As one of Barbados’ most iconic cultural celebrations, the annual Crop Over festival’s flagship Grand Kadooment event faces growing pressure to preserve its indigenous craft roots amid shifting industry trends. To safeguard the centuries-old tradition of masquerade costume making for future generations, a cohort of veteran bandleaders has launched targeted youth training initiatives and long-term succession plans to keep the cultural heart of the festival beating.
Kathy-Ann Scott, founder of Haus of Mas who has built her brand over 11 years in the industry, made youth skills development a core priority for her 2024 band entry. Speaking with Barbados TODAY on the sidelines of the Flow 5G+ Grand Kadooment event, Scott explained that while running a mas band has grown increasingly challenging in recent decades, the shifting landscape has created a critical opening to rebuild local artistic capacity. This year, every costume displayed by her troupe was crafted entirely in Barbados by local artisans, with 15 and 16-year-old trainees joining the production line to learn core skills including feather work and costume framing.
Scott emphasized that nurturing local craft is not just a matter of heritage preservation—it is key to building long-term investment in the festival. “If we keep exporting all our costume production overseas, we lose the core art of costume making and masquerade itself,” she noted. “When people help create the celebration, they feel a sense of ownership, and that makes them far more committed to keeping the tradition alive.”
For 35-year industry veteran Betty West, the push to pass on her craft changed plans for her planned retirement. West announced last year that 2023 would mark her final year leading a Grand Kadooment band, but she has extended her tenure to train a new generation of creators. “I said this year would be my last, but that changed,” she shared. “I have young people now learning the craft, so I’ll stay on for two more years to make sure they’re ready.”
Henderson Jones, a master wirebender with more than 30 years of experience creating costume structures, warned that core traditional skills—including wire bending, costume shaping, and structural piece fabrication—are at risk of dying out completely. He is calling for formal integration of masquerade craft into national school curricula to build a sustained pipeline of new talent. Right now, Jones explained, schools only teach basic fabric decoration, not the advanced structural skills that are the backbone of authentic Grand Kadooment costume design. If production continues to shift to overseas manufacturers in Trinidad and China, he added, costume prices will skyrocket past the reach of most local participants, pricing communities out of the tradition they created.
Quincy Jones, bandleader of the popular troupe Zenobia, is preparing a gradual handover of leadership to a younger generation, framing succession as a natural and necessary step for the festival’s evolution. While he plans to step back in the near future, he emphasized the need to keep the festival’s cultural heritage at the center of its growth, even as the event evolves to meet modern tastes.
Veteran bandleader Christopher Williams, who returned to Grand Kadooment in 2023 after a 10-year hiatus, shares that concern. He stepped back into the festival specifically to help reverse what he sees as an erosion of the event’s indigenous cultural identity. Williams’ band Salt continues to center its performances around tributes to the Barbados Landship, a unique Indigenous cultural movement with roots in Barbadian working history, and he has already laid out plans for multiple iterations of this cultural tribute over the coming years. “I fully embrace change, but we need to maintain consistency around what is indigenous, what is creatively ours, and what defines our cultural identity,” he said.
Collectively, these veteran leaders’ efforts aim to ensure that Grand Kadooment grows not just as a popular tourist event, but as a living, locally rooted cultural practice that belongs to generations of Barbadians to come.