Behind the revelry, NYC’s West Indian Day parade is facing decline, band leaders say

Behind the feathers, jeweled bikinis and stilted walkers of New York’s West Indian American Day Parade, masquerade bands say interest is waning in one of the city’s best known cultural celebrations — and dwindling resources have made competition among the bands more fierce.

Gothamist interviewed multiple bandleaders, representing hundreds if not thousands of participants, who said the competition has become more intense in recent years as costs rise and interest fades.

Many bands have pulled out and those that remain are fighting for fewer profits from the annual celebration while trying to preserve their culture. That scarcity has created mistrust, rivalries and debt among several of the groups in the longstanding parade, according to the band leaders. It’s also inspired other groups to experiment with new business models and more inclusive options for participants.

“The business side matters a lot because before you actually sell any kind of costume to start replenishing your money, you’re in about a debt of almost $20,000,” Eddie Trotman, the leader of the band Dingolay Mas, said.

Trotman pulled out of New York’s Carnival in 2019 after 10 years of participating.

“It’s sad because in my DNA, it’s in our culture,” he said. “It’s sad to see. It’s sad to see where it’s going.”

Come Labor Day, Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, will still teem with thousands of masqueraders dancing in some 30 groups called bands, also known as mas camps — short for masquerade.

Akin to traveling parties, mas band participants pay the bands for lavish costumes, food, drink and to party alongside a semi truck pulling loud music as it makes its way down the parade route.

But the mas camp leaders say with fewer participants, turning a profit or even recouping the substantial investment of both time and money grows more difficult every year. Not including the per-participant costs of food and material, organizers say overhead alone can cost bands $25,000 a year, for things like costumes, insurance and advertising.

One band makes participants sign a contract saying they won’t disclose details of the costumes or inner workings of the band.

“It’s a competition. If I tell you everything, there could be a possibility that you could be working for someone else,” Maxine Borneo of the band Suga Candy Mas said in a phone interview. “You could be working for another band. You can steal my idea, they can steal mine, I can steal theirs.”

Borneo runs a tight media operation, asking Gothamist to not mention her band alongside others. When told the story would include other mas camps, she asked not to be involved and threatened to have the reporter arrested.

Other groups were more open, describing a complex industry that requires nearly a year of planning, design and logistics. Bands profit by selling participants not just costumes, but the entire traveling party.

Mas camps to advertise, buy special event insurance, rent storefronts to sell costumes and hire designers, craftspeople, promoters, private security, DJs and caterers for the parade. Band leaders source supplies from South Africa, the United Kingdom, China and Trinidad.

“Once you’re a big band, you can go to China” for costume manufacturing, said Jamila Gulstone, the leader of the B Paradise Mas, a band participating in Monday’s parade. “You have to consider customs and the price that you’re going to pay for shipping and then getting it on time.”

To maximize profit, many bands “carnival chase,” traveling the mas camp circuit in cities like Atlanta, Miami, Trinidad, Barbados, Toronto, Grenada and elsewhere.

“A lot of bands basically thought it was more lucrative to go to the Caribbean and to Miami and that’s where they are now,” Gulstone said. “Depending on where we’re from, we would have family or people that we’ve networked with as business partners that live in those places.”

Gulstone said she’d forgo profit if it meant passing Carnival on to a younger generation of New Yorkers. However, several major bands made the opposite decision and stopped participating in New York’s Carnival.

Among those is Dingolay Mas, led by Trotman, who quit New York’s Carnival scene because organizers and police struggled to keep non-paying revelers from jumping the barricades and partying with masqueraders who paid to participate.

“The girls are basically half naked, having a good time. They don’t want the outside people to just come and grab them and rub up against them,” he said.

Trotman, who still leads a band in Miami, said he has to pay $15,000 in deposits to vendors before getting paid from participants.

“I can’t put that money up without selling one costume knowing that [customers] are not going to enjoy the show,” he said.

Band leaders listed a confluence of factors for Carnival’s decline in New York, owing mostly to economics. The rising cost of materials has pushed the cost of costumes alone to $1,000 or beyond for frontline band sections.

Kenneth Antoine, the leader of one of New York’s oldest bands, Antoine International, said participants don’t want to pay that anymore.

“Last year I borrowed quite a bit and I’m still paying it,” he said from his basement shop in Flatbush. “I don’t know what’s going on this year. I got nowhere to borrow from.”

The parade’s official organizer, the West Indian American Day Carnival Association, said it has strict rules against non-costumed paradegoers from joining the bands on the parkway.

Cecile Ford, the association board secretary, acknowledged the dwindling number of masqueraders but blamed inflation and a lack of business savvy among some band leaders.

“Even though we run educational programs on how to create a business, many of them do not heed the advice as to how they can set themselves up in order to be more successful businesses,” she said.

The for-profit business is not the only model of mas camp out there. At least, two bands whose leaders said they were disillusioned with what Carnival has become are offering cheaper alternatives.

The community group I Am Caribbeing sells what it calls body-inclusive costumes that come in larger sizes and cover more skin. Shelly Worrell, the group’s founder, criticized what she called the hyper-competitive, hyper-sexualized trope of Carnival.

“You’re just buying a costume, you’re not buying into a concept or a community,” she said from her shop on Nostrand Avenue. “It’s just like ‘I’m showing my body off’ or it’s for Instagram or social media. Actually, a lot of people, that’s what they’re doing. They’re doing Carnival for the ‘Gram.”

Worrell keeps the cost of her costumes below $200 and said they can be reused at the beach.

Another mas camp is subsidized by 1199 Service Employees International Union which has many members of Caribbean descent. It offers costumes between $400 to $600, roughly half the price of other bands.

In an interview at SEIU’s mas camp, band director Curtis Dyer said as he’s gotten older, he’s become more attached to his Trinidadian roots.

“The other bands, they’re all about making money,” he said. “Our band is just about keeping the heritage going.”