These guys are inexperienced when it comes to promotion.
That’s the view of a New York-based Grenadian promoter with over 30-years in the business as he called on the Dickon Mitchell-led Congress administration to do a complete overhaul of the Board of Directors of the Spicemas Corporation.
Speaking to THE NEW TODAY at the end of the August carnival festival, the promoter said that some of the top persons in the Spicemas set-up need to go for incompetence and a lack of professional approach to the culture.
He charged that a lot of Grenadians in New York are consistently complaining about the attitude of Spicemas to the cultural event.
“I don’t think these fellahs doing anything for Culture in Grenada – not even here (New York),” he said. According to the overseas promoter, the outfit at Spicemas can best be described as “ungrateful” and demonstrate “No Thanks” to those in the Diaspora who have been pushing the Grenada Culture over the years.
“They have no regards for the people overseas who can help them. They have no knowledge about what they ‘re doing,” he said.
The promoter spoke of knowing several persons who have been helping even the Spicemas body “from up here” in New York and are shown little or no courtesy when they come home for the festival. “They went to Grenada, they don’t even look at us to get a pass to go to a show,” he remarked.
The promoter stated that the current life of the Spicemas Board should be two years and the Congress government needs to make fundamental changes to its composition when the time comes.
“That board should change – get rid of all these people who are holding back progress for Grenada. I don’t feel that they are doing what is right and justice for the people who live in Canada as promoters, people that live here (New York) that would excel the culture that will help to build Grenada,” he said.
The U.S-based promoter lamented that Grenadians living in North America will come to the island for the annual festival not because of the effort of Spicemas but due to the work done over the years for the culture by persons living in the United States and Canada.
“They don’t even honour those guys – they have to go and stand up and pay for a ticket and stuff like that,” he said. “I don’t think those guys are doing what is right – we need to see more things on CNN, NEWS-12 where all the Caribbean people are tuned into New York, spend some money and advertise and make the thing (Spicemas) bigger and better,” he added.
The promoter went on to say: “The Jab thing is a thing that catch a fire in the whole world – white playing it, Chinese playing it – everybody playing it, so they need to market this more and do what is right. They need to market our culture more.”
He lashed out at the Spicemas outfit for engaging in behavior which seemingly suggest that they “discriminate” the Grenadian-born overseas promoters and appear to be “holding grudges” against them. He said a frequent complaint is that the Board members of Spicemas “don’t answer calls, you attempt to give them advice – they don’t listen to it (and) when people reach out to call them – they don’t call back.”
“I don’t know if it is too much and they can’t handle. It isn’t personal. I feel frustrated when am sending you messages and you don’t answer. I am sending you messages that (are) pertinent about our growth, our culture, to our people,” he remarked.
“I don’t know what is their problem down dey but Spicemas could do better than that. They are not professional – they never return calls and do follow ups,” he said.
The promoter also called for Spicemas to make greater use of the newly crowned Power Soca monarch Dash and Groovy monarch, Boyzie to help market the Grenada product to attract more visitors to the island for future carnival celebrations.
The current Chairman of the Spicemas Board is businessman Kurt Ross and the Chief Executive Officer is Cecil Noel.