Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

TruDYNASTY drives 24 hours to play Mas in Miami Trains. Planes. Automobiles. And, quite possibly Boats brought thousands of revelers into South Florida on the weekend to take part in the 34 th Annual Miami Carnival Parade & Concert .   Although revellers in Toronto and New York will vehemently disagree, the Miami event is often self-described as the " Largest  Caribbean  Carnival  in North America.” The big event, as it is in every carnival city, belongs to the mas band parade. More than 17 costume bands, 5 pan orchestras and blaring sound trucks took it down the road all day Sunday. Pictured: TruDYNASTY’s Thea Jackson Although no official announcement has been made as to how many people played mas at the city’s Miami-Dade County Fairgrounds or how many watched from the sidelines. Social media estimate 8,000 people were in amazingly skimpy costumes (much more women than men) and 100,000 took it all in from the sidelines. The local media who cover carnival ar

Sheffield's first parade in over 20 years By Stephen Weir for Caribbean Camera Photos courtesy of the Sheffield Carnival Rise of the Phoenix - photo courtesy of Sheffield Carnival The list of world carnival cities grew by one on the weekend. Sheffield, a British city of close to 1.6 million people staged its first carnival in over 20-years and English media outlets are reporting it was a success. “ This was the first Carnival event held here since the early 1990's,” Sheffield Carnival spokesperson Andrea Risden told the Caribbean Camera. They were aware of the Toronto Caribbean Carnival and other North American festivals, but decided “not to focus on any overseas carnivals at present. This was an event representative of carnivals around England and unique to Sheffield.”​ We had approximately 150 people playing in our mas,” continued Risden. “There were 3 bands in total, Sheffield (split into several sections), Mahogany and a small band from the Leeds West

  . But a Toronto Summer is always Hot, Hot, Hot. Jump Up. Jump Up. In the land of  snow   (feature article for WinTV's inflight magazine - Trinidad)  Playing Mas in downtown Toronto - photograph by Andrew Weir In Canada, carnival is done differently. In Trinidad, you might even call it backwards. But hey, if you can get a million people to jump up, you gotta be doing something right. At Carnival in Trinidad, everyone plays Mas in the street.  The players out-number the people watching by a long shot.  In Toronto?  There are million people cheering on the 16,000 people playing Mas along the city’s waterfront! The Scotiabank Toronto Caribbean Carnival is getting ready to hit the streets of Toronto, this August 4th.  This is the 45 th year for the festival formally known as Caribana, and not only is going to be bigger, it is going to be better. The Toronto festival runs for three weeks and attracts over a million people from Ontario, the United States and