Feb. 24, 2002 – The artists and organizers who help make Carnival the extravaganza it has become shared their insights at a weekend seminar on St. Thomas.
The year 2002 marks the 50th anniversary of Virgin Islands Carnival. A year-long celebration of monthly events, including Saturday's symposium at Palms Court Harbor View, are being held to honor this event. It was also time to honor some of the originators.
Alfred "Freddy" Lockhart Sr., Allen Richardson, Hollis Liverpool ("the Mighty Chalkdust") and Thyra Hodge-Smith were honored for their cultural contributions during an induction ceremony into the V.I. Carnival Hall of Fame.
Lockhart helped promote V.I. music abroad and introduce the music of Antigua at carnivals back home. Richardson founded the "Moby Dick Carnival Troupe" that was popular in the 1970s. Hodge-Smith is credited for her prize-winning individual costume entries and Liverpool, for using his lyrical and musical talents to capture the calypso crown both here and in his native Trinidad and Tobago.
It was a gesture greatly appreciated by those who played their parts right from the start.
Former Delegate Ron de Lugo said he had been skeptical about the idea of holding a seminar on Carnival but changed his mind. "It was a great idea," he said. "Just listening to some of the presentations by the inductees … For me, it brought back memories."
There were memories of the days when de Lugo, then a 22-year-old radio personality called Mango Jones, raised the idea of holding Carnival on his morning talk show. From that moment, he said, the telephones began ringing. The rest, he said, sprang from the shared enthusiasm of the St. Thomas community.
To keep the spark alive and to meet the challenges of today, the V.I. Carnival Committee has been holding an annual symposium for the past several years. It is a time when the public is invited to take a closer look at the cultural and traditional elements that make up the annual fete and figure out how to preserve and promote the best of it.
Organizers said they were pleased with the presentations made by nearly a dozen performers, costume makers and pageant winners but said they wished there had been a better turnout. "The crowd's not big, but I think the information is great," Kenneth Blake, Carnival Committee chair, said.
"Of course the disappointment was the turnout," said public relations director Lorraine Gumbs-Morton. She said it's usually at the height of Carnival season when critics are most vocal and those who say they'd like to see changes make their views known over the airwaves. She said one objective of the symposium is to give those critics a forum and give those who want to make suggestions a way to do that, "to give us something to ponder and to work with. We're not a closed-door operation, as some people say we are."
And, as it has over the past few years, the Carnival Finance Committee presented its annual report. It showed revenues for the 2001 season of $887,405 expenditures of $871,716.40. The committee received $300,000 in financial aid from the V.I. government; proceeds from annual shows and stadium events totaled $215,220.
Since the government slashed Carnival spending as part of an overall budget cut several years ago, the committee has been carrying over a deficit at the end of the year. But that deficit has steadily been shrinking, and for 2001 it was reported at $12,262.90, less than half of what it was four years ago.
