Jamaican nationals can find employment Guyana.
My friends looked at me as if I were a madman. “Jamaican!” they exclaimed. “That man is a Guyanese. He has never left these shores. He is just imitating being a Jamaican.”
I was told that there are many imitators and pretenders out there. Some of them are more Jamaican than Jamaicans. You cannot blame them. Guyana has for almost fifty years been trying to mimic Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival. Guyana’s Mashramani is only original in name, not in content.
Guyana has always been trying to outdo Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival. We have never quite made the grade, but each year we try our own feeble imitation of the Greatest Show on Earth.
Guyana’s Mash Day Float Parade is an embarrassment when compared to Port of Spain’s Carnival. Guyanese simply do not have the resources to put into that aspect of the revelries to come anywhere near to what exists in Trinidad.
Guyana has never produced a world class calypsonian. Trinidad has produced the best in the field. Trinidad owns pan music and chutney in the Caribbean. Guyana’s soca renditions pale in comparison to the soca tunes of Barbados and Trinidad. These two countries have world class performers. Our artistes are playing catch-up.
Mashramani is an embarrassment when compared also with Rio’s Carnival and Barbados’s Crop Over.
The persons who know about tourism have long been arguing that the timing of Mashramani falls around the same time of Trinidad and Brazil’s carnivals. No one is going to go to those carnivals and then come to see our pitiful imitation. The tourism people have been calling for Mashramani to be moved to later in the year so as to attract more tourists.
But it is not so much the timing as it is the product we have. Mashramani is no show-stopper. It is a “big lime”. It is a time when Guyanese come out and try to make the best out of something which has always been mediocre.
We should not try to play catch-up with the rest of the Caribbean. We do not have the money to bring our Mashramani up to the standards of our regional counterparts. A few companies tend to be the big sponsors for mash events in Guyana. There is only so much money which these companies can fork out. Apart from the big companies, very little support comes from the local private sector.
Some of the big sponsors are pulling out of Mash. They are not obtaining the desired marketing returns. This spells disaster for the future of Mash, even with a more sympathetic and supportive government.
This means that Guyanese will have to go into their pockets to make mash the success which they want it to be. But we know that the disposable income of the average man will not allow for any major spending on Mashramani.
The second problem is the size of the tourism and entertainment industry. Promoters of shows in Guyana will tell you that the entertainment crowd is too small to sustain it as a major industry. And the number of tourists that we have cannot kick-start our tourism sector. This is the bottom line.
We are simply not ready yet to have a major entertainment industry and this is why we will continue to fail year after year with trying to make Mashramani a hit. It will continue to be a miss.
It is time for Guyana to reinvent Mashramani. It is time for the copycatting to end. It is time Guyana aims for something different than those other carnivals which we simply cannot compete with. We need to remake our national festival and to do so quickly.

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Mash is no splash

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