What to know
- Smaller and independent mas bands play an important role in bringing cultural representation and diversity to Toronto’s Caribbean Carnival.
- Organizers say keeping them alive requires significant time, money and dedication.
- Band leaders say costs associated with securing space, creating costumes and organizing participants can put major financial pressure on smaller groups.
- Despite the challenges, organizers say they continue participating to preserve Caribbean traditions, share their cultures and create meaningful experiences for the next generation.
The feathers, music and spectacle of Toronto Caribbean Carnival often capture the spotlight.
However, behind many of the festival’s most distinctive cultural experiences are small and independent mas bands whose organizers say keeping those traditions alive requires enormous financial sacrifice, months of planning and countless volunteer hours.
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The hidden cost of playing mas
Co-founder of Boutique Caribbean costume design company SugaCayne, Candice Dixon, told Now Toronto the business will not be joining Carnival as a mas band this year.
The decision comes following immense pressure for the participation, including multiple hours of planning, personal sacrifice by those involved, and significant financial costs.
“It does take a toll on you. It is a lot of work. It’s a lot of organizing. It’s a lot of dollars that you have to have up front,” Dixon said.
According to Dixon, affording the space for a mass band often comes to a minimum of $5,000, while funding for band leaders can be scarce, leaving members to often use their own money to deal with the costs.
“A lot of people are mortgaged their homes. They’re coming out of pocket to make this thing happen,” she said.
“Finance is a lot of it, and I think that’s something that I think is important to note that this carnival brings in so much money into the city, but we as the practitioners don’t see.”
Months of work for one weekend
In addition to the financial toll, organizers say participating in the event can take months and months of planning.
Freedom Mas Band leader Johanna Grant says between building the team, creating design sketches, sourcing materials, and finding a location, it can take them about 18 months of planning.
“It’s all those little moving parts, and then you plan. You have a plan for everything…By the time you’re done planning everything before you’ve actually started anything, I swear you have like 1000 pages of notes,” she said.
Although the final product looks exciting, finding a spot to join the event can also be extremely challenging.
Hayden Joseph, Lavway Mas founder and bandleader, said for him finding a spot is actually one of the most challenging aspects of participating in the event.
“It’s very hard to get one, since none of us in this industry has a stable place except for one band, right? Everyone else has to search for camp space every year, and it’s very difficult to get a spot for a short term,” Joseph said.
Bands push through to keep bringing representation
Although it might be challenging to keep pushing, band organizers said they choose to put in the work and overcome barriers to join the event.
For Sharon Niles, CEO and co-founder of Lux Carnival, the only Barbadian band participating in Toronto’s Carnival, bringing representation is extremely important.
“Our first year was a very very challenging year, but because of the responsibilities around being the only Barbadian band, being given that appointed status after a first year, we felt it necessary to pull through,” she said.
This year’s Carnival is about to be a special one for Lux Carnival, with Barbados celebrating its 60th independence later this year. The band is expecting to bring a real feel of its culture to the event, having even hired a Barbadian chef to bring the real Carnival experience to Toronto.
“We are commemorating that by actually having a really great lineup of Barbadian artists on the road, so that people can really get to understand the culture…We’ve coined our experience this year as crop over in Toronto, just to bring that true essence to the carnival,” she added.
Passing Carnival to the next generation
While SugaCayne not being a part of the event as a band this year, Dixon said she is still playing a major role in the event, as a costume designer, educator and practitioner.
Having been teaching design and costume production for 16 years, she wishes to bring a deeper look into the Carnival to younger generations.
“I really found that there’s so much more to the Carnival than what you see on the road. The beads and the feathers and the music and the fetting, that’s all great, but there’s a real history behind it,” she said.
“Introducing [students] to wire bending and traditional tenets of costume design, but also introducing them to fabrication and digital technology and new methods of fabricating, thinking about sustainability and having them upcycle within their costumes, that’s sort of my trajectory.”
More than a parade
For Joseph, Carnival is much more than a parade, and encourages attendees to experience the culture and “freeing up.”
“This is all about freeing up, enjoying yourself, and having a great experience of the world with the culture,” he said.
