Hold On Band Issues Until 2010

 Nation News: 6/22/2009.

by JOHN SEALY

A NUMBER of issues which the Barbados Association of Masqueraders (BAM) wanted to address with the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) before this year's Crop-Over Festival have been deferred.

One of these, according to Mackie Holder, producer/bandleader of Wednesday 2000, is the judging of the bands and tabulation of points.

"We have agreed that going forward we would like a first-past-the-post system - a simple tabulation of first second and third in all categories going into Band Of The Year whether it is Kiddies Kadooment or Grand Kadooment.

"However, in keeping with the spirit of the festival at this time, and not trying to prolong the agony, we are going to defer the judging issues until next year," Holder said.

According to BAM, the current situation is that in spite of a band placing first in an "overwhelming number of categories" it "can still not be in overall winners' row".

Another issue for discussion that BAM has put on the back-burner is "the use of images of bands by all and sundry" across the world without the bands' permission or benefit.

"It is a very technical issue. There have been cases where individuals have threatened to sue bands because their images have been used without permission."